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On Monday 12JUL04, much of the BBC’s UK news featured parts of a story headlined on BBC News Online as ‘Shocking’ racism in jobs market.

Five Live’s Ian Shoesmith was interviewed on BBC1’s lightweight Breakfast programme. The story was also on BBC News Online, BBC One O’Clock News, and as a lead item on the BBC London news at lunchtime, 6.30pm and 10.30pm.

Watching and reading the various takes, it boils down to:

1) six fictitious candidates, three male, three female, two with traditional British names (Jenny Hughes and John Andrews), two with African names (Abu Olasemi and Yinka Olatunde) and two with Asian names (Fatima Khan and Nasser Hanif).

2) applications from each of the six in response to adverts for a job at each of fifty companies (“Many… well known… jobs covered a range of fields”), thirty-one of them based in London.

3) the CVs were of “the same standard of qualifications and experience but… were presented differently”.

4) of all the applications (100 for each pair of names), the traditional British named pair were offered 23 interviews, the African named pair 13 interviews and the Asian named pair 9 interviews.

5) Shoesmith followed up with five of the fifty employers, three of whom responded in an unspecified way, one of whom “disputed the findings”, claiming to have offered interviews to “one or two” of the non-traditional British named candidates, but this was disregarded because “we had to go on what we received”.

Example conclusions drawn from the above are:

– Shoesmith was “‘surprised by the sheer extent’ of religious and racial discrimination it uncovered”;

– Brendan Barber of the TUC said “Statistics as shocking as these suggest that many people recruiting for the private sector firms are harbouring inherently racist views. Public sector bodies have to prove they are doing all they can to eliminate race discrimination”;

– Professor Muhammad Anwar of Warwick University said “the survey was proof of a recent rise in anti-Muslim feeling”.

From the information provided (the above summary really is all of the detail that can be discerned), there are a number of flaws with, and omissions from, the survey, the accompanying news reports and the rentaquote conclusions drawn from it, including:

– the survey sample was very small – just fifty jobs, with six applications for each, meaning that small errors (e.g. missing post) one way or the other have a large effect on the apparent outcome;

– the success rate of all the applications is poor – it would be much more significant if, say, one pair had a 60-70% hit rate in contrast to the other groups – it doesn’t say much for the standard of the fictional applications in general;

– the CVs were of “the same standard of qualifications and experience but… were presented differently” – no examples are provided. When sifting job applications presentation is often the first consideration – poorly written, poorly spelled and poorly laid out CVs can be quickly rejected, so unless the survey applications were genuinely alike in every respect, it is likely this will have affected the outcome;

– beyond the details above, nothing is said about the nature of the jobs, the types of companies, their sizes or locations;

– we don’t know the backgrounds of the people processing the applications or the methods used to decide between one application or another. Maybe they read them. Maybe they cut the pile in two. Maybe they picked the first twenty for interview. Who knows? Certainly not the BBC with their lack of rigorous follow-ups (and why limit follow ups to just five employers anyway?);

– the BBC ascribes attributes to the three pairs of names – White, Black-African and Muslim. Leaving aside that there are many Black and Asian Britons with traditional British names, I cannot, in spite of being well read and living in Greater London, distinguish people’s religious backgrounds from their names, except in a few obvious cases (e.g. a Mohammed is almost certainly a Muslim, a Patrick O’Flaherty is most likely Catholic etc.), so it seems a big stretch to conclude that these employers rejected someone on the grounds of religion (e.g. Muslim) rather than simply ethnicity (e.g. Asian), if indeed racism played a part;

This is all very troubling. Racism does exist in the UK, in (but not throughout) all groups and communities, white, black, Asian, etc. But this ‘survey’ (some reports even called it an ‘undercover investigation’) does not merit the conclusions drawn from it. At best it suggests there is a case for a proper study of such issues, perhaps a Panorama style investigation. But not the shock, horror headlines that have been used so glibly already.

A proper investigation should include:

– a much larger sample with a wider variety of candidate names (i.e. names with obvious religious connections, names from different parts of the UK, continental names, names from different classes (e.g. how does Wayne Smith fare compared with Tarquin Fortescue for different types of jobs), etc.;

– proper follow-ups with all employers to ascertain their backgrounds, selection methods and reasoning;

– distinction between employers – to ascertain the extent of racism among white/black/Asian/Muslim/etc. employers when it comes to employing people apparently from other groups – racism isn’t limited to white people;

– analysis of the differences between the private-sector and the public-sector (given that the former are often very small businesses, the latter much larger more bureaucratic organisations, where stats would be more meaningful);

Until then it’s wrong for a small item on a small radio station to become the inspiration for a great deal of “employers are racist” headlines across a wide variety of major BBC broadcasts.

Addendum (for B-BBC scare-quote aficionados):

The first News Online version, timestamped 11.22BST, began:

A BBC survey showing applicants from ethnic minorities still face widespread discrimination in the job market has prompted calls for tougher regulation.

CVs from six fictitious candidates – who were given “white”, black African or Muslim names – were sent to 50 employers in the BBC Radio Five Live survey.

White candidates were much more likely to be given an interview than similarly qualified black or Asian people.

The second version, timestamped 14:46BST, begins:

A union boss is calling for tougher regulation after a BBC survey showed ethnic minority applicants still face major discrimination in the jobs market

CVs from six fictitious candidates – who were given traditionally white, black African or Muslim names – were sent to 50 firms by Radio Five Live.

White “candidates” were far more likely to be given an interview than similarly qualified black or Asian “names”.

Note the aimless scare-quote merry-go-round and how the level of journo-spin ratchets up from cub-journo to junior-journo as the day progressed!

Seeing the headline href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3890821.stm”>BBC Iraq war coverage criticised on BBC News Online’s UK page was puzzling – had the penny dropped at last? Or are they reporting someone else’s criticism of their lamentably biased coverage last year?

No fear! The story, appropriately enough in the Entertainment section of News Online, reveals that:

“BBC coverage of the Iraq war did not treat military sources with enough scepticism, the corporation’s annual report has said.” and “there was “much to be proud of” in the BBC’s coverage of the war. It included a good range of Arab and Muslim opinion, the governors said, while “outstanding analysis” came from Newsnight and The World at One. BBC news reporting in general was praised.”

Turning to the News

section of the href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/report2004/download.shtml”>annual report

reveals this gem:

The main international story of the year was the war in Iraq and its aftermath. The conspicuous lack of national consensus here meant that, once again, the BBC’s impartiality came under intense scrutiny. BBC News passed the test. An ICM poll in April 2003 indicated that it had sustained its position as the best and most trusted provider of news.

Presumably the ICM poll in question was conducted in Wood Lane, W12 and Farringdon Road, EC1, outside BBC Television Centre and the office’s of The Guardian, results compiled by Mr. G. Dyke and Ms. P. Toynbee.

Could this be the same organisation that was described in href=”http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,922206,00.html”>The

Guardian (Jason Deans, 26MAR03) thus:

The BBC’s coverage of the war has come under fire from one of its own correspondents in the Gulf who has fired off a furious memo claiming the corporation is misleading viewers about the conflict in Iraq.

Paul Adams, the BBC’s defence correspondent who is based at the coalition command centre in Qatar, complained that the corporation was conveying a untruthful picture of how the war was progressing.

Adams accused the BBC’s coverage of exaggerating the military impact of casualties suffered by UK forces and downplaying their achievements on the battlefield during the first few days of the conflict.

“I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering ‘significant casualties’. This is simply not true,” Adams said in the memo.

“Nor is it true to say – as the same intro stated – that coalition forces are fighting ‘guerrillas’. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas,” he stormed.

“Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving ‘small victories at a very high price?’ The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected,” Adams continued.

Or this one, from The

Times (Tim Hames, 07JUL03):

For this affair has left the BBC dangerously exposed. It has served as a catalyst, allowing diverse complaints about its news coverage to resurface simultaneously. The Beeb has been accused of, among other matters, fanatical suspicion of the motives of

those in power and unrelenting hostility towards the Conservative Party. It has been

attacked for a wholesale scepticism about capitalism, combined with a weakness for quack environmentalism and health-scare speculation over hard science.

Reporting the Middle East, it sometimes seems so remorselessly anti-Israeli that Mr Dyke might as well be open about it and allow his reporters to appear speaking Arabic, riding a camel, stopping occasionally to suck from a long pipe in a crowded souk.

Put bluntly, the BBC, a public sector bureaucracy funded by a poll tax, with a privileged status that looks starkly anomalous in an age of hundreds of television channels and thousands of radio stations, needs more friends. It is already detested by other broadcasters, derided by the print press for squandering its vast resources and damned by publishing houses for its increasingly aggressive marketing activities in their domain.

Could be. And what can we conclude from these contradictions?

Little has changed, other than the names on the doors of the DG and the Chairman of the Governors. Smug old Auntie’s grand party continues – at least until we benefactors realise that Auntie’s not the slim, sober, reliable soul she once was.

It’s time to find her a nice home to while away her dotage, on a much reduced allowance, of course.

Yesterday, Mon 12JUL04, BBC News Online published a story headed History spurs anti-English tirade.

The first version of the story, online for five and a half hours, was simply about a moronic tirade by a moronic councillor, thrown out of a Scottish pub for being obnoxious to English patrons during the recent England/Portugal football match.

On reading it, I wondered why such a moron was being given coverage on the BBC. What was the point of the story? It was simply “Obnoxious man behaves obnoxiously. Ends”. Embarrassing for those of us who hail from Scotland, but hardly a major news item, either in Scotland or across the UK.

Indeed, were he, say, a visiting Islamic cleric with a penchant for supporting suicide terrorism, wife-beating, gay-bashing and the murder of apostates, I expect his views would have been downplayed a bit – “Mr. Leggatt, a respected peace-loving community leader, expressed his enthusiasm for football as the English team struggled against the better armed Portuguese team, with their, according to an insider, superior American-backed* ability to kick the ball straight”. (* their coach is Brazilian after all!).

Then last night, the story was heavily amended, doubling in length to its current size. The original story ended at the “Their fans are a disgrace… Motson should be put up against the wall and shot” paragraph, followed by the paragraph about the Battle of Culloden, that now sits rather oddly further down among the newly added paragraphs.

The new paragraphs are all the stuff that should have been in the original story for it to even have qualified as a potential story – Fife Council’s reaction, codes of conduct, Commission for Racial Equality (Scotland) etc.

For good measure, although the URL shows the story is part of the BBC’s Scottish coverage, for a chunk of yesterday morning, it was listed in the England section of the UK home page, before later being moved to the Scotland section.

I wonder why the original non-story was published? What prompted it to be modified so heavily? (i.e. was the original story half-finished, or did the CRE get in on the act later?). Is any of it news (beyond the weekly free-sheet variety) anyway? How did it come to be listed under England rather than Scotland for a time yesterday?

P.S. Lest we forget that we’re really all Brits together, I

suppose

it

could

have

been

much

worse!

You have to wade through almost to the end of this BBC story of July 10th “Bush military records destroyed” to see that the destruction took place in 1996 or 1997. This fact makes it all less suspicious.

Compare the BBC story to this New York Times account of July 9th. Many things are similar, but the point that the destruction accidentally occured in 1996 or 1997 comes in only the second paragraph.

The NYT also stresses that the destruction occurred as part of a general conservation project which went wrong much more strongly than does the BBC.

Also note the up-front way the NYT has dealt with the correction to the story, issued on the 10th. There is a line at the top saying “correction appended” and it is duly appended at the bottom. The BBC could and should copy this technique.

Perhaps it could also copy the specific correction and state that the White House admitted the loss of the records not in the last few days, as you might think from the BBC story, but in February.

(New York Times links via Jim Millerwho is less impressed with the NYT than I am.

So far as I can see the only permitted ways of sorting the comments are chronologically or reverse-chronologically, irrespective of post. This makes it very difficult to search out a particular comment in order to edit it. Is there a way of sorting comments according to the post they are connected to? I note that the premium service offers a word search facility, but we don’t have that level of service.

The BBC provides 170 news-based lesson plans for teachers. Some strange force drew me towards the section on the EU. In this “myths or facts” quiz the pupil is asked to say whether each of five reports in which it is said that the EU does or does not wish to ban, change or rename some aspect of British life, are facts or myths. It turns out that number four is the only true one.

Answer the following questions. Use one side of the paper only.

(1) What is the general idea that this quiz is intended to convey?

(2) What other questions can you suggest that might convey different ideas?

(3) (For advanced candidates only) Write not more than 100 words on the background to any ONE question demonstrating how another very similar example might have been chosen giving quite the opposite result.

(4) Why is the BBC providing lesson plans anyway? Discuss.

(5) Remind me, who pays for all this?

some comments recently. May I draw your attention to our comments policy:

This comments facility is the property of ‘Biased BBC’ blog.

The owners of this blog reserve the right to edit, amend or remove all and any comments for reasons of libel, gratuitous insult or any other legal or policy reasons or any other reasons we judge fit.

By posting comments here you accept and acknowledge the absolute and unfettered right of the owners of this blog to edit your comments as set out above.

[On reflection I thought it best to have this post as a mere re-statement of the comments policy. A few lines have been deleted.]

…against W. Apparently, some reporting stinks in Baghdad too. Here is the entire post.

The War against GWB

The new report by the US Senate regarding intelligence failure about WMD may be part of the war against GWB!

The question that they should ask themselves about is; what will happen if Saddam remained in power in regard to the issue of the international terrorism. Sooner or later; SH will side with the terrorists to kill as many people as they can. He showed his WMD in Halabja and the South of Iraq.

SH tried and has he succeeded to produce nuclear or other similar WMD he will not hesitate to use it any where it may come.

We are not supporting GWB neither against his opponents but really telling the truth about our dictator that we knew more than the others. If those who talk about WMD and the war should ask us and we will tell them that SH is a danger not only for Iraq but to the region and the world. This has been demonstrated by his several atrocities in the past.

Without the help of US to get rid of Saddam he may has stayed in power for hundreds of years by his sons with all his danger over the heads of all of us.

What GWB done is the right thing and it is good as far as that is going to change the Middle East into a better place for the whole world.

Nowadays one can smell the same thing which is in Al Jazeera from the BBC and the CNN!

He must be some kind of right wing nut. (Hat tip: Power Line)

The BBC, never known to flinch from airing dirty linen, becomes strangely hesitant when reporting on the Kerry-Edwards ‘love-in’. It is hard to imagine that they are reporting the same event as the LA Times [requires free registration] and the Washington Post [requires free registration]. In the Times story we read–

But praise for the two running mates was overshadowed by angry and mocking comments directed at President Bush. The tone was jarringly dissonant from the sunny message Kerry and Edwards have emphasized on their first few days together on the campaign trail.

Jessica Lange denounced the current occupants of the White House as “a self-serving regime of deceit, hypocrisy and belligerence,” accusing Bush of violating international law. Chevy Chase accused the president of invading Iraq “just so he could be called a wartime president” and quipped that the most recent book Bush had read was “Leader of the Free World for Dummies.”

In a song called “Texas Bandido,” John Mellencamp sang, “He’s just another cheap thug that sacrifices our young … You’re going to get us killed with your little white lies.” And Meryl Streep bemoaned Bush’s frequent invocation of religion, saying, “I wondered to myself through the shock and awe, I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families in Baghdad.”

Goldberg, who repeatedly referred to Edwards as “Kid” throughout the night, delivered the most inflammatory performance of the show in a comedy bit that involved a sexual pun playing off the president’s name.As the audience roared with embarrassed and horrified laughter, she retorted: “C’mon, you knew this was coming. It’s what I’m trying to explain to people: Why you asking me to come if you don’t want me to be me?”

The Bush campaign condemned Thursday’s concert fundraiser, which was produced by Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt noted that Kerry told CNN’s Larry King earlier in the day that he had not had time to get briefed about reports of possible new terrorist threats. Yet, Schmidt said, “he found time to attend a Hollywood fundraiser, filled with enough hate and vitriol to make Michael Moore blush.”

The Washington Post article contrasts the candidates differing values and includes these paragraphs:

At the fundraiser, Kerry praised speakers and performers, some of whom lambasted Bush as a liar, “thug” and killer. Singer John Mellencamp sang an anti-Bush song called “Texas Bandito,” in which he called the president “another cheap thug who sacrifices our young.” Actress Whoopi Goldberg repeatedly referred to Edwards as “Kid” and made a crude wordplay on the president’s name.

Kerry said every performer conveyed the “heart and soul” of America. Afterward, Kerry spokesman David Wade said: “Performers have a right to speak their mind. John Kerry and John Edwards speak their minds and Americans know what they believe.”

Where do the Beeb’s sympathies lie when they fail to report embarrassments like this? (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt)

Jim Miller compares and contrasts the Sun‘s treatment of the visit to Britain of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who advocates wife beating, execution for homosexuals and suicide bombing by children, to the BBC’s much more insipid account.

Reader Patrick Bramwell sends another link and writes:

An utterly appalling whitewash of Al-Qaradawi on today’s UK BBC Online. The man is the soul of moderation, in tune with the mainstream Arab thinking, and a peacemaker!!!

This one is a real doozy so far as BBC bias goes.

In defence of Magdi Abdelhadi, who wrote the piece, the assertion that al-Qaradawi is in tune with mainstream Arab thinking may well be correct. It is notoriously difficult to know what people in unfree societies really believe.