In what appears to be a blatant bit of ratings tourism, Question Time tomorrow comes from Wootton Bassett and is set up to be completely devoted to the war in Afghanistan. The panel will consist of former head of the British Army General Sir Richard Dannatt, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, and former News of the Screws editor Piers “Moron” Morgan (as Private Eye styles him). Armed Forces Minister Bill … Continue reading
I have been away most of the day and not been able to follow much BBC coverage of Mr Darling’s last stand aka his Pre Budget Report. I did catch George Osborne’s response to it and thought he was pretty good but wanted to open the topic up to you…. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
I wonder if you noticed the BBC coverage here of the welcome news that an English Court has found a Christian couple who had been accused of “insulting” a Muslim to be innocent? Quite obviously this was another pointless prosecution by the CPS but I notice that twice in the BBC item they repeat the CPS claim that there was sufficient evidence to bring the prosecution. If only the Judge … Continue reading
So far, the BBC is totally silent on the Copenhagen Climate Challenge, an open letter to the UN signed by 141 leading international scientists who work in relevant fields. It challenges them to provide hard evidence on 10 questions relating to alleged AGW, including whether CO2 rises are causing harm, whether surface station measurements are accurate, and whether there has been a threatening rise in sea levels due to ‘climate … Continue reading
… even the presenter of your Newswatch show makes comments like this on Twitter: Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
Wonderful letter here from a genuine expert on the science of sea-level changes to the president of the Maldives saying that – despite his publicity stunt in which the cabinet met underwater – his fascist little fiefdom is not going to sink between the waves. What do the BBC do? Report the president’s demands for more money to deal with the impending (non) disaster: Mohamed Nasheed said there was so … Continue reading
This morning, the Times reported that the World Meteorological Orgainsation, using data from CRU, and with the clear purpose of influencing the discussions at Copenhagen, had claimed that this year had been the fifth warmest on record. Hours later, our dear BBC environnment correspondent Richard Black reports the same story. He mentions that there’s some controversy about the figures – and about CRU – but without a peep about the … Continue reading
The BBC’s job is to report impartially what goes on in the world. To pursue that task, it receives at least £750m of your money every year, and it has almost 5,000 staff who are directly involved in journalism. So when steel-making on Teeside, one of our oldest manufacturing industries, faces closure, with the loss of 300 years of tradition and 10,000 jobs, you would expect the corporation to be … Continue reading
The BBC Trust’s From See-saw to Wagon Wheel, p 40: The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close … Continue reading
In a recent blog post I drew attention to some anti-Sarah Palin tweets from the BBC’s Richard Bacon, and said that I thought the BBC would “follow ITN’s example and issue Twitter rules for its employees”. Bacon was asked about the BBC’s attitude to his Twitter influence on Saturday’s Adam and Joe Show. He responded: “They’re going to check what I write before I put it up there, which will … Continue reading
