Category Archives: Uncategorized

No entry to Britain: Is the Conservative immigration plan as simple as they say?

Lib Dem plan to help new mothers

Tory expert denies defeatism

Tories accused of ‘desperation’

The Tory stories all have negative headlines. But the headline that concerns the LibDems is presented as an offer to help. Those lovely LibDems. All they want is to be allowed to spread happiness. The story reads like a LibDems’ press release – the only criticism comes right at the end, and that from a Tory, Theresa May.

Ever noticed how the BBC often get Tories to do the negative stuff? That has two effects – it reinforces the image of the Tories as the dour, negative party, and it creates the impression that it’s only the Tories, and not any serious economists or analysts, who are against the proposal in question.

the prospects for the BBC’s self-regulation:

‘The idea that anything produced or sponsored by the BBC was ever going to find any serious defects in the BBC’s coverage is entirely facile.’

Yep. Any other notion defies commonsense.

only to come up empty-handed once more. Yes, friends, the BBC has a story about Iraq the Model, a pro-western blog by Iraqis (and sometimes linked on B-BBC of all strange things). Now, however, such hopeful news is clouded by this ‘revelation.’ (Hmm, the Beeb must read the New York Times once in a while.)

The fight has raised the issue of identity and misrepresentation in weblogs, where often it is nearly impossible to verify if the person “blogging” really is who they claim to be.

The BBC online article makes much of a supposed rift between the three Iraqi blogger brothers. Ali, started a blog called Free Iraqi. Now that the BBC has highlighted this supposed conspiracy, check out what Ali has to say about some members of the press.

I feel I should give my opinion on the NY times article about me and Iraq the Model that has created some variable reactions on the blogosphere. The article was, despite Ms Boxer’s kindness, a bad piece of journalism. I had around 45 minutes long phone call with the reporter about my journey with Iraq the Model, my new site, the elections, the general situation here in Baghdad but she (or the paper) seems to have a certain agenda and managed to change the whole issue into a very silly gossip (going as far as quoting trolls!) that is way beneath any respectable paper and certainly beneath me so I won’t give it more attention but lesson learned and I won’t make the mistake of talking to anyone from the NY times again. It’s important to note though that my feelings of respect, gratitude and love for the American people have never and will never change.

Just face it. Every last one of us works for the CIA.

UPDATE: I just noticed that InstaPundit points to Chrenkoff on this smear of Iraqi bloggers.

In the parallel universe inhabited by Beebazoids this panel might seem like a representative, even right of centre, assortment of opinion regarding the next four Bush years. Having selected eight panelists, all the Beeb can muster is two solid Bush supporters and a semi-supportive one. The remaining five might consider Michael Moore a bit too mushy. Alice in Wonderland makes better sense. The BBC must still be trying to come to terms with the idiocy of the American electorate.

Struggling BBC employees have a voice on the panel in Nancy Pew, who states: “Inauguration Day 2005 will be a day of mourning, reflection and prayer for me.”

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The Diplomad is, well, kind of mad at the BBC. The EURef. is too. Both have recent excellent blog posts on the matter of the BBC, and in EUref’s case some interesting serious observations.

The Diplomad is plotting its revenge for the BBC’s ‘balance’ in not covering the tsunami relief effort the way it is, but how they’d like it to be (amongst other items of complaint):

‘OK, so what’s the plan? We are voting here in our secret council: the Hebrews among us are inclined to releasing a plague of locusts . . .oh, that’s already been done . . . Hmmm? What to do? What to do? Force the Brits to pay TV license fees . . . oh, never mind . . . Better yet, better yet, just to drive home what can happen to those who doubt the word of Washington, next time there’s a massive disaster, let the UN and the EU handle it! Too cruel, you think?

Meanwhile Richard North has thoughts on the evolution of bias (and us too):

‘The more obvious kind of bias, which the likes of Biased BBC and Last Night’s BBC News have been diligently reporting, is hard enough to spot, but the “new” technique used by the BBC is simply not to report a subject at all when there is favourable news. Instead, it will only cover unfavourable aspects when they arise.’

Of course, we knew about that, too, but it is harder to talk about. What’s there to say when all you get is a cold shoulder?

– at least that’s what you’d think from comparing the two BBC pictures of Robert Jackson on BBC Views Online. Jackson the traitor is happy and smiling, whilst Jackson the Conservative is as glum as can be.

And yet if you look at the two pictures they were obviously taken at the same time as part of the same set – the clothing and lighting are identical in both. So why is it that when Jackson was a Conservative the BBC portrayed him as a miserable git, yet when he sees the error of his ways and becomes a shiny New Labour turncoat he’s suddenly charm itself?

Maybe it’s an unfortunate coincidence. Or perhaps it’s just another instance of subtle left-wing BBC bias that we’re not supposed to notice.

Update: On closer examination it is also clear that the ‘happy’ New Labour Jackson’s colours are quite natural, whereas the old ‘Conservative’ Jackson’s picture’s contrast is badly skewed, thus, compared to the ‘happy’ picture, the top left corner is washed out, the left of Jackson’s face is thrown into shadow and his forehead verges on overexposed. Was this mere incompetence, or a deliberate attempt to portray the Conservative version of Jackson as harshly as could be got away with?

While we’re on the subject of defections, the BBC’s See also: list seems very sparse, given the constant froth of malcontents (did you hear about Robert Jackson’s knighthood? Me neither) to-ing and fro-ing between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee Party, for instance, Richard Balfe’s 2002 defection seems to have been omitted. Short of time I expect.

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‘We are up against a large, self-satisfied and introspective culture.’ -Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Indeed, despite some of the movements since Hutton. It’s not just about bias, it’s about blind assumption and pure ignorance at times, which amounts to much the same thing.

Lord Pearson goes on to say that ‘Their main problem is that they and their researchers know very little about the detail of our relationship with “Brussels”.’

Naturally we can see that this post is concerned with Europhile bias at the Beeb, but it could just as well be half a dozen++ other wilful blindspots. For another perspective on media bias, this essay from a military man in Iraq contains numerous nuggets applicable to the Beeb’s coverage of that country’s struggles.

. Got to have balance, haven’t we? Six to one and half a dozen of the other, tit for tat, a fair crack of the whip, everyone’s human etc. That’s maybe why the Beeb put two reports out with apparent simultaneity showing the US as critic (of Iran) and the US as criticised (by Human Rights Watch).

Now for the differences. The headlines are written in such a way that the US’ is seen expressing a viewpoint, whereas HRW have their headline in the form of a statement marred only by the slight matter of quotemarks around ‘erodes’ (a word with fairly unincendiary connotations, except when you place it next to the explosive term ‘global human rights’).

While the Iran-alert article focusses narrowly on an item of news- the fate of a female Iranian human rights campaigner- the HRW article (for it really belongs to them) gets a wide ranging remit, and double-takes on the simple thesis that all schoolchildren (and D.U. contributors) know, that ‘ when a country as dominant as the US openly defies the law, it invites others to do the same.’

You have to say this is pretty lame in a news article, and risible in an opinion one. Like the ‘world’ actually cares about ‘human rights’!

But whether the world really cares about human rights or that’s just some liberal fantasy, Aunty Beeb is determined to bring us up as if it did.

The Rathergate report [pdf] must have been a shade touchy for some loyal BBC scribe to report. Replacing a name here, a circumstance there could easily conjure images the Beeb would prefer to forget. It’s a bit ironic to read the following:

The internal investigation received widespread coverage in the US media, which has been battered by a series of media scandals in the last two years at such major newspapers as the New York Times and USA Today. [And we won’t mention any battered media institutions on the other side of the pond, will we.]

“The 224-page report, which blames the network’s rush on a ‘myopic zeal’ [Now where have we seen that before?] to be first with the Bush story, amounts to a stunning repudiation of the newsgathering process of CBS News,” wrote Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz. The US media hit CBS hard in the wake of the investigation The New York Times wrote: “Already under duress from years of budget cuts, poor ratings and reduced influence [The Beeb feels your pain…well, except the budget cut part.], CBS News suffered a crushing blow to its credibility yesterday because of a broadcast that has now been labelled as both factually discredited and unprofessionally produced.”

The Boston Globe called the investigation “a scathing independent post-mortem that describes the story’s journalistic failings“. [Lord Hutton led the way.]

So, are fossilized old media BBChemoths capable of learning anything? The perils and punishments for prejudicial ‘journalists’ who refuse to let the facts get in the way of a good story can be painfully public. As Yogi Berra used to say– “It’s deja vu all over again.”

the communist authorities ordered the construction of millions of backyard iron furnaces to forward the revolution. Nearly all this vast effort was useless. You can’t make industrial-quality iron from mud-brick furnaces. I thought of this when I read in Christopher Booker an item (scroll down) about

Another ludicrous example of how the BBC now pushes its own cock-eyed agenda was an item on Radio 4’s You and Yours last week on wind turbines. The message was that, if you install your own turbine, you can make money by selling the surplus to the National Grid.

All five contributors, including the energy minister, Mike O’Brien, were wide-eyed lobbyists for wind power. A man from Kent who has erected a 45-foot turbine at the bottom of his garden, at a cost of £25,000, was asked how much electricity it produced. He admitted that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, it did not average more than “two or three kilowatts”. The BBC carefully did not explain that this is only enough to power a couple of electric fires, or boil a few kettles.

Just above that there is an item about the BBC downplaying of the tsunami relief work of the US and Australian Navies in favour of reports about the views of politicians on the disaster, the EU’s three minute silence and so on.