It’s funny the little differences that can occur between the BBC’s web based version of a story and their radio coverage. On the web, the BBC proclaims that the House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls is questioning the validity of  arms  export licences to to countries with “questionable” human rights. These include China, Iran and Saudi. But on the TODAY Programme, they managed to also thrown on ISRAEL. Seems to me that those working on Today have an issue with Israel, since on no basis can it be said to have “questionable” human rights issues.

It seems the butthurt is deep at the BBC over the Zimmerman verdict. Using the topic of celebrity lawyers as a hook, the BBC’s Tara Mckelvey has penned a hit-piece portraying Zimmerman lawyer Mark O’Mara as a self-serving celebrity-craving huckster using up his 15 minutes of fame to foment anger: “Zimmerman’s lawyer raises profile – and incites rage”

You won’t find BBC articles on the Zimmerman trial questioning the race-baiting comments from hustlers such as the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson. One assumes their views are taken as pearls of conventional wisdom within the politically correct world of left-liberal BBC newsrooms.

Mckelvey explains that the “vigilante” George Zimmerman shot Martin “through the heart”.

The jury accepted self-defence as justification for the shooting. The trial resulted in freedom for Mr Zimmerman – and in a new profile for O’Mara.

A “Justice For Trayvon” photo appears at this point in the article.

Mckelvey tells us that O’Mara’s “fame, or notoriety, was ratcheted up even more after the trial”.

After the jury reached their verdict, Mr O’Mara spoke at a press conference – and surprised people with his inflammatory comments about race.

If Zimmerman had been black, said Mr O’Mara, “he never would have been charged with a crime”.

“This became a focus for a civil rights event, which again is a wonderful event to have,” O’Mara said.

“But they decided that George Zimmerman would be the person who they were to blame and sort of use as the creation of a civil rights violation,” Mr O’Mara said. “The facts that night were not borne out that he acted in a racial way.”

Many people found his remarks offensive.

People such as BBC journalist Tara Mckelvey, evidently.

But what O’Mara said is true. Zimmerman did “become a focus for civil rights violation” because of the colour of skin. It happened when the race hustlers got involved. It happened when Obama said “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon.” It happened when the media made Zimmerman a “white Hispanic” and tried to portray him as a racist, even to the extent of selectively editing his 911 call. And it’s also true that the “facts that night were not borne out that he acted in a racial way.” The FBI conducted extensive interviews with Zimmerman, his friends and his colleagues, and could find no evidence he was racist.

Mckelvey then gives us a renatgob with approved views to make the case against O’Mara.

“The defence looked unfeeling and callous during the trial,” says Jeannine Bell, a professor of law at Indiana University. “This comment – that if Zimmerman had been black, he would not have been charged – reinforced that view.”

Jeannine Bell is author of “Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime”. It’s always someone like that the BBC calls on, isn’t it? God forbid they ever get the views of a black conservative. How about asking, say, Thomas Sowell for example, eh BBC?

Mckelvey continues:

Mr O’Mara may have appeared callous, yet his remarks fuelled his fame. It is not clear how long he will stay in the limelight, though.

After a few paragraphs on other celebrity lawyers, she wraps up her article by quoting another on-message expert:

“Celebrity journalists [sic] have an agenda,” says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California. “They know exactly what they want to use the media for.”

Mr O’Mara’s racially charged comments at the press conference after the trial may have been an honest expression of his views but were not “helpful” to his client, says Ms Levenson.

“Being on camera in a press conference is not the time to vent,’ she says. “It’s not a therapy session.”

Mr O’Mara heightened tension with his racially charged remarks after the trial, she says, and made the situation harder for his client. She believes that his remarks hurt his chances for a career as a celebrity lawyer.

“This is O’Mara’s 15 minutes of fame,” says Ms Levenson. “It’s a flash in the pan.”

“incites rage… notoriety… inflammatory comments… offensive… unfeeling and callous… callous… racially charged comments… racially charged remarks”. Get the point? He’s a bad, bad man. Luckily he’ll be “a flash in the pan”, so he’ll get his and no mistake. The “15 minutes of fame” line is the pull quote used in the sidebar of the article.

According to Wikipedia Laurie Levenson is “a frequent television commentator on criminal legal issues, first coming to fame as a frequent commentator for CBS in the OJ Simpson trial.” Perhaps she sees O’Mara as a potential competitor on the circuit?

Not mentioned in Mckelvey’s hit-piece are O’Mara’s comments on the prosecutors:

Zimmerman’s lawyer calls prosecutors ‘disgrace’ to profession

(Reuters) – George Zimmerman’s chief defense lawyer on Monday called Florida prosecutors “a disgrace to my profession” for holding back evidence for months and pledged a new effort to impose sanctions against them.

Mark O’Mara and co-counsel Don West argued the self-defense case that helped Zimmerman win an acquittal of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on Saturday for the 2012 shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

The law requires prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys, especially if it helps exonerate defendants. The requirement is known as the Brady disclosure.

O’Mara accused prosecutors of several Brady violations, which were heard by Judge Debra Nelson before the trial. Nelson postponed some of her decisions on sanctions until after trial, saying the process was time-consuming.

“This is not acceptable, and is not going to be tolerated in any case that I’m involved in,” O’Mara told Reuters in New York on Monday, accusing special prosecutor Angela Corey and lead trial attorney Bernie de la Rionda of Brady violations.

Pointing out any of that doesn’t serve the petty revenge-driven agenda of Mckelvey, so she conveniently ignores it.

Another low in the BBC’s biased coverage of this issue.

UPDATE. Tara McKelvey has form: BBC Admits Error in Claiming Race Played Role in Cleveland Kidnappings Coverage (h/t The Beebinator)

And time for yet another NEW Open Thread as the last one exceeds the 200 comment mark! Off you go..BBC being annoying you?…Have something to say about it..detail it HERE!

We already know how the BBC lavishes praise on the shrew Labour MP Margaret Hodge in her role as Chairman (sic) of the Public Accounts Committee. So when the Duchy of Cornwall representative William Bye was invited to appear before this Labour dominated Star Chamber, one could be sure that the BBC would fall in behind Labour is suggesting that the Duchy of Cornwall is dodging tax. There was an item on Today this morning before 7am on the topic and it was clear the BBC (Along with Labour) wanted to imply that Prince Charles is a tax dodger.  The Guardian – the BBC in print – gives you a taste here of what the Comrades discussed this morning.

 John Humphrys grandly suggested to IDS yesterday that ‘There are facts and beliefs and you can believe whatever you like.’

So let’s look at how the BBC presents some ‘facts’.

The BBC has been trumpeting the left leaning Resolution Foundation’s claim that:

Rent ‘unaffordable’ for low-income families in third of UK

The BBC have tagged that onto their news bulletins or reports about welfare all day without qualification.

But this is what the Resolution Foundation’s report actually said:

Ian Duncan Smith tore a strip off the BBC this morning for orchestrating a politically motivated campaign against government welfare reforms: 

‘Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith today accused the BBC of launching a ‘politically-motivated’ attack on government plans to cap benefits at £26,000.

In an extraordinary on-air blast, the Work and Pensions Secretary accused the Corporation of using ‘lots of little cases’ to claim that limiting welfare payments would not get people back to work.

The confrontation live on Radio 4’s Today programme marks a significant escalation in the political row between Mr Duncan Smith and the BBC over reforms to the benefits system.’

IDS’s claims that the BBC use ‘little cases’, that is highly personalised cases which supposedly show the disastrous consequences of the reforms on the ‘vulnerable’ and which therefore illustrate no less than the futility of the whole policy ….or so the BBC hopes.

Of course the BBC rarely bothers to present the other side of the argument, those who suffer under the present regime or those who will benefit from the new one.

It’s one of the BBC’s favourite ‘tricks’.  The ‘little case’.  Used to especial effect in any debate about immigration or asylum.  The BBC briing on ‘an immigrant’.  The BBC paints a picture of dire need and danger if that person is not allowed to stay….and uses that single story to illustrate how immigration or asylum are vital and necessary if we are to be a humane, caring society.

Curiously today, by coincidence, on the Sheila Fogarty show we have the perfect example of that in action.

In support of refugees she brings on not one but two advocates…Maurice Wren, Chief Executive of the British Refugee Council and Maria Hennessy, the Senior Legal Officer at the European Council on Refugees & Exiles.

Think we know what they will be saying.

Then Fogarty plays her ace card, or should that  be the ‘Grace card’?

At 12:37 Fogarty introduces ‘Grace’s story’ a refugee from the Ivory Coast.  She came here in 2000 but her claim for asylum was rejected…she appealed three more times…each one rejected…she made another appeal and is awaiting the result.

Fogarty is concerned at how long it is all taking….she basically ignores the fact that ‘Grace’ has been refused entry 4 times already…and all funded by legal aid….her claim based upon the fact she is Muslim and will suffer female genital mutilation on return to the Ivory Coast….she feels safe here..nobody gets killed, nobody’s after you.

Fogarty is thoroughly on board and accepts totally that ‘Grace’ should be here….the sole concern seems to be how she is treated here and the speed of the asylum process.

Personalising the story is intended to elicit sympathy and make you think ‘oh my god, she must be allowed to stay’….and thereby also think differently about the immigration/asylum debate as a whole….in other words…. fling open the borders.

It is in essence, bluntly, a BBC propaganda drive to brain wash you into agreeing to allow anybody and everybody into the country.

At 42 mins Fogarty reads out an anonymous text from Glasgow in which someone claiming to be an ‘Asylum decision maker for the Home Office’  says that they are on a productivity drive,  being forced to make more and quicker decisons about cases…he/she claims this leads to bad decisions….he/she says the Home Office is only interested in the numbers….which is counter productive and morally repugnant.

Astonishing that Fogarty can use an anonymous text to then provide evidence of  the ‘human suffering’ caused by the asylum system.

The irony is that the programme was based upon the premise that the asylum system took too long to deal with cases…the text claimed this was being dealt with one way or another……but Fogarty still wasn’t happy….speed meant ‘human suffering’…but so apparently does slowness.

A paradox but what to do? 

The BBC has the answer…open the borders…agree to every asylum claim and hand out houses and money….simple.

“This item on Radio 5Live at about 0800 ‘ish attracted my attention mid-shave this morning (13th of July). Amidst the standard  BBC deprecation of the repatriation and ‘overhang’ problems (much of which I agree with, to be honest) who should appear but Keith Best. His brief is to oppose repatriation on the grounds of the dangers of torture of the returnees, should the repatriation process become successful. Again, difficult to be in support of torture but hard also to support a blanket acceptance of anyone who pleads fear of torture as a reason to come here and to stay.

CCE in the comments pointed out this offering from the BBC:

NHS failings ‘suppressed for electoral reasons’

An independent expert on mortality rates has suggested that ministers have suppressed details of NHS failings to avoid losing votes.

Prof Sir Brian Jarman said a “basic problem” with the NHS was that the government both provided health services and monitored them.

In a report out on Tuesday, he says 14 NHS trusts totalled 13,000 more deaths than the national average in 2005-10.

Note  the present tense despite the dates provided at the end giving the impression that the present government is possibly to blame.

‘Labour’ doesn’t get a namecheck until halfway down the page despite this being a story about them.

But even when it does get a mention it’s almost as if they are merely commenting on something that’s happened but which had nothing to do with them really…they aren’t actually  answering for their atrocious record on the NHS.

Here Sir Brian Jarman is quoted but it is still unclear who he is talking about

Sir Brian told the BBC: “One of the basic problems is that the government is responsible for provision of the health service but also for the monitoring of it.

“The NHS is very popular, and quite rightly so, in the country, and they don’t want a bad news story for electoral purposes.”

In an interview with Sky News, he said: “When they had a problem with quality, they couldn’t really say what it was, so things were suppressed…. spin.

“Effectively they had to deliver good news for the minister. The minister then indicated that the pressure came from Number 10. Although he then denied it.”

In response, Mr Burnham said the last Labour government had “established independence” by setting up the independent regulator and that “was not the move of a government that wanted to hide”.

Note that first paragraph:

‘Sir Brian told the BBC: “One of the basic problems is that the government is responsible for provision of the health service but also for the monitoring of it.” ‘

The Telegraph tells a slightly, but significantly different, version:

“The government was in the position of providing the health service and monitoring it, it was a conflict of interest. Ministers have an electoral interest in getting out good news.”

Now as the BBC mentioned the correct tense at the beginning of the report….‘a “basic problem” with the NHS was that the government’….is it possible that the author changed it for the second quote but forgot to do the first one?  Changing the tense changes the whole meaning of the sentence and the sentiment.

The BBC end with a final quote from Sir Brian Jarman:

‘”We have another group of Mid Staffs hospitals.”

Which leaves a lot of questions….does he mean that in the historical sense…that more problem hospitals were hidden…or does he mean that the problems still exist and are ongoing under this government?

The BBC have left that very much open to speculation.

BBC seem to have gone out of the way to allow Labour MP and former Health Minister Andy Burnham to try and distance himself and his Party from the scandalous behaviour of the NHS on his watch.