Quite a concerted effort by the BBC to remove some of those “hideously white” faces that so offend bleeding liberal hearts. First this…

Match Of The Day needs to become more diverse with fewer white men on its panel of pundits, the BBC has said. Days after announcing its dramas would include more black and gay actors to reflect modern Britain, the corporation turned its sights on sports shows. Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television, singled out BBC1’s Saturday football highlights programme for fresh criticism. He said: ‘If we have five people on a panel show, it shouldn’t be five white men. I think the same thing of Match Of The Day. It’s a very diverse sport and it shouldn’t be like that.’

Then this…

Sol Campbell has claimed he would have been “England captain for more than 10 years” had he been born white.

Institutional racism everywhere…

Tricky one for the Dhimmis at the BBC. An act of gruesome mass terrorism, dozens dead. What to say?

Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded.

 Elsewhere..but not on the BBC.

China has blamed Islamic militants from the volatile Xinjiang province for an attack by knife-wielding “terrorists” at a railway station in Kunming city that left at least 33 people dead and 130 injured.

I thought this was instructive. From the BBC bitesize website..my thanks to @juliusmandrake

Here is a site that is keeping an eye on the BBC:

In 2006 the BBC was found to have a pro-EU bias by a report commissioned by itself:

The report may conclude that direction does not come from the Top but the problem is that the ‘troops’ are the ‘believers’ in the EU and they are the ones who mold the tone and direction of any programme as admitted by the report:

We were also told by Helen Boaden, the BBC’s former director of news admitted in July 2013 that:

The BBC has a “deep liberal bias” and has failed to reflect the public’s growing concerns about immigration and the European Union.

Seems nothing has changed.

The Spectator looks again at revelations that the BBC has pocketed money from the EU despite its claims to be ‘independent’ of politics:

The millions in EU funding the BBC tried to hide

Over the last three years the BBC has secretly obtained millions of pounds in grants from the European Union. Licence fee payers might assume that the Corporation would have been compelled to disclose the source of this money in its annual reports, but they bear no trace of it specifically. In the latest set of accounts, for example, these funds are simply referred to as ‘other grant income’.

Instead of making an open declaration, the BBC’s successful lobbying for this money had to be prised out of it using a Freedom of Information (FoI) request lodged for The Spectator, proving that there was never any danger of the state broadcaster’s bosses volunteering it willingly.

The FoI response confirms that BBC staff applied for, and accepted, about £3 million of EU funds between April 2011 and November 2013, most of which has been spent on unspecified ‘research and development’ projects, with the remaining £1 million spent on programming.

Rob Wilson MP, says:

‘The whole point of the licence fee is to protect the BBC’s political independence and impartiality by providing it with a source of funding that is outside the hands of governments and politicians. Thanks to this FoI response, we now learn that it has been going cap in hand to the EU for millions of pounds on the quiet over the last few years. Such outrageous flouting of the principles on which the BBC is based and funded will only promote cynicism about its political impartiality and lead to a loss of trust in the BBC’s independence.’

But it isn’t just the money…the BBC has been sidelining Labour MPs who are Eurosceptics so as to present ‘Euroscepticism’ as a rightwing plot:

When Newswatch [a site that checks for BBC pro EU bias] provided oral evidence [Of the BBC’s lack of reporting of Labour scepticism] to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee in March 2013, Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins said that the figures gathered by Newswatch were ‘a revelation’ to him as a Labour withdrawalist, and added: ‘Even in the House of Commons, at least one in 10 speeches are made by Labour withdrawalists, so the imbalance is very clear.’

Eurosceptic Labour MP Kate Hoey, now part of an unofficial coalition of politicians overseeing the privately-funded organisation Newswatch, which monitors the BBC for EU bias at a cost of £60,000 per year, says the FoI disclosure is ‘shocking’. She says:

‘I have grave concerns about the bias of the BBC when it comes to EU matters. I find the whole thing shocking. The lack of transparency is unjustified. Why does it seem so worried about people knowing where it gets its money? What has the BBC got to hide other than knowing that many of us don’t trust them on EU matters and the need for a referendum on Britain’s EU membership?’

Ms Hoey adds that she has concerns that the BBC ‘very rarely’ reports Labour MPs’ views on Europe. She says:

‘Even Today in Parliament [on Radio 4] always tries to convey Tory splits on Europe, and this doesn’t help the perception of an EU bias. There are Labour MPs with strong views on Europe as well. It doesn’t help that the BBC very rarely reports these views.’

 

 

 

Three interesting ways of looking at things from the BBC today:

1.  Moazzam Begg has been charged with terror offences…..the BBC throughout the day has been tacking on to each bulletin about this that Begg, though spending 3 years in Guantananmo, ‘was never charged with any offence’.

Why emphasise that?

Why is that relevant to this?  Surely of more relevance is that the US thought he was guilty of exactly the same offences he has been charged with now.  He admitted attending terrorist training camps pre-9/11…but the BBC doesn’t find that relevant here.

Not just on every radio bulletin but it seems they are pretty keen for you to know that on the web as well……..2 reports, the same words….

Mr Begg, who is now a director of campaign group Cage which helps the families of people who have been detained, has never been charged with an offence.

Mr Begg, who is now a director of campaign group Cage which helps the families of people who have been detained, had never previously been charged with an offence.

Why no mention of Begg’s well known links to Jihadists?

2.  Miliband has had his changes to Party rules approved……the BBC has been telling us that ‘the Union’s influence in choosing a leader will be reduced’.

Sorry…but that’s just not true….the Union’s influence will increase and even Labour insiders acknowledge that.

The BBC tells us in this long pro-Miliband report:

The BBC’s chief political correspondent Norman Smith said it was interesting that opposition to the reforms had come from ordinary party members rather than trade unionists – perhaps underlining concern about how the changes would affect their own votes.

…..interesting indeed…….but the BBC doesn’t care to elaborate.

Why let the facts spoil a good PR stunt for their Boy?

3.  Then on Saturday Live this morning they were talking to a Ukrainian girl who told us that the internet allowed them to find the truth about things that the Russian news service was distorting….democratising the media.

The BBC presenter told us it ‘was great that the new media is subverting the mainstream’.

Of course that attitude is a bit different at home when bloggers are the enemy…..as you can see from the first two examples of BBC journalism above it’s just as well there are others out there providing the truth.

I had the UTTER MISFORTUNE to listen to BBC Any Questions today. It was from the Bath Literature Festival with Justice Minister Simon Hughes MP, Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Maria Eagle MP, Yale Law professor and author Amy Chua, and writer and broadcaster Germaine Greer. So, all to the left as usual. What stunned me was the question on whether Harriet Harman should apologise. The panel were unanimous – she should not. It was put to the audience, 99% of whom agree she had NOTHING to say sorry for. I was stunned. The bias is UNBELIEVABLE.

OPEN THREAD.

Nothing by the BBC about the founder of Greenpeace coming over to the dark side:

Confessions of a ‘Greenpeace Dropout’ to the U.S. Senate on climate change

There is no scientific proof of man-made global warming and a hotter earth would be ‘beneficial for humans and the majority of other species’, according to a founding member of environmental campaign group Greenpeace.

The assertion was made by Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, a member of Greenpeace from 1971 to 1986, to U.S lawmakers on Tuesday.

He told The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: ‘There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.’

Hmmm….all a bit inconvenient…especially for politicians arguing about it in PMQ’s and telling us CO2 is the most dangerous substance on Earth essentially….and all with nobody to challenge and disabuse them as the BBC fails miserably to do its job properly.

However the BBC is happy to report that the ‘slow down’, as they term it, in global warming has a cause….that must be what…cause number 341?

…and it’s not global cooling……

Smell of forest pine can limit climate change – researchers

New research suggests a strong link between the powerful smell of pine trees and climate change.

Scientists say they’ve found a mechanism by which these scented vapours turn into aerosols above boreal forests.

These particles promote cooling by reflecting sunlight back into space and helping clouds to form.

The authors believe that this is playing a significant role in reducing the impact of rising temperatures. They argue that this effect is likely to strengthen in the future.

Oh……so global warming will actually be producing global cooling?

err……

A Guardian report from 1975 about a Campaign for Homosexual Equality conference…the CHE has Labour peer Chris Smith as a vice president….the CHE was kicked out of ‘Liberty’ for its stance on child abuse…in 2009.

Cover-up has become part of the story of child abuse

From Nick Davies in the Guardian in 1998:

The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain

The sexual abuse of children is a special crime, not simply because of the damage it does to its victims, nor even because of the anger and fear it provokes in communities, but more particularly because it is so easy – easy to commit, easy to get away with.

We have seen the results of cover-up and concealment, occasionally of corruption, of whistleblowers who are punished for trying to expose the truth, of local authorities, churches and other organisations who have closed ranks to deny or conceal allegations against their staff.

Of course it’s especially easy to get away with when people in positions of power or influence turn a blind eye to what is happening.

‘Speaking to the Radio 4 Today Programme O’Carroll said: ‘At the time Harman and Hewitt couldn’t just kick us out, or they could but they didn’t try. The reason was their careers in the NCCL depended upon them not rocking the boat too much.’ ‘

And it still goes on.

‘Is the BBC biased”s Craig, notes that Newsnight has again done a decent job:

Laura Kuennsberg v Harriet Harman (Part Two)

Perhaps a stint at ITV might be good for a few more BBC journo’s and might make them remember why they entered the job n the first place.

However, Newsnight apart, the BBC wanted to ignore this story and sweep it under the carpet.  Even now as they ‘report’ it they downplay the story itself and concentrate on the politics or try to spread the ‘blame’.

Here is a Labour spokesperson trying to dodge the bullet:

 “There’s an argument that the Daily Mail has got an agenda against certain senior figures in the Labour Party.”

And oddly enough here is Labour’s favourite BBC reporter, John Pienaar, giving us exactly the same line: (13:30)

Pienaar tells us that this story has plenty of mileage left in it especially for the Daily Mail which will keep digging away….‘objectively [?], this accounts for the deep hostility towards the paper from Harman’.

Really?  I thought it was because they’d dragged up something that was extremely uncomfortable for her from her past that she didn’t want to deal with.

Sheila Fogarty feeds Pienaar a question….

‘Is this  fight between the Daily Mail and Harriet Harman following a pattern such as when a paper tries to draw in an MP or politician?’

So dealing with the politics and not the substance of the issue.

Pienaar says….‘Not in this unpleasant form…..’

So now we know what he thinks…the Daily Mail raising the question is ‘unpleasant’….never mind the truth then.

Pienaar reduces it to a matter of a ‘feud and vendetta’ by the Daily Mail against Harman…..we must remember, he tells us, that it is important that the story is put against the background of not what Harriet Harman did but what she didn’t do…it’s crucial to reiterate that there’s no accusation that she acted in any way to support the paedophiles.…..the damage to her is by connecting the word paedophiles to her name in the same sentence…that’s what caused the outrage from Harriet Harman’.

So Harman didn’t work for an organisation that had close ties to PIE and she didn’t push for photos of naked children to be considered legal as long as the children weren’t ‘harmed’?

Pienaar goes on….‘The damage has been done and the war will continue but as far as this is concerned that context needs to be clear.’

So context is all…once again never mind the truth…or the actual context.

Pienaar portrays this as solely a political feud between a right wing paper and the Labour Party….downplaying the actual story itself.

But is it just a story cooked up by a right wing press to embarrass Labour?

Curious no mention of this from Labour’s Tom Watson only last year:

After 30 years without an answer it’s time to find out who protected the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange

It was established in 1974 to campaign for the age of consent to be lowered to four years old

Did previous Tory and Labour governments fund the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange?

Or this from the Daily Mirror recently:

There is a paedophile elephant in the corner of Labour’s living room

Everyone in the country is talking about perverts except people who have reasonable questions to answer about perverts

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman and her MP husband Jack Dromey waited three days until the scandal reached boiling point and then accused the newspaper which started it of being more pervy than they are and running a political smear campaign.

The Daily Mail is pretty pervy, but it’s not political for the simple reason that a Tory politician with the same provable, documented links to PIE would be front page too.

You can’t blame it on one newspaper because pretty much everyone’s done it, except the BBC which was conspicuous in its absence from reporting the allegations.

It’s undeniably a story.

And was the NCCL so innocent?  Apparently not….Patricia Hewitt has surfaced and done Harman up like a kipper:

Patricia Hewitt ‘sorry’ for stance on paedophile group

Did she have anything to apologise for?  And did the NCCL sideline the ‘appalling PIE’ as claimed by Harman?

It seems not…….

From the Daily Mail in 1983:

And even the Guardian digs for more dirt: