Category Archives: BBC bias

NO GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN AVAILABLE..

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Nice illustration of how the BBC selects interviewees with an eye towards shaping the story to the BBC’s narrative……

‘BBC seeks angry right-winger to come on show…
She didn’t quite put it like that, but the BBC researcher who phoned me this morning basically wanted to know if I would be prepared to go on air to angrily denounce the Big Society – while preferably making rude noises about the government.
“What” she inquired “did I think about David Cameron’s ideas for the Big Society?”
I told her I was in favour. The bigger civic society, the better. After decades of politicians trying to get the state to run everything, I added, trying to get non state players involved was a refreshing change.
“Oh” she replied, sounding a tad disappointed.
Perhaps in the minds of those who make such programmes, the Big Society has become a kind of shorthand for what is nice and cuddly and modern about the Conservatives.
What better, then, than to find an outspoken Tory backbencher to say how much they are against it. Two lazy stereotypes confirmed in one go, eh.
It simply did not seem to have occured to her that a libertarian, small-state MP might be in favour of less government. Much easier to think of outspoken Tory backbenchers as being opposed to nice and cuddly and modern things ….
It could have been worse. Several months ago, I had a BBC researcher call me up hoping to get me to speak out against proposals for direct democracy.
Outspoken backbench Tory? Must be against more democracy and change, obviously.’

Now, by way of balance and because I believe in trying to be fair, in my OWN experience, the BBC does try to present contrasting views. I have been regularly approached to express a counter-balancing “right of liberal” set of views and respect the BBC for that. The only time I get irritated is when the HOST of a given debate clearly weighs in on one side, so unbalancing the debate. This is usually from the left perspective. Hard to generalise because, for example, I was on BBC Hereford recently and the host only interviewed me and if anything was very  sympathetic to my opinion on the recent tanker drivers strike. It seems the bias is more concentrated in some areas than others. Carswell flags up a more disturbing situation where the clear aim was to bring on a Government critic from within the Government.

The BBC Sides With Illegal Immigrants While Pretending Otherwise

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Before I even get into this, I have to call attention to what appears to be the title for a series of reports: “Altered States”. This is bias right up front, as it’s a theme we keep hearing from the BBC and the Left-wing media in the US, that the US has somehow suddenly become more divided and vicious since 2008. I wonder why that is, BBC? Could it be that nothing has really changed except the occupant of the White House? Have we forgotten the constant outrage about Bush, and before him Clinton, and before him (skipping a Bush), Reagan, and before him….well, you get the idea.

In short, this is a BS Narrative being pushed by the BBC, in the long run-up to November, just to reinforce the notion that opponents to the President have made things worse. Not Him, mind you. It’s the fault of His enemies, those who want to tear Him down. Of course, that’s really about racism, right? So, with that in mind, let’s examine what’s sure to be a story involving a racial angle.


Illegal immigrants take taxis to avoid deportation

Here’s the blurb to this in the Top News Story featured links on the main news page:

Illegal immigrants take taxis because to avoid getting pulled over while driving and having their papers checked. “The BBC investigates why.”   I’ll tell you why, BBC: they broke the law. In other news, bank robbers avoid the police because they don’t want to get arrested for heroically redistributing wealth.



“They have their life blocked because of the immigration issue.”

And there you have it. No need to listen further, really, unless you just want to get hit over the head with it repeatedly. Their life is ruined because they broke the law, BBC. They all deliberately broke the law, in many cases repeatedly. Even if we’re to sympathize with the heroic idea that they’re just looking for a better life, I have to ask the BBC why Hispanics are elevated above my own family, who came here legally. There is no embargo, no blockade stopping these people from entering legally and going through the correct process. They don’t because people with whom the BBC sympathizes – and whom the BBC is abetting with this report – enable this illegal behavior.

In the tiniest possible gesture towards balance, we also hear from a white person who tells us about people from Kosovo, who had to go through the legal process. So that’s one voice on the side of the law. Next up, a man who is against the law. Then – the classic trick – a child, to appeal to your sympathy. Then another Hispanic who is against the law.

We next hear from another Hispanic taxi driver, who also shares his concern. And so on.

The blurb accompanying the video report itself says this:

But critics call it a civil rights issue and warn it stokes a climate of fear and division. Ironically, all eight of the cab companies in Gainsville are operated by Hispanics.

Ironically? And there’s the race angle. The fact that they have brown skin and speak Spanish is irrelevant to the legal issue. But that’s the real agenda here, the real Narrative from pro-illegal activists: that it’s about race. Typically, the racialist-minded Beeboids see ethnicity before they see a person’s character. There is a racial angle here, though: brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking people helping other brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking people to break the law. I’m not sure that’s ironic at all.

By the way, BBC, where are all the hand-wringing stories about illegal Chinese immigrants who get deported? Or don’t we care about them because they don’t have the same powerful activist base, and Chinese people don’t get the same sympathy about race discrimination?

Does your head hurt yet? Did you get the message? In case you didn’t, and that lone voice in favor of the law out of ten against somehow held your attention, the closing line is “We just gotta learn how to do it the right way.”

This is a propaganda piece, full stop. Paid for by you.

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The BBC Celebrates WikiHacks Again

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Check out how the BBC reflexively sides with WikiHacks and their publishing of stolen emails from Stratfor.  Stratfor is not a government agency, and has not been accused of any crime, yet the BBC opens the piece by describing WikiHacks as a “whistleblowing website”. Of course, anyone who is aware of boss Julian Assange’s open declaration that his intent is to harm US geopolitical goals will know what his real agenda is here.

In any case, in stark contrast to their treatment of the leaked CRU emails (there is still not a single scrap of evidence that they were stolen), the BBC sees nothing wrong – declines to editorialize against, really – with the fact that WikiHacks got the Stratfor emails from the hacker group, Anonymous, who admits to illegally obtaining the emails, along with credit card numbers and other data.

Notice also the accompanying photo of a gently beaming, serene St. Julian. Selecting photos is an editorial decision, one which can influence the readers’ interpretation of a story.

St. Julian is on record, we’re told, as stating that some of the far-left activist groups on which Stratfor was gathering information are “fighting for a just cause”. So it’s not so much whistleblowing as it is an attempt to undermine a political enemy. But never mind, he’s still a hero to the BBC for doing it. To further cast aspersions on Stratfor – the victim of a crime here – we even get a quote from Barron’s that the organization is a kind of “shadow CIA”. Just so you all know who the real bad guys are here, and to re-inforce the false description of WikiHacks as whistleblowers.

Then comes the outrageous bit:

Despite the new disclosures, Wikileaks is still facing difficulties on several fronts.

Despite? Despite releasing stolen information from an organization not of the Left, BBC?  In other words, the Beeboid who wrote this – and an approving editor – believe that releasing stolen emails from Stratfor should go a long way towards rehabilitating WikiHacks in the public eye. This is the BBC taking sides against Stratfor and in favor of WikiHacks.

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THE WORLD’S LARGEST LIBERAL ECHO CHAMBER

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Interesting post HERE on the DT from Ed West concerning the BBC;

“The difference between the makers of Fox’s political programmes and the BBC is that the former believe they are in a battle of ideas while the latter genuinely thinks their beliefs are “the” default correct ones. That is why the BBC – which is still a first-class broadcaster – is so keen to respond to criticism of bias, because they really do not believe they are. Yet bias it is, and the BBC remains the world’s largest echo chamber.

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Responding To A Defender Of The Indefensible

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This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.

A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).

That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”,  and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim,  people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.

So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.

Hell Yeah! Because it can’t be anything to do with the idiots pictured here:
http://snotrockets.net/politics/tea-party/the-tea-party-are-a-bunch-of-racists-there-ive-said-it/
And it can’t be anything to do with The Patriot Freedom Alliance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073094/Racism-row-erupts-Tea-Party-calls-Barack-Obama-skunk.html

Or Marilyn Davenport:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378380/Official-apologizes-Obama-chimpanzee-email-Tea-party-member-fired.html

No! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”

Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC  CoJ.

First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.

The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short?  The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December,  Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC.  Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.

So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.

Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.

In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.

Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.

There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.

The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.

The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day.  But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.

However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?

But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.

If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few?  Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:

Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall St LA


Occupier shouting “Go back to Israel” to a Jew

The Hate in Zuccotti

Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”

“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.

“They control the media.”

But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’

“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.

The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.


Occupy Wall Street Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and  the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.

I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea?  I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.

You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)

Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.

I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.

Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC.  That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.

And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.

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BBC Bias And Wisconsin – Again

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So the Union-led petition to force a recall election against Republican Gov. Scott Walker has gathered 1 million signatures. That’s nearly twice what’s required to force the recall. Of course, that’s only if the signatures are valid. If you get your information on this story from the BBC, you’d have no idea there’s even a hint of impropriety. The BBC news brief sanitizes the whole thing, spins it to make Walker look bad, and even misleads the reader about the result of the recall elections from last summer.

Let’s start with how the BBC spins it to make Walker look bad.

The governor has become a conservative hero and put the Midwest state at the centre of the US labour rights debate.

The BBC News Online sub-editor decided to leave it as an anti-Unions thing, and censor the news that Walker balanced the state budget for the first time in ages. That’s actually what has earned Walker respect from conservatives. Curbing public sector union powers helped him do that, sure. But it’s about fixing the state economy, not just attacking unions. The BBC leaves out how this is about fixing the economy, leaving Walker looking like a villain. They do it again a couple sentences later:

The governor’s opponents are also angry at the $800m (£521m) in budget cuts to schools passed under him.

 But they leave out the fact that this actually improved things. Of course, the BBC has form on censoring news about this issue in Wisconsin. What the BBC didn’t want you to know at the time is that schools have saved well over $100 million since Walker cut down union power and passed his budget. In fact, one school district went from a major deficit to a budget surplus thanks to Walker’s plan. Instead, the BBC spins it so you think he hurt the schools. Does that sound familiar?
The BBC says this about the previous round of recalls:

Two Republican state senators were recalled in earlier elections.

What the BBC censors because it hurts the Narrative is that the other five Republicans kept their seats, and the Republicans kept their majority – albeit just barely – in the legislature. But that fact won’t help lead you to think that this new petition means the people of Wisconsin want the Republicans out, so the BBC leaves it out.

One last bit of anti-Walker spin is where the article mentions that he’s raised over $5 million for the fight, taking care to point out that half of it is from out of state. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that out-of-state Unions and other partisan PACs are pouring money into it for the Democrat cause. In last summer’s recall elections, Democrat-supporting groups from out of state even outspent Republican groups from out of state, to the tune of $23.4 million to $20.5 million. Does anyone think this time will be any different? So it’s grossly dishonest for the BBC to mention only Walker’s out-of-state money. But that helps the Narrative of “the hard-working innocent lambs against nasty Republicans and their moneymen”.

Now let’s look at the worst part of all this: the 1 million signatures. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that there’s most likely a massive amount of fraud going on.  The state board overseeing the whole thing has already admitted there’s going to be a problem with duplicate signatures. It sure doesn’t help matters that the far-Left group, One Wisconsin Now, actually encouraged people to sign multiple petitions, knowing that they won’t all be caught. One guy has even proudly claimed to have signed 80 times. Not a word about this from the BBC.

Then there’s the fact that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) is admitting they won’t be trying to dismiss all those Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse signatures if they have Wisconsin addresses and are dated properly. So there’s voter fraud built into the system, to help Democrats. But remember, kids, according to the BBC, only Republicans engage in voter fraud.  In fact, things are so bad that the GAB is hiring a bunch of temporary staff to sort through all this crap. The GAB, however, is an independent group. So when the BBC reports this:

Supporters of the governor are being trained to spot any duplicate or falsified signatures.

You have to say they’re lying. Only supporters of the governor are being trained? No, BBC, it’s the staff of the independent GAB. This is meant to create the suspicion in your mind that it’s only a Republican plot to disenfranchise honest Democrats, nothing to do with massive Democrat fraud. There isn’t even a hint of suspicion raised here, not a single eyebrow raised. Why do you think it’s going to take 60 days to sort this out?

Sure, it’s only an unsigned news brief, no time to mention all the details, right? So why are the details the piece does mention so dishonest? You can read about previous examples of BBC censorship and dishonesty about the goings on in Wisconsin here, here, and here. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

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The BBC Fails To Provide Context If It Detracts From Their Narrative

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The recent BBC coverage of the indictment and pending extradition of Richard O’Dwyer for abetting internet piracy has been pretty overtly biased in favor of the defendant.

The main thrust of O’Dwyer’s story, the way the BBC tells it, is that the young man is facing serious consequences from a foreign legal system for “simply linking” to illegal content. The legal question was, until yesterday’s court decision, whether or not what he’d done was a crime under UK law. In his  live reports from outside the courthouse on the BBC News Channel yesterday (Jan. 13), BBC correspondent constantly sanitized O’Dwyer’s alleged act by saying the he “simply linked” to illegal content. At one point the reporter clearly stressed the words “simply linking”, raising his voice to emphasize the point.

The legal charges against O’Dwyer do not refer to his actions as “simply” anything. That’s a BBC editorial decision, revealing the report’s personal opinion of the legal issue at hand. He did it over and over again, so it must be condoned by BBC News bosses.

The BBC News Online article is less overtly opinionated, but does give plenty of space to the defendant’s complaints. The article also relates the pure speculation from O’Dwyer and his lawyer that he’s being used as a “guinea pig” by US authorities in their efforts expand their powers to enforce copyright law. Then there’s the sympathy from Victoria Derbyshire.

Essentially, the BBC is presenting O’Dwyer as an innocent student, who did nothing wrong, and is being treated unfairly by a grasping US. But there’s some important background context which the BBC curiously fails to provide, and which makes a lot of difference in how the audience might understand the story.  Here’s what the BBC doesn’t want you to know (h/t pounce for the extra info):
After the authorities originally shut down O’Dwyer’s website in June 2010, he started up a mirror site. This lovable little innocent student included “F*ck the Police” in the title. He also put up a photo of the police-hating old rap group, NWA. This is not the behavior of someone who doesn’t realize he’s done anything illegal. O’Dwyer knew perfectly well what he was doing the entire time: deliberately abetting criminal acts.

That bit of context might have made the reader view things a bit differently back in November, when the BBC was fretting that the poor dear would be “at risk” if extradited, a lost little lamb amongst hardened criminals in the US justice system. At least in that article, the phrasing I’ve been complaining about was presented as the words of O’Dwyer’s lawyer, rather than a BBC reporter’s explanation:

Mr Cooper argued the site did not store copyright material but merely pointed users to other sites where they could download films and TV shows.

 “Merely”, “simply”, what’s a few million acts of media piracy among friends, eh? So why does the BBC allow O’Dwyer to play all innocent, that he was “surprised” when the cops showed up on his doorstep in November, five months after his original site was shut down and he started it up again with an anti-police taunt?

We heard the same BS, unquestioned by the BBC, in Friday’s coverage. The BBC has been very sympathetic to this criminal, going out of their way to portray him not only as someone who should not be extradited to the US, but who really hasn’t even done anything wrong. Even though the facts show that he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and kept doing it even after being told it was illegal.

I wonder how the BBC would spin things if a US citizen was extradited to the UK for helping people around the world pirate BBC content?

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Mark Mardell Visits A Jon Huntsman Gathering And Defends The President On The Economy

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The BBC’s US President editor is in New Hampshire to cover the Republican Primary. “It’s the economy, stupid” is the running gag these days about the number one reason why the President might not be re-elected. Among the elite media, anyway. Much of the rest of the country might be worried about His continued assault on gun rights, poor performance on stopping illegal immigration, the constant class war rhetoric, the possibly unconstitutional power grabs and recess appointments, His poor foreign policy record, and His general apparent incompetence to improve anything, but that doesn’t interest Mardell or his fellow travelers.  And we never hear about any of that from the BBC anyway, so it may as well not exist for the purposes of this discussion.

As Mitt Romney solidifies his lead over Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich, where do you think the BBC’s top man in the US goes to keep his finger on the pulse of the people? A Jon Huntsman gathering. Who?

Yes, Mardell went to a gathering of supporters of the candidate who has been at the bottom of the polls from the beginning. Huntsman is now getting a little play in New Hampshire, because that state is full of Reagan Democrats, who basically were the “independents” who voted for The Obamessiah in 2008. To support his attendance at a Huntsman event, he points to an article by the Left-wing (but not identified as such, contrary to what Jane Bradley said they should do) Daily Beast which says Huntsman had his best debate performance yet. In other words, Democrats like him, so Mardell is on the scene. I’d be more impressed if he had found a non-Left article speaking positively about Huntsman.

Now, you might be saying, “Hey, Dave, Hunstman is suddenly on the rise, so it’s logical that Mardell would check out his gathering to see what’s up.” Well, he didn’t do that for Santorum, who rocketed up from the bottom of the polls in Iowa. He went to a Ron Paul rally after a quick stop at a Romney speech. The BBC instead sent Peter Marshall of Newsnight to laugh at Santorum. Contrary to the tone here, Santorum’s rise was discussed with distaste in BBC reporting.

No, Mardell has liked Huntsman from the beginning. He was mentioning Huntsman when the man was not even a blip on the radar, yet didn’t mention Herman Cain until after the first debate, when he dismissed Cain out of hand. Last September, Mardell told an audience at the BBC College of Journalism that he liked Huntsman as a candidate and especially that Democrats liked him. I think that about sums it up right there. But this is at least as much about defending the President as it is about Huntsman.

For his latest, Mardell is talking to some other Republican voters. What’s especially troubling about this report is that Mardell also seizes an opportunity to defend the President on the economy.


Do Republican attacks on Obama strike a chord?

Actual Republican voters in New Hampshire are more conservative, or at least used to be. Reagan lost a primary to Pat Buchanan, for example. The state has, though, seen a serious increase in Democrat voters in the last few years. The problem is that the state also has this rather lax, same-day voter registration deal, so people can switch parties or independents can sign up for one (one has to be registered for a party to vote in the primary) on the day in order to flood the polls for a given candidate. There are rumors that out-of-state Paul minions are coming in to take advantage of this as well. So the particular circumstances of New Hampshire benefit Huntsman more than just about any other candidate.

But Mardell is there more to defend the President than to push Huntsman. So he talks to some Huntsman supporters about their thoughts on the economy. First, he talks to an actual Republican, a business owner and son of a former Republican governor and White House staffer. Chris Sununu definitely blames the President for the bad economy. Mardell, though, questions him.

I put it to him that is fine as political rhetoric, but question whether Obama’s policies have really hurt his thriving ski resort.

Somebody show me an example of Mardell doing this to an Obamessiah supporter.  He let’s Sununu answer the question, but then dismisses it.

Not everyone agrees that the language of the campaign reflects reality.

It’s very clever how he emphasizes that this is “rhetoric”, which devalues the position. In the interest of balance, of course, Mardell then talks to someone who – what a shock – doesn’t like where the Republican Party is going. Donald Byrne is one of those “independents” registering specifically for this primary I was talking about. It would be more informative if he’d found an actual Republican who felt differently, but I guess one right-winger a day is all he can stomach. Tell me if any of the following sounds eerily familiar to everything the BBC has been telling about the Republicans:

He says the language used about Obama is pandering to the base.

“I think the Republican party in the United States has shifted very far to the right,” he says.

“Being a moderate is a negative in this campaign and that’s very unfortunate, because the majority of Americans are moderate and well balanced in their thought process.

“There is too much pandering to these right-wing extreme sides.”

This could have been copied and pasted from any number of BBC reports. Actually, it sounds like a good White House talking point. Wake me up when Mardell finds an “independent” who says that the Democrats have moved too far to the Left, and that it’s bad for the President to pander to Left-wing extremes. No, to Mardell, that’s a good thing, what He should be doing.

One thing Mardell neglected to tell you about Byrne is that he hosted a Huntsman gathering at his own home last month, and that he doesn’t like Romney’s strong talk against China. It’s pretty obvious that a software entrepreneur with a vested business interest in dealing with China is going to like the former Ambassador to China who sucked up to them. The “pandering” to extremists Byrne was talking about was, in fact, about anti-China rhetoric and not, as Mardell wants you think, specifically about the US economy. So a little dishonesty from Mardell there to help his Narrative.

To further defend the President on the economy and convince you that the fiscally conservative position is actually an extremist one, Mardell found a big-government Republican and economist who worked for the first President Bush. You won’t be surprised to learn that he says that the debate between Keynesian and Milton Friedman economics is silly. It’s more between Keynes and Hayek, but Friedman is a big American name, so we’ll accept that. In any case, Mr. Bastani says that neither approach works, and anyways Keynesian economics has become the middle ground. If Mardell asked him if anything the President has done might have harmed the economy, we aren’t told.  Did he censor that bit, or did he just not bother to ask at all? Either way, you’re left with a specific Narrative.

That’s the same message you’ve heard over and over again from a number of Beeboids, isn’t it? How many times have we heard “Two Eds” Flanders say it? How many times has the BBC gotten Blanchflower or some other Left-wing pundit to say this? Mardell himself has said (at that now infamous BBC CoJ appearance) that the British public support endless deficit spending, and that the President is “the last Keynesian standing”. He thinks that’s the answer. So he went out and found people to support his own personal position.  And we know his own personal position, because he revealed it in front of the BBC CoJ camera.

Both these reports from New Hampshire were written from his own personal viewpoint: Huntsman is the good candidate, Keynesian policies are best (it’s a misunderstood Keynesianism, actually, as the man himself never promoted an endless, infinite deficit),  the other Republican candidates are extremist, and that any talk of the President hurting the economy is mere rhetoric.

As a result, you’re not informed about what’s going in New Hampshire, but you do get a message.

UPDATE: In case there’s any doubt about the reality of Huntsman’s supporters, here’s a video of some supporters who think he’s practically a Democrat. Notice how they whine about evangelicals just like Mardell and the other Beeboids do.

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Myth-Spinning From Detroit

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There’s yet another BBC North America correspondent pushing an agenda these days. Ian Pannell has gone to Detroit to spin a tale of woe and misery, blaming all of it on the current economic situation. He even clearly articulates the message one is meant to take away:

“The gap between the rich and poor in America is now bigger than it’s been for 30 years.”

Pannell closes the piece with this line, followed by a statement that “what we’ve seen” all over the US is a similar problem.  In case anyone didn’t bother watching all the way through, the message is spelled out equally clearly in the blurb accompanying the video.

Now, before we get into the problems of Detroit, let me just say that I’m in no way denying that there’s a severe economic problem in the US right now. I’m on record here many times complaining about exactly that. In fact, I believe we’ve been in a Depression for the last 18 months or so, and will continue to be unless there’s a drastic change nationwide. So this post is not meant to challenge Pannell’s last sentence. Instead, I mean to challenge the agenda being pushed and the myth being spun specifically from Detroit.

Detroit, of course, is definitely a problem city. Unemployment in the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn region is the worst in the nation  among what we call “greater metropolitan areas”. As of May 2010, Detroit had about 90,000 (!) abandoned homes or residential lots, and the city has had to spend money demolishing them. If that seems like an awful lot of homes emptying over a relatively short period of time (we’re meant to assume that this is all about the “downturn” since 2008), you’d be right to be suspicious. Yet Pannell wants you to believe that Detroit is just like the rest of the country, a victim of economic inequality thrust upon it by outside forces. Well-trained BBC audiences will already know the approved causes: greedy bankers and the evil rich appropriating more than their fare share of wealth.

Except it’s simply not true. Detroit has been going down the tubes for years and years. Here’s what Pannell and the BBC don’t want you to know, because it detracts from their agenda:
First of all, Detroit suffers from relying far, far too much on a single workhorse: the automotive industry. The fact that the industry has been in decline for a couple of decades or more – so bad that the President had to bail out the unions out GM and sell Chrysler off – is an inconvenient truth which interferes with Pannell’s tale, so he leaves it out. White flight and urban blight have been a problem for decades. How could Detroit’s struggles as portrayed by the BBC be largely due to a recent phenomenon if a site like “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit” won a local award in 1998?  There were 12,000 abandoned homes as of 2005.  In 2008 – at the beginning of the economic crisis, mind – unemployment was at 21% in some areas, and criminals were re-offending to stay in the safety and comfort of prison rather than trying to get by in a disaster area.

Detroit’s population has declined by 25% over the last decade. This has very little to do with the “downturn” (it’s only a recession when conservatives are in charge, right?). Pannell provides none of this context. The problems of the last three years have obviously made things tougher, but to portray Detroit purely as a victim of the recent economic crisis is false. But it does help feed the class war mythology which the BBC loves to push.

Another Detroit problem Pannell doesn’t want you to know about is that Detroit was on the brink of insolvency by 2005. It was driven there by powerful unions and poor management from a series of economic denialist Democrat mayors, and capped off by a Democrat mayor who ended up in prison over a sex scandal. To be fair, I’m pretty sure Republican mayors in that area wouldn’t have done much better, considering the corruption and cronyism that went on, and that precious few Republicans over the last decade have been fiscal conservatives. Regardless of who was in charge, though, the city lost 39% of its manufacturing jobs – mostly in the auto industry – in the 1980s. Unemployment ten years ago was among the worst in the nation. This has nothing to do with the current economic situation.

As of 2002, five of the ten largest employers in the area were state-run organizations. Indeed, the top two employers were the public school system and the City government itself. Does that sound familiar? This is never a recipe for growth and success. The Post Office was the #7 employer, and I think we can all guess how that works out after the city loses a quarter of its population. Even a media studies graduate can do the math here.

But none of this context is provided to the BBC audience. All you see is a tale of woe, people struggling to survive in tough economic times. The struggle is real, but the direct cause presented to you by Pannell is false. Using Detroit like this to highlight the current economic crisis in the US is like using Grimethorpe to highlight what Tory Cuts have done over the last couple years without telling you about the closing of the mines.

This is the result of agenda-driven newsgathering and reporting. It’s a dishonest report, pushing a specific agenda, intended to support the BBC’s Narrative about income inequality. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

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Jeremy Bowen’s Bias Revealed: Muslim Brotherhood "Conservative, Moderate and Non-Violent"

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Yesterday, As I See It posted a comment in the open thread about how Lyse Doucet gave a report on Radio 5 in which she gently sanitized the Muslim Brotherhood ( I can’t find a link to it right now, but if someone points to it I’ll add it here).  At one point, she apparently slipped up and said that Salafists are “extremists….er…..let me say strict….”  Oops, nearly tanked the Narrative there.  In any case, I was reminded of a post I saw by Jeremy Bowen back in February, where he said that the Muslim Brotherhood are “conservative, moderate and non-violent”.

WTF? I said to myself.  How can  they be both?  By definition one cannot be the other.  Any group calling for Shariah Law cannot be moderate. Yet Bowen saw no problem saying it.  However, somebody had a problem with it, as he stealth-edited it out quickly.  I failed to take a screenshot at the time, assuming News Sniffer would catch it if anything happened, but when I went back the next day, “moderate” had been removed, and News Sniffer had nothing.  So I gave up on it.

Fortunately,  I’ve just remembered the Wayback Machine.  Within a minute, I found this:

Why would he say such a thing?  Somebody pointed it out to him, and he or an astute BBC News Online sub-editor sent it down the memory hole.  Wake me up when a Beeboid says the same thing about the Tea Party movement.

If anyone still had a modicum of trust in Bowen’s reporting, it’s surely shredded to pieces now.  He’s obviously partisan, and not thinking clearly.  Defenders of the indefensible may dismiss this simply because it’s 10 months old, but I fail to see how that makes any difference.  Bowen truly believed it, and clearly meant to sanitize the Muslim Brotherhood so the license fee payers wouldn’t get too worried about them.  He’s not, so why should you be?  I’m sure his superiors at the BBC know all about what he really thinks, and simply don’t care.  Some of them may even agree with him. It’s irresponsible, not to mention delusional.  I’d say it’s impossible to trust his reporting on Egypt any longer. 

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