Time for a new one of these. Sorry about my absence in recent times but two close family bereavements in succession have somewhat taken my eye off BBC bias. Anyway, I am back. So detail the bias here.

The BBC is feeding the Black grievance industry and victimhood narrative, and worse, promoting the idea that all whites are racist, and blacks the victims of that racism….a very dangerous and destructive line that sets one group against another.

Justin Webb demonstrates what is so often wrong with BBC interviewers…they go in with preconceived notions that any interviewee has to then defend themselves against rather than the BBC asking neutral questions intended to genuinely discover what is going on in any given situation that has suddenly got their interest.

Webb in this interview (08:48) with British police officer Michael Matthews, author of “We Are The Cops”, who has long experience of how American police operate, began with the prejudice that American police are brutal, racist, violent and a regard themselves as beleagured ‘superheros’ setting themselves against the rest of the population, the police not being part of the community.

Matthews soon put Webb right on just about every criticism.

Webb’s approach is all too often reflected in the rest of the BBC when it comes to reporting on recent events in the US, reporting as ‘fact’ that America is a racist society and that white police officers are gunning down black men because the white officers are racist.

The BBC plays a dangerous game feeding into the black activists game of race baiting, race hustling and facilitating the grievance industry and the line that Blacks are victims of white People’s prejudices at all times.

Here are just some of the BBC’s own prejudices where it casually accepts that events in Ferguson and Baltimore and elsewhere are caused by police racism…

The Costco heir who became a voice for Baltimore

Justin Brotman is a human rights activist, and the son of one of the co-founders of wholesale superstore Costco. And as the voice behind the @Bipartisanism Twitter account, he became one of the main drivers of a campaign to change the public perception of what happened in Baltimore last week.

“I think what we’re seeing is a bit of a tipping point in American culture. With each incident, with video, with witnesses, we’re starting to think – wow, we really do have this problem in America,” Brotman said.

“People are starting to think ‘How many black men are in jail, and shouldn’t be? How many black men have been killed?’ That’s all starting to percolate clearly.”

Why do US police keep killing unarmed black men?

 

What a riot does achieve

So what box do we put the Freddie Gray story in?

It’s obviously a story – but it is none too rare, sadly not that unusual – and if you ask many in the black community, not in the least bit unexpected.

I heard one piece of commentary that more or less started “First there was Ferguson, now Baltimore”‘ – but in truth there has been a whole pile of incidents in between.

I haven’t the space to list them all – the 12-year-old boy shot dead in a park in Cleveland, Ohio, the student left bloody and bruised at the University of Virginia, the man fatally shot eight times in the back in South Carolina, the 44-year-old chased down and killed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after volunteer officer pulled a firearm instead of a stun gun.

And there are more, culminating in Freddie Gray dying while in the custody of Baltimore police, after his spinal cord had been virtually severed. It’s unlikely you would sustain an injury like that simply by slipping as you stepped into the police wagon.

What the common features are of all these incidents is that the victims were black and the forces of law and order involved in them were for the most part white.

Which brings us back to the opinion piece that made the point that first there was Ferguson, then there was Baltimore. The writer is correct, insofar as they both resulted in looting, burning and vandalising – all playing out on our screens last night.

From the hapless Baltimore mayor through to the president the point has been made – rioting achieves nothing.

But, sadly it has. It has caught people’s attention – because it has conformed to the journalist’s law of what makes a story – it is rare, unexpected and unusual.

Perhaps the lesson is we need to take more notice of things that lead to the riots and sense of alienation by disaffected young African-Americans.

The white cop assaulting or shooting a black man may not be that unusual, but it has already led to dire consequences for those living in Ferguson and in Baltimore.

More black ‘victimhood’….you can’t call a thug a thug…

The unlikely origins of the word ‘thug’

In the wake of violence and unrest in Baltimore, media commentators as well as politicians – including President Barack Obama – called rioters “thugs”, and were criticised for it. But the term has a much older history.

In the US, “thug” is a loaded term.

“It’s this very effective way of suggesting that the people who are doing the rioting and who are being called thugs don’t actually have a right to their outrage,” she says.

That’s partly why there’s widespread disgust in the African American community over its use. Just take the response Baltimore Councilman Carl Stokes gave to CNN’s Erin Burnett over the word.

“It’s not the right word to call our children ‘thugs,'” Mr Stokes said. “These are children who have been set aside, marginalised, who have not been engaged by us.”

Garber isn’t surprised the word has become so loaded.“In some sense, the history of language is about people trying to wield power over other people,” she says.

“And so this is just one more example of that strife and that effort.”

Here is a typical BBC, very one-sided, look at the ‘problem’…..naturally the BBC doesn’t bother with any context or challenge to the lines being fed to us that blacks are treated more harshly than whites……..

Would it have been different if the Waco bikers were black?

Biker gangs in Waco, Texas, shot each other up and the police moved in to stop the shootings.  The police actually shot some of the bikers and arrested over 170…and yet black activists, and the BBC, are asking why there was no ‘tanks’ etc on the streets…it’s a race thing surely?

Well perhaps there were no tanks because, despite police shooting some bikers and arresting 170 or so of them, there were no mass riots, civil disorder and mass destruction in reaction to those shootings and arrests in contrast to how the black community reacted in Baltimore and Ferguson….here are those rioting bikers……

And yet there were heavily armed police at Waco…

Contrast with Baltimore and Ferguson….can you spot the difference?……

And you may remember a previous police action at Waco….guess that was police racism as well….or not as the ‘victims’ of police violence were white……….

How about those racist National Guardsmen?

or indeed back to Waco present day…….those racist cops arresting all these black boys……

The BBC were working themselves into quite a state of euphoria over that handshake between IRA godfather Gerry Adams and Prince Charles in Galway yesterday. What sickened me MOST about a pretty revolting situation was the way in which the BBC coyly referenced Adams as leader of ..cough…”the Republican movement” without making it clear that he commanded the IRA terrorist campaign and would assuredly have been involved in the signoff of the murder of Lord Mountbatten all those years ago. The BBC is an agent for appeasement and for sanitising the bloody heritage of Adams and his vile cohorts. It sickens me.

I am always disappointed but not surprised to read this sort of idiocy.

B-BBC reader Dave Ward responds…

“I am about to send a letter to the editor, but from past experience, this probably won’t get printed!

Dear Editor,

I assume that Steve Downes is trying his hand at comedy writing (EDP Opinion & Comment, 16th May), as I can’t believe his defence of the BBC is meant to be serious. He claims to “Know full well if I’m on the receiving end of biased, skewed reporting” and “Never for a moment have I suspected the BBC of such a crime”. I can only suggest he removes the welding goggles coving his rose tinted spectacles, and looks further. For a start, their daily “The Papers” TV programme – the backdrop for this features a number of titles, and right at the top is the only UK example, The Guardian. If that isn’t more than a little biased to the left, I don’t know what is. The BBC fought a long battle against a FOI request enquiring about the “experts” advising them on climate issues. When this effort failed it soon became apparent why: tinyurl.com/p3nwgml The BBC does indeed produce some wonderful specialist programmes, but their news and current affairs output can no longer be trusted, and the 1,000’s of viewers cancelling TV licences shows I’m not alone in that view. Mr Downes might also focus on what they don’t cover, as well as what they do. It is high time the organisation was given a shake-up.

At one time the EDP was fairly right wing, on account of its circulation area, but since a “night of the long knives” clear out of editorial staff it is now just as left wing as sister paper the Norwich Evening News. Both are part of the Archant publishing group, which we know contains a number of Common Purpose “graduates”, and clearly sucks up to the UEA which has many more. ”

Good to confront those who grovel to the BBC.

Middle of the week and time for a new Open Thread. Over to you!

The BBC has a new celebrity left winger to flood the airwaves with their views….Steve Hilton, a one time David Cameron advisor….which could explain a lot when you listen to his thoughts.

‘Parish’ Hilton is all about the ‘local’ now, anti-big business, anti-capitalist and confusingly seemingly also anti-communist bu he just doesn’t realise it.  He has a very confused message and a very naive one.  The BBC likes him though with him popping up everywhere, twice on Today today, on Marr’s Start the Week  ,with that other favourite lefty guru Stiglitz, and given a free hand to promote his message on Newsnight….that message being very ‘Occupy’ and would seem better suited to Miliband than the Tories….as the Times points out…‘Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s modernising guru, has a message that the opposition should take to heart‘.  One notable omission from Hilton’s hit list is the power hungry, anti- people EU….could it be because Cameron is pro-Europe?  Are we being sold a political ideology by Hilton rather than a genuine attempt to understand the problems and come up with a solution?

Kathy Gyngell from ‘Conservative Woman’ on the Today programme (08:55) said Hilton was irrelevant and infantile….can’t say I disagree.

Hilton tells us he is against the centralised, uniform way of doing things by Government….isn’t that Communism and the Labour way, a way in which the individaul is irrelevant? And yet he ascribes it to Capitalism. He claims that for most of human history politics was local and it was impossible to be organised any other way….really?  Has he never heard of the Aztec, Roman, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Muslim, Soviet, SNP, etc etc empires?  Has he never heard of the Domesday Book...’a landmark in the triumph of the centralised written record, once set down fixed forever, over evolving local oral traditions’, the rule of kings and queens, the Aristocracy, the Church?  The centralised power of previous societies and ways of ruling were enormous and overwhelming,  the privileged elite who held the reins of that power controlled it ruthlessly.

Life for people has never given them so much power than what they have today, especially in the capitalist West where consumer power, political power and now with the internet, the power to challenge the entrenched Media empires, has never been so strong….the power of ‘people power’ and bad publicity is enormous as shown by Thomas Cook being shamed into handing over money it received upon the death of tourists to a charity….but then again a powerful central government is essential to enforce regulations against such big institutions and  businesses on behalf of ‘The people’.  And in politics things are being shaken up radically….UKIP forced Cameron to change his politics, the SNP wiped the floor with Labour……there is no ‘status quo’ with one overwhelming, out of touch elite, they are vulnerable as never before….people have real political power…certainly it’s not perfect….the EU for instance is vastly out of touch and beyond the power of people to easily effect….but change is possible….the Soviet Empire fell because of ‘People Power’ such as ‘Solidarnosc’ backed up by Maggie and Reagan and those ‘useless’ Nukes….and the ‘Arab Spring’….which the BBC assures us was triggered and maintained by people on the ‘social media’.

Hilton of course talks about the Banks and tearing them apart but also the supermarkets saying that more competition needs to be injected by government…that ‘local’, less intrusive, less powerful government.  He tells us that the barriers to entry by competition are too strong and the big supermarkets are just too powerful….has he never heard of Aldi, Lidl and the ‘Pound’ shops, the insurgent low cost supermarkets who are making the big supermarkets run for cover?

You kind of suspect Hilton is the victim of that very thing he tells us we should be wary of, the elitist, closed minds created by being in a limited environment that turns out to be an echo chamber reflecting and reinforcing ideas that he desperately wants to believe in.  Just how many ‘real’ people does he talk to rather than activist campaigners and political geeks?  Not many it would seem.

Why is the BBC giving him so much airtime?  Great publicity for his book…..and yet his ideas smack of easy, utopian crowd pleasing, lefty schmaltz that lack any grounding in the real world and are completely unworkable in that real world….or irrelevant and infantile as someone said….much like Occupy and Giles Fraser.

A biased BBC reader writes

‘Just in case you missed it, Sarah Monatgue interviewing a prospective labour leader candidate on Radio 4’s Today (16/05/15) does a Naughtie and says “the reason why we, er you lost the election………”. The relevant section starts around 51 mins in.`’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05v6cyd

Here you go, a new Open Thread to start the week. HERE is where you detail the egregious bias!

When the Labour Party wanted to communicate their values to a less than grateful Nation they carved them into the ‘Ed Stone’ for posterity, well three days at least.

When the BBC wants to communicate their values to an expectant Nation they send for the Easton, Mark Easton, for better or worse.

Neither of these two vehicles for ‘The Message’ met with unalloyed joy from a less than adoring population.  The Ed Stone was quietly removed and secreted away, hidden from the ridicule and scorn that poured down upon it whilst, unfortunately, Mark Easton is still free to roam the world spreading his own brand of pious worthiness wherever he goes….in this case the interesting perspective that Islamic ‘extremism’ may in fact be thought heroic when the history books are written.

The BBC is not a stranger to offering support and reassurance to terrorists and those who seek to attack the West whether by violence or by using the Media itself, the BBC, along with the Guardian, often being the channel of first choice for the ‘disenfranchised’ to get their message out.

The BBC started early of course, banning Churchill from the airwaves for fear he would upset Herr Hitler, then giving priceless airtime and credibility to the IRA and its bloody message before moving on to the ‘militants’ of the PLO and Hamas, not forgetting the ‘moderates’ of the Muslim Brotherhood and the BBC’s decision to claim that the Muslim Trojan Horse scandal was a hoax generated by racism, Islamophobia and paranoia, and latterly of course the Islamists who can more often than not rely on a sympathetic hearing at the BBC.

Which brings us bang up to date and Mark Easton’s latest foray into the World  of Relativity that the BBC exists deep within.

Easton expressed the opinion that Islamists like Anjem Choudray are a vital part of society, a sounding board for society and a source of shibboleth breaking iconoclasm to be valued not censored…here he wonders if such extremism isn’t just all relative and may not be bad at all…

‘One can understand a government’s determination to prevent extremism that might lead to radicalisation and terrorism. But where to draw the line? And indeed, how do we draw up a definition?

There is, it seems to me, an inherent contradiction between banning orders and the core British value that one should be tolerant of different viewpoints.

History tells us that the development of new ideas of governance and government require people to think radically. Extreme views are necessary to test the wisdom of the mainstream.’

The BBC of course has no problem at all in deciding what is extreme and shutting such voices out of the debate…oh they may let them speak but only to give someone else the chance to cast derision, scorn and mockery upon them…..UKIP, the EDL and even the Tories know full well they are considered ‘extremists’ by the BBC.

Easton asks…

‘Would those who oppose homosexuality or multiculturalism or feminism be accused of threatening values of tolerance and equality?

Well yes if the person is Christian, no if they are Muslim…..as has been shown many, many times when Christians have been arrested on the streets or forced from their jobs because of their views.

Unfortunately for Easton a great many people objected to his claim that extremists like Choudray could be compared to great transformational figures in history such as Ghandi and that possibly, at some time in the future, we will come to believe extremists like Choudray were in fact the prophets and harbingers of a new and better way of life.

Easton was shocked to be on the receiving end of so much criticism….and all of it,, he assures us, completely unjustified as he scrambles to explain in this self-serving attempt to dig himself out of his hole……

‘After my blog earlier this week and an appearance on the BBC News at Ten reporting on government plans to introduce extremist banning orders, it is upsetting to find myself accused of positively comparing the radical Islamist firebrand Anjem Choudary with civil rights hero Mahatma Gandhi.

I would understand people’s shock and horror if I had – but I did not. Quite the reverse. Anjem Choudary is nothing like Mahatma Gandhi. Nor Nelson Mandela for that matter. Indeed, that was my point and I am saddened if it has been misconstrued.’

Anyone reading the original article and reports of his news broadcast will know he is not being truthful with himself….he was clearly trying to relativise the issues and was suggesting that Choudray may be considered a hero like Ghandi or Mandela one day and that his extremist views might not just be a useful sounding board for society but a source and inspiration for a new society and way of governing.

Easton….shame he can’t be found a quiet spot in a very, very big warehouse where he can be parked for a very, very long time…with no wifi.