BROOKING NO BALANCE…

BBC News in paroxysm of joy at the news that the CPS have announced that eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, will face a total of 19 charges relating to phone hacking, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.

The two ex-News of the World editors are to be charged in connection with the accessing of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone messages.

I caught the PM coverage of thison Radio 4 at 5pm  and one could be forgiven for thinking that these allegations have already been proven and that all these folks are going to prison. The undisguised pleasure in the BBC voices at this news was remarkable and I noted their praise for Alan Rushbridger, presented as hero of the process, and of course they guy in charge of their print end . Coinciding with the end of Leveson today I have rarely heard the BBC anti-Murdoch machine sounding so triumphalist.

THE STAR CHAMBER

In one way, Cameron deserves all gets for foolishly agreeing to set up the Leveson Inquiry. As predicted this has turned into a leftist Star Chamber with the twin objectives of  damaging the Government whilst undermining the Murdoch Empire. The BBC salivate over the daily farce and I notice that the BBC have elevated the vote of whether Hunt should “be investigated” over how he handled the News Corp’s BSkyB bid to be the  lead UK story. In their little media village perhaps this is the biggest news of the day but I don’t meet too many people who are agitated about what Hunt did when and to whom, do you?

I also think there is a more sinister edge to the issue than merely the sustained baiting of Cameron and Murdoch. Miliband gave the game away yesterday when he suggested a cap on media ownership saying he had   “no worries” about a company owning 20% of the British market but said there was a “question of between 20-30%”.  Alright then, Ed, the BBC falls into the area that you seek to question so I presume you will show consistency of principle and demand that it’s dominance be broken up, right? Thought not. It’s my view that Leveson is all about restricting our choice of media provision and in that regard one can FULLY understand why the BBC is so enthusiastic about magnifying it at every opportunity.

THOMPSON ON LEVESON

Perhaps you may wish to comment on this from BBC DG Mark Thompson to the Leveson Inquiry this morning?

“The BBC is not a business and it might well be that someone running a media business might take a different view from the view that I took as director general of the BBC.

“The BBC is a public service broadcaster. It is committed to be the most trusted, trustworthy source of news in the world and we want to maintain the highest possible standards in all matters, including matters relating to privacy.”

Left Wing Hackette’s Shoddy Reporting Forces “Guardian” To Apologise To “The Sun” But BBC Doesn’t Notice It..

Obviously the BBC has not made much of this story…..I wonder why?

Britain’s Guardian newspaper was forced to apologise to Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun today for falsely alleging that the tabloid’s reporters doorstepped a lawyer at the phone-hacking enquiry.
In an unwelcome twist for the left-leaning paper which has led efforts to expose hacking at Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World weekly tabloid, the Guardian admitted in court that its front-page claim was wrong.


Oxford educated left wing Guardian hackette Marina Hyde (“one of the funniest and most admired journalists in the UK”) might be getting the smallest Oxfam charity Christmas card this year from her editor Alan Rusbridger who had to endure the humiliation of seeing his face spread over The Sun as the tabloid helpfully pointed out

Her piece was published by editor Alan Rusbridger without any checks or calls made to The Sun. Hyde’s false accusations were sent around the world on Twitter.


The much hyped Ms Hyde, the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, blends in perfectly with the well born radical chic crowd at The Guardian burnishing their NW1 dinner party credentials by bashing the “rich” and the Tories. But it’s perfectly clear that this was a story that fitted so neatly into the Guardian’s Murdoch manic obsession she didn’t even bother to check it out.

Epic fail.

But her career will not suffer. Socialist hacks live in a risk free environment when it comes to peddling untruths because the golden rule of left wing journalism is that truth = what ought to be true rather than what is true. There will be no explosion of indignation from media colleagues for this shoddy piece of gimcrack “journalism”. No thundering broadsides from the BBC for it is now open season on Murdoch, not because of the hacking and blagging that anyway was probably par for the course for all tabloids, including the left wing Mirror – but because Murdoch and The Sun switched their support from Labour to the Conservatives in the final months of Gordon Brown’s tenure at No. 10 – and the many years of Murdoch supporting Labour were immediately conveniently airbrushed out of history.

Hence the lack of BBC interest in this story.

But imagine the outburst from the BBC if it had been a Sun reporter inventing stuff up about The Guardian. …..

Aaaaahhhhh….the sweet sense of liberal left hypocrisy in the morning…..

ON LEVESON…

I suggest you might give this interview concerning the Leveson Inquiry on Today a whirl if you get a moment. Contrast the treatment of Roy Greenslade with that of Trevor Kavanagh. I was pleased when Kavanagh actually kicked back at the tangled Webb but it is a scandal that an interviewer takes such a blatantly biased position in the first instance. I’ve done a few debates with Greenslade myself on the BBC and he is treated as a real hero by them, no interruptions allowed.