Category Archives: BBC bias

The Luvvies are all out in force as they see the end is nigh for their easy life troughing aboard the BBC gravy train.

We’ve had BBC top brass manning the barricades with Hall and Harding telling us what a brilliant job they do, now we’ve got the Grunts coming out to join the frontline in the battle against the dark forces of evil that are arrayed against the BBC, that New Hope for the world.

Hall must be calling in a few favours and dusting off the address book in order to get the troops to answer the call to arms to save the BBC from the terrible Tories and their allies in the right wing Press.

Everyman and his dog are making some noise, including David Dimbleby.  Apparently the whole news and entertainment industry will collapse without the BBC propping it up…not only that but the nation, nay, the world, will be a poorer place without it and its preaching.

The Writer’s Union, WGGB,  has signed up for the cause, as has the NUJ and BECTU amongst other Media unions…..all lobbying hard to keep the licence fee going and their share of it coming their way.  Even Hollywood has taken Aunties’ shilling.

I particularly liked this from a template protest letter that union members were instructed to bombard Parliament with….

BECTU is campaigning for a strong, independent and properly-funded BBC so it can carry out its duties as a public service broadcaster; protect quality journalism and programming, the World Service and the important cultural role it plays.

A functioning democracy depends upon its citizens hearing a range of arguments and having equal access to information and opinions in order to participate. The BBC plays a major role in presenting balanced, impartial news coverage which does not depend on the personal prejudices and foibles of media moguls or commercial pressure to appease shareholders.

 

A functioning democracy does indeed depend upon its citizens being properly informed and able to hear a range of arguments…unfortunately they don’t get that from the BBC….what they get is a very left wing slant on the news and deliberate attempts to downplay or hide relevant facts that would, if broadcast or published, completely alter the narrative that the BBC is actually feeding the Public.

And it is amusing that the creative types need a template letter, shouldn’t they be just the people to come up with something unique, inspiring and gamechanging?

The Guardian reports that ‘Jonathan Dimbleby warns of ‘powerful vested interests’ attacking BBC licence fee’

Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has hit out at the BBC’s “enemies” and warned against cuts to the licence fee….“the nation would lose massively if the BBC were to face any kind of demise”.

“I believe that while there are powerful vested interests who would like to see the BBC denied a licence fee, without a licence fee the BBC could not do what it does.”

“The BBC has enemies, it has powerful enemies. It has powerful enemies in the press and powerful enemies in Westminster – some for ideological reasons, some for straight commercial reasons.”

Curious how anyone who criticises the BBC or thinks it may need reforming in any way is classed as an ‘enemy’ of the BBC.

Does Dimbleby think that the BBC is sacred, too sacred to mention at all….perhaps like Charlie Hebdo he’d like to see Murdoch and his ilk machine gunned for having the temerity to challenge the might and majesty of the BBC.

The licence fee is totally iniquitous….why should you have to pay for a service that you may not use at all?  OK, you could make a case for a ‘national broadcaster’ but why should anyone have to pay for the BBC if they only want to watch Sky?

BBC funding should come out of general taxation with the added benefit that the less well off will pay less and the rich more.  The other benefit is that the BBC will stop hounding people, mostly the poorest in society, for their money….often with menaces.

Will that mean that the BBC is dependent on the largesse of politicians?  They already are….hence the mobilisation of the ‘Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ brigade to defend the licence against the predations of the Conservative Party and Fox News.

 

The National Union of Miner’s own website says:
Throughout the 1960s, with a Labour Government in office from 1964, the pit closure programme accelerated; it decimated the industry. During this period, nearly 300 more pits were closed, and the total workforce slumped from over 750,000 in the late 1950s down to 320,000 by 1968. In many parts of Britain, miners now became known as industrial gypsies as pit closures forced them to move from coalfield to coalfield in search of secure jobs.

They were victims of madhouse economics.

The BBC has been putting its weight behind Labour’s campaign to initiate an inquiry into the events at Orgreave in 1984…..I did hear a BBC reporter claiming that the whole thing, that campaign, was actually started by the BBC itself.  That whole thing of course is highly political with Labour’s real target being Maggie Thatcher in an attempt to keep up the myth that Thatcher destroyed the mines….a myth that is easily discredited should anyone be interested in the truth….not the BBC unfortunately.

On Friday Humphrys did a report on Orgreave (08:50) and the demand for an inquiry.  One guest was Alan Billings…introduced merely as a Police and Crime Commissioner.  Billings was shocked that the IPCC had decided not to investigate what happened in 1984 and demanded an inquiry.

What Humphrys failed to inform us was that Billings is a Labour Party man and was pushing a party line on this….something you might think was of significance in the debate.

Even in the web report the BBC fails to mention his true colours…

South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings described the decision as a missed opportunity that did “disservice” to former miners, police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

The BBC’s whole approach to Orgreave is one that leans towards sympathy for the miners and a rewriting of history to favour their narrative of ‘police brutality’.

Here the BBC puts the boot into the police…..

‘There was violence from both sides.

The debate goes on about who acted first, but police horses were sent to charge the crowd up the field and officers followed to make arrests. Many miners and police officers were injured.

The pictures of miners and police officers fighting shocked TV viewers.

The number of officers was unprecedented. The use of dogs, horses and riot gear in an industrial dispute was almost unheard of. Some of the tactics were learned from the police in Northern Ireland and Hong Kong who had experience dealing with violent disorder.

During the subsequent court case a police manual was uncovered which set out the latest plans to deal with pickets and protests.

… the moment the police strategy switched from defensive – protecting collieries, coking plants and working miners – to offensive, actively breaking up crowds and making large numbers of arrests. In many mining communities faith in the police was destroyed, a legacy that lasts to this day. 

The thrust of that is to paint the police as the real instigators of the violence….note the lack of a similarly extensive list of what the miners did that may have caused the police reaction….we are led to believe that the police actions were unprovoked and brutal.

The BBC goes on…

The miners felt they had been set up.

They believed the intention that day was to beat them and make arrests, a show of force that would convince them they were not going to win.

That left a bitter legacy of hatred and distrust of the police in many mining communities.

The police said they were just doing their job in the face of violence from striking miners. The strike lasted until March 1985.

You see quite clearly where the BBC’s sympathies lie.

Such sympathies are on display again in this travesty of a ‘news report’…

There was violence on both sides, but when police horses charged the crowd the violence escalated and many officers and miners were injured.

Once again that message that it was the police who are to really blame.

There’s more…

Dave Smith, a former miner and former president of Dinnington NUM was at Orgreave on 18 June 1984.

He said it was a hot day and they had been playing football, but the police arrived and all “hell let loose.”

“Horses came out, short shields came out; we tried to defend ourselves as best we could.

“Most of us were running like hell. We finished up down embankments, on to railway lines with dogs chasing us.

“People were seriously injured and I mean seriously injured, and left by the police.

“That’s not helping, that’s attacking, and we were attacked.”

Innocents out playing soccer.  Yeah, right.  Not a bunch of thugs trying to intimidate and bully other workers who needed police protection just to go to work and whose homes were often attacked by those peaceable soccer loving fellas.

Why not look back at the news reports from the time to see that the miners were the ones instigating the violence….throwing rocks at police and beating up working miners….600 police injured and 200 miners since the strike began at one point….which tells a tale that the BBC isn’t telling…..

Let’s have some salient facts…

The NUM was funded by their ‘Soviet comrades’.

The strike was illegal and the miners had voted not to strike…Scargill ignored the ballot and forced miners out on strike….either in ‘solidarity’ or because they knew what happened to ‘scabs’.

Labour closed more pits than the Tories and the redundancy terms on offer to the miners were far higher than to any other industry.

And how about the words of an ex-miner, and then a Tory minister, Patrick McLoughlin, commenting on the myths being propagated and buttressed by the likes of the BBC.…and yet the BBC ignored him.

‘“As a cabinet minister now and a miner in the 1980s, I have been listening to the debate about Baroness Thatcher with particular interest.

The reality is that the violence was always initiated by the miners and that Scargill used them as cannon fodder for his own political games not caring one jot about them, their jobs and their families.

Seems that the BBC has conveniently forgotten all that as it pillories the police and romanticises and glorifies the miners.

‘Almost one in three of England’s primary school children is from an ethnic minority – the highest level yet.  One pupil in five speaks English as a second language.’

‘The UK’s population has increased by around 5 million since 2001.’

There is an enormous and growing pressure on schools as they struggle to cope with the influx of new pupils who turn up on their doorsteps expecting a free British education.

That ‘free’ British education of course costs money…a lot of money….the government having to pump in at least £12 billion extra to try and cope….the Unions saying that amount will only cover 40-60% of the funding actually needed.

Immigrants of course, the BBC tells us, are highly beneficial for the economy, EU immigrants, the BBC insists, paying more in tax then they take out of the system….never mind that the majority of jobs they take are low pay ones that in no way pay for child care, housing and education and health.

On Saturday Mishal Husain did a piece on the crisis in schools (08:40)…remarkably she managed to do the whole report without once mentioning immigration herself despite the two guests both saying that immigration was the main cause of the crisis.

How is it possible to completely avoid the cause of overcrowding in schools, the ‘blackhole’, the’ breaking point’, when talking about this subject, especially as the BBC were so keen to pillory the Tories for having failed to reach their target in limiting immigration in the run up to the election?

Husain was though, eager to suggest that the government was failing in its approach telling us that ‘the situation is far from ideal……it doesn’t sound as if it is enough [funding]….it’s not the way you’d want the education system to work’.

Husain, an immigrant herself, and one having history on this subject, does the usual BBC thing and dodges the real story, the uncomfortable truth that immigration is causing enormous problems throughout the UK.  The BBC is only interested in telling us the ‘good news’, even if it has to make that up (ie how much tax they pay), the BBC is extremely reluctant to highlight the negative sides to mass immigration.  The BBC is once again more concerned with attempting to ‘social engineer’ our perceptions and subsequent actions than actually delivering the News.

You may have heard that Mo Farah’s coach and training mate were outed by the BBC in an alleged ‘doping scandal’...

‘One of the world’s best known athletics coaches is at the centre of doping allegations, according to a BBC investigation.

Alberto Salazar has been accused of violating anti-doping rules, including claims he was involved in doping US record holder Galen Rupp, in 2002.

Rupp and GB Olympic gold medallist Mo Farah are part of Salazar’s US stable, the Nike Oregon Project.

However we can be reassured that despite his coach and stable mate being accused no suspicion falls on Mo……as the BBC repeatedly, endlessly, tells us…..

There is no suggestion Farah has broken any rules.

There is no suggestion that Farah himself has been involved in doping.

Undoubtedly Mo is entirely free of drug use but just how hard did the BBC look?  Mo is the Left’s Muslim immigrant poster boy after all.  Are the BBC avoiding asking awkward questions  due to Mo’s special status?  Not as if the BBC hasn’t turned a blind eye before….Rochdale and other towns spring to mind, never mind the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, and Lutfur Rahman whose activities the BBC did its best to downplay for years, and when he was booted out as Mayor of Tower Hamlets for fraud and electoral corruption the BBC hid the story on the England page….a major news story….nary a mention of the role racial and religious intimidation played in the fraud either.

Looks like a new open thread is well behind time……so here’s a fresh one….

The Daily Mail has an indepth look at the case of a white woman who pretended that she was black in America and has numerous photographs to show just how white the woman really is…….blond, blue eyed and whiter than white….

The BBC, which reduced the story to a BBC Trending ‘man bites dog’ story, comes up with this…

I met Rachel Dolezal – and never doubted her black roots

When I met Rachel Dolezal, I found it easy to accept her description of her ethnicity. Along with BBC correspondent Jonny Dymond, I talked to Dolezal in 2011 in a coffee shop in Spokane, Washington, while producing a BBC World Service documentary on a surge in extremist militia activity in America. She told us that she was of mixed racial heritage but that she primarily identified with her black ancestors. She matter-of-factly listed the abuse she says she received at the hands of racists, including threats, break-ins, and nooses being left at her workplace.

At no time during our hour-long interview, or during a number of phone and email conversations before and after, did Dolezal give any cause to doubt her heritage.

Note how the Beeboid gets in the ‘extremist militias’ and tales of racism before anything else.  Distinct lack any real attempt to ‘out’ the woman as a fraud…..tending towards excusing her actions is the impression I get….perhaps because the BBC man is somewhat professionally embarrassed at being fooled by her…..quick to tell us that Jonny Dymond was there with him.

Whilst reporting that ‘Many African-American activists were outraged’  we then get this ‘Others compared Dolezal’s story with the discussion around transgender issues, especially the example of Caitlyn – formerly Bruce – Jenner. Soon the hashtag #transracial was trending. Some were using it for jokes and satire, but others were making serious points.’

Everything is relative in BBC World…no black and white you might say….when it suits of course.

Just have to wonder how many Beeboids think they are ‘Black’ and would love to ‘identify’ as such.

New week and a brand new one of these for your edification! Detail the bias here please!

The Guardian indulges itself with a long, cerebral and somewhat overthought piece on why Miliband crashed and burned….The undoing of Ed Miliband – and how Labour lost the election.

No need for such tortured introspection….Miliband was ‘weird’, too intellectual, he was ‘Red Ed’, a chip off the Old Bloc of his Marxist father, the voters didn’t like him nor his failure to come clean about Labour’s part in the economic crash and its immigration policies.  He wasn’t Statesman-like enough…..even today his reappearance in Parliament was about Himself…being ‘famous once’….a mistake he continuously made in the election campaign.  Miliband also had pick’n’mix policies designed to catch eyes and headlines with no real central theme that grabbed the voter and convinced them Labour was a solid bet….mostly Miliband seemed to want to soak the rich and give handouts to selected groups of the poorest….presumably the most telegenic.

One passage did stand out in the Guardian piece.  Miliband forgot to mention the deficit and immigration in his conference speech in September 2014.  The two most explosive issues for Labour and ones he had to address if he was to convince voters that Labour could be trusted.  The Guardian looks in depth at the failure to mention the deficit….Curiously the Guardian forgets that Miliband also forgot to mention immigration.

Here is the standout passage…….

Miliband knew the story of his “forgetting the deficit” would prove devastating. “He was really upset,” the speech writer recalled. “He pushes himself very hard – he was very, very angry with himself even before he knew it was going to be the main story out of the speech. We tried to cheer him up, but even then he was too upset. He did not come to the celebratory party, he just did not want to come out of his room.”

Miliband was so distraught that he shut himself in his hotel room, where a series of people, including his wife, Justine, joined him and tried to offer some reassurance – pointing out that the omission had not featured prominently in the BBC political editor Nick Robinson’s report on the Six O’Clock News.

Miliband ‘forgets’ to mention the deficit, a subject absolutely central to Labour’s election campaign and the BBC barely mentions the omission?  How unusual for the BBC to ‘misplace’ a crucial piece of information that undermines Labour’s credibility.  Still good to know that the BBC’s coverage is ‘reassuring’ for Labour here.

One other main talking point for the Guardian is the SNP/Labour double act that was likely to occur if Miliband headed a minority government which seemed the most likely prospect for many….the BBC allowing the Polls to lead the news, a decision perhaps more often based upon wishful thinking than solid evidence by the BBC….the ‘evidence’ conveniently matching the outcome that the BBC wanted…so why rock the boat by questioning the polls or taking a more independent and detached approach to events?  The BBC’s Director of News admitted that this was a failure on the part of the BBC….‘we and all other media organisations allowed the poll numbers to infect our thinking: there was too much ‘coalitionology’ as a result.’

Labour complained about the BBC’s massive amount of airtime it gave to the prospect of such an alliance however that worked, either as a formal coalition (denied by Miliband) or as an issue by issue set of agreements but seems to have forgotten that most on the Left had resigned themselves to the prospect of a minority Labour government.

‘Biased BBC’ noted the BBC’s fascination with this and divined it as a pro-Labour stance by the BBC….the BBC presenting the possibility of a Labour government as almost de facto and therefore possibly altering how people might vote….perhaps they would be convinced to vote Labour if they thought Labour were now going to win, even if as a minority government, when previously they may have thought a vote for a Labour Party that was going to lose was a waste and therefore would vote tactically to suit another agenda.

Labour didn’t see it in this way.  Here is an email they sent to the BBC…

Labour was so desperate that on 22 April, Lucy Powell, the campaign chair, wrote to the BBC’s director of news, James Harding, to complain about the broadcaster’s coverage. In an email obtained by the Guardian, she alleged:

“Your bulletins and output have become disproportionately focused on the SNP and Tory claims that Labour would enter into a deal which would damage the rest of the UK … We strongly object not only to the scale of your coverage but also the apparent abandonment of any basic news values, with so much reporting now becoming extremely repetitive.

“The BBC’s relentless focus on Scotland is potentially of huge political benefit not only to the SNP but also to the Conservative party. Indeed, it is becoming apparent that this has become the main Tory message in this election and you have regularly shown images from their posters and advertising designed to reinforce this attack. But the BBC has a responsibility not only to reflect what the Conservatives are saying but also to reflect on it.

“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it … The BBC includes growing amounts of commentary in its news bulletins. But you have barely ever reflected our view – and that of many commentators from across the political spectrum – that the Conservatives want the SNP to win seats from Labour in Scotland because that represents their best chance of remaining in Downing Street.”

The BBC certainly did spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time on a Labour/SNP partnership but as said this was a pro-Labour narrative that fed the voters the lie that Labour had the election in the bag.

As for the BBC not noting the idea that the Tories would benefit from a Labour wipeout in Scotland….“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it’ …that’s nonsense…it was a prospect repeatedly mentioned….here is one quote on the BBC from Labour’s Scottish Party Leader…

Mr Murphy said Mr Cameron was “desperate” for the SNP to beat Labour so that his party would have a chance of clinging on to power.

Speaking from the Scottish Gas training academy where he was visiting apprenticeships, Mr Murphy explained: “In every election, going way back to 1924, the biggest party has gone on to form the government.

“So David Cameron is desperate for the SNP to beat Labour and he’s talking up the SNP in the hope that Scots go out and vote for them, to reduce the size of the Labour party in parliament so that he can cling on to power.”

And more of the same here.

It’s not as if no one else on the Left was talking of Labour as a minority government…Labour itself expected such an outcome so can hardly complain that the BBC also concentrated on that possibility.

Here the New Statesman explains…

For a majority, Labour and the Tories will need to look elsewhere: to the SNP, the Northern Irish DUP and, in extremis, Ukip.

It is this foreboding arithmetic that explains why Britain is increasingly likely to be led by a minority government after the election. To their principled objections to another coalition, Tory backbenchers can now add a pragmatic one: it wouldn’t give them the numbers anyway.

Most of Labour’s shadow cabinet have long believed minority government is preferable if the party falls short of a majority. It is also the option privately favoured by Ed Miliband.

So Labour would run as a minority government and not as a coalition….it would then rely on doing deals with the other parties….the biggest of which, Tories aside, would be the SNP in which case you might ask, as the Guardian did…‘Will the SNP run Britain under a minority Labour government?’

So not just the BBC investigating an SNP/Labour bloc…the right wing Guardian, and the fascist New Statesman, were also subverting democracy by pushing a Tory narrative.

Labour likes to paint the BBC as right wing but the BBC’s election coverage proved that it was absolutely the Left’s most willing fellow traveller.