PLAYING POLITICS

 

 

“I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it.”
Margaret Thatcher

 

 


You have to grin when you hear the BBC great and the good running round with their fingers in their ears shouting about tight budgets, Hutton and top management being to blame….where have we heard similar before?

‘The Daily Star, though quite accurately at the time, and possibly the only time I have found this awful newspaper interesting, mentioned the fact the BBC had blown millions of pounds on substandard American miniseries while cutting back on home-produced drama, wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on German luxury cars for executives instead of cheaper British cars, and was dominated by a culture of bureaucracy and waste.

And look…..the BBC making up accusations based on flimsy evidence, badly researched, badly edited and libellous programmes.…history is repeating itself.……

‘The Panorama documentary, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, about the threat of National Front infiltration of the Conservatives, caused a furore.…the documentary, after discussing some of these groups, then decided to accuse both Neil Hamilton and Harvey Proctor of flirting with fascism and dressing in fascist uniforms in their young days. While Proctor in particular was known for his racist views, as well as being outed as a homosexual in his later years, accusations against both men were flimsy and led to a libel case against the Corporation. Mrs Thatcher was furious, though I do believe on this occasion the party’s anger was justified, was turned into a badly-researched and badly-edited programme which was libellous.’
So what’s new? So the BBC has always been suspect professionally and ethically.

Looking back you can see that every time the BBC has got itself into hot  water it is because it has tried to change the political landscape by broadcasting highly politicised messages aimed at contradicting and challenging the government of the day…

….or hiding inconvenient facts…such as Labour’s mass immigration plans and the effects that would have on British society or that there has been no global warming for nearly 15 years and there is no proof that CO2 causes it…indeed the ‘proof’ suggests no link….something even the infamous Prof Phil Jones from the CRU admitted.

 

John Humphrys has usefully illustrated the BBC attitude:
“If we were not prepared to take on a very, very powerful government indeed there would be no point in the BBC existing — that is ultimately what the BBC is for.”

Actually no, that’s not what the BBC is for, it is not some sort of unofficial, self proclaimed opposition…its job is to ascertain the facts not to pass judgement on the rights or wrongs of  any situation.

The Falklands are a classic example of the BBC getting the narrative wrong….adopting a stance suggesting that the Argentine invaders were perhaps equally right in their actions as the British.

This is still reflected today in BBC coverage…here is, again, John Humphrys on Today suggesting we hand the Islands over:

‘So the time has come for Britain to negotiate. A deal should be struck which establishes Argentinian sovereignty over the islands while allowing the islanders to remain British and which perhaps shares the spoils of oil exploration.’

As you can see, still deciding government policy for us.

Here is what the BBC admits itself about its coverage:

‘Initially the problem was over the tone of the BBC’s reporting of the combat, and particularly its presentation of information issued by the military. Peter Snow, on Newsnight, began one sentence: “If we believe the British…”. Casting such doubt on official sources enraged the Thatcher Government, and John Page MP described Snow’s remarks as “almost treasonable”.

Panorama [ran its own anti war feature] under the title Can We Avoid War?
There were misgivings about the programme inside the BBC too. Presenter Robert Kee told The Times it had been one-sided. He was promptly dropped from Panorama, and resigned from the BBC later that month.’

Here is what Thatcher thought was at stake…perhaps everything the BBC hates…..

‘Much was at stake: what we were fighting for eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world – above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force.
The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat. The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.’

The BBC weren’t above ‘manufacturing’ its own narrative…such as Thatcher only fighting the war to win an election….nor was it above banning anything from the airwaves that was deemed to show Thatcher in a good light:

The Falklands Play is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War. The play was written by Ian Curteis,
In early July the new Head of Plays Peter Goodchild (whose background was in documentaries, rather than drama) requested considerable modifications to the script, amongst them objecting to the portrayal of Thatcher’s “private and instinctive self” – as opposed to the “bellicose Iron Lady of the public scenes” – and requesting the inclusion of discussions between members of the government about the possible effect of the War on the 1983 general election. Curteis declined the latter on the grounds that none of the relevant people he had interviewed had alluded to such conversations, and that there was no other record of them. In addition, he considered that attributing such fictional dialogue to real people could be libellous.

The BBC continued in its anti-Tory vain and its coverage of the extremely political miner’s strike (Scargill trying to bring down the government) and the IRA were highly controversial……eventually resulting in the sacking of Alisdair Milne (whose son is Seumas Milne….over paid, over promoted Guardian …well, troll, might be a fair description).

In 2001 the BBC once again took upon itself the role of peacemaker and set its cap against the Afghan War despite its obvious rights.

This is the ever forthright, yet again, Humphrys on Afghanistan:

‘…..the lives lost were a pointless and avoidable sacrifice…..The cynical view, perhaps the realist one, is that they might as well have stayed at home.
NATO will pull out of Afghanistan because the cynical view is, they have fully come to recognise all of that [Afghan is complicated, backward, tribal place.].  The truly cynical view is that all these soldiers, more than 320 of our own, who have died, have effectively died in vain and why waste another 4 or 5 years for still more to die on a hopeless mission?’

The BBC carried this anti-war stance over into its coverage of the build up to the Iraq War and of the war itself.

The BBC made false allegations about the government lying in its Dossier which set out the case for military action and as a result Greg Dyke, BBC DG, lost his job.

The BBC have never accepted they were wrong and continually rewrite history so that now they openly state that they were right and Hutton was wrong.  They are wrong.

I would contend that the BBC’s stance on Iraq and Afghanistan has cost British soldier’s lives, Afghan civilian  lives and has extended the war immeasurably by turning public opinion against it and made the government reluctant to spend the money to provide the necessary kit to protect the troops and to provide the necessary number of troops to do the job and see it through to the end.

When the BBC decides to play politics it has real consequences.  It costs lives.

Moving on into more recent events the Savile affair saw the ‘open and accountable’ BBC attempt to cover up a scandal…and failing miserably….resulting in the debacle we have now.

Whilst that was about ‘internal’ politics if you like….to do with the image and reputation of the BBC, the later Newsnight programme that intended to ‘out’ a Tory politician as a paedophile can only be judged as once more the BBC entering the political arena…..it’s judgement went out the window as it saw an opportunity to not only attack the Tories and smear them but also to taint Mrs Thatcher’s image if only by association.

It was a chance they couldn’t resist and  threw caution to the wind.

The BBC has of course other strings to its bow when it comes to political intervention….tackling ‘Austerity’ and government ’cuts’ as well as promoting Labour’s Plan B,  seem to be top of the agenda at the moment…..along with quiet encouragement to strikers and rioters to ‘protest’.

The BBC spending £300,000 hiding the Balen Report which reveals if it had any anti-Israeli bias in its reporting hardly shows a nature that regards ‘openness’ and ‘accountability’ as a necessity.

Is BBC News killing Jews?  Does its coverage of the Israel/Palestinian conflict incite anti-Semitic attacks?  We’ll never know what Balen concluded…because the BBC hid the report.   Why?  Just what did it say that’s so bad?

Its refusal to reveal who attended a meeting run by the CMEP, which is essentially a pro AGW advocacy group run by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and climate activist Joe Smith, hardly demonstrates good faith….the BBC’s complete coverage of global warming was radically altered to adopt a ‘pro man made global warming’ stance was effected by this meeting….so just who attended?…what were the vested interests?…..because they certainly were not the ‘scientific experts’ that the BBC claims they were…being environmental activists, businessmen and media types.

 

The whole raison d’être behind the BBC’s existence is that it provides impartial, accurate and fair news and information to the Public…essential in a democracy…even more essential in a time when the internet makes so much unsubstantiated information available.

It should have been the BBC’s job to quash the rumours about McAlpine…set in motion by the irresponsible, showboating Tom Watson (even though he is making claims about someone else apparently…though he remains silent on the matter for now), instead it fanned the flames and indeed intended to place McAlpine on the bonfire themselves.

The BBC is a left wing organisation through and through…regardless of Mark Thompson’s announcement that that is no longer the case, it still is….anti-Thatcher, anti-Tory, pro-’progressive’ social policies:

“But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.” Antony Jay, Telegraph, July 2007

Can anyone say anything has changed?

If the BBC is failing to be impartial and balanced in its reporting then the very reason for its existence disappears….We may as well have a commercial station that pumps out whatever its owner orders it to.

Can it’s attitude be changed?  Can it be made to broadcast impartial news?…if not why should anyone be obliged to pay the license fee any longer for something that they can get from Sky by choice, and a lot more choice at that….or ITV or a myriad of other options on the Internet?  Adverts?  Have you not seen how many adverts the BBC puts out for its own programmes?…even ‘Today’ becomes a ‘trail’ for Panorama or Newsnight  or similar programmes more often than not.

As Patten says…time for a ‘radical overhaul’…though probably not what he had in mind.

TEBBIT ON FORM

Worth a read from one of the last true Conservatives, Lord Tebbit;

“The resignation of George Entwistle should not be the end of the clean-up at the BBC. There has been more than one man involved in this affair.

It was bad enough for those of us who believe in the concept of public service broadcasting and who over the years have greatly admired much of the BBC’s output of music, drama, humour and factual scientific programmes to see how the Eurocentric Left-of-centre Guardianstas established and entrenched their monoply over its political and current affairs output.

Then, as Thatcher dominated the political scene and to the fury of those Guardianistas won not only the Falklands War to liberate the islanders from the fascist junta but three general elections, their lofty disdain for conservatives began to turn into something much nastier. It became a visceral loathing and determination to see off not only Thatcher and her friends, but to exact a revenge upon both them and her.”

STEPPING ASIDE?

Could the deck of cards be crumbling?

The BBC’s director of news, Helen Boaden, and her deputy have “stepped aside” pending the outcome of an internal review. The move by Ms Boaden and Steve Mitchell comes after director general George Entwistle quit on Saturday. The BBC said it was not commenting yet, but there will be an announcement within hours.

Time to axe the institutional bias and time for a REAL debate on it. It is curious how the BBC studiously ignores the MOST vocal critics at this time….

BECAUSE HE IS WORTH IT?

The BBC has been to the fore of the “Anti Bonus and Anti Pay off” Jihad.  But it is do as I say, not do as I do.

“The decision to pay a year’s salary to ex-BBC director general George Entwistle, who quit after eight weeks, has been criticised by senior MPs. John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the commons culture committee, said he wanted to know why the BBC Trust thinks the £450,000 payout is “appropriate”.”

I thought Entwistle voluntarily stepped down so the basis for this pay off seems dubious but I suppose when it is OUR money they are splashing on their sacrificial lamb that is OK?

Living The Dream

Jon Donnison@JonDonnison

Listening to BBC #Radio4 Pick of the Week including a #Gaza piece: a reminder of what fantastic material the BBC turns out week in, week out

 

Yes….This is what he reported (as near as I can remember….no link…R4) this morning after Palestinians attacked Israeli forces, injuring 4 troops…….

‘Israeli tanks have fired shells into Gaza and caused casualties….this came after an exchange of fire with Palestinian militants.….Israeli shells landed near a funeral tent and may have caused civilian casualties…..earlier militants had fired a missile at an Israeli jeep.’

 

Is it just me or would you get the impression that it was maybe the Israelis who started all this…..and that the missile attack was an entirely separate affair?  Like the nice touch about the funeral and ‘may have caused’ civilian casualties.

 

Here is the hard copy from a  different BBC reporter:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64064000/jpg/_64064715_8lflz9nz.jpg

A Palestinian house destroyed by the savage Israeli response to Palestinian freedom fighter’s liberation activities.

‘Six Palestinians have been killed and more than 20 injured in a series of clashes close to the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Hamas officials said Israeli fire had killed five at a funeral in Shijaia, near Gaza City. An Islamic Jihad member died in a separate Israeli air strike.

Israel said it was responding to a missile attack on an army patrol that injured four Israeli soldiers.’

 

They eventually get to the Israelis being attacked.

 

Oh..but look…on Jon Donnison’s twitter feed someone has posted the truth:

Amir Mizroch@Amirmizroch

Hamas not taking on Iron Dome. Firing shorter rockets, mortars also targeting almost all IDF activities along Gaza fence. Per @galey_zahal

 

 

To be fair Donnison tweeted the attack on the Israeli vehicle….but that didn’t seem to effect the drift of his report to radio…which most people would hear and not see his tweets………and nice to see we’re not the only ones thinking the BBC is biased….Palestinian supporters do as well…..

Jon Donnison@JonDonnison IDF: 4 Israeli solider injured in Gaza violence. Hamas sources say at least 2 killed, 20 injured.

Jon Donnison@JonDonnison #IDF sources: a number of Israeli soliders injured after Pal militants in #Gaza fire missile at army patrol.

SoSyrious@S0Syrious @JonDonnison youre a liar.

We Need Patton Not Patten

 

 

 

A comment from Nick Robinson…..

 

The prime minister has not sought to impose a government enquiry on the BBC undermining the independence of the BBC Trust.

 

So the BBC doesn’t want an inquiry into how it runs its services…..unlike the private, commercial companies such as News International……is the BBC questioning the need for Press regulation imposed by a government inquiry then?

For months we  endured the BBC reporting Leveson day in day out in gleeful schadenfreude as it saw its arch commercial and ideological rival , News International, being torn apart.   And now it fights shy of any similar inquiry into its own shortcomings….of which it clearly has a few judging by the requirements of its Charter and Agreement…legally binding…..

Protocols on openness and transparency(1)Protocols must (as an aspect of how the Trust will discharge its general duty under article23(f) to ensure that the BBC observes high standards of openness and transparency.

44. Accuracy and impartiality
(1) The BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output.
(2) In applying paragraph (1), a series of programmes may be considered as a whole.
(3) The UK Public Services must not contain any output which expresses the opinion of the BBC or of its Trust or Executive Board on current affairs or matters of public policy other than broadcasting or the provision of online services.

 

And what of the famous BBC Trust’s independence?  Maybe of government,  but not of the BBC….it appointed Entwistle, and Patten is even now demanding  a  ‘ “thorough, radical, structural overhaul” of the BBC [which]is necessary in the wake of the resignation of the director general.’

And:

Steve Hewlett, who presents The Media Show on BBC Radio 4, has said that BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten has “taken it upon himself” to “get a grip” in the wake of the resignation of the director general.

 

The BBC Trust has a huge influence over the direction and running of the BBC:

The BBC Trust is the governing body of the BBC, and we make sure the BBC delivers that mission.

The Trust is responsible for approving the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines. These Guidelines are the key foundation for the maintenance of high editorial standards in everything broadcast or produced by the BBC.

The Trust sets the overall strategic direction for the BBC, approves its strategy and budget and assesses its performance.

The Executive is responsible for the day-to-day delivery of the commercial strategy set by the Trust.

 

The BBC Trust is by no means independent of the BBC.

And yet it also is responsible for handling complaints about the BBC….a BBC that it essentially runs, not day to day but overall…..a successful criticism of the BBC is in effect a criticism of the Trust as well…hardly inspires confidence in their impartiality.

Hands up all those who think Patten is going to do anything but shuffle the deckchairs on the BBC Titanic which is listing, as always, to the left and sinking ever more quickly into irrelevance and obscurity because of its failure to actually report the real news….how many people watch Sky News rather than BBC?  Quite a lot I believe.

George Patton I would trust.  Chris Patten…not so much.

After all, as Norman Tebbit says, Patten has got a bit of historic BBC baggage to chuck overboard:

‘The Eurocentric Left-of-centre Guardianstas established and entrenched their monoply over its political and current affairs output.

Then, as Thatcher dominated the political scene and to the fury of those Guardianistas won not only the Falklands War to liberate the islanders from the fascist junta but three general elections, their lofty disdain for conservatives began to turn int something much nastier. It became a visceral loathing and determination to see off not only Thatcher and her friends, but to exact a revenge upon both them and her.’

 

John Redwood MP has his thoughts on the matter:

Do we trust the BBC Trust?

If the BBC is to continue to recruit mainly pro EU global warming hawks to its main news programmes, doesn’t the Trust have a duty to represent all the licence payers who do not agree with these viewpoints? Shouldn’t it be the voice for balance?

Isn’t it time for the Trust to demand proper journalist standards? It could ask why the BBC has spent a lot of money blocking FOI requests seeking to find out how balanced the BBC is in its approach to energy policy and global warming. [ed…And I might add, the Balen Report]

Shouldn’t the BBC news and current affairs side seek to represent the spectrum of views on big topics that characterise our democratic debate, without fear or favour?

 

 

 

 

PAXO STUFFED

Astounding statement by Paxman…..complete lack of perspective and awareness……and again this shows how the BBC great and the good are completely unprepared to accept that they are in the wrong.…the ever present shadow of Hutton that they refuse to acknowledge as a truthful indictment of their journalism is something that they continue to try to rewrite in the history books or blame for present bad practise.

Was it ‘cowardice and incompetence and cuts’?   No, it was stupidity and anti-Tory sentiment that brought them down as well as massive management incompetence.

Paxman claims it is cowardice?  How so?  They broadcast to the world a claim, completely unsubstantiated, that a Tory politician was a paedophile….that was either very brave or very, very stupid.

What did Paxman say in 2007:

“In this press of events there often isn’t time to get out and find things out: you rely upon second-hand information-quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organisations which do the work we don’t have time for, even, god help us, press releases from public relations agencies.  The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis.  It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free.”

TIME IS SHORT, NOT MONEY, TIME AND COMMON SENSE.

How soon we forget.

This was out and out bad journalism, bad practise, bad management…nothing to do with the BBC being cowed by the spectre of another Hutton like inquiry, nothing to do with cuts in budgets……everything to do with incompetence at all levels of the BBC.

If Paxman is upset now perhaps he should wait awhile.…because surely the bloodbath is not over yet.  Entwistle was at fault because he knew nothing  and did nothing…he did not make those decisions to broadcast the accusation.

So who did…who was it that decided the BBC news narrative was that ‘a leading Thatcher era Conservative politician’ should be the phrase used throughout the BBC?
Who was it that decided that they would name the accused politician…only at the last moment deciding not to because of threats of legal action?

If they are still in a job at the end of the week I would be surprised.

Here is Paxman’s statement via the News Statesman:

The statement was tweeted by Paxman’s agent, Capel & Land:
‘Statement from Jeremy Paxman – “GeorgeEntwistle’s departure is a great shame. He has been brought low by cowards and incompetents.  “The real problem here is the BBC’s decision, in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry, to play safe by appointing biddable people.  “They then compounded the problem by enforcing a series of cuts on programme budgets, while bloating the management.  “That is how you arrive at the current mess on Newsnight. I very much doubt the problem is unique to that programme. I had hoped that George might stay to sort this out.It is a great pity that a talented man has been sacrificed while time-servers prosper. I shall not be issuing any further statements or doing any interviews.”

BYE BYE ENTWISTLE

Well, BBC D-G George Entwistle has resigned. But the question is rather larger – should the BBC now be AXED as a parasite bleeding off the public purse? One sacrificial lamb is not sufficient.

“The BBC’s director general, George Entwistle, has resigned in the wake of the Newsnight child abuse broadcast. In a statement given outside New Broadcasting House, Mr Entwistle said: “I have decided that the honourable thing to do is to step down.” Earlier, Mr Entwistle said the Newsnight report, which wrongly implicated ex-senior Tory Lord McAlpine should never have been broadcast.The broadcast covered cases of child abuse at north Wales care homes. Mr Entwistle took up the post of director general on 17 September.”

Pity Chris Patten did not also resign.