Category Archives: BBC bias

Red in tooth and claw, what is your view of the BBC coverage of that Miliband speech?

The McBride Of Frownenstein

John Pienaar told us that Victoria Derbyshire was so hard Damien McBride would be quaking in his boots in an upcoming interview.

Derbyshire opened the interview with a quote from McBride:

‘It was just me being a cruel vindictive thoughtless bastard.’

…and then asked him where, on a scale of bastards, would he put himself.

However that was about as ‘hard’ as the interview got…McBride far from quaking in his boots walked all over Derbyshire and gave a good account of himself.

Whether anyone believes a word of it of course is a different thing altogether but he made everything very plausible…so much so that the BBC now ‘excuse’ his actions in news bulletins saying he was ‘in a battle’.

Janet Daley in the Telegraph says he also made mincemeat of Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight:

McBride gets the better of Paxman: is there a lesson here?

Plenty of opprobrium for serialising his book in the ‘Tory’ Daily Mail….both from Derbyshire and Labour critics……one saying Alastair Campbell didn’t take Mail’s money for his book….but of course he did take the BBC’s, who serialised his book and employed him on an almost permanent basis:

 From Iain Dale (wrestler):

How the BBC Is Saying ‘Sorry’ to Alastair Campbell

Damian Thompson in the Telegraph thinks there is quite a lot in ‘a name’:

Kenya terror attack: disgracefully, the BBC still won’t call these murderers ‘terrorists’

I suppose it is hard to quantify exactly what constitutes a ‘terrorist’.

A group which kills 61 people, deliberately selecting non-Mulsims, and then apparently burning off their faces and cutting off their hands to prevent identification, may have justifiable political aims or pressing social grievances against the ‘system’ that may explain their actions.

To call them terrorists is to adopt a narrative that is judgemental, one based upon a Western notion of right and wrong.  We cannot impose our Western values and reasoning upon other cultures.

Nor can we impose them upon the Labour Party.

The BBC in contrast to its ‘ethical’ stance on the labelling of terrorists is quite happy to adopt the Labour narrative about the spare bedroom subsidy….or as Labour calls it, the Bedroom Tax.

The BBC seems to have decided to get around any checks on its use of politically nuanced language by just adding ‘as Labour calls it’ to any mention of the ‘Bedroom Tax’.

Miliband has made a speech.  Without notes the BBC notes. 

The BBC seem rather in awe of Miliband’s speech.

Perhaps John Pienaar’s description of Miliband as ‘Bold and statesman like’ should have warned us of the attitude the BBC would strike in relation to this.

 The Telegraph by contrast has a much more critical stance, some positive but mostly negative about the content of the speech.

Miliband’s decision to cap fuel prices (somehow) has struck a chord and looks like a winner for the BBC.

No mention of course that fuel prices are rising because of the ruinous green taxes imposed by legistlation enacted by…Ed Miliband.

This report of the speech seems more like a press release from Labour than a critical look at the policies or lack of policies and substance on show from Miliband:

Ed Miliband: Labour would freeze energy prices

This from James Landale is even worse,  all too ready to explain Miliband’s side of the argument without any critical thoughts on it:

Labour: Could energy pledge power Miliband to victory?

This quote from Landale shows which side he is on perhaps:

‘As he [Miliband] said, the rising tide doesn’t lift all boats, just the yachts.’

Really?  I don’t think so.

Perhaps this encounter with Alastair Campbell helped Landale align his thinking [Godfrey Bloom must be thinking life is so unfair]:

This rather curious piece of work from Landale might inform us of his own attitude towards Europe and whether we should stay or go:

IF… (a verse for David Cameron)

If you can talk with sceptics and keep us in the EU

Or walk with Europe’s kings – nor lose the Commons touch,

If you can stop your party dividing between In and Out

and genuinely settle the European question,

If you can keep the British people onside

and not go down in history as the man who took Britain out of the EU,

Yours is the next election, Dave, and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll have won, my son!

Miliband seems to have been given a bit of a free pass by the BBC commentators, at least on the website….just as they gave him when he decided that there was ‘no evidence’ to indicate Unite’s guilt in Falkirk…the BBC telling us Unite is exonerated…when in fact the evidence was ‘withdrawn’ rather than not existing….and that doesn’t explain all the other documented examples, much of which implicated Miliband himself knowing what was going on, especially in regard to MEP candidates.

Victoria Derbyshire has on Bishop Nazir Ali (11:54) to talk about attacks on Christians…all going well until he mentioned Egypt when Derbyshire said:

‘Some might quibble…some argue that Muslims are now being targeted and that’s as bad as any other religious group being targeted.’

She goes on to mention that the Taliban claim that the attack on the church in Pakistan was in retaliation for American drone strikes….how does that explain attacks on Christians in Egypt or anywhere else?

Muslims being targeted in Egypt?  Well a political party is being targeted, the Muslim Brotherhood…one which bases its policies on the teachings of the Koran but it is a political party none the less….and of course the Army is ‘Muslim’ so it is a strange comparison from Derbyshire.

Also consider that when bombs went off in the UK the Muslims that carried out the attack were labelled ‘political’, ‘extremists’, and essentially not Muslims.

Yet now the highly political and extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are to be considered normal, everyday ‘Muslims’.

It seems now that your normal, non political Muslim isn’t really a Muslim, not a proper one in the BBC’s eyes…but the extremist Muslim Brotherhood are the true believers.

And on another topic….Derbyshire is interviewing Damien McBride tomorrow (Tuesday)….John Pienaar reckons if McBride thinks he’s ‘hard’ then he might have to think again….sounds like an interesting interview.

  Ed Balls today made a joke about Cameron and his beach towel then went on to hide his own embarrassment at Labour’s 13 years of destruction with a load of old flannel.

The BBC’s reaction to all that is going on with Labour at the moment?  Well…not too bad as I saw it….at least in parts.

John Pienaar was his usual Labour leaning self, in my opinion…with little in the way of hard hitting analysis of Balls’ speech.

This morning on Today Justin Webb had the job of tackling Balls. (07:35)  The interview was on the moderate side with no questions that Balls couldn’t easily bat aside.  Humphrys should really have done the interview, his style of interviewing would have rattled Balls far more.

Webb allowed Balls to get away with a lot of  that ‘flannel’.

For instance Balls said that the Socialism that Labour represented was not ‘economic socialism’..it was about values, policies with an ethical basis..fairness.  Webb didn’t challenge that claim that it wasn’t the economics of socialism that was being taken up once again by Labour.

Webb said that Labour were going to spend more but hadn’t laid out the ‘big picture’ of what cuts they would make and what actual plans they had.

Balls replied Labour would match the government’s spending plan but make different choices within that budget.

In contradiction to that, and his request to the OBR to scrutinize his plans,  he said the budget plans would only be published in the 2015 manifesto.

Webb didn’t react to either point…the first means that Balls has adopted Osborne’s Plan A…and the second point raises the question of just what would the OBR be looking at if Labour’s budget isn’t published until 2015…Balls has after all spent 3 years steadfastly refusing to disclose his spending plans whilst making claims that his spending plans would save the economy….and yet he always said he couldn’t publish the plans because he didn’t have the data…so how could he work out that plan in the first place?

The reliably awkward Andrew Neil however proved more hard hitting than Webb on the Daily Politics.….though the BBC have once again dragged in someone from the New Economic Foundation….she panned Labour…but only because they weren’t really socialist enough.

At 08:22  the Today programme delved into the murky world of Damien McBride who has lifted the lid to confirm what we already knew about the mad, bad and ugly goings on in Labour’s backrooms.

It seems also to have stirred the BBC into action…whilst they are reluctant to criticise Brown for his economic policies they apparently have no problem here slating him for his political machinations….and it seems apparent that Brown knew all too well what was going on and even ignored complaints from MPs and Cabinet members.

Later on Woman’s Hour brought on Harriet Harman and again the BBC laid into Brown in regard to McBride’s revelations with some reasonably challenging questions.  However once that little difficulty was out of the way it was all sisterly love and unity….eulogising about Harman’s feminist sensibilities.

Harman complained about the lack of women in Parliament….stating that the problem with Thatcher was that yes, she was a woman PM, but she did little to help women to enter Parliament and that Thatcher got to be PM by the shocking tactic of playing men at their own game…..whatever that means….is there a separate and different route reserved for women…bikinis and baking competitions rather than the trouble of having to win at the ballot box?

Harman was allowed to avoid answering the obvious question…she could have been Labour Leader and possibly PM if she had gone for the leadership, but she refused to take on the challenge.  How is it that a champion of women’s progress and someone who says she wants more women in higher profile jobs refused to put herself in the role that could have helped with that…apparently…if, as she claims, Thatcher could have helped women, why did she not take on the responsibility herself?

And no questions about her casting aside her feminist solidarity when it came to refusing to accept an all woman candidate list in a constituency her husband wanted to stand in.

All in all a mixed bag today….they were on the right track but the heart didn’t seem to be in it for the most part, lacking a bit of the necessary brutality when dealing with Labour’s politicians and policies…..a brutality necessary because whilst Balls made the hilariously unaware claim (having spent 3 years denying Labour had anything to do with the greatest economic crash in 100 years…and still denying it in his speech today) that Osborne can’t airbrush out the economic past, Balls and his Labour comrades are all wandering around the studios saying that McBride’s allegations are all things dragged up from the past, irrelevant, depressing, and you know what, let’s not talk about it.

The one thing that you can be certain about is that Roger Harrabin is an unapologetic cheer-leader for the AGW mob.

“Scientists are more certain than ever that greenhouse gases from human activities are heating the planet, the head of the UN’s climate panel says. Rajendra Pachauri made the comments in an interview with BBC News. The panel is due to deliver its latest report on the state of the climate later this week in Stockholm, Sweden.”

Chris Patten is the kind of guy who walks the plank last. So no big surprise to read that he has suggested that three out of five senior BBC managers could lose their jobs.

The former governor of Hong Kong praised the corporation for becoming more efficient but said viewers do not expect BBC bosses to be paid massive salaries and he wants to see a smaller, more accountable group in charge. Speaking at the Prix Italia in Turnin last night, he said: “There are still too many senior managers, around 2.5 per cent of the workforce at the last count.”

Cutting the bloat won’t remove the bias. Were the BBC uncoupled from the drug of the License Tax it would move instinctively to become less top heavy. That’s where the cut has to happen.

I thought this was interesting;  “Kenyan officials say they are in the final stages of bringing to an end the deadly stand-off with suspected al-Shabab militants at the Westgate shopping complex in Nairobi.” Erm, not quite. Kenyan officials refer to them as terrorists but the BBC feels a need to parenthesis around the term. Also, in what way are they “suspected”???? We have dozens slaughtered, Al Shabab stating it has carried out the atrocity, yet the BBC seems unsure? Further, I heard an “expert” on the BBC inform us that is a moderate side to Al Shabab? Really?

It’s Monday so time for a new one of these!