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Clare Balding mounts defence of BBC with some black propaganda…..or a distortion of the truth…or a lie if you like.

The photo below was presented to us by Balding as if it were a picture taken in secret by a paparazzi in  the bushes and published without consent by a newspaper for dirty old men to ogle…..the truth is entirely different and puts another, completely different, perspective on the story.

The BBC are rattled, very  rattled.  They are being subjected to the sort of inquisition that they  normally dish out to others whom they perceive to have committed some form of misdemeanour.

We have long been witness to the defensiveness of those working for the BBC when their integrity is brought into question….just how prickly does Humphrys get when challenged about BBC reporting…or Campbell or Derbyshire?

There is an unwillingness to accept that the BBC can do anything wrong or to challenge their own perceptions.  Which BBC journalist has dared to investigate the Balen Report?  Any journalist worth his salt would be digging away at that one….it has the potential to be absolute dynamite if it says what many think it might say.

Rather than fully accept that they maybe got things badly wrong they are lashing out and trying to divide up the ‘guilt’, pointing fingers at others,  so as to lessen the BBC’s own part in this saga.

The latest ‘Have I got News For You’  sold its soul and became a mechanism to channel the BBC’s propaganda.  Even the doughty Hislop toed the party line, taking the BBC shilling, and rather disengenuously defended the BBC by claiming no one was examining the NHS’s role or that of the Press……the BBC is hard done by and innocent of all wrong doing.

They claimed no one knew about any of Savile’s actions or those of other people….but again that’s not true….as senior staff were informed of ‘goings on’, just as with Liz Kershaw, and they decided to ignore them…..former BBC director David Nicolson told The Sun that a BBC boss had said “That’s the way it is” and “That’s Jimmy” after he reported that Savile was having sex with a young girl in his dressing room.

Hislop said that no one knew the allegations were true…since when has that stopped an investigation into ‘allegations’?…as a BBC journalist himself says…..

“In most newsrooms if you are not quite there [with a story] you would just keep going.”

Did the Press do anything?…..In 1971, according to the Sunday Times, the News of The World ran an expose of the ‘goings on’ off camera at ‘Top Of The Pops’ and the partying and procurement of girls…..nothing was done.

Such behaviour, not just Savile’s, seems to have been pretty endemic, but accepted or brushed under the carpet. 

They knew but chose to ignore it.

The fact that similar behaviour by Savile was happening under the eyes of the NHS doesn’t let the BBC off the hook one little bit….and the NHS has come under considerable scrutiny from the rest of the media over this business and so the claim of the BBC being singled out does not stand up at all.

Clare Balding dug out a photo from the Daily Mail Online…from its sidebar…which she calls ‘its sidebar of shame’.  However looking at it now the sidebar is entitled ‘Femail Today’…..stories about women for women.

Balding tried to assert that the Mail showing a 14 year old girl in a bikini was somehow tantamount to procuring young girls for the likes of Savile……the reality is that the only readers of that part of the Mail Online is likely to be women…..I’ve read the Online Mail hundreds of times and never once bothered to click on anything on ‘the sidebar of shame’…..so the photo was for women’s eyes only.

What Balding doesn’t reveal is that the photos were on the girl’s Twitter page….on which she has two million followers….and the fact that she is one of the stars of the US show about the Kardashian family.

The choice of photo is also questionable….the BBC chose a shot that looked as if it had been snapped in secret with a hidden camera…..rather than taken as it was by a family member or friend.   The reaction from Merton et al said it all….shock….because they weren’t told the full story of course.

The BBC could have chosen these shots of kylie’s sister, Kendall, from two years ago….taken when she was 14 by a professional photographer as she launched her modelling career….but that wouldn’t have looked half as seedy as the one BBC picked to present the Daily Mail in a damning way…so they chose a very particular photograph in a particular style and presented it with a particular spin.

Balding tries to claim the moral high ground by saying the Mail is peddling stories that are only interested in what women look like….is this from a BBC that mainly employs young, good looking women to front its programmes?  Balding is a sports reporter….so exceptions can be made.

The girl in the photo shown by Balding is Kylie Jenner who has a column in 17 magazines giving her (and her sister’s) expertise on ‘fashion, beauty and style’….are those columns all ‘columns of shame’?

I think Balding needs to recognise that there is a big difference between the Mail publishing shots of your cellulite and wobbly bits and the BBC ignoring sex abuse going on on its premises by its employees.

That is an example of the BBC counter attack….using its own programmes to launch a bitter attack on a paper it disdains anyway.  The Daily Mail is the bete noire of BBC presenters who all pretend not to read it but undoubtedly do so avidly underneath copies of the Guardian.  That photograph did not appear from nowhere….the BBC had to dig around to find that…..and clearly did so with a purpose…..and that is to try and paint others in such a bad light that the BBC comes off better….nowt but BBC black propaganda at work.

However under the slightest scrutiny Balding’s story comes flying apart and it can be seen to be a mess of half truths and deliberate smears that sounded good on the night but turn out to be pretentious, pious, posturing rubbish….however mud sticks and the BBC knows that and are quite happy to have put the boot into the Mail whether the attack was merited or not.

To round off this sad little episode of HIGNFY Merton dragged in Thatcher….Savile spent a Christmas at Chequers with her….or ‘always spent Christmas at Chequers’  as Merton put it.  Apparently that might be the answer as to why Savile got away with it for so long.  If you were thinking maybe it was the BBC hiding anything sordid that might damage its reputation you’d be barking entirely up the wrong tree!

So then,  that’s it, the answer…..Thatcher is to blame for Savile’s long career of  abusing young girls and getting away with it.  

So that’s three boxes ticked….Defend the BBC, blame Thatcher for the ills of the world, and launch a clearly well planned assault on the Daily Mail.

Comic Gold.

Further to David’s comments on Bland…..

 Savile was said to have got away with what he did because of his reputation and celebrity status……I would suggest that the very same effect is allowing the BBC to get away with its own sordid, illicit liasons…its finger prints all over several crime scenes of political and cultural vandalism as it snuggled up with the Labour Party.

Bland’s comments on the Today programme perfectly showcase the sheer arrogance of the BBC mindest….the self righteous belief in their own goodness, their sense of entitlement to lecture us and yet be free from any need for transparency or accountability themselves because….

….as Bland told us….‘Given the BBC’s reputation we should take it on trust that it would never do anything wrong.’

He maintains that BBC editors and producers are completely independent of management and do not take direction from them as to what programmes to produce and whether to broadcast them or not.

Now that is obviously no where near the truth…..no organisation can work like that.  We know for certain that the BBC operates an internal consensus driven narrative on certain subjects…Climate, Israel, immigration, Toryism, Europe to name a few…with guidelines being passed along the chain to mould how programmes are made, what programmes are made and what the agreed line is intended to produce in the way of affect on the audience and its perceptions and thoughts.

The programme makers are not independent…and nor is the BBC…..their coverage of abuse in places such as Rochdale, before the truth finally came out, followed the official Establishment line of  ‘nothing to see here….and if there is then the girls are just trash and not to be believed.’

The BBC essentially colluded in covering up a shocking series of crimes for years.

This line is still coming out in places…Nicky Campbell when discussing Savile asked if it could still happen now….and his answer was of course it could…look at Rochdale….why did it happen there?…because, he says, the girls weren’t believed.

Really?   That’s not true is it.  The reason nothing was done was because of sensitivity about race and a certain religious minority….the police knew it was true…they just didn’t act because they were afraid of charges of racism….a legacy that can be laid at the feet of the likes of the BBC who have driven that particular line of thought…that any talk of immigration or race is ‘racist’.

Jimmy Savile seems to have got away with it because those who knew kept quiet, the gangs in Rochdale got away with it because those who knew kept quiet, Labour were allowed to impose mass immigration upon a crowded nation that didn’t want it and didn’t get asked because the BBC kept quiet.

The BBC has failed and failed again, and again, to do what is really its primary purpose…to inform and educate the Nation….it has hidden not only its politically favoured friend’s dirty secrets, but it has hidden its own using its world class reputation for trustworthiness, honesty and accountability to fool us all.

An organisation that lectured us on gender issues and even has its own ‘Woman’s Hour’, was found to be operating an ‘ageist’ and sexist policy for older female presenters. 

It has berated bankers, businessmen and politicians for tax avoidnace and yet has been found to be operating its own little scheme on an industrial scale….never mind paying banker style salaries to some of its stars.

This is a BBC that would be horrified if the Army were to have a regiment just for British Black soldiers….and yet the BBC has its very own ghetto radio…the Asian Network….staffed by Asians.  Are Asians British or what?  If British, why do they need an ‘Asian Network’?  Does a brown skin mean they can’t like fish and chips, Eastenders and Dr Who? 

Mark Thompson admitted the BBC had been left wing once and had failed to report on Europe and immigration in a balanced way.  And yet even now we get the same old stuff coming out of the BBC.  Thompson’s legacy is a BBC that if anything has become even more polarised, anti-Tory, pro-Climate Change, anti-Republican, anti-war, pro-Muslim, pro-Europe and pro-immigration.

Its historic failures with Savile continue and the results are the same…..the failure to ‘hold Power to account’  has allowed The Power, in one shape or another, to corrupt and damage our society, culture and democracy.

The BBC has allowed one political party to do enormous damage to the economy and the makeup of society.  The BBC’s betrayal of its duty, the faith and trust placed in it,  has served to undermine nearly every aspect of this country’s being, from its economy, its welfare system, its political and cultural values, and even its very ethnic makeup….the ‘whites’ being too hideously white and British to be allowed to ‘dominate’ in their own land….so much so that Labour were allowed to import literally millions of foreigners to break the ‘dominance’ of the natives…as well as to serve a calculated political purpose….the new arrivals would, Labour believed, vote Labour, vote for ‘Europe’ and never vote Tory. 

The BBC has in effect collaborated in a quiet coup  that has attempted to gerrymander the voting system and deliver up an almost one party state…that one party being Labour….as well as a peverse sort of ethnic cleansing to dilute the whiteness and Britishness of Britain.

It still works to that end…even now Labour surge ahead with around 10% more support…..Labour’s past has been pretty much erased from BBC history…..the most likely BBC culprit for the credit crunch, if not the Banks, is Mrs Thatcher. 

The BBC cannot be trusted.  It cannot be trusted to hold itself to account and it certainly cannot be trusted to reform itself.

The BBC Trust can no longer be the body that is the ultimate arbiter in disputes….it cannot be both BBC cheerleader and chief critic.   Only a completely independent, politically and intellectually diverse body, can hold the BBC truly to account and make it answer for its actions.

It maybe that this body infact needs to be weighted towards the ‘Right’ to balance what is the very difficult problem to solve of Left wing bias within the BC given where it recruits from, the sort of people likely to be attracted to journalism and the dominant culture within the BBC that ensures anyone who goes against the internal cultural ‘stream’ sinks….slow promotion, rubbish jobs and a career reporting from places like Bogota.

Whatever the solution is it is one that needs to be found…and soon….as well as a pair of balls for the politicians who have so far run scared of tackling the all too powerful BBC.

Right folks, here is  new OPEN THREAD for you to take us into the wide blue yonder of the weekend. Also to let you know that I will be appearing on BBC Sunday Morning Live tomorrow morning discussing whether Prisons are too tough/not tough enough.

The BBC stands indicted concerning precisely who knew what and why some did NOTHING during the decades of alleged sex abuse carried out by BBC star and national treasure Jimmy Savile. I don’t know about you but I think this response is utterly inadequate…

“The BBC is to launch two inquiries surrounding sex abuse claims made against Sir Jimmy Savile, director general George Entwistle has announced. The first into why a BBC Newsnight investigation into Savile was shelved last year will start straight away. The other into whether culture and practice at the BBC at the time enabled Savile to carry out the sexual abuse of children will wait for police go-ahead.”

BBC investigating the BBC? No. Not good enough. We need a Judicial led independent enquiry that can challenge evert detail of this horrendous case. There was an interview on Today this morning at 8.29am with Sir Christopher Bland, the former Chairman of BBC Board of Governors. If ever there was a man well named, it is he. His arrogance and scorn for those “conspiracists” – as he calls those who challenge just what went on at the BBC and who knew about it – shone through! Think Justin Webb actually did a good job on him.

Stephanie Flanders, has notoriously has slept with both Ed Milliband and Ed Balls. She is “nauseated” by Conservatives. So she is ideal as the Economics Editor of the BBC then.

“In his speech Cameron talks about the NHS but can they tell us how many of the Cabinet have private health insurance?!”

So Stephanie … do you?

We know you send your two children to public schools so it’s not as though being a hypocrite is out of character….

EDIT: It appears that Flanders has stealth edited her post to shift the comment on to an unverifiable “viewer contribution” hence two screenshots of the same post showing different text. Nice. And can’t be checked of course.

At least on Biased-BBC we document our edits.

A new one of these for you!

BBC DJ Liz Kershaw was on Nicky Campbell’s show this morning giving a good account of herself regarding the BBC culture in the 1980’s….a time when PC and health and safety were rapidly becoming  a fixture in the workplace….so even if you were inclined to say ‘Well it was the times’, that’s just not true…it was not the 50’s when a woman knew her place nor the swinging 60’s era of free love and letting it all hang out.

Her story about being regularly groped and then her complaints ignored is now well known….but she revealed something else….that she had some concerns about something else, unspecified and unrelated to her other complaint, that she went to management to deal with…and was told that if she spoke openly about it she would ‘never work in the BBC again.‘

The BBC has a draconian non-disclosure agreement that prevents employees talking about the BBC and this was applied with vigour to Kershaw to shut her up.

So there are two questions here….one….what was the thing that Liz Kershaw felt so strongly about that she raised it with management….and two…..why did the BBC then close down all talk about it?

It does seem that far from being transparent and accountable the BBC works desperately hard to maintain its reputation by hiding its dirty secrets with legal injunctions, in the case of the Balen Report or threats, what Kershaw called ‘intimidation and fear’, to silence employees.

The more we see of the BBC the less we see of it.  What are the great ‘unknown unknowns’ that the BBC is hiding?

Bodo in the comments has highlighted this article in the guardian reporting that the BBC is to instigate a new investigation into its isupposed mpartiality.

The report will look into the BBC’s coverage of Europe, immigration and religion.

Now it may just me being cynical but this is just one in a long line of such reports which seem to be purely designed to cover up more than they reveal.

In 2006 the BBC commissioned Loughborough University to carry out a report into its coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict…its conclusion…the BBC was biased…against the Palestinians.

THE BBC’S coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict implicitly favours the Israeli side, a study for the BBC Governors has concluded.

Deaths of Israelis received greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities, while Israelis received more airtime on news and current affairs programmes. The references to “identifiable shortcomings” surprised BBC News executives, who are more used to accusations that their coverage is routinely anti-Israel.

The BBC Governors felt there was no bias at all:
The Governors received the panel’s report at their Board meeting last week and welcomed its finding of no deliberate or systematic bias.

Apparently the BBC does not have any bias towards Europe either……

We are pleased that the Panel found no evidence of deliberate bias in the BBC’s coverage of EU matters.

“That said, we note the Panel’s conclusion that “there is a widespread perception that the BBC suffers from certain forms of cultural and unintentional bias” and that “the BBC’s coverage of EU news needs to be improved and to be made more demonstrably impartial”.

The BBC’s 2007 report, From Seesaw To Wagonwheel  into impartiality failed to tackle the Israel/Palestine conflict….one of the major, if not the major, area of contention about BBC coverage and bias.

The BBC then employed Scientist Steve Jones to review its coverage of science….Jones was hardly independent, his career having been saved by the BBC which essentially has him on a short leash. It is no wonder that the pro-AGW Jones found no signs of bias in the BBC’s coverage and in fact argued for bias in favour of climate change and global warming.

The BBC employed another of its own to investigate its coverage of Israel/Palestine…Malcolm Balen….who declared even before the investigation began that he believed that the BBC was not biased but that it did make mistakes…..which seems to be the kneejerk get out clause for all bias….it’s not deliberate or systematic just cultural, unintentional and a result of group think.

The Balen Report has famously been hidden from all eyes…you can only conclude that it must reveal something so damaging to the BBC’s reputation that it can never see the light of day…..what could that be?  Something that shows the BBC’s coverage has consistently been anti-Israeli and may have led to the death of Jews and the legitimisation of attacks on Israel?

There does seem to be a pattern here……evidence of bias but a declaration that no bias exists….or as with the Seesaw to Wagonwheels and the Balen Report, a complete refusal to acknowledge concerns about the BBC’s Middle East coverage.

The new report can only be more of the same…regardless of the content of the report you can only conclude that it will be kicked into the long grass and quietly forgotten should its findings turn out to be uncomfortable.

David Liddiment, the lead BBC trustee for the review, said the BBC’s reputation and commitment to impartiality was in its DNA.

A report into Europe, immigration and religion…what’s missing yet again?  Israel.

Presumably ‘DNA’ stands for ‘Do Not Answer’ any questions about our coverage of Israel.

This programme is one that should see the new DG in the dock at OFFCOM if any BBC programme would.

Evan Davis has ensured that the BBC has taken sides in one of the biggest political and economic arguments of the times. The BBC has become openly political and partisan.

A programme that was dreamt up as a clever ‘Trojan horse’ to ‘nudge’ us into accepting a certain economic viewpoint was allowed to go too far and become what amounts to a blatantly obvious piece of propaganda for the Labour Party’s spending, or is that ‘investing’, plans.

It should, I would assume, have been a subtle bit of agitprop that told a story, made its point but not say that point aloud, it should have ‘led’ the viewer to reach the desired conclusion himself…but the BBC being the BBC it doesn’t trust the British public to make the right decision so it spells it out for them…spend money now!

Evan Davis is investigating the condition of Britain’s Infrastructure…he finds it is in a dire state, of course….and in need of great deal of money to be invested in it.

This will not only help provide jobs and economic growth now…but future proof us when the population reaches 70 million….he tells us.

No mention of the immigration that Labour imposed upon us that makes 70 million a likely figure….and upon which we can heap much of the blame for the hugely expensive upgrades in infrastructure needed now….the estimate in the programme is, purely for energy, telecoms, water and transport improvements, that it will cost £500 billion by 2020….and that excludes other projects needed such as schools, housing and hospitals to cope with the flood of new people.

So not only has Evan’s Labour Party spent ruinously when in government and landed us with a huge bill hanging over us now but it has left us a legacy that is going to bankrupt us or turn us into a third world economic basketcase as the economy cannot pay for all the necessary infrastructure to cope with the influx of immigrants.

But don’t worry says Evan….the cost is a mere nothing in the scale of things…and even if you object to new construction, don’t worry…because once it’s built you’ll love it, you’ll be content!

Here is a taste of Evan’s thinking and the conclusions he proposes….it is essentially a Labour Party political broadcast giving unqualified backing to Labour’s own policies.

As I said, if he’d been clever he’d have left it at telling us of the crumbling infrastructure and the future problems that will arise from that and then allowed us to start thinking ‘maybe something should be done’…but he kept going and decided to lecture us in what is as he says an area in which there is a great argument.

He has ensured that the BBC has taken sides in one of the biggest political and economic arguments of the times. The BBC has become openly political and partisan.　

Evan Davis speaks:

‘Britain faces an almighty challenge…key parts of our infrastructure are wearing out and all over Britain it is the same story. Much of our civil engineering that’s holding our country together is not up to the job.

Britain needs some serious work.

It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap.

But if we’re ambitious for our future there’s no better time to get on with the job of building it than right now!

Should we be doing a lot more of this work (building infrastructure)…I know I’m biased…because I like it….but isn’t there a case for investing far more in infrastructure to get Britain ready for the future?

Forth Road Bridge….although it cost 1.5 billion it is a useful fillip to the local economy at a difficult time.

Infrastructure is one of the most effective ways of creating jobs.

Many believe there’s a lesson for Britain today and we should be digging our way out of a slump.

There’s a big argument over that.

But it makes an awful lot of sense when the economy is in the doldrums.

How much would it cost?

To keep the water, energy, telecoms and transport systems alone up to scratch and keeping pace with the growing population will cost £500 billion by 2020.

Don’t we have to spend more to give our economy space to respond to change?’

Davis occassionally tries to keep to the script…ie this is a programme that is trying to suggest we build infrastructure for ‘the Future’…but keeps letting his true reasons slip out….it is all about spending for ‘growth’….or alleged growth…and no idea where the money comes from to  start with.

A more partisan programme, openly supporting a Labour policy, would be hard to find.

If the Tories don’t start acting on programmes like this and stop the BBC from airing them they deserve everything they get…which is probably a big fat zero vote in 2015.