The BBC is having a spate of programmes that deal with immigration and culture (Andrew Green from Migration Watch even getting decent treatment on the Today programme)…I wonder if that has anything to do with the ongoing review of its coverage of such issues…and will they suddenly be on the back burner again once the review is published?
Anyway, the floor is yours…..a new open thread for any BBC subject you think fit to mention…..
Another gang of abusers….all of a certain culture…but not a particular race….race only being an issue with regard to the way the Police may have reacted…not prosecuting because of the possible appearance of being racist.
Islam is the common factor between the offenders…that’s not to say Islam makes them abusers…what it may suggest is that they came to believe that as Non-Muslims are dehumanised, deemed worthless, they can freely abuse them without any shame or guilt.
If you sit back and say ‘I am uncomfortable with being associated with any debate about Islam’ that is a betrayal of both the abused girls and Muslims themselves who become tarred with the label ‘abusers’ because the debate is left in the hands of the Far Right who will define what a Muslim is.
If someone had said the same about slavery…‘I’m uncomfortable being associated with any debate on the white community’s part in slavery’..because you don’t want to label every white person a ‘slaver’, then slavery would still exist…the same for segregation in America…or Apartheid.
That is the very attitude in the BBC that this site seeks to challenge…that of not tackling an issue because of its perceived sensitivity or because it favours a certain ideology, whether religious or political, and looks to downplay any criticism of it….whilst happily attacking opposing views or thinking…such as Christianity.
If these had been gangs of Christian men targeting only Muslim girls there would be a huge outcry and questions raised about Christian values and teachings….just as there was in fact about the BBC ‘culture’ that allowed Savile and Co to abuse young people for years.
You have to engage in the debate in order to prevent it spiralling into polemic and becoming highly polarised and sectarian…if you leave it to the extremists on either side you get extremism.:
As long ago as 2001, Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was making claims about Asian grooming gangs…..He was making his allegations to stir up ethnic strife. Right-thinking people, aware of the BNP’s record as liars, presumed that these stories were just racist demagoguery. No doubt Griffin feels vindicated today: for telling the truth before anyone else. And yet it was thanks in part to his thuggish intervention that society felt able to ignore the scandal. And thus the abuse continued.
Even the BBC is starting to address certain highly sensitive subjects that previously it had ignored or denied were an issue.
Today Nicky Campbell presided over an extremely open and wide ranging debate on the recent spate of child abuse cases….specifically looking at race, religion and culture.
This is what Julie Siddiqui, from the Islamic Society of Britain, had to say:
‘If we are seeing patterns emerging we can’t stay quiet….people not speaking out is extremely dangerous.’
Other Muslims admitted that one problem was that in the Mosques and sermons whilst there were exhortations to treat Muslim women with respect there was no similar demand to do the same for Non-Muslims…which led to them being ‘de-humanised’ in the eyes of some Muslims.
As I said Islam doesn’t turn them into abusers, that must be in their nature already, but it may give them an excuse to treat Non-Muslims in a manner they wouldn’t treat Muslim girls….and that is an issue that should be looked at…as part of a wider examination of why and how these abuses happen.
Mark Easton, of all people, being very pro immigration and culturally sensitive, has also dipped his toe into the debate about race and Islam in regard to the ‘Asian’ gangs abusing non-Muslim, mostly white girls.
Uncomfortable truths of child exploitation in Britain
People will look for someone to blame….There are none so blind as those that will not see…..
Perhaps there is an unconscious and misguided calculation that to act risks damage to something of broader value than the well-being of a single child – public confidence, institutional reputation or community relations.
One wonders if that last concern has a bearing on why we have seen a series of high-profile court cases in which men from predominantly South Asian backgrounds have been convicted of sexually exploiting young girls.
Although he studiously avoids the word Islam himself, he reports that the Far Right are blaming Muslims….Easton himself oddly seems to point the finger at the race of the abusers….‘black and particularly Asian perpetrators remain over-represented.’…but at the end of the report there is a sudden cut to quotes from Muslim community leaders…which makes the association without Easton himself expressly making the link:’
In Oxford, an imam who knew some of the grooming gang as they were growing up, has talked of the responsibilities of the wider community. “I can say it’s a problem of the whole Muslim community and we have to rectify it,” said Sheikh Hojjat Ramzy.
“I say to them, my brothers, my sisters, wake up. You are in England. You are British. You must integrate. You must look after the children. There is an issue and we cannot put it under the carpet. Enough is enough.”‘
The BBC should be praised for raising these issues…as even the ‘Press’ seem reluctant to do any more than label the gangs ‘Asian’…which in itself is wrong….as Race has little to do with the selection of victims….many actually being ‘Asian’…just not Muslim.
However will the BBC’s new found bravery translate into a wider examination of Islam as a whole…looking at the history and creation of the Koran, the genuine ‘life’ of Muhammed, the actual teachings and meaning of Islam and the cultural impact that it is having on secular/Christian European countries, and will have in the future on Britain?
I doubt that….I think the BBC will slip back into its bunker and avoid the issue.
But it is definitely a debate that should be held…just as the one on mass immigration that the BBC sidelined but the effects of which were serious and damaging to Britain…forced on it by a small group of politicians and ‘liberals’ imposing their view of what life should be upon everyone regardless of consequences.
That is surely what the BBC is meant to defend us against…the abuse of power and misinformation by challenging those in power to justify their actions and by informing and educating the Public…..but it betrayed those values and it betrayed by doing so, the people of this country…previous immigrants included, who came here because of the values and life that ‘Britain’ offered…only to find that Britain was turning into the very thing they had tried to escape from.
Just what is the point of Mark Mardell?
When he reports a story his own politcal leanings colour his reports…getting it wrong on Boston, Obama’s foreign policy and Benghazi….but that’s when he bothers to report a story:
Two recent eye catchers don’t seem to have raised his interest judging by his Twitter feed…the Obama government targeting political opponents and journalists who embarrass them:
The division of the Internal Revenue Service that improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups sent confidential information on 31 conservative groups to the well-funded liberal nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, according to a revelation made by ProPublica Monday.
“The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year,” according to the ProPublica report.
That story is on the BBC…but not under Mardell’s name.
Ah here he is: ‘From what we know so far this appears to be an A-grade scandal – a shocking abuse of power with apparently political motives.’
An ‘A grade scandal’…but not big enough to get onto his Twitter feed to provide a link to the report? Curious lack of priority….and yes, Twitter is now a major source of news for people, even for journalists looking for a breaking story…way back in 2008 this was recognised:
‘If I didn’t hear about something important happening by watching my Twitter stream, it’s the first place I go to get an idea of what’s going on. Years ago I would have turned to the cable news channels, now it’s Twitter.’
Secret U.S. Trawl of AP Calls Decried by Press Groups
Media groups and government watchdogs said the U.S. Justice Department interfered with press freedom when it secretly collected telephone records from Associated Press reporters and editors over a two-month period last year.
“This is really a disturbing affront to a free press,” Arnie Robbins, executive director of the American Society of News Editors in Columbia, Missouri, said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s also troubling because it is consistent with perhaps the most aggressive administration ever against reporters doing their jobs.”
The BBC should be a necessary part of the fabric of our society providing impartial and balanced news and views that are accurate and truthful, a counter weight to the myriad of partisan broadcasters and publishers who offer just one side of any argument.
The existence of this site, and many like it, is evidence that all is not as it should be at the BBC.
Does it matter you ask if the BBC is biased, if it plays politics and favours one side or the other?
Greg Dyke, once BBC DG, quotes the Daily Telegraph in his autobiography which said:
‘A nation kept in ignorance is a nation easily led.’
If the BBC is not doing its job in providing accurate and impartial news the consequences can be severe.
The BBC more often than not actively campaigns on many fronts, either by commission or omission in what it broadcasts.
If the BBC does take an active part in politics, manipulating opinion or attempting to engage in social engineering rather than sticking to its remit of informing and educating the Public then the BBC has to take responsibility for the outcome of its interventions.
People need to start asking the BBC questions and getting answers.
‘Labour sent out ‘search parties’ for immigrants to get them to come to the UK, Lord Mandelson has admitted.
In a stunning confirmation that the Blair and Brown governments deliberately engineered mass immigration, the former Cabinet Minister and spin doctor said New Labour sought out foreign workers.
He also conceded that the influx of arrivals meant the party’s traditional supporters are now unable to find work.’
‘In 2004 when as a Labour government, we were not only welcoming people to come into this country to work, we were sending out search parties for people and encouraging them, in some cases, to take up work in this country.’
He said: ‘The problem has grown during the period of economic stagnation over the last five, six years.’
When Labour encouraged new arrivals ‘we were almost … a full employment economy’ but, he admitted: ‘The situation is different obviously now.
‘We have to just realise… entry to the labour market of many people of non-British origin is hard for people who are finding it very difficult to find jobs, who find it hard to keep jobs.
‘For these people immigration tends to loom large in their lives and in their worlds, now that is an inescapable fact, and we have to understand it, address it, engage with people in discussion about it.’
So far the BBC’s website has ignored Mandelson’s ‘bombshell’ comments despite linking to the Telegraph’s comment on them:
The BBC for a long time completely ignored Labour’s policy, but they didn’t just ignore Labour’s immigration policy…they deliberately buried it and the damaging effects of its consequences…firstly because they themselves approve of immigration and the end of the nation state, but also because they knew that if this story had caught light it would have been the end of Labour for a long time as it betrayed not just the country, and a class of people but in effect carried out a policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’….trying to dilute the ‘horrible whiteness’ of this country.
The BBC ignored Labour’s Andrew Neather when he revealed the true nature of Labour’s open border policy….one that should have been political dynamite if publicised…..
Lord Mandelson’s remarks come three years after Labour officials denied claims by former adviser Andrew Neather that they deliberately encouraged immigration in order to change the make-up of Britain.
Mr Neather said the policy was designed to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.
He said there was ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.
Not only were the working class betrayed and put on the scrap heap but Labour’s policy imported massive amounts of crime…just how many murders, attacks, rapes, thefts, drug crimes have been committed by people Labour allowed into this country?
Nearly a fifth of all suspected rapists and murderers arrested last year were immigrants
Just how many people would still be alive now had it not been for Labour and the BBC?
As I said the BBC’s own actions have severe consequences.
The BBC’s support for Labour’s immigration policy has condemned this country to a very different future to that which was likely in 1997 before Labour took power.
A future in which Miliband’s much vaunted ‘One Nation’ will become more and more segregated and divided with conflicts erupting with ever more frequency and seriousness.
The BBC has played its part in that. It has played its part in bringing serious and dangerous crime within our borders, it played its part in bringing terrorism to our shores, often excusing and ‘explaining’ it away, it has played its part in making the future a bleaker place for the working class who can’t get a job, or when they do they find the wages are so much lower, but it doesn’t matter because even if they could afford to rent or buy a house they find they are last on the list behind the immigrant family just off the plane whose human rights seem more important than the native Brits.
The BBC fully supported and actively promoted mass immigration.
It is one of the ’Guilty Men’ responsible for the bloodshed, the crime, the jobless, the homeless, the crowded schools and hospitals that comes with that mass immigration.
That’s not an exaggeration…think about it…that’s the uncomfortable truth.
All those people without jobs or forced onto low wages might like to ponder the fact that it is highly paid BBC employees, some getting paid £150,000 allowances to relocate to Salford, who are making decisions that destroy lives, not just lives but a culture, a nation…and yes even a ‘Race’.
The Question Time livechat last Thursday was quite promising. There were some teething problems as you’d expect with new software. The chat window needed refreshing for most people every now and then – more for certain people in certain browsers than others. The LogIn/Out button was also in a slightly awkward place. One or two things outside of our control too; emailed passwords stuck in spam filters for example.
To address the issues raised, this week we’re going to run a beta version of the chat software’s next update. Hopefully it will iron out some of the issues. We’re going to be joined by one of the development team who will observe the performance of the chat so if you get issues please include browser type/version and other relevant details in comments so that he can get an idea of what is going on. Remember that it is a beta release of the software so there will be both known and unknown flaws in it still. But for us it is going in the right direction and we are lucky to have the ear of their dev team at this point in the project.
Please head over there before Thursday, make sure you can log in (or create an account if necessary) and try it. If you took a look last week, it still might be worth a look at the differences. Please leave any feedback either here or over there.
See you on Thursday for Question Time!
The BBC has dominated the Sony radio awards which makes a mockery of its claim that Murdoch monopolizes everything.
It does show that the BBC, funded by the license fee, smashes the opposition….pretty easy when you don’t have to worry where the next penny is coming from.
The Today programme gets ‘Best Breakfast Show’ (Over 10 million listeners)……Humphry’s gets Best Journalist…5Live gets best UK station….
There is essentially no competition for the Today programme in the area that it covers…that of serious news and current affairs.
Humphrys had a sitting duck with Entwistle and so he could hardly fail to have a ‘good interview’….Would be more impressed if he dragged in Gordon Brown and gave him the same treatment….many of his other interviews are pretty dire, seeming more about point scoring than informing the listener.
5Live isn’t bad covering a wide range of subjects and sport naturally….but it does often pick the low hanging fruit…Derbyshire in particular going for the easy tearjerkers whilst Campbell picks subjects for his phone-ins that seem entirley to miss the major talking points of the day…major newsworthy talking points that is….going for ones that interest the BBC chattering classes whilst often avoiding the ones making headlines in the papers or giving them a lightweight shallow coverage.
This morning Campbell had on the Tory Europe Minister, David Lidington…didn’t ask him any difficult questions about Europe, but just wanted to point out that it was all rather embarrassing for Cameron…Campbell let the Minister ramble on about how vital Europe was to us without any challenge to his assertions about our ‘influence’ or jobs reliant on us being joined at the hip with the EU….just how much influence do we have?….ask the banks who are going to be subject to the financial transaction tax….on which we had no influence at all it seems.
Looking at the judges (they all come from the industry)…. they are dominated by BBC employees or people who have been BBC employees…out of the first 35 judges 24 are ‘BBC’ with one Guardianista….there are around 100 judge in all…covering different categories.
Only natural you might say, the BBC being the ‘breeding ground’ for other stations….maybe the rest of the Judges were all commercial through and through. I doubt it.
‘Mr Lord Mayor, we will not forget that the first and foremost duty of government – as the governor has reminded us – is to maintain and indeed to strengthen the monetary and fiscal stability that has enabled us, successively, to grow and remain free of recession…..stability through a predictable and light touch regulatory environment.’
Gordon Brown Mansion House speech 2007
The BBC has set out to target the Banks….as Evan Davis admitted before…“So we can blame the bankers for it, as we normally do”….but it has set the parameters, the limits of engagement so to speak.
The BBC programme about the banking system is described thus by the Open University who partner the BBC in producing this series:
‘Interviewing a range of important figures in the financial and political sector, including those intimately involved with the meltdown of 2007 / 2008, this new series will delve behind the scenes of a crisis that brought the global banking system to the brink of collapse.’
Note that ‘behind the scenes of a crisis that brought the global banking system to the brink of collapse’…the BBC programme is entitled ‘Fixing the System’…so surely you must examine why it ‘broke’.
Unfortunately that’s just what the BBC doesn’t do.
The BBC itself says about the programme…‘Fixing the System traces the cultural changes that took place in London’s banks during the late 1990s and early 2000s, which many now identify as one of the underlying causes of the Libor scandal.’
The Libor? So what? The Libor rigging didn’t cause the Crash.
Once again the BBC have decided to duck the issue of what caused the Crash…why? To protect Labour and Gordon Brown.
The BBC tells us that: ‘By 2009 the FSA knew that there was cheating and lying at the heart of the banking system and the layers of control were failing: The bank management failed, the BBA failed, the FSA failed‘…but the BBC doesn’t mention the Labour politicians failing.
Labour is only mentioned in relation to its challenge to the bonuses to be paid to the RBS bankers….our heroes!
Unfortunately for the BBC even Gordon Brown admits his own part in our downfall:
“The truth is that, globally and nationally, we should have been regulating them more”.
The BBC though doesn’t look at the cause of the Crash…it has decided that what is important is to ask the question ‘Can we trust the Banks?’…claiming also that: ‘Some say it took this latest scandal to expose a profit-at-all-costs cynicism that they believe has corrupted the heart of our banking system; all agree things need to change.’
Well, no…we never have been able to trust banks, no one has ever trusted the banks…but nor can we trust supermarkets, garages, the NHS, schools, food producers and yes even the BBC.
That’s why we have all sorts of regulators and inspectors…because no one trusts anyone.
The Banks went belly up precisely because Labour decided they didn’t need regulating…allowing them to ‘let rip’…..so the question is really ‘Can we trust the politicians to protect us from monopolies, incompetence and fraud?’
As Lord Turner of the FSA said: ‘Politicians were in love with the ultra free market and wanted to let it rip.’
So what exactly is the point of this new series?
Here are a couple of comments on the Open University site about the programme that sums it up:
‘The most telling statement in the whole programme was that the banks have been making money from their customers and not for their customers. I thought that most of the comments from both sides of the debate were like watching a hamster in its wheel. Lots of activity but ultimately going nowhere. The programme was full of prejudicial opinions and devoid of any hard evidence. The fundamental problem which caused the crash was missed entirely. The creation of money as debt by the privately owned banks. Anyone looking at the data with an open mind will understand the problem, if you review the money supply over the last 100 years……The reason the banks caused the crisis/crash is being conflated with the banks’ demonstrable dishonesty. I fear the politicians will ‘solve’ the dishonesty but gloss over the reason the banks actually caused the crisis/crash.’
And:
‘I just watched this on iplayer and i have to say it was totally biased. The producers obviously had an agenda that went something like this:
A in the old days there was trust and integrity
B greed took over and Barclays symbolised a greed-leads-to growth environment by its own exponential growth
C libor fixing was part of all this greed
D bob diamond “aggressiveness” was to blame for libor fixing taking place
E the regulators now step in where before they turned a blind eye
All contributions were carefully edited to support this pre-conceived agenda.
I am not a banker, do not work in financial services, am not a politician or belong to a political party, I am working and living on the minimum wage despite being middle aged. And yet i can see a skewed truth when i see it.
Libor Fixing? I hope someone makes a programme about “BBC Truth Fixing” – boy, there is more than enough evidence to back that up.’
A write up of the first episode is available…..‘the first episode a three-part BBC Two series looks at the Libor scandal – a watershed moment that finally exposed wide-scale lying and cheating at the heart of the banking system.’
Episode 2 (available this coming Wednesday) looks at risk…but in relation to recent incidents, not that which caused the crash:
‘With gripping first-hand accounts from banking insiders, regulators and politicians this film tells the story of two recent multi-billion pound trading disasters that rocked the City. It shows that some bankers are still taking reckless risks, five years after the crash that brought the world’s economy to its knees.’
Episode three is still under wraps.
The programme seems aimed at undermining banks reputations rather than asking real questions about how economic crashes occur…it seems more in line with simple, child like rhetoric from Occupy than something that will enlighten and provide answers and solutions….and avoids asking difficult questions of those really in control…the politicians.
A final telling comment told us that by 2012 there was a new world order…the regulators were now the most powerful people whereas previously it was the bankers.
That means that the bankers, not the Regulators were in control before the crash….allowed to ‘let rip’ by the politicians like Gordon Brown.
A Gordon Brown who the BBC strangely fail to remind us that in his June 2007 Mansion House speech, that this is “an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London …..And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created…..and I will be honest with you, many who advised me, including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown”. “I believe”, he went on, “we were right not to go down that road … and we were right to build upon our light touch system….fair, proportionate and increasingly risk based”.
Back in 2005, he said that the better model for financial regulation was “not just a light touch, but a limited touch. We should not only apply the concept of risk to enforcement of regulation, but to…the decision as to whether to regulate at all.”’
And did Ed Balls have a hand in all this…which he denies?
“Ed Balls, our new City Minister, will work with you to develop publish and then promote a long term strategy for the development of London’s financial services and promoting our unique advantages and assets.”
‘
Way back in 2005 even Stephanie Flanders knew that Gordon Brown’s economy was in trouble…long before the Crash brought on by under regulating the banks…this was trouble caused by over spending and reliance on consumer credit….just a shame that she can’t seem to remember that now:
Testing the Miracle
Stephanie Flanders, BBC economics reporter
On running the rule over Gordon Brown’s economic record
2005
‘These must be frustrating times for Gordon Brown. Now his foes have decided it is open season on the economy – which even a year ago had seemed beyond reproach.
Britain is growing slower than it has in more than a decade. The high street has ground to a halt, and inflation is the highest it has been under Labour.
When we look back, in a few years’ time, at Brown’s economy, will we still see an economic miracle? Or another old-fashioned spending binge that, sooner or later, had to run dry?
Former chancellor Ken Clarke was disarmingly petulant. “What I’m saying is that I did all the spadework, and that my four years were better than the eight years since….And if he doesn’t do something about the public finances soon he’s going to leave a terrible mess for his successor.”
‘Gordon Brown took my nice shiny economy and he frittered it away.’
Our trade gap has widened almost every year since Labour took office.
Ed Balls was with Gordon Brown every step of the way until he became MP for Normanton in May 2005. I asked him whether he was disappointed by Britain’s continued low productivity and widening trade gap.
“There’s an ability for people to plan ahead, invest in the future, which we’ve not seen in the last 20 to 30 years.”
Quite a few people around the country echoed this view – especially the property developers (before the property crash of course….causing the credit crunch). There is just one problem. Businesses are not investing more. They are investing less.
Total investment as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the lowest it has been since those records began in 1965.
Saved by spending
The miracle, if there is one, is that we carried on growing. But looking around the country, you see it is a miracle built not on investing, or exporting, but on a miraculous capacity to spend.
The public spending prop
What is left of the miracle economy, if you strip out the cheap imports and the consumer spending? What is left is a lot of public spending. The only part of the economy that has grown faster than spending by all of us the past few years has been spending by the government.
In the north-east, one recent estimate puts the public sector of the economy at close to 60%.
But all of that public spending, sooner or later has to be paid for. Ed Balls denies that Gordon Brown’s decision to move the goal posts on his golden rule this summer has done his reputation real harm.
What Gordon Brown would like to be his final years as chancellor could be the most testing yet.’
So just remember that quote at the top of the page from Brown:
‘…the first and foremost duty of government – as the governor has reminded us – is to maintain and indeed to strengthen the monetary and fiscal stability…..’
The Government is responsible ultimately….Banks can’t be trusted, we know that, have always known that…that’s why we have Regulators.
The BBC just can’t seem to accept that simple premise…Gordon Brown’s fingerprints are all over this recession.
So far this series hasn’t been about ‘Fixing The System’….dishonesty or fraud was not what caused the collapse of the System….bad judgement, a preparedness to take unqualified risks and the lack of regualtion to rein in such impulses were the main causes.
The BBC is going round kicking the tyres when the real reason Gordon Brown’s Rolls Royce economy is off the road is because the engine has blown up due to lack of maintenance.
Sorry for the delay, been busy, this is for you!
Laughed a lot when Victoria Derbyshire tore a strip off the Police for running an internal review of their own behaviour because as we know the BBC is well versed in the ins and outs of that old trick itself.
Always worth a reminder of all those reviews by the BBC into its own impartiality…what could go wrong?
Ensuring the impartiality of the BBC is a key priority for the Trust; it is essential to its independence that the BBC retains the public’s trust as an impartial purveyor of news and programming.
The BBC is required to deliver duly impartial news by the Royal Charter and Agreement and to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality. The Trust is committed to making sure that the BBC fulfils this obligation. One of the ways the Trust does so, is by commissioning reviews of specific subject areas.
Here is the Trust’s Work Plan.…. The main purpose of the work plan is to provide an overview of our work in the coming year for licence fee payers and the wider media industry. It also identifies the views of our Audience Councils.
This summer the BBC Trust will publish its latest review into BBC impartiality, concentrating especially on immigration, religion and Europe:
The Trust has today published the terms of reference and planned approach for its impartiality review of the BBC’s breadth of opinion.
Breadth of opinion means reflecting a range of voices and viewpoints in BBC output and the BBC has a unique commitment to it included in its Editorial Guidelines.
The review, which will be led by former broadcasting executive Stuart Prebble, will focus on the BBC’s news, current affairs and factual output.
The content analysis will include an analysis of the BBC’s coverage of immigration, religion and the EU, by comparing some coverage from 2007 with coverage from 2012/13.
Nothing about Israel? Oh yes they did that in the Balen Report already….what ever happened to that?
Shouldn’t hold out too much hope of anything groundbreaking…this is the Guardian’s take on the BBC:
On Europe, for instance, the BBC has been found to be more negative and critical of the EU than the German media. On the European constitution, this finding held, even when reporters were relatively more Europhile. A study of BBC online coverage of immigration found that it “invites a reading that might, most positively, be described as unease” in relation to immigration.
There seems to be some suggestion that the review of the BBC may also examine religion in general, and Islamophobia in particular. No shortage of material there. A variety of academic studies has examined how the BBC and other media have covered Islam, especially since September 2001. One found that “the framing of Islam as a security threat can be inferred from the very large numbers of news items in which Muslim political and military or paramilitary actors have been shown in postures of hostility towards aspects of [western] societies”.
Not a lot of support in these studies for the contention in a Daily Mail leader column last week that the BBC “consistently attacks Christianity (though never Islam)”.
Of course that came from an academic…David Miller is professor of sociology at the University of Bath and a director of Spinwatch
An academic, a professor of sociology, a director of Spinwatch…..impartial? …Left wing, anti-Iraq War, pro extremist Islam…very popular on Muslim media outlets, received research grants from the EU.
Something to watch out for anyway.
Those pesky Jews. BBC Watch exposes some historical revisionism from the State Broadcaster. First the facts….
“In 1862 the population of Jerusalem numbered some 17,800 people, with the majority (eight thousand) being Jews. Two years prior to that date the first Jewish neighbourhood outside the Old City walls – Mishkenot Sha’ananim – had been built by Sir Moses Montefiore. Inside theOld City itself, restoration work on the Hurva Synagogue was in its advanced stages and the quarter boasted additional synagogues, schools and hospitals. The Mount of Olives had by that time been a Jewish burial ground for 3,000 years. ”
However, a listener to John McCarthy’s programme on Jerusalem from the series “In a Prince’s Footsteps” which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on May 8th (available here for a limited period of time) would have no idea that any Jews lived in the city at all when Prince Albert visited it in 1862 – or indeed before or after that date.
McCarthy is just one more in a long line of BBC talking heads who seems to choke at the idea of recognising Jerusalem as Jewish. Remarkable really. But surely it is time for McCarthy to correct himself?
