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news bulletin reported that Home Office Security Minister Tony McNulty had admitted that the government had made mistakes in the aftermath of the 7/7 terrorist atrocities in London, in particular that the Muslim Council of Britain should not have been treated as being representative of British Muslims.

The story was mentioned on Newsnight with greater brevity, and is featured, ‘Mistakes’ made over 7/7 reaction, on BBC Views Online (appearing on the quieter reaches of the Politics and London pages) – complete with all the usual BBC features – careful use of the ‘T’ word, people ‘killed’ rather than ‘murdered’ and so on.

What seems strange though is that this story, a big admission from the government, and a long-needed come-uppance for the pernicious Muslim Council of Britain, wasn’t reported on the main Ten O’Clock News bulletin itself. 7/7 was a major national and international event – surely this news item is deserving of wider dissemination than a couple of fleeting mentions on niche programmes?

N.B. I’ve tweaked this article – I mistakenly said “no use of the ‘T’ word” originally, a mistake that was online for a couple of hours. See comments for details.

of the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Halo 3 game on Tuesday by showing gameplay from arch competitor Sony’s PS3 Killzone 2 game instead, helpfully labelled on screen as ‘Halo 3’. I suppose that’s one way of being balanced. Next up, news about Apple’s new Vista operating system…

Biased BBC reader Supermario spotted this Youtube clip showing the BBC’s latest stupidity, and a comment thread at Computer & Video Games magazine. As Supermario says, “BBC, all your base are belong to us!”.

Update (Thursday): Mark Popescu, editor of daytime news at the BBC, writing on the BBC Editors Blog, Digital Games, quotes Rory Cellan-Jones explanation for the Halo 3/Killzone 2 cock-up:

This, I’ll admit, was a bad mistake. Naturally I’m usually an enthusiast for digital technology, but this time it’s really caught me out…

…Result – disaster, and one replicated in the Ten O’Clock version of the story.

What was impressive to me was the speed with which bloggers spotted the mistake. So the latest technology can lead you down the wrong path – but it can also bring any foul-ups under the spotlight of the eagle-eyed web generation.

Sorry – we’ll try to be more careful in future.

Read the rest for Rory’s full explanation of events.

Thank you to Nick Reynolds of the BBC for the Editors Blog link.

(courtesy of the Daily Mail):

After years on six-figure salaries as cabinet ministers, John Prescott and John Reid should hardly be short of a bob or two.

But yesterday it was revealed that both had pocketed about £250 from the BBC to give their views on Monday’s proceedings at Bournemouth.

A source at another broadcaster also claimed that Mr Reid had asked to be paid for a five-minute chat, so the interview was cancelled.

Rival politicians described the BBC’s behaviour as “outrageous” claiming it should not be using licence-fee-payers’ money to pay for party political propaganda.

The BBC claimed that it had paid them in exchange for them being available all day to comment on the events at the conference.

A spokesman said: “They were given a facility fee to cover the inconvenience and disturbance of being available to BBC News for the whole day, and that is not in breach of our editorial guidelines.”

Nice work if you can get it. I’m sure there are plenty of more interesting and worthwhile commenters at the Labour Conference who’d be only too pleased to share their opinions with us via the BBC for free – it’s disgraceful that two wealthy well-upholstered former cabinet ministers with fat pensions coming their way should ask for payment and receive payment from the BBC in this way – in particular a discredited and dishonourable buffoon like Prescott, who most people, the Labour Party included, are only too happy to see the back of.

Perhaps in its apparent drive for honesty and transparency the BBC ought to inform us, its tellytaxpaying customers, when people are being paid (over and above reasonable expenses) to share their opinions with us – there seems to be a coterie of BBC talking head favourites who do quite nicely out of appearance fees – apart from honesty and transparency this might save the corporation some cash and give viewers a wider range of more interesting opinions. Doubtless a public register of payments would be of interest to HM Revenue & Customs too.

P.S. Did anyone see either of these grasping buffoons commenting on the BBC on Monday? I don’t recall seeing them, though I have been somewhat unwell since Monday with an (unrelated) stomach upset.

Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

writes David Elstein, a respected broadcasting executive and commentator:

If fake quizzes are venial sins, loss of impartiality is – for the BBC – a mortal one. This summer, the BBC published a laudably honest independent report on impartiality, which exposed the prevalence of political correctness and “groupthink”.

It revealed how despite all the BBC’s efforts, its editorial processes were captured two years ago by the Make Poverty History lobby group, in the shape of a major drama, an episode of The Vicar Of Dibley, and a massive live concert, all promoting the same ideas.

It was only after two senior BBC executives earlier this month protested in public that a similar event relating to environmental issues – Planet Relief – was abandoned.

How can trust be restored to the BBC? Certainly not by calling in former executives to investigate, which is how the mis-edited footage of the Queen is being handled.

What is needed are wholly independent adjudicators, with a wide remit and access to email traffic.

Do read the rest.

writes Chris Hastings in the Sunday Telegraph:

…BBC employees are furious that the corporation has spared Mr Yentob from disciplinary action after it forced a wave of resignations last week from junior members of staff who committed similar breaches.

Staff contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, including some of the BBC’s best known names, said Mr Yentob’s “extraordinary” behaviour should be the subject of disciplinary action.

“The Alan Yentob business is the most serious allegation”, said one senior broadcaster who asked not to be named.

Another said: “He is guilty of deception and should be for the high jump like all the others.”

And in defence of ‘Noddy’ Yentob we have:

One senior figure in broadcasting said: “Alan Yentob is guilty of self-regard and foolish vanity. But I don’t think he is alone in that respect. I simply cannot accept that he is the only person in television to have behaved like this.”

It’s not much of a defence is it? Still, it sounds like there’s more sleaze to come out if that’s true.

This could be a useful and painful lesson for the BBC and other broadcasters about how easily the stupidity and dishonesty of a few can tarnish and smear everyone else – a lesson that the BBC gleefully meted out to the Conservatives with their endless ‘Tory sleaze’ mantra in the years before 1997. Let us hope that it takes as long for broadcasters to regain the trust of their audiences as it is taking the Conservatives to regain the trust of the electorate.

:

As BBC executives fall on their swords for rigging such world historical events as the naming of the Blue Peter cat, I am reminded of a story told me by an ex-minister concerning this programme. It held a competition of a creative nature of which the minister was a judge. He chose an entry that turned out to have been from a child at a fee-paying prep school as the winner, on the quite reasonable grounds that it was by far the best. The powers-that-were threw up their hands in horror, saying that such a privileged child could not possibly get the prize, so it went to someone from a much more impoverished postcode. It is nice to know that, since few at the BBC have got anywhere by merit, they wish to apply the same standards to others.

Thank you to Biased BBC reader Lurker in a Burqua for the link.

I see that in his latest Gaza sob-fest on today’s BBC News website, Jeremy Bowen says that:

“Israel, like most of its Western allies, regards Hamas as an unreconstructed terrorist organisation bent on the destruction of the Jewish state.”

That’s absolutely right Jeremy. Just as we regard a large, grey, four-legged mammal with a long trunk and big ears as an elephant.

Ouch! Spot on.

is The Times report on last night’s latest developments in the BBC fakery scandal.

BBC Director General, (Bite-) Mark Thompson, writing on the BBC Editors Blog, Trust and values (worth a read just for the vitriol of the comments!), says:

The trawl did find four more cases of serious audience deception to go with the six we disclosed in July.

…which of course avoids the question of cases of deception that the BBC doesn’t regard as serious.

Note: Unfortunately I’m short of time today. There’s more I’d like to say on Thompson’s comments. Hopefully later.

reports the Daily Mail:

Natasha Kaplinsky has already been chosen to present the oneminute national news, aimed at younger viewers with a short attention span…

Horses for courses I suppose in the case of Ms. Kaplinsky.

An insider said: “Meetings are taking place at all the regional centres, We were told that some market research had been done and that the audience likes pretty young women reading the news – so that’s what we are going to have. “We were told this is not dumbing down – we are just connecting with our audience better.”

Yeah right. One of the big issues with the BBC these days is too much concentration on style and presentation – and not enough on substance and gravitas. Audience research also tells the BBC that a large part of the public is opposed to the BBC tellytax – are they going to pay some attention to that research too?

“Viewers will, of course, still be able to watch the Ten O’Clock News later to get more in-depth news and analysis.”

Of course it’s not so long ago that viewers had the choice of two decent evening news programmes – one at 9pm, the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News, and ITN’s much missed News at Ten.

Shortsighted execs at ITN were allowed to do away with News at Ten for a while, until they realised what a mistake they had made. Then along came the predatory BBC, acting in its own interests rather than the public’s interest, finishing all hope of News at Ten ever returning by moving the Nine O’Clock News to 10pm as quickly and as unseemly as they could. So much for public service television.