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Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Commenter Lee Moore may have got the BBC’s attention.. His comment here said:

The BBC’s 2006 party conference page is well up to the usual standard. The first thing I noticed was that the zone at the bottom has specially titled sections leading you to more stories about Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, and Respect.

Curiously, there are no slots for more stories about UKIP or the BNP. At the last general election UKIP got more than twice as many votes as the Greens. The BNP got nearly three times as many votes as Respect. And as far as regional parties go, the DUP got about 40% more votes than Plaid Cymru, and as many seats as the SNP and Plaid Cymru put together.

The second thing I noticed was that while the stories on Labour and the Conservatives had a mix of positive and negative headlines, all the headlines about the Lib Dems were positive.
And last but not least, the links to Have Your Says are to Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens. No link to the UKIP Have Your Say.

I suspect that this isn’t somebody deliberately saying to themselves, let’s not link to stuff about the right wing fringe and regional parties (well maybe as far as the BNP is concerned.) It’s more likely that the Beeboid who is in charge of the page just naturally thinks “UKIP, BNP = fringe”; “Greens, Respect = small, but serious, parties”.

His comment here says:

And whaddya know – within 24 hours they’ve added a slot for extra stories about UKIP ! Yo, Beeboid ! How about that link to the UKIP DHYS ?

Andrew Ian Dodge writes about the latest episode of Spooks.

Guess who are the bad guys now? Yeah you guessed it…the Israelis. Not even a rogue element, but proper Israeli agents trying to stop a nuclear power deal with Saudi.

The sheer amazing astoundingness of this shock ending leaves me amazed and astounded.

Jonz and Archduke also flagged this up.

A critical and secret internal BBC report on its perceived anti-Israel bias is the subject of a Freedom of Information court battle, according to The Telegraph:

BBC mounts court fight to keep ‘critical’ report secretBy Chris Hastings and Beth Jones
(Filed: 15/10/2006)

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

Read the rest of the story at The Telegraph.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

This blog and its commenters has had hard words for the BBC’s Justin Webb many times. Sixteen times, a quick search tells me, so I won’t bother linking. But our hard words are as nothing compared to the response he got from Democrats for this post saying that the Foley scandal might end up being a trap for the Democrats.

Some of these people seriously need a cup of tea and a nice lie down.

wrote:

Presumably you’ve heard the story of the 14-year old arrested for “racism”.

The BBC report doesn’t mention any of the details i.e. what she supposedly
did or said that was racist. Can’t imagine why.

I’ve been busy, and by the time I came to look at this post and follow the link the BBC story had improved considerably. It now has many of the strangely-missing details, only, oh, a day or so after everyone else.

Here’s a link to the Little Bulldogs post.

My serene confidence that Little Bulldogs, a newish blog of which I only became aware in the last few days, correctly describes the original BBC story is based on experience. They do this. After a while you get to spot the prim, repressed tone that says they’d rather you moved on from this particular story as soon as possible.

It does not help the people they think it helps. All it does is create an atmosphere of distrust.

Sure, if details are still emerging, make that clear. But practically every other news outlet in Britain managed to report what Codie Stott claims happened as soon as they heard about it. In other circumstances the BBC is quite capable of indicating that it does not necessarily endorse what someone asserts.

UPDATE: Now that the comments are working again I’ve seen this comment by “pounce” on the same story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Back after the weekend, Little Bulldogs provides a screenshot.

From Radio Four’s Law In Action programme :

The prison population has risen rapidly over the past 13 years – up 78% to nearly 80,000 – yet over the same period crime has fallen substantially.

I’m not asking for ‘yet’ to be replaced with ‘as a result’, although that would be my personal view. I suppose the word ‘and’ is just too neutral for the unbiased BBC. No agenda here.

(You can also hear Lord Hurd of the (anti-prison lobby group) Prison Reform Trust on the Week In Westminster – the balancing view being represented by … er … no one. And anti-prison lobbyists on the Today programme this morning, balance being provided by …)

“Then imagine bumping into an old friend who tells you he’s now working in one of the old Soviet republics which has found it hard to throw off the state control. Here, your friend says, you have to inform the state of your address when you buy a television. This address and your name is then kept on a database which is used to verify whether you have a licence to own such an instrument. The state owned channel which you must pay for, whether you want its product or not, broadcasts to further the political Left, although in theory, they are meant to be impartial. And just in case you manage to get a TV without informing the authorities, the government have vans with electronic detection equipment that patrol the streets looking for signals that betray unlicensed TVs. If you’re caught without a licence you are heavily fined and could even be imprisoned.”

– a post by Gary Walker to this Telegraph forum.

ADDED LATER to the same post because it was so close in theme: Lib-Dem blogger Stephen Tall argues against his party’s policy on the licence fee. (Via the Adam Smith Institute.)

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.