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writes Richard over at EU Referendum (complete with shiny new redesign) in his ongoing and very valuable work to ensure our boys and girls are properly kitted out on the frontline, in spite of government and MoD incompetence and widespread media ignorance. Richard writes:

Anyone listening to the intolerably smug Eddie Mair on the [BBC Radio 4] PM programme yesterday, when he interviewed the forces minister Bob Ainsworth, may have recognised a common BBC technique.

Ostensibly, the interview was about the unfortunate Ben Parkinson. He had suffered terrible injuries when the WIMIK Land Rover in which he had been riding had been hit by a mine, and had since been awarded what was described as “paltry damages”.

But, from the way Mair conducted his line of questioning of the minister, it was easy to discern that he wanted one thing – a personal admission from the minister that he thought the level of compensation awarded was “inadequate” – the game here to capture a damaging sound bite that could then be used on subsequent news bulletins, and perhaps be picked up by the print media.

So obsessed with his little game was Mair that he failed to pick up an outrageous assertion made by Ainsworth. The minister had it that the reason soldiers like Ben Parkinson were surviving was “better armoured vehicles”, which allowed them to survive when, previously, they would have been killed.

Yet, as even the Daily Mail story made clear, Parkinson was riding in an “unprotected Land Rover”. Ainsworth’s point, which has some general validity, was wholly untrue in this incident. Had the soldier been riding in a properly protected vehicle, he would have been uninjured, and would still be serving in the Army.

Which is typical of the sort of uninformed or wilful fabrications that Ministers get away with time and again when faced with an ignorant journalist too busy trying to make his or her own particular point rather than trying to uncover the truth or properly inform his or her audience.

Richard goes on to say that he tried to post a comment on the PM programme’s own blog page for comments on this item, Ben Parkinson, his parents and the minister:

we already had good evidence of the life-saving role of these vehicles. Thus armed, I placed a post on the PM blog. It says everything about the BBC that, with now 47 comments posted on the blog, the comment that went against the narrative and pointed out that Mair had failed to task the minister with an obvious untruth, did not get published. Thou shalt not criticise the BBC.

Therein lies the true dereliction of the BBC. Mair had an opportunity to point out that life-saving technology was available and was not used, but squandered it in his attempt to score a cheap point against the minister. Then his dire organisation covers up for him and hides criticism from the public gaze.

Another typical BBC technique – one that we at Biased BBC are happy to help expose, since the BBC seems happy to censor mention of Eddie Mair’s evident ignorance of the facts from their own blog. There’s a lot more in Richard’s post that is worth reading too.

bleated BBC Views Online a couple of days ago:

A demonstration has been held in south-east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah.

The balls showed the Saudi Arabian flag which features the Koranic declaration of faith.

The US military said the idea had been to give something for Afghan children to enjoy and they did not realise it would cause offence.

The footballs were dropped from a helicopter in Khost province.

Except that reading further afield than BBC Views Online (e.g. here or here), we find that it may have been as little as one ball out of an unspecified number, and that the well meaning Americans had apparently bought the balls, made in China, from a market in Kabul, where presumably people hadn’t been quite so ready to take offense at seeing a trader selling the balls that the Americans bought… all of which seems to have escaped the BBC’s inquisitive gaze.

reports the Daily Telegraph:

Miss Ford echoed Jeremy Paxman’s withering attack on the fall in standards on British television, saying it was vital that the BBC differentiates itself from other channels by making “extremely high-class programmes”.

“I do think that complaints about dumbing down are justified,” she said. “I must sound very old-fashioned when I use the word vulgarity, but we are constantly seeing people on screen who are of low intelligence and low education and whose views on everything seem to be made important.”

She also took a swipe at the BBC’s cost-cutting initiatives, which she said were having a disastrous impact on the quality of news programmes.

(2.30pm) for his persistence in an interview with Steve Gough, National Vice Chair of the Prison Officers Association trade union.

At lunchtime the government sought (oh the irony!) and was granted an injunction agsint the POA, compelling the the union to call off today’s lightning strike or be in contempt of court. A little after 2pm, live on TV, a POA official in Liverpool, Steve Baines, told his members that he’d just spoken with Steve Gough:

“And he expressed his view to us, ‘Tell them to shove it up their a***, we’re staying out'”

– which, if true, places Gough and the POA clearly in contempt of the High Court – not something that anyone sensible would undertake lightly. Sopel tied Gough up in knots as he wriggled and jiggled to avoid either confirming the above quote or admitting that the union, whatever the legitimacy of their case, must order its member to return to work under the terms of the injunction.

It was a pleasant change from the normal uninformed lightweight question and answer sessions that pass for TV interviews these days. I hope that the government’s failure to avoid even being interviewed about these issues (and larger issues with the Prison Service) is highlighted just as robustly, and I hope, for the sake of the members of the POA, that their case is being handled by people more gifted than Mr. Gough.

“We’ve received a number of calls and messages …”

… complaining about the liberal, Guardian nature of this debate”.

Radio Four’s You and Yours discusses inequalities of wealth – with Polly Toynbee, Camila Batmanghelidjh and I think some chap from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The consensus ? More government spending.

on a day long series of programmes under the working title of Planet Relief, a ghastly sounding load of right-on eco-fascist claptrap propaganda, presented by well known and respected scientific investigators Ricky Gervais and Jonathan ‘a bargain at £18 million’ Woss (“is ‘e ‘avin a laff?”, as Gervais might ask). The Guardian’s piece sums it up best:

Two of the BBC’s most senior news and current affairs executives attacked the corporation’s plans yesterday for a Comic Relief-style day of programming on environmental issues, saying it was not the broadcaster’s job to preach to viewers.

The event, understood to have been 18 months in development, would see stars such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross take part in a “consciousness raising” event, provisionally titled Planet Relief, early next year.

But, speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday, Newsnight’s editor, Peter Barron, and the BBC’s head of television news, Peter Horrocks, attacked the plan, which also seems to contradict the corporation’s guidelines. Asked whether the BBC should campaign on issues such as climate change, Mr Horrocks said: “I absolutely don’t think we should do that because it’s not impartial. It’s not our job to lead people and proselytise about it.” Mr Barron said: “It is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped.”

The rest of the Guardian’s piece is worth reading too. The interesting things about this from a Biased BBC point of view are:

a) that they have been working (and presumably spending tellytax cash) on this for 18 months – even though it sounds like such a partial mad-cap non-starter (or are they really so arrogant as to think they could get away with it?);

b) that the likes of Peter Horrocks and Peter Barron feel the need to speak out in public about it to, presumably, stop the BBC from inflicting yet another huge own goal in terms of their claims to be impartial and unbiased.

P.S. Apologies for my lack of posts since Saturday. I’ve been laid low by a nasty little viral infection, but am beginning to feel a bit better.

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.

may, as Damien Thompson pointed out, tread warily when it comes to investigating radical Islamists, leaving that sort of thing to Channel Four.

But you can’t fault them when it comes to keeping tabs on the SS Historical Re-enactment Menace. Nothing like a finely honed sense of priorities.

It surely can’t be long before the Second Battle Group turn up in an episode of Casualty.

at the Edinburgh International Televison Festival is available in full here on the Newsnight website. Here’s a great line to be going on with:

I have to say that it seems to me things haven’t been much helped by they way they’ve been handled. We’ve had the preposterous spectacle of some of the most senior figures in broadcasting running around like maiden aunts who’ve walked in on some teenage party, affecting shock and disbelief at what they’ve heard. It simply won’t wash for senior figures in the industry to blame our troubles on an influx of untrained young people: the ITV Alzheimer’s documentary and the trailer for the series about the Queen were made by a couple of the most venerable figures in the business.

More to follow later.

an article defending the BBC in today’s Guardian.

A commentator in the Guardian’s comments section sums it up well:

Partnership… standards… interaction… percentages… engage… conversation… culture… value… colleagues…

Now, back to the studio.

Most of the comments, from Guardian readers remember, have been hostile. For example:

What a load of guff. It’s not your stupid phone-ins and naff prizes which are the problem – it’s your political bias and the increasing vacuousness of your news coverage. It offends me, and I’m a bloody liberal! No wonder the Tories and assorted “nationalists” are apoplectic.

And PLEASE put a kindly bolt in the head of that awful NEWS 24. “All the same news all the effin’ time”.

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I deeply resent being forced to pay the licence fee for a luxury item that I do not need and would not currently choose to have. I don’t watch BBC news or documentaries anymore because the news is simplistic, sensationalistic and condescending and the documentaries are ‘docudramas’. I don’t much care about the quiz line rip-offs – I always assumed they were rip-offs anyway – but the issue of selective editing is far more dangerous. You create the view you want to and everyone is taken in by something, no matter how smart we think we are. I do realise that neutrality is virtually impossible to achieve but you might take a stab at it occasionally. Meanwhile, the licence fee has to go. I want to have a television, primarily to watch dvds on, but occasionally to watch television programmes too. I am quite happy to not receive BBC. I’d like to be given that choice.

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I’m fed up paying the BBC license tax I rarely watch it. I don’t watch SKY either but then I don’t pay for it, I believe only 25% of the public watch it. If I watch TV on the PC do I have to pay the license???

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As someone that leans towards soft centre-left liberalism (i.e. a Guardian reader) I find the BBC news reasonably balanced and have little to complain about.

Erm..hang on a sec though, that’s the problem here isn’t it?

I doubt I’d agree with bigjake on many things but the treatment of Redwood by bbc editors was truly appalling, it played right into the hands of everyone that accuses the beeb of bias.

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Impoverished local theatres with a budget of tuppence ha’penny a year put on fantastic new and revived stuff week in, week out. But the Beeb, with its corridors awash with OUR MONEY, gives us Casualty and, if we’re children, DR BLEEDIN WHO.

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The political coverage is so soft on Labour as to be a joke. Remember Little Ant and Dec interviewing Blair?

Brown refused to go on Question Time. John Humphrys says there’s no point having him on the Today programme because he just reads from a script irrespective of the question.

He is almost NEVER interviewed full stop. The BBC needs to get mediaeval on his ass for being so undemocratic.

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Well you could start by realising the report on the BBC’s coverage of the Lebanon war instead of hiding behind data protection act in the courts , that may help. Or even get your middle east reports to actual read Hamas charter before they report on it, they are there to report the events for the wider world in balanced way not to be ‘friends of the Palestinians’.

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Thank you to Biased BBC reader Ayayay for the link.