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Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated!

It’s been going on for eight nights. Baffled BBC bods are scratching their heads.

“It is not clear what triggered the riots”

Dumb Jon attempts to decipher the entrails :

BBC: Pravda For The Electronic Age

As Fidel Castro prepares to give his fiefdom to his brother in true feudal fashion, the BBC records the event thus: End of Castro’s half-century in power and Castro: Profile of the great survivor. It fair enough to call Castro a survivor when referring to the many American assassination attempts against him (mind you it might have been nice to have had a link back to the BBC’s own story describing credible reports that Castro returned the favour, in his case successfully), but I am a little tired of hearing him lauded for “outlasting” nine American presidents as if he were a heavyweight champion beating off challengers. Go Fidel! Your staying power really showed up those feeble Americans, with their wimpy term limits and free elections.

While thinking about such things, I amused myself by searching the BBC website for combinations of “Cuba”, “election” and “candidate”. Here are some of the reports I found:

Castro nominated for Cuban seat dates from December last year. It burbles happily away about nomination and re-election as if it were talking about a proper election where those procedures might actually give a result contrary to the wishes of those currently in power: “Cuban President Fidel Castro has been nominated as a candidate for a seat in the next National Assembly – indicating he may still hope to return to power. Mr Castro, 81, must be re-elected to the assembly if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” That brave old guy, submitting himself to the electorate… no, wait, it’s Cuba.

That story follows the tone set a month earlier in this piece: Cuba prepares for elections. It says, “But he will have to be re-elected to the national parliament if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” The tension, the tension!

A story from the “election” of January 2003 speaks of “electing 609 pro-government candidates who ran unopposed”. Someone truly on a mission to explain might have pointed that the lack of opposition was because only pro-government candidates are permitted to run, rather than leaving open the possibility that they were just loved so universally that no one wants to stand against them.

However I did find a BBC story about the Cuban elections that makes the true situation quite clear: “The Cuban government is reporting a 98 turnout for the the country’s elections – even athough there was no choice of candidates.” Pity it was ten years old.

So anyway, I bit my tongue and tuned in to the “Today” programme on Radio 4 for just around 15 minutes this morning. What a rich mine of institutionalised bias it is. First up, we had a report on yesterday in the Commons and the debate on the Nationalisation of Northern Rock. Thanks to the way in which the excerpts were spliced, every effort was made to make the pathetic Alistair Darling look in control. Naturally the always-in-favour of Statism of the GLib-Dem’s was given a soft ride, whereas apparently the venom in George Osbourne’s contribution “rallied” the Labour backbenches to their beleaguered masters. One Labour MP even referred to the Northern Rock as “the people’s bank”. And to hammer this home, we had Mark Simpson sent to Newcastle, interviewing “local” people on how they felt about the Rock. One man burst into tears claiming that the Rock had been very well run indeed (Wonder was he a local branch manager) A local Labour MP was brought on to tell us that it would be “unthinkable” had the government not stepped in. (Yeah, unthinkable for his re-election propects) The BBC is shilling to make us feel that this “temporary” change of ownership is the most natural thing imaginable and of course for one organ of the State to claim this about a new organ of the State is understandable, but still repugnant from an organisation that claims to be neutral. Following on from this, we had an item which suggested that a manager’s organisation backed the TUC campaign to cut back on the hours we work. Apparently we all work too far too many hours and the comrades in the Trades Unions have now found an ally amongst the managerial classes, to the BBC’s evident delight. Employers just need more regulation, right? Then to finish off, we had an item concerning the planned arrest of an Israeli General, stopping off at Heathrow, and wanted by the loony left as a “war criminal.” The BBC revealed that police feared a possible shoot-out if they dared boarding the El-Al aircraft to arrest the general. Hope so. It’s funny how the BBC did not question how it came about that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of this Israeli General – it merely repeated the far-left claim that he was a wanted “war-criminal” – well, all Jews are, right? There you go – just 15 minutes looking at the world through the prism of leftworld. Couldn’t take any more!

The Weekly Standard (quoting the Jerusalem Post, but that link is not working for me) reports that:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as “great national leaders.”

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, the Associated Press’s former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as “an outrage” and “beyond belief.”

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh’s men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.

The BBC issued a statement Friday acknowledging that “the scripting of this phrase was imprecise.”

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Just a reminder that the scripting of this phrase imprecisely equated a terrorist hosted by the Syrians with a democratic leader murdered by the Syrians.

I see that the BBC is in full battle cry against… bottled water. You may wonder how relevant this is at a time when our very civilisation is under attack by Islamofascists, and when our national sovereignty is being diluted on a daily basis by Europhiles, but hey, in leftworld there’s always going to be some utter irrelevance to distract attention from that what counts. So it is that tonight’s Panorama is given over to an all out attack on those of us who prefer to drink bottled water. Consumer choice is apparently a bad thing and so the BBC gives all possible aid to the ramblings of Environment Minister Phil Woolas and the rest of the crew who would deny us water -when it’s not the right sort of water.

Is the BBC’s militant. Thanks to Mr Free Market for the graphic.

The BBC series “Life on Mars” was set in the 1970’s and it seems we are all going back to the 70’s with the news that the government has decided to nationalise the Northern Rock bank. In this report the BBC dutifully reports the goverment line that there was no other option but for the State to step in and take over the running of this institution. It also reports the warm welcomethis step has been given by the uberleftist Lib-Dem’s Vince Cable and the Chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee Labour’s John McFall. Everyone seems happy at this catastrophic waste of billions of tax-payers money – apart from George Osbourne and Richard Branson. Naturally the share-holders get shafted but who cares about that when there all those Northern Rock jobs in Labour constituencies to preserve? Could you imagine if this was a bank called “Southern Rock” with thousands of jobs in the home counties that there would be the same enthusiasm from NuLabour? I look forward to the BBC providing a platform for those many capable economic analysts who can take apart this Brown/Darling shambles.

Here. Ophelia Benson adds commentary here.

Did you see the prominence the BBC has given to the Competition Commision’s imminent report into the alleged monopoly of the “Big Four” supermarkets here in the UK? With a 74% market share between them, it seems that tough questions must be asked but at least free competition exists to regulate what they do. Can you imagine if there was a State supermarket chain? Do you think the Competition Commission would be interested in its behavior? Can you imagine shoppers outrage if that State Supermarket could insist that money be spent in its stores, even if poor value and shoody goods were all that was on offer? Even worse, imagine if because of the State supermarket’s power, it’s rivals struggled to sustain their own operations. Might it be that some monopolies are OK?