Category Archives: Joe Biden

The BBC has managed to squeeze two items out of a Washington Post story on Marco Rubio’s family history, with a news report and an accompanying bit of pointless padding from Daniel “let’s defend Obama” Nasaw (unsurprisingly both pieces make prominent reference to Rubio’s status as a Tea Party favourite). Thanks to the internet we can get a different perspective, and Hot Air provides us with a statement from the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies:

The Washington Post seems to have very little understanding of the Cuban exile experience and what it means to be an exile. Marco Rubio’s family was forced to stay in America because they refused to live under a communist system. That makes them exiles. It makes no difference what year you first arrived. The fundamental Cuban exile experience is not defined according to what year Cubans left, but rather by the simple, painful reality that they could not return to their homelands to live freely.

It’s so predictable that the pro-Democrat BBC would cover the Rubio story in the way it has and yet totally ignore Joe Biden’s recent outrageous claims that opposition to Obama’s jobs bill will lead to increased rape and murder. We know from the Rubio articles that BBC journalists have been reading the Washington Post this week; it’s stretching the bounds of credulity to believe not one of them saw the paper’s Fact Check column in which Biden’s statements were debunked and awarded the highest mark of Four Pinocchios.

It’s also revealing of BBC priorities that there’s been no follow-up to Fast and Furious since August, and that it hasn’t touched the Solyndra story in over three weeks, despite more revelations in both scandals. And goodness how the BBC’s US journos are suddenly quiet about the Occupy movement since it all started going Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm. They were queuing up to cover it a week ago. [*See updates]

When Bush was in power the BBC went out looking for political scandal (for example agenda-driven conspiracy-peddling left-wing activist Greg Palast – who recently told a crowd of lefties they should urinate on Republicans – was a regular reporter on Newsnight). Can anybody think of a single example of BBC journalists digging up dirt on the current administration? Has there been any scuffed BBC shoe-leather in pursuit of Democrat scandal? Some of Mark Mardell’s efforts read like they’ve been dictated to him by White House press secretary Jay Carney (who is, let’s not forget, husband to the co-author of Katty Kay’s book Womenomics). The BBC really should drop the laughable pretence of impartiality and just declare its hand:

[*] UPDATE 13:40. Related to the Occupy Wall Street protests – here’s another story from this week’s Washington Post which the BBC chose not to pick up:

Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data.

UPDATE 14:00. H/t John Anderson: