Journalistic Double Standards at the BBC Due to Ideology

As everyone here knows by now – but people who rely on the BBC for their information will not – the US Justice Department has collaborated with the Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan Police to seize computers and a router from UK citizen Roger Tattersall, who runs the truth-seeking blog Tallbloke’s Talkshop, under the moniker, “Tallbloke”. Tattersall is one of a handful of climate truth-seekers* who had a link to the ClimateGate2 emails posted by a third party on their blogs.

The BBC defined the first release of ClimateGate emails in 2009 as “stolen” and “hacked”. Even though they didn’t actually know what happened. As part of the investigation into what the BBC has described as the stolen emails, the UK authorities asked the US Justice Dept. to instruct WordPress, where Climate Audit is hosted, to hand over all blog records during the days leading up to “FOIA” posting a link to the emails. Tallbloke has posted the legal notice on his blog.

So far, there has been utter silence from the BBC. This is not exactly like WikiHacks abetting Pvt. Bradley Manning’s illegal acquisition – honest people would call it theft – of all that Dept. of Defense data, which was subsequently published by St. Julian Assange and his crew.  In Manning’s case, he was arrested for actually stealing the data, and Assange has been indicted for knowingly receiving stolen goods and publishing it. Even today, the BBC defines that data instead as “leaked:”. The double standard is clear. It’s an editorial choice, driven by the biases of the BBC staff involved. Anyone doing a search of “Manning” and “leaked” on the BBC website will see loads of evidence. The opposite is true for ClimateGate.

Tattersall has not stolen anything, has not published anything, and was not responsible for “FOIA” posting a link to it on his blog. All he did was report that it had happened, and report on the emails after he saw them. Just like the BBC did with the documents Manning stole and Assange published. Today, as it happens, St. Julian has gotten a break in his appeal against being extradited to Sweden, and the BBC is all over it, making sure everyone still has hope for this heroic figure. At the same time, Manning is back in the news because his pre-trial hearing is starting.  As I write this, the BBC News Channel just referred to his act as “leaking”. It now seems to be enshrined in the BBC style guide.

Now Mark Mardell is asking if Manning is a hero or a villain.We know that certain Beeboids think Assange is one.

Pte Manning is the intelligence analyst who US authorities suspect of being behind the hugely embarrassing Wikileaks releases. He was arrested in Iraq last May for illegally downloading material from America’s secret internet network.

Mardell admits it was illegal, which is refreshing. Notice, though, the pathetic editorializing of referring to Defense Dept. classified documents as “America’s secret internet”.

To some he is a hero, to others a villain.

Many in America will feel, if he is guilty, it is quite clear that he is a traitor who has broken his vows to his country and deserves harsh punishment. Some have even said what he and Wikileaks have done amounts to terrorism.

The defence may choose to paint a picture of a disturbed young man, sensitive and gay adrift in a macho culture. They are likely to bring up allegations that he has been subjected to deliberately punitive detention in a military brig.

Get out the tiny violins, folks. None of this justifies breaking the law in any situation. It’s especially ridiculous to use “punitive detention” as an excuse for something he’s already done. But never mind that. The fact that Mardell and the BBC are happy to give voice to those who declare Manning – and by extension, Assange – a hero.  Can someone show me a single example of the BBC giving the same time for praise of a single climate truth-seeker or someone who says we have a right to see the UEA and other climate scientists’ data, as well as their work?

No, of course there isn’t any. The BBC Trust even declared that they don’t have to give time to those voices. And they got a Warmist to do a report saying they need to be even more biased. To the BBC, releasing the ClimateGate emails was wrong, and harmful, and we have no right to see any of it.

Again as I write this, the BBC is giving air time to someone declaring Manning as a hero, a champion for justice and the US Constitution. Another Beeboid in the US got the quote, and has made a separate report saying the exact same thing Mardell did.

Here’s Mardell again on Manning:

But it will be interesting if they put the main point of his many supporters – that what Manning did transcends legal rules and national interests, that information wants to be free, and that truth is more important than government’s desire to keep something secret.

Behind this is a specific allegation – that orders to Manning were illegal.

And there you have the BBC’s Narrative as well. Mardell is at the trial today, and has reported from there for the BBC News Channel as it gets underway. He repeated what he said in his blog, that the defense is that no damage was done by publishing the documents. Funny how that’s exactly the line ex-Beeboid and now Democrat strategist, Katie Connolly, tried to push a year ago. Manning wouldn’t have done this without knowing that Assange would publish it. What the BBC never told you is that Assange’s stated goal is to harm US interests. So it doesn’t matter whether or not any harm was done. An attempted crime is still an illegal act. Mardell knows this – he reads the Washington Post – but curiously leaves that out of his anaylsis. Only one side is given: Manning’s.

Manning and Assange are in the news, and the BBC sees no parallel between their cases and what has happened to Tattersall, someone who has neither stolen, nor published, nor abetted anyone doing either, emails which are not classified.

So where is the BBC reporting on the legal action taken against a UK citizen for being tangentially involved in the publishing of emails from the climate scientists? This is the top level of US government helping to seize personal property from a UK citizen for something someone else did, and over which he had no control. Nobody could have prevented “FOIA” from posting a link on their blog. It’s intimidation at best, oppression at worst. Where’s Rory Cellan-Jones on this? He’s all about freedom of publishing whatever one likes when it’s a paedophile handbook. One would have thought that the Beeboids who were so angry about the emails being published would be eager to jump on someone connected to it. Yet they haven’t made a sound.  Don’t want to give any more air time to “opponents of the consensus”, I guess, as reporting on it would open up discussion about what happened, and the fact that there is evidence of fraud contained within.

A clear double-standard of reporting on the publishing of non-public emails. It’s all driven by the personal ideology of BBC employees. They support St. Julian, so sanitize his publication of classified documents. They support Warmism, so demonize the publication of their emails. This latest round of releases sure hasn’t gotten much play by the BBC. They made a big deal about the arrest of Pvt. Manning for actually stealing classified documents, but are completely silent when international authorities collude to seize private property, as well as server records, of someone who did absolutely nothing, and was only a spectator of an act which may not even be illegal. I understand that there’s so much big news to report today that there isn’t time to do a main report on it.  But why isn’t this worth even the tiniest of news briefs on the website?

When will the BBC start honestly reporting about what’s been going on? If anything, Tallbloke and whoever “FOIA” is are the real heroes. They’re seeking the truth, and informing us all about real law breaking, real collusion to produce agenda-driven data with which to influence governments. They’re seeking truth about the data the UN and all of our respective sovereign governments are using to oppress us, to reduce us, and to control our behavior. The BBC abets this, and tries instead to demonize or suppress information to the contrary.  If it ultimately turns out that these truth-seekers are wrong, that still doesn’t make them criminals for seeking the truth. Yet that’s not how they’re treated by the BBC, in stark contrast to how they treat an actual criminal, and a man who has openly stated his desire to harm US interests.


UPDATE: Now I know why the US Government is involved. One key revelation in the ClimageGate2 emails is that the US Dept. of Energy was colluding with Phil Jones to hide data that harmed the cause, and would give fodder to truth-seekers. The same Dept. of Energy which has thrown $4.7 billion down the Green Energy toilet to Obamessiah moneymen was funding some of Jones’ research. It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?

* I refuse to use the term “climate skeptic”, as once one starts using one’s opponents terms, the argument has already been lost. From now on, I’m going to use the term “climate truth-seeker” or similar.

Mardell Links to Conservative Publications, But Then Uses White House Propaganda to Defend the President

First, let’s celebrate the fact that Mark Mardell has actually linked to two conservative publications in one blog post!  Must be a new record, and probably takes care of his quota for the next six months.  In any case, as usual, Mardell is wrong about most of what he writes, and pushes White House propaganda instead of the truth.  Although, there’s actually one – very rare – criticism of the President from the US President editor.

Whatever happened to the reset button?

Mardell reminisces about the pathetic “Reset Button” incident where Hillary Clinton was sent to Russia as part of the President’s attempts to prove to everyone that He’s not George Bush. He actually pokes fun at the translation fiasco, calling the whole display “cheesy”. It’s nice to hear him actually criticize something about The Obamessiah Administration, even if it’s nearly three years after the fact. He was still Europe editor at the time, so no record of his opinion then, although curiously his predecessor, Justin Webb, didn’t bother to comment on his blog. Actually, the first BBC report about it, from Paul Reynolds, censored news of the error, and it was only later after Hillary caught some heat in the US media for it that the BBC dared discuss it.

Obviously things are not going well these days between the US and Russia, so the BBC US President editor has to explain why it’s not really the President’s fault.

The first excuse is actually valid: Sec. of State Hillary correctly criticized Russia for the rigged election. There’s a hint of disappointment from the US President editor as well, which is pretty rare, about how His Administration spoke out against Russia much faster than against Iran or Bahrain. This is where Mardell links to the non-Left Washington Times (I had to look out my window to check for airborne pigs) for a negative opinion on the President’s reluctance to speak out against those governments.

It’s not really His fault that relations are bad right now, you see, because both Russia and the US have been in the middle of an election cycle. So naturally the rhetoric spikes up on both sides, ruffling feathers everywhere. This, of course, excuses the President for not having His Administration speak up sooner about Iran and Bahrain. It also kind of gives the idea that Hillary’s criticism wasn’t that serious, in part just a bit of noise to please the home crowd in an election cycle. An unintentional error by Mardell there, I think.

Then Mardell tries to prove that the President really has had some successes in dealing with Russia.  First, he tells us that Dmitry Medvedev is the President’s best friend among world leaders. That’s a really, really bad sign of His priorities and diplomacy if true. What’s funny is that this apparent fact makes Mardell and his Beltway buddies utterly confused about why Russia is reacting so strongly to Hillary’s scolding. Maybe Medvedev is actually useless and has no real influence and does not speak for Russia except as a figurehead to sign treaties? Anyone ever thought of that?

Now the spin really starts. Sensing that there’s concern about the President’s apparent lack of success in negotiating with Russia, Mardell points out what he claims are three successes.

First is the START Treaty. Mardell shamelessly links to the White House’s own propaganda page on it. He must be hoping that nobody has any idea that in reality the President caved in to Russia and told our allies in Eastern Europe that we were going to ditch the plans for a missile defense system there in exchange for Russia signing on to…um…agreeing to think about considering not making more nuclear weapons for a while. When even the BBC’s favorite rent-a-Leftoid from the US, Michael Goldfarb, says it’s not cool, you know it’s pretty bad.

Basically, we got schooled. Yet the person the BBC tells you to trust for an insight into US issues denies it and shoves actual White House propaganda down your throats instead. Couldn’t he find a nice JournoLista article about how it was a triumph?

Next up is the trumpeting of a joint-military action against some Taliban heroin traders. Here Mardell links to the second conservative publication (miraculous), the Telegraph, except instead of an “important agreement”, it’s apparently one operation and not much else. Grasping at straws there.

Lastly, Mardell portrays Russia agreeing to let yet another NATO country move military equipment (really just a step-up of a pre-existing agreement) through its territory into Afghanistan (a country they have an interest in keeping to heel) as a special success for the President.

Assuming that nobody bothered to look any of this up and his readers believe the propaganda, Mardell continues to defend the President.  It’s also not His fault because He really is pushing that missile defense set-up in Europe against Iran. Russia feels threatened and is behaving badly.  Wait: isn’t this the missile defense system the President caved on already? Anybody think Russia is really scared this time?

Another sad effort from the BBC US President editor.

#OccupyFail: Three Occupiers Exercise Their Freedom of Speech by Bringing Mortars in Glass Jars

The BBC will never report this, because their thought-leaders in the US media and Left-wing blogosphere won’t.

3 men claiming to be Occupy Portland protesters arrested in Marion County for possession of explosives

Inside the car, the deputy also found a number of firecrackers and two commercially made mortars inside glass canning jars, designed to be fired into the area during professional pyrotechnic displays. One was found in the floorboard of the vehicle, and the other was allegedly in Luff’s jacket.


The deputy also found two gas masks, protective eye goggles and a safety helmet. All three men told the deputy that they had spent the night at the Occupy Portland demonstration, and they brought the mortars and safety equipment to the demonstration in preparation of the expected confrontation between police and protesters Sunday morning.

The three had been at the demonstration during the confrontation Sunday morning and had left about an hour before the vehicle was stopped. During that confrontation, a police officer was injured by a firework, but the three men denied being involved in the incident.

When asked about the explosives, the three men told authorities that they knew the canning jar would explode, causing glass shrapnel to fly and possibly cause injury.

(emphasis mine)

A reminder of Mark Mardell’s partisan bias and hypocrisy:

Healthcare row gets physical?

We are used to terms like “Nazi” being bandied around in the health debate at overheated town hall meetings.

But a new way of persuading opponents has just emerged – biting off their finger.

It reportedly happened in California and the man took his detached little finger to a local hospital to be sewed back on.

I don’t yet know how he fares. But as we in the media are always on the look-out for real-life case studies to illustrate political debates, this seems ideal.

Did he have insurance and did it cover Severed Pinkie Syndrome?

As he was 65, was he covered by a government-run, taxpayer-funded scheme?

And can any Americans out there explain why this debate has got quite so heated?

Mardell can tut-tut about this non-story, and openly sneer at what he assumes to be the senior citizen’s own hypocrisy, simply because he disagrees with the victim’s political views.

Yet there has been utter silence from him and the BBC about all the violence and foul behavior by their darling Occupiers.  And all this while the BBC has increased spending and hiring for their US coverage.

#OccupyFail.  #BBCFail.

NOW, IT’S SERIOUS

Mark Mardell

Mark Mardell is a busy chap these days. One moment is his salivating at Rick Perry’s 53 seconds of forgetfulness during the latest GOP debate (It’s finished Perry, reckons Mardell, and Republicans simply must support Romney, this years Dem/BBC approved John McCain) the next he is grimly pointing out that the only person that can beat Obama in 2012 is..yes, Angela Merkel. I believe that is called the assumptive close. Gosh, things must be getting serious.

Mark Mardell Defends The President

The BBC’s US President editor (“North America editor” is not an appropriate title, as he reports exclusively on the President and the US politics surrounding Him) has noticed that the President’s popularity and job approval has been at something of a low ebb.  Naturally, concerned that his audience might be worried, Mardell leaps to His defense.  Under the time-honored journalistic pretext of posing a question, he proceeds to give you the answer.  He’s got a defense for every single criticism of the President.

Is President Obama a good leader?

When President Obama was elected he seemed like a different kind of leader.

Only to those caught up in the cult of personality foisted on us by a complicit media.  Mardell himself came to the US as one of those true believers, excited by the possibilities.  He knows he was wrong then, but goes through a series of intellectual contortions to prove to himself otherwise.

Not just the first black man in the White House but a new sort of American president: thoughtful, reflective and determined to represent all of his country.

Again, only those caught up in the worship believed this for a moment.

Now, a year away from the next presidential election many people question what sort of leader he has turned out to be.

Many of you may question His leadership, but Mardell is here to set you straight.

One unkind critic said that he seemed like a 50-year-old man who has just got his first proper job, that he has had no experience of running any organisation and it shows in his management of the White House.

Unkind?  How about “honest”?  He is a 50-year old man who has had no experience of running any organization, and this is His first really challenging job.  What would a “kind” critic say, anyway?  Still, let’s hear some real criticism.

Republicans are of course the harshest critics. Ed Rogers, a veteran of the George H W Bush and Reagan White House told me: “I think Obama is not a very effective leader.

“I think he is a thinker and a ditherer to a fault. I think his leadership style does not lend itself to crisp decision making.

Those familiar with Mardell’s coverage of (for) the President will know this is one of the criticisms which most angers him.  No surprise that this is how he sets it up.

“I get the impression he anguishes before a decision, and even worse for a president, he anguishes after a decision. So, his team never has certainty.
“They never know if the other side is back in appealing to the president, they never know if they have gotten clear, certain decisions.

“And at the end of the day being president is about making decisions and sticking with them.”

Think about that for a second, before reading Mardell’s defense.

Of course in part Mr Obama’s initial appeal was that he did consider the facts, carefully and dispassionately.

That’s not what Rogers is saying at all.  Mardell is misrepresenting things.  The criticism isn’t that He is thoughtful and wanted to contemplate all the facts, but that He kept changing His tune afterward.   Try not to laugh too hard about the “dispassionately” BS.  Mardell obviously doesn’t get it, so starts his defense in earnest:

He was seen as the diametric opposite of his predecessor, President George W Bush, in the popular imagination a cowboy president who shot from the hip, trusting his first gut instinct.

Mr Obama, on the other hand, likes to get down with the details.

Remember, the criticism isn’t about whether or not the President considers the details, but whether or not He is capable of  making a firm decision.  Only Mardell still thinks this is about why it seems to take Him so long to make one.  We all know this isn’t true, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The US President editor then gives us an anecdote from Jared Bernstein, a former adviser to the Vice President, who heaps praise on the President for being so deeply concerned and interested in real detail.  This is, of course, how Mardell shows you that He is so very different from that tiresome cowboy.

In order to drive this point home, we’re told that the President actually saved the US economy.

He makes the point that Mr Obama was faced with an immense challenge and says he stopped the economy going off the edge of a cliff.

Never mind that the initial round of TARP bailouts was begun before He took office, and that He kept Bush’s finance team essentially intact to continue that progress.  Praise Him!  Then back to the defense.

However, he accepts there is a perception of dithering:

“The guy has an amazing capacity to assimilate a lot of information. He really likes to solve a problem pragmatically – but from a perspective of being as well informed as he can be.

“He certainly doesn’t reach snap decisions. He is a pretty deliberative guy, but you put the facts in front of him he will reach a conclusion pretty quickly.”

Hmm. How does reaching a conclusion “pretty quickly” give the appearance of dithering?  In the case of going to war against Libya, for example, it turns out that the President wasn’t dithering so much as He actually didn’t want to do it at all.  He thought light sanctions and hard, Paddington-like stares were working, and had to be shown that it wasn’t before He gave the green light.  It’s why Hillary Clinton has said that she won’t be working for Him if He gets a second term.  Yes, I know the BBC never told you about that.

“I think what looks like excessive deliberation has more to do with the politics. The president might come to a decision on economic policy pretty quickly, but then you’ve got to navigate this Congress and that is a fairly tough equation, getting through all those road blocks.”

“This Congress”?  You mean the one with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and a Democrat-controlled Senate?  Or the totally Democrat-controlled Congress He had for the first two years which rammed through ObamaCare and Stimulus via backroom deals and end runs around the opposition?  You know, the one that Mardell called a “Golden Age”? What a load of garbage.  But Mardell thinks you’re all too stupid to remember that, and continues his “Trapped in a world He never made” defense.

But the president has to be a navigator, or at least know people who are.

Mr Obama does not seem to have a strategy for dealing with the sausage factory that is Congress. It has perhaps been his worst failure.

Seriously?  What about the billions thrown down the green jobs toilet, mostly to His Democrat moneymen?  What about the failure of the $1 trillion-plus Stimulus?

True, he not only got through economic packages which admirers would say saved the country, he also in the end got a healthcare package that has long been a dream of Democrats.

Mardell knows he can’t give the President too much credit for that because, as I said above, that was mostly the doing of the Democrat leadership when they controlled both the House and the Senate.  But now it’s time to pretend to criticize Him from the Left.

But it was so diminished that it offended his own side while enraging the right and helping the Tea Party to get off the ground.

Hello: the Tea Party movement was well “off the ground” by April 15, 2009, almost a year before ObamaCare was signed into law.  How can Mardell still get this wrong? And it can’t have been too much of an offense to supporters at the time, judging from the way the BBC lauded it.

The trail of sometimes grubby compromises that led to a deal made him look part of a Washington he said he had come to fix.

Yeah, that’s much worse than the fact that the President is the recipient of more money from the finance industry than all the Republican candidates combined, or that the CEO of GE is His Jobs Czar, or that He gave more than half a trillion dollars to a green energy boondoggle because it was backed by one of His moneymen.  But I digress.

Perhaps even more importantly it led to an unclear proposal that left many Americans confused and worried that it would leave them worse off.

Oh, God, we’re back to the Narrative that people don’t like ObamaCare only if they don’t understand it properly.

Mr Obama seems to lack the sort of special political skills you need to make sausages (Bismarck said you don’t want to know how sausages or laws are made).

It certainly doesn’t help when practically the first words out of His mouth as President when trying to work a deal with Republicans was “I won“.  There’s a difference between not having certain political skills and being an arrogant asshole.

He’s obviously not a thug nor, more oddly, a charmer.

“More oddly”?  Why does Mardell say that?

Undoubtedly he has buckets of charisma.

Oh, right.  Silly me.

Mardell then goes on to say that the President hasn’t been much good at reaching across the aisle, and – bizarrely – that not even “charming bully” Rahm Emmanuel could get both sides to work together.  To my surprise, though, he does acknowledge that critics on the Left don’t want Him to compromise at all.  Hey, what happened to all that Republican intransigence?  Never mind that, of course, as this is about how the President feels pressure from the Left to stay on course, and that’s why He’s not such a bridge-builder.  As always, Mardell has a defense ready for any charge.

He then moves on to the next section.

What made Mr Obama a unique political phenomenon was that he, quite literally, wrote his own story.

Er, no.  The media did that.  His book was promoted far and wide by them, and they didn’t even spend a tiny fraction of the effort checking into His past that they did on Sarah Palin.  More than anything else, though, it was cos He is black.  Let’s face it, that was the number one selling point.  No white neophyte politician with a vague background of association with questionable characters would have been catapulted to stardom in such fashion.

So Mardell is wondering what happened, how the bloom came off the rose.

Yet this master storyteller appears to have lost control of the narrative in office.

Uh-oh, please, not this again.

Some may think this is post-modern claptrap or simply a silly way to look at politics.

But part of being a leader, and especially an American president, is telling people in very clear terms what is going on, why it’s going on and what should happen next.

Mr Obama himself has said the best solutions to the economic crisis may not be the best story.

Damn.  If you don’t agree, it’s because the message hasn’t been made clear to you enough.  This is seriously wrong.  The President has been absolutely clear on all of His policies, and on all of His various messages.  Nobody doubts what He wants to happen or thinks is going on.  But Mardell still, after all this time, thinks that if we don’t think He’s doing a bang-up job, it’s only because He hasn’t made the Gospel clear to us yet.  Does anyone here think His Plan For Us hasn’t been made crystal clear over and over again?  And here comes more defense:

The plot twists of real life get in the way of a simple tale. The president – and just about everyone else – thought the economy would be showing stronger signs of recovery by now.

No, not everybody thought that.  Why else would the Tea Party movement have transformed the face of the House?  Lots of people knew things weren’t going to go well.  Now, why would we think that?

But the author of a critical book about the president’s handing of the economic crisis, Ron Suskind, says the disconnect is the problem.

“Even if the words of a leader are not along the lines of what people want if they match his deeds people say ‘Well, I may not agree with him, he’s a straight shooter’ and that gets you confidence points.

“Mr Obama has had trouble because of his brilliance at soaring rhetoric – inspirational rhetoric.

Wait….what?

“And often the caution that has abided his deeds, a kind of split-the-middle-let’s-find-some-middle-ground, even if there is not much coherence to it, a half of this and a little of that, often does not make sound, dramatic policy. “

Name me one big speech where the President wasn’t scolding His opponents.  This is Beltway BS.  The general public doesn’t think this way.  We’ve heard His message, and found it wanting.  Suskind, by the way, is not an impartial observer.  He’s an Obamessiah supporter who wrote an entire book shifting blame for the economy away from Him.  Even far-Left ideologue and JournoList founder Ezra Klein, who wrote the review I’ve linked to, can see that.  But Mardell isn’t going to tell you.  He, like Suskind, wants the President to go back to the “Yes We Can” stuff.

“When you are president, people always need to know what you would do if you were a dictator. What you would do. Not what’s possible or the realities of Congress or the limits on your authority.

“What would you do if you were dictator? People don’t know that about Obama. And that’s a problem. A weakness. And stylistically it is going to be hard for him to get that back.”

This is a joke, right?  Who here doesn’t know how that would go?  Any excuse to distract people from wondering about His competence.  And that’s the key here: a lack of competence.

Everything in Mardell’s piece is about blaming factors beyond the President’s control, or how people get the wrong idea because He doesn’t fit the typical Washington mold. As I said earlier, trapped in a world He never made.  In other words, not really His fault.  Don’t question His competence.

Mardell and Suskind both still think He’s brilliant, and potentially a great leader.  He’s already shown that He isn’t, but they can’t see it.  If He fails, it won’t be His fault. Mardell’s doing a whole series of this stuff this week, hoping for more Hope, and I’m not sure I can stomach it.

Come, let us tell in Zion what the Lord our God has done

Sorry I’m a little late in getting to this, but life intrudes occasionally. I saw this the day it was posted, but didn’t have time to deal with it until now. BBC US President editor blogged about Libya and the death of Gaddafi. And it’s classic Mardell in full acolyte mode.

Gaddafi killed: A new kind of US foreign policy success

“Wow”, said Hilary Clinton as she was handed a Blackberry with the news out of Libya.

Gaddafi’s death will be a relief to President Obama and his administration. That’s on the fairly simple grounds that he backed NATO action, called for him to go, and now he’s gone.

Wait a second…..that’s not what I saw originally. I remember it well because I literally smacked my forehead, stood up, and walked away when I saw it. It’s the reason I went back to do this now. It appears that Mardell had a rethink and made a stealth edit. Fortunately, he can’t escape Google. The original post seems to be lost down the memory hole, but the opening line in question is still there:

The death of Col Gaddafi is a vindication of sorts for Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and the awkward US decision to ‘lead from behind’.

A vindication, eh? Killing Gaddafi in cold blood, without due process of law, is vindication of a foreign policy strategy? Did the BBC ever say that when Sadaam was put on trial by his own people, judged, convicted, and sentenced by his own people, that was a vindication of Bush’s foreign policy? I forget. What color is the sky on your planet, Mark? I wonder who told him to tone it down. But make no mistake: Mardell’s true thoughts were revealed in his original words. His beloved Obamessiah has been vindicated. Was it the not doing anything part that was vindicated, or the not having boots on the ground which led to a killing in cold blood without trial or due process of law that was the vindication? Yeah, whatever. Don’t bother wondering if we had put boots on the ground that Gaddafi might have been captured and granted his human rights, put on trial, etc. Nah. The Obamessiah knows best, regardless.

Has His Nobel Peace Prize been vindicated yet? FFS.

In any case, let’s recall the facts. Originally, the President didn’t want to get involved at all. In fact, He had to be dragged, practically kicking and screaming, into it. (There you go again, always wanting an unapologetically aggressive America storming ahead – ed.) At the time, of course, Mardell was trying to convince you that this was “deliberating”, not dithering. We know for a fact, however, that He really was dithering, and had to have reality shoved in His face before reluctantly agreeing to act (once again, Al Jazeera beats the BBC, eh? ) In fact, Sec. of State Clinton and her Department were complaining that it was basically amateur hour at the White House, and were thinking that the lights were on but nobody was at home. It’s also important to remember that the Libyan people themselves were asking for our help, and that Mardell himself was trying to big up The Obamessiah by saying that He felt a personal connection, an emotional attachment, to the Libyans’ cry for justice.

Okay, so back to the current post. Mardell explains that Gaddafi’s death will come as a relief to the President because that means the mission was a success. Naturally, what he really means is that ugly, barbaric United Statesians wanted him slotted, not that the President Himself would be so crass. But Mardell’s main point is that this represents the “Obama Doctrine”, of a less aggressive US. The fact that he has to then admit that we carried the main load of warmongering, and that the essential defeat of Gaddafi’s forces wouldn’t have been possible without US muscle is amusing, but then irritating because Mardell still maintains that it’s totally cool simply because we didn’t start it. I’ll leave it to others to explain how that makes sense, because I sure as hell can’t. Either we made it possible, or we didn’t, no?

Mardell’s main point here is that it’s a significant improvement over the Bush Cowboy years because the Muslims won’t view this as the nasty US imposing our will on the poor brown-skinned folk. There won’t be a generation of Libyans growing up the name “Barack”, I guess. He still sticks to his position that the President wanted to “lead from behind”, and not that He didn’t want to do anything at all. This is White House spin, and not the facts.

Let’s also recall now that Mardell himself was originally against taking action in Libya. He felt that the President frowning at Gaddafi would be sufficient, and tried to convince you that the President’s approach to this conflict was “very deliberate, very rigorous, rather academic.” It was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. The President didn’t want to do it, and had to be convinced by others to act. There’s a big difference between being unsure and trying to work it out and not wanting to do it, full stop. But Mardell constantly told you that the President was trying to figure it out anyway, and that only the uglier side of the US wanted to rush out, guns blazing.

In fact, Mardell was so against the notion that the US was going to save the day that at one point he even praised the President for making the UN relevant again. This is the same UN, mind, that’s now whining about how Gaddafi didn’t get his human rights affirmed before he was whacked. Who didn’t see that coming?

I won’t bother to get into a discussion about how US involvement was illegal anyway, because the President actually needed Congressional approval to send troops out in this case, where Libya wasn’t relevant to immediate US foreign policy and security needs, or that some people like St. Michael and St. Jon (Moore and Stewart) were displeased, as the BBC censored all of that. They’re both totally cool now because they support the Occupiers, so forget about old news that might make the President look bad.

Mardell continues his in blog post to reassure you that it’s great because the Libyans will think they did it themselves, and didn’t have it forced on them by Western Imperialists (he doesn’t use those terms, but that’s what he means). If that’s the case – if Gaddafi’s killing in cold blood vindicates that strategy – then why was it so great for the President to dither over it for weeks?

This is where it becomes clear that Mardell was spinning for Him the entire time. If the President’s plan the whole time was to bomb from afar and let the Libyans themselves do the heavy lifting on the ground, then why dither deliberate about whether or not to get involved? If “leading from behind” was the plan all along, why did He have to have His arm twisted to do it?

Even Mardell admits it, sort of:

In the end it was fear of being judged a moral failure that drove the decision.

Ah, yes. He wanted to be “on the right side of history”, right?

The president was told that thousands could die in a massacre in Benghazi and he wasn’t going to be held responsible for that.

Hell, even the odious, now departed, Matt Frei was worrying about that before Mardell was. And Mardell is still trying to tell you that this is a success story.

But if President Obama’s policy has been a success on its own terms, it leaves others in the US deeply worried. They don’t think their country should encourage, cajole, help and guide. They think it should lead – that it should be seen to lead in fact and in deed.

And if it doesn’t it is not clever – it is defeatist, and will inevitably lead to a diminution of power. They may raise their voices, not today, but when the dust settles.

It’s worth repeating: Forget that Sadaam was captured without harm, put on trial by his own people, and sentenced in a court of law by his own people, according to the laws of his own country. Mardell will hate that to his dying day, yet the cold-blooded killing of Gaddafi, without trail, without legal justice, is a success, a vindication, in his view. How twisted can you get?

In Mardell’s biased worldview, the President’s plan was a success, even if He didn’t actually have this plan and it was forced upon Him. Cold-blooded killing is vindication, whereas a trial according to the laws of the country concerned is Cowboy justice. No effort is spared at the BBC to praise Him and prove to you that He knows best.

NOT THE BBC’S CUP OF TEA

A search on the BBC website for ‘Occupy Wall Street‘ brings up pages of articles within the last month (the first appearing on 23rd September). There are now well over thirty articles just about the U.S. protests from that period.

Compare that to an equivalent search for the ‘Tea Party‘. The movement took off in a big way during the first three months of 2009 and by April some half a million people were taking part in Tea Party protests across the United States. How did the BBC cover it? Very differently.

Somewhat belatedly, the first article to appear was a full-length one by Kevin Connolly, entering the world on 15/4/09 (the one with the “tea-baggers” reference).

This was followed on 20/4/09 by a very brief, ironic aside (in the BBC’s Obama Diary) from Kevin Connolly (“the modern versions [of the Tea Party] do not quite have that regime-shaking intensity about them”).

On 27/4/09 there was a personal ‘voter’s view‘ from a Tea Party supporter as part of a series of voter reflections on Obama’s first hundred days.

There were a couple of ‘Newsnight’ blog-posts on 29th April, one from Peter Marshall (“the Tea Party people are almost exclusively white”), the other by Paul Mason.

There was then nothing for four months (May-August 2009), while the Tea Party continued going from strength to strength. The BBC looked away.

Finally, on 14 September 2009 Mark Mardell almost woke up, with a sneering aside in a blog-post about Congressman Joe ‘You lie!’ Wilson (“Listening to the “tax-payers’ tea party” in Washington on the radio over the weekend, it struck me that if I were reading a transcript blind of context, I would assume I was listening to a demonstration of a growing resistance to a brutal and undemocratic regime.”)

A day later there was the briefest mention of the Tea Party movement in another blog-post by Paul Mason.

On the same day, Mark Mardell posted a piece called “Is race a factor in Obama protests?” Having put that question out there, tied it to the Tea Party protests and added that “the allegation is that many of those who are calling their president “un-American” mean he is not white,” he then blithely added that he’s was merely “describing and inviting debate, not passing comment”. You lie, Mark!
Finally, on 26/9/09 there was a dismissive aside in an article by Max Deveson saying, like their ideological opposites, that the Tea Party has “a shopping-list of grievances that did not necessarily gel very well together”.

Nothing more appeared on the BBC News website about the Tea Party movement during the closing three months of 2009, even though the Tea Party continued to go from strength to strength, enough to make every BBC reporter sit up and take notice in 2010 – whether they wanted to or not.

So, in contrast to the dozens of generally full-length articles in under a month about OWS that are already littering the BBC News website, the growth of a major political movement, the Tea Party movement, that shook the American political system in 2010 and continues to shake it in 2011, passed with just five full-length pieces and four other fleeting mentions in the course of an entire year.
At best that’s extremely poor journalism, at worst it’s ideologically-driven selective reporting. It’s almost certainly both.

LOVING OWS

Mark Mardell has awoken. I assume he has been slumbering in recent days such has been his apparent lack of interest in the OccupyWallStreet movement. Initially, I thought that perhaps even HE would be embarrassed by the disgusting antics of this motley crew. I mean, defecating on a Police car or spitting on a Marine are things that surely any civilised person would be ashamed of and yet it’s right up there on the “To Do” wish list for OWS. But Mark has suddenly chosen to engage with OWS and. as one might expect, he’s a fan. Instantly, he compares it to the Tea Party, and is now wondering what it can achieve. He continually references the Tea Party in a vain move to compare the two whilst carefully erasing the law-breaking that has accompanied the Occupy movement – Obama’s little stormtroopers.
   

Katty Kay and Mark Mardell Love Far-Left Protests

I know others have mentioned the BBC’s biased coverage of the Occupiers, but I think it’s important to look at them all together, so we can see the big picture, the larger context of the BBC’s reporting. We’ve all seen by now how the BBC loves the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, as well as the copy-cat protests in other cities. Any negative aspects played down, the protesters’ mixed messages spun favorably. Now the top BBC talent in the US has gone among them, and come back with glowing reports. It makes for a stark contrast with the way Mardell and Katty reported on the Tea Party protests.

First, the unbelievable dishonesty and bias of Katty Kay:
Occupy Wall Street: Grievances without violence

I’ll pause for a moment while everyone stops laughing, and give you a chance to clean the tea off your monitors and keyboards. You read that right: Katty says there’s no violence. And it gets worse. How does she open her report?

There is something endearing about a protester who camps out on Wall Street carrying a sign that reads “I love humanity, let’s figure this s**t out together”.

OK, he wasn’t quite as discreet with the swear word, but my editors will frown if I replace the asterisks with the actual letters.

But seriously, how angry can you really sound if you begin your revolutionary bank-bashing with the words love and humanity? It is somehow so very un-European.

Awww, how sweet, eh? Like all well-constructed pieces, the Narrative is set out very clearly in the opening section: these protesters are lovely, have the best of intentions.

It’s hard to imagine, for example, the hooded youths of the London riots pausing between rock throwing and shop-looting to utter poetic affection for their fellow human beings.

Their priority was Sony or Samsung (stolen plasma TVs that is), not sitting down with their political opponents to figure out the country’s economic problems.

Who’s sitting down with political opponents here? The Occupiers are screaming at their ideological enemies. If these people honestly wanted to sit down with political opponents and figure out the country’s problems, they’d be sitting outside political offices and government buildings, going to committee meetings open to the public, etc. That’s not what they’re doing at all. Katty just made that up out of thin air.

Let’s recall how Katty opened her first report about the Tea Party movement. She opened that video piece with a quote from the President, who is one of the Tea Party’s political opponents. The people on whom she’s reporting doesn’t even get the first word. The President called for unity, she intoned, but that call was drowned out by the Tea Partiers. Before we even learn what the Tea Partiers wanted, we’re told they disrupt, divide, oppose. Oh, and let’s not forget they are angry. And that was actually the least biased, least frowning, least scaremongering report about the Tea Party movement ever done on the BBC at the time.

Yet for some odd reason Katty starts her report on the Occupiers focusing on the love. She contrasts the Occupiers with the violence of the protesters in Greece and other places, and draws the conclusion that the US is just a nicer place, so protesters don’t get violent like they do in Europe.

No, the most extraordinary thing about the US protests so far is that they have been so mild.

It took Americans a long time to jump on the European protest wagon and now they’ve finally done so, it’s with exemplary order and calm. Given how rough the American economy is, that’s quite surprising.

You ain’t seen nothing yet, Katty. (UPDATE 9:23pm: All those nice people Katty met just got up and tried to occupy Wall St. again and and got violent with the police, throwing bottles and bags of garbage at them. Imagine! How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya, Katty?)
They’ve only just begun. Wait until they realize they won’t get their way immediately. She gets in her usual far-Left ideology about “growing inequality” and how the evil rich are “gobbling up” wealth while others aren’t getting richer. This is far-Left ideology, no matter which side of the argument you’re on. And she has form. For example, recently she complained that the economic crash hasn’t lasted long enough to “turn people off Capitalism”. It’s right there, out in the open. This is what Katty believes, and she reports according to her personal political beliefs. It cannot be denied. Naturally, because she holds these beliefs, she’s surprised things haven’t gotten more violent.

So it’s interesting that – barring the one incident of pepper spray used against demonstrators on Brooklyn Bridge – the nice people camping out in Zuccotti Park have been well, so nice.

Show me one single example of Katty – or any Beeboid – describing Tea Party protesters as “so nice”. Notice how she says there’s been just the one unfortunate incident. What about the hundreds of people arrested while trying to illegally storm the Brooklyn Bridge? What about all those nice protesters who tried to actually illegally occupy Wall St. itself? Does Katty know about this? Does she care? Or does she sweep that under the rug because it doesn’t help the Narrative she wants to tell?

Oh, but Katty knows that United Statesians can do violent protests when they want:

And it’s not that Americans can’t riot – they’ve done so with force in the past. Remember Vietnam, LA, the race riots in Detroit?

But those were in the 1960s. In recent decades protests in the US seem to have become more peaceful, even more subdued.

So why haven’t there been molotov cocktails and shootings yet? Katty will tell us by – you won’t believe this – using the Tea Party movement as an example.

That other political protest movement of recent times, the Tea Party, might get fired up by their deeply held convictions, but they certainly don’t riot.

Oh, gee, thanks a lot. We also don’t get arrested by the hundreds, or illegally occupy anything. To my knowledge, there has never been a single arrest as a result of Tea Party activity. If somebody does manage to find such an anomaly, it would be nothing compared to the hundreds of arrests of Occupiers around the country in the last few weeks. That’s right, Katty: hundreds of nice people arrested in Boston, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, San Diego, New Jersey, Des Moines. The only reason there haven’t been even more arrests in other cities is because the police have decided not to do any for the moment.

Why have all these people been arrested? Why are the police trying to clear them out in various cities? Because the protesters are breaking the law. Unlike the Tea Party, these people didn’t bother with mundane things like permits or working with the police or obeying the law or having consideration for their fellow citizens. Yet Katty thinks it’s the same thing.

The same quality of civic duty and lawfulness that foreigners find so distinctive about American life in general has dictated the mood of the economic protests as well.

Civic duty, my arse! Breaking the law and blocking traffic and storming government buildings is not civic duty or lawfulness. How can Katty be so dishonest? Hey, Katty: would say these people in Zuccotti Park are “nice” and civic-minded? Or did you miss the anti-Jew messages? I guess you’re also unaware that they’re calling for violence in LA. I guess I shouldn’t ask about the “Time to kill the wealthy” email that was sent to a bunch of NY lawmakers. (UPDATE: Or spitting on a member of the Coast Guard.)

Now let’s visit with Mark Mardell. He went to Nashville to see what the kids are up to. His enthusiasm is evident in the headline:

The start of something new?

Out of all the protesters in Nashville, Mardell managed to find a person of color. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even be bothered to find an African American, who are a significant portion of the population there, if only a small minority of protesters. The poor lad had been to New York, and got himself arrested trying to illegally occupy the Brooklyn Bridge. Mardell gives him sympathetic treatment. He spent seven hours in a cell (oh, the humanity), and his law-abiding immigrant parents weren’t pleased that he now has a criminal record. But the BBC’s top man in the US understands.

On the other hand, Hirak believes his arrest was part of something historic, something important.

A movement that isn’t just about Wall Street, but which he hopes will grow in Tennessee, where he goes to university.

“I am a very small part of it, but this is the opportunity finally for the people to speak out and participate in our democracy,” he says. “We’re finally going to get our voice back in our democracy. We are the 99%.”

Now let’s recall Mardell’s first blog post about the Tea Party movement. He asked if it was down to racism. He pretended to be impartially asking the question, throwing it out there for others to ponder. But we know now that he believes it is secretly driven by racism, and that all the noise about fiscal conservatism and government reform is a smokescreen to hide it.

The rest of his piece is sympathetic to the protesters and their cause. No casting aspersions, no suggesting that they’re mere puppets of Washington think tanks (like he said about the Tea Party to the BBC College of Journalism), and most curiously, no fretting about the anger. No, Mardell is hopeful, not concerned. This is the US protest movement he’s been waiting for, and it shows. You won’t see him mocking any of these protesters the way he did last month to his junior colleagues.

Naturally, when he gets to New York, Mardell also has to try to compare the Occupiers with the Tea Party movement. He makes sure to tell you that, unlike these people, those Tea Partiers like big corporations. But he forgot to mention that a major complaint is corporate welfare and bank bailouts. No, the easy route is to claim that the Tea Party is on the side of the evil rich, and the Occupiers are on the side of the poorest and most vulnerable.

Fortunately, Mardell understands that there really isn’t a fair comparison at all.

But other differences suggest it would be wrong to read across from one movement to another.

These are early days, but Occupy doesn’t seem to have drawn people into politics for the first time in the way that the Tea Party has.

Most of those I have spoken to here and in Nashville were already interested in radical politics.

I have yet to meet any one who turned up because their own economic situation made them want to change the world.

Which is what we’ve been saying here all along. These people had this ideology long before the economic crisis, long before the bank bailouts. Unlike the Tea Party movement, this was planned in advance. Unlike the Tea Party movement, which was spontaneously started by a St. Louis housewife as an anti-tax gathering, and eventually inspired millions of people to form peaceful, law-abiding protests. Funny how all the Beeboids leave this fact out. However, notice that Mardell doesn’t wonder about organization or influence from above. He also never enthused over how someone he met at a Tea Party event felt they were part of something historic. To him, it was all hatred and racism.

Here’s what Mardell and Katty have censored from their glowing reports about the Occupiers: Union organizers and Union members joining in. Even the far-Left Mother Jones says it’s driven by Big Labor. That’s not a grass-roots movement at all. Will Mardell admit it? No.

Laura Trevalyan has been more honest in her coverage. She does report about the defecating on police cars, the ugly behavior, and the complaints about the property destruction and illegal behavior in Zuccotti Park. Unfortunately, she thinks that occupying private property and preventing the city from cleaning up after a month of filthy occupation is “a victory”. Only at the BBC is breaking the law celebrated in such a fashion. She made a live report saying the same thing on the News Channel earlier today.

You want to know what a real victory is for a political movement is? Changing politics. The first Tea Party victory was affecting a town council vote in a little town in Rhode Island. Real victories include affecting local elections in places like Tucson and Miami, not to mention electing Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Oh, and taking over the House of Representatives last November. Those are actual, respectable victories for a political movement: law-abiding and civic-minded. Not occupying and vandalizing private property and preventing the city from cleaning it up. Ah, the twisted morality of the BBC.

There was one bit of dishonesty in Trevalyan’s report as well.

In the Colorado city of Denver on Friday, riot police arrested demonstrators as they removed their tents in Lincoln Park near the state Capitol.

This makes it seem as if the police just went in and started arresting innocent people who were actually packing up to leave peacefully. Wrong. Those arrested refused to leave an area they had been occupying illegally.

Why can’t the BBC be honest about breaking the law? Why can’t the BBC be honest about these Occupiers? I think we know why. The difference between their treatment of these protests and the Tea Party movement is staggering.

The Wit And Wisdom Of Mark Mardell At The BBC College Of Journalism

I came across this while looking for some Mardell quotes for a recent post, and saved it until after I’d had a long look at it and taken time to absorb it all. It’s an hour-long discussion with Mark Mardell and BBC Washington editor Simon Wilson about US politics and how the BBC is going to cover the looming (13 months away) second-most important election in human history.

Parts of it give a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the vast, multi-tentacled creature that is the BBC, as well as glimpses of how any large media organization operates. There’s talk of funding, use and distribution of resources, personnel, and reporting angles. On that score alone it’s worth watching. I’m going to post the video first, and my comments and analysis will be below the fold.



We learn that Mardell claims that he needs to ask not only what has gone wrong with the US economy, but why. He says he needs to ask not only if the Republicans hurt it but if actually the President’s policies might have harmed the recovery. He hasn’t done it yet, even after more than two years, and I don’t expect him to do it now. Still, he pretends that’s what he’s doing, and it’s nice to hear him acknowledge that it’s at least a valid question to ask.

Mardell states (@5:51)that the big story of the US economy is easy to “sell” to (meaning, I hope, gain the interest of)the British public because “it has such huge resonance here.” The President, he says, “is the last Keynesian standing. He’s still someone saying, the stimulus can work, that’s the way to get the economy going.” Mardell was encouraged, he explains, that after a recent blog post about the President’s latest Jobs Plan For Us, there were a bunch of Left-wing Brits commenting on his blog that this was great, the way to go, this is what Cameron should be doing, etc. This told Mardell that there was “a resonance” in Britain with the President’s policies. We’re seeing here clear proof that Mardell – and, as we’ll soon learn, the BBC – feels that he (and they) reflect the general thoughts and feelings of the British public. This supports Jeff Randall’s quote about how they think they are on the middle ground. And there’s much, much more of this kind of thing to come.

The first Republican candidate Mardell mentions by name is Huntsman. You may well ask who the hell that is, as he’s never gotten more than a couple percent of any vote or poll anywhere, and is on no one’s radar except far-Left foreigners and discussions inside the Beltway bubble. Mardell will return to Huntsman again, and we’ll learn later why that is.

When Mardell goes through the candidates, I was willing – at first – to cut him some slack over how he leaves Herman Cain for last, as this was done a month ago and Cain had yet to achieve the prominence he has now. But notice how Mardell again dismisses the “pizza millionaire”. (Millionaire: Boo!) I’ll get to why I won’t cut him slack for putting Cain at the bottom later on. When he gets to Huntsman again, he says that candidate is the favorite of Democrats, and I’ll leave it others to infer an attitude behind his facial expression and the way he says it, as well as the audience reaction.

13:30 Mardell says that the country is changing, and while he can’t say specifically what the President has done to affect that change, the country “is changing in His image”. To support this he points to the fact that there are now two Governors of Indian descent in…ahem…formerly racist Southern states. He doesn’t mention that both Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal are Republicans, because that would detract from the notion that The Obamessiah has redeemed us to some degree. Of course, he totally contradicts that notion later on, but we’ll get to that in due course.

Then he says “on the other hand”, black poverty is the worst it’s been in almost thirty years. We saw this same blinkered attitude come out in his two recent blog posts where he visited struggling black people in Chicago. Because He is black, somehow economic policies will be aimed specifically at helping black people. Only a naive person who has a poor grasp of government and economics on a national scale will think that a black President can have a specific, immediate affect on the economic situation of millions of black people across the country. It makes no sense, but that was part of the Hope and Change Mardell expected. His last blog post shows that he does know better than that, but his and the BBC’s obsession with race and racial politics keeps driving him back to silly ideas. And hey: wasn’t He supposed to usher in a post-racial era? Emotion is getting the better of reason with Mardell here.

Maybe His policies have been crap? Nah.

In any case, Mardell concludes this section by laying out what he thinks are the main questions or points he and the Beeboids covering the US should be bringing up:

1. What has the President done to put Himself in this position?
2. Big up the resonances with the British audience (assuming, that is, the British public thinks like Beeboids do on issues such as taxation and stimulus)
3. What are the wider implications for America?

Ask yourselves how Mardell and the BBC have done so far on these. From what I can tell, the answer to the first question is “Nothing! Never!” The other two go some way towards explaining the BBC editors’ choice of stories and angles. And I suppose there’s really nothing wrong with the second two as general guidelines. Also, be sure to keep these, especially the first one, in mind over the next year of noise.

The floor is then handed over to Wilson, who goes into the more pragmatic aspects of newsgathering and coverage. I found this part rather interesting, and license-fee payers might also be interested to know how their money is being spent, and just why the BBC reports what it does.

We soon learn from Wilson that there has been a “huge investment” in the BBC’s online coverage of the US. That will be clear to anyone having a look recently, just from all those lightweight, magazine-style pieces about parks and some woman giving birth just after running a marathon. Well worth the money, I’m sure. By now they will have 11 full-time staff doing online reporting or those “digital media” magazine-style pieces they teach in courses in those feeder schools. And that doesn’t even include the usual Washington staff like Kim Ghattas and Katty Kay, or Laura Trevalyan in New York, or the number of on-air talent traipsing around the country, like Steve Kingston and Jonny Dymond. I think we’ve all noticed for a while now that the BBC has ramped up their US coverage.

Much later in the video, Wilson explains how these new hires “put great value” back into the news by providing real stories, etc. You can all judge for yourselves how much value for your money there is in these magazine-style fluff pieces. He says it’s partially driven by “commercial” concerns, which is, I think, a hint of the new international subscription scheme they’ve come up with. He does say that some of the new commercial money will go towards paying for cameramen and extra crew to follow the radio guys around.

At one point later on, they discuss how social media will play an important role. No, it isn’t what you think. Part of it is actually a fairly reasonable, if brief, discussion about how there will be debate events and whatnot driven by Twitter, and so that will be an important platform. But there’s more, which I’ll come to soon enough.

@ 25:00 I just want to add some info to Mardell’s remarks about why it’s not so exciting to get that sit-down interview with the President. He says that it’s because the message won’t be much different from what you already get from the members of the Administration because, unlike in British Governments, there isn’t really much policy conflict or different Cabinet members briefing against each other etc. This is true, but he only half way explains why this is. Obviously in the US the Cabinet and all people holding the various key positions in an Administration are not sitting politicians, aren’t vying for leadership, and aren’t fighting to get promoted to a better Cabinet position. It makes a big difference in so many ways, functionally and in message management.

@28:00 question from another Beeboid about the Republican candidate nobody except Mardell has ever cared about or thought had a chance: John Huntsman. His name comes up yet again, this time because he’s the only one fretting about Climate Change. Check out how Mardell answers, and the audience reaction. No further proof is needed of the BBC’s inner thinking on this issue. The discussion expands to the “anti-science party”, etc. Judge for yourselves, of course. But I wonder how many of these “pro-science” Beeboids believe in homeopathy or astrology?

It’s obvious that Mardell likes Huntsman, and he even says that nobody likes Huntsman except the Democrats, and that he’d fit right in with the British Conservative Party. I know, I know, let’s not get started on how the Conservative Party should be held in violation of the Trades Description Act. Just more insight into the Beeboid mindset. But this is why I won’t cut him slack on ignoring Cain earlier, and in his reporting. Even a month ago nobody outside his bubble thought Huntsman was going anywhere, whereas lots of people were already starting to take Cain seriously.

32:00 In response to a question/statement about how all this focus on the election leaves less room for the more interesting bigger picture of what the US is about, Mardell says he’s always wanting to “tell a greater American story”. He claims that’s what he always tries to do. Which is pretty funny considering how I’ve been saying that he should be called the US President editor precisely because that’s not what he does at all.

Then he says one of the voices he wants to look into is the “wealthy African American community”, specifically where the President comes from. We know now that he went out and did that, resulting in his recent blog post I discussed here. I bet he didn’t get what he expected there at all.

33:45 Mardell reveals that former BBC World News America executive producer Rome Hartman wanted to “ban all stories about guns and ban all stories about poor black Americans”. Which just tells me what lay behind the crap which led me to call it BBC World Propaganda America.

But then he says this: “You can’t censor bits of a country, you know, because it doesn’t fit the image you would like.” Oh, really now?

35:00 Mardell says that Jonny Dymond has done “some fantastic stuff”.

36:45 Mardell says that Twitter “doesn’t follow BBC guidelines.” He’s referring to accuracy, and not revealing personal biases all over the place, but it’s nice to hear them admit it nevertheless.

37:15 As part of his explanation of his feeling about how important Twitter can be as a source of mood, Mardell references the Tucson shooting (of Rep. Giffords and several other victims). He says when that happened, “the idea came out from Twitter that this was a bigger story about America;it says something about the tone of our politics. I mean, that came from Twitter, and it was absolutely right. Now, whether it created that because people like me reacted, and thought, ‘Well, that’s a good point.'”

We knew at the time, and it’s known now, that this simply wasn’t true. The murderer was mentally ill, with more political influences from the Left than from the Right. But the media – including Mardell and the BBC – used it to whip up anger against the Right, blaming Sarah Palin as an accessory to murder, etc. Mardell even used this lie to promote the idea that the President was healing the country. It was a disgrace then, and it’s a disgrace now that Mardell still apparently doesn’t realize what he’s done, or that he helped promote a lie.

40:00 Mardell agrees with a question about doing public figure profiles and how he wants to widen the focus to say something about “a wider sense of America”. You mean like how we’re racists or anti-science or want justice at the point of a gun?

41:20 Wilson explains how some beats are more important than others, and how he’s spent his career in places which are “stand-by” stories. On a slow news day, he says, the BBC News producers will want to “just shove an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in, because people always that.” That’s not anti-Israel bias in and of itself, of course, and it’s a no-brainer that throwing red meat out will rouse the dogs and get an audience reaction. But how sad that they see it as titillation in this way. He does go on to explain how it’s just part of the news cycle, outlets need to put something out, etc., so I guess that’s just the jaded journo talking there, and won’t try to read any more into it.

43:15 A female Beeboid brings up Huntsman yet again (he’s gotten more mentions inside this BBC bubble during the last 45 minutes than in the entire US media over the last six months). “How much further to the Right has American politics shifted? Superficially, it would seem much further to the Right. Has the center ground moved far to the right of what we would consider the center here?”

When did we really shift to the Left, exactly? Justin Webb’s book about the “strange death of Social Conservatism” in the US aside, that is. Yes, we elected a Democrat, but that had a whole lot to do with white guilt and the self-congratulatory outcome of electing a black man, not to mention a general backlash from the middle against the policy failures of Bush’s second term, and the entire media (except Fox News and a couple of radio talking heads, sure) being in the tank for The Obamessiah, especially the agenda-setting New York Times and Washington Post, as well as the MTV/Comedy Central crowd. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t exactly a landslide victory, despite the swooning of the Beeboids, the way the electoral counts look, and the number of celebrities crying on camera. It was 52% to 46% of the popular vote. Decisive, yes. A sign that the country had moved so far to the Left that today we’re “much further to the Right”, no. Mardell, naturally, thinks the woman’s observation is correct.

The Tea Party movement started less than a month after the inauguration. That has to be the fastest cultural shift in history, right? And remember that the Beeboids said at first that the whole thing was just sour grapes from whites who wouldn’t have voted for Him anyway. Recall that Wilson was just a few minutes ago talking about how Presidential candidates must find the center ground to win elections. So why isn’t the woman asking if the President had shifted too far to the Left, and the country was moving away from that, which is by default to the Right, but not necessarily so far to the right of center? Because He’s in the correct place, of course, and anyone not agreeing must be wrong. Again, very revealing of the Beeboid mindset and ideological ground.

To prove his point that the country really has shifted to the Right, Mardell says that politicians and operatives who’ve been in the business for 30 years say that it’s nothing like the old days, when they could just have a drink with the opposition. If one isn’t lost in the mist of bias, one might say that it could also be due to the number of “to hell with business as usual” types who have come in, and the influence of the Tea Party movement being fed up with Corporate Welfare, Corporate Cronyism, Big-Government spending (all of which flourished under Bush, let’s be clear). Funny how when the Occupy Wall Street darlings say the same thing, they’re somehow not much further to the Left than these Beeboids. We can see the perspective here, see the prism through which they view everything. The US is much further to the Right on Social issues than Britain, as if the 60s never happened, says Mardell. Particularly homosexuality. I wonder if this isn’t just another example of the Beeboids assuming their own viewpoints reflect that of the country.

This reveals the difficulty as well as the madness of defining the US in British terms. It also shows that they really do look down on us from on high, and from the Left. Wilson follows this up by saying that “the divisiveness is just almost impossible to, kind of, quantify.” He says it’s worse than the Middle East, because Israel and Hamas sit down and talk sometimes. Yes, that’s right. Notice how none of this is blamed on their beloved Obamessiah. No mention of President “I won”, no mention of “don’t call my bluff”, no blame even remotely directed His way. Eventually Wilson wonders if there might be a bit of blame laid on the Democrats’ doorstep. He recalls that the Dems were vicious about Bush, so maybe there’s a smidgeon of that left, eh? How generous and impartial of you, Simon. You mean there might be someone else to blame? Unbelievable bias on display here.

50:19 After Mardell discusses how probably the best angle for the Republicans to take would be to push the line that the President may be a nice guy, very intellectual, etc., He’s just not up to the job, a female Beeboid asks how much of that is felt in the US, and that “I do think that’s the mood here, actually.” Wow. That’s the first time I’ve heard that coming out the mouth of a Beeboid. Mardell replies that he thinks it’s “pretty widespread”, then relates the story of a black Virginia businessman he met who said that in the real world the President would be out of a job for failing to produce.

I have to admit that I’m stunned by this. Not that Mardell is aware that people think the President is inept (he brings it up every once in a while), but that he understands that there’s at least a grain of truth to it and doesn’t place blame everywhere else. This is so absent from his reporting it’s not even funny. Sometimes we’ve seen him express disappointment when a speech doesn’t inspire him enough, or lay out the policy attacks he thinks would work, but no way has his overall reporting given anyone the idea that the idea that the President is inept is widespread, at least without qualifying it somehow by saying those people are ideologically opposed to Him or racist or something.

The next question is about how much religion will play in the election. Mardell again reveals that the BBC’s general anti-religion bias accurately reflects the views of the British public. Believing in God isn’t normal in Britain, he says. I guess Songs of Praise just panders to the tiniest of minorities? The Church of England is just something they put on the tin? I hope no Muslims hear about this.

Michelle Bachmann’s chances hadn’t yet tanked when this was made, so I won’t blame him for going on about her here. I will, however, complain that he’s unfairly suggesting that she might still want the death penalty enforced for adultery and blasphemy. This simply isn’t credible. Nobody is going to get elected on that platform, and this isn’t a banana republic where the President can start hanging people on a whim. She can believe whatever she wants, and it’s simply impossible that as President she could even make the tiniest headway towards convincing Congress to pass some kind of of insane law like that. Yet Mardell is concerned. Does he really still have no idea how US Government works, or is his visceral hatred for religious belief causing him to have ridiculous fears?

As part of this discussion on the influence of religion, Mardell says that he thinks the Tea Party “got it right – or that the think tanks behind the Tea Party in Washington”. Wrong. There was and is no think tank behind the movement. It was going strong for two months at least before anyone tried to form a national organization or think tanks or activist groups started jumping on the bandwagon. Even after two and half years, they still don’t get it. There’s a difference between groups trying to have influence, lending support, or jumping on the bandwagon and being “behind” the movement. In one sentence, Mardell has demonstrated that he thinks the whole notion of a grass roots movement is discredited. Fail.

He says that the Left wants to highlight the social-religious aspect, while the Right wants to play it down. Does this mean that all those BBC reports whipping up fear about the social-religious aspect of the Tea Party movement come from the Left? I think we can say they do.

The penultimate question is about – you knew it was coming eventually – racism. A male Beeboid brings up the “visceral hatred of Obama”, and says that during the last election there was a lot of concern about race, and asks if there is “a danger” of “playing that down” this time. In other words, in the minds of these Beeboids, we’re still secretly mostly racist, and if The Obamessiah loses in 2012, it will be because of racism. Mardell first says that he knows it’s a factor, and recalls one of Justin Webb’s pieces featuring a southern white woman subtly expressing her racism. But then, he actually says that after meeting so many Tea Partiers, he doesn’t think most of us are racists. “At least not in a straight-forward sense”. He says that underlying the concern about government spending our money, it’s really about not wanting to the government to “spend money on people not like them”. That’s simply offensive, and made me swear out loud when I heard it.

Then he says that there are also people who feel disconnected because “they didn’t expect this sort of person in the White House.” Somehow the President “doesn’t meet their stereotype about what a black person is like.” Is that why Joe Biden praised the then-junior Senator from Illinois for being so “articulate and bright and clean”? Words fail, other than more swearing at the screen. And oh how Mardell smiles, very pleased with himself, while slandering about a hundred million people.

Still, what happened to the idea Mardell put forth earlier that there is a widespread notion that the President is just not up to the job? Yeah, never mind about that, then. Racist!

So yes, we’re still apparently racists, even though in the end Mardell admits that he hasn’t found racism to be as much of a factor as he thought he would. Well, thank you very much. Still, that hardly discounts the rest of what he said. Wilson agrees with his assessment. To judge from this, everything you’ve heard about fiscal responsibility is just a lie, a smokescreen to hide our racism. This is what Mardell thinks, this is what the BBC thinks, and this is what they want you to think. They simply cannot accept any reasonable justification for objecting to Socialist policies.

In all, a fascinating hour spent inside the hive mind, and very revealing on a number of levels. I hope this exceedingly lengthy post didn’t cause too much pain, but there was just so much to talk about.