Unsurging the surge. Surgemania.

“Not one call has been aired suggesting that there might, just might, be some improvement as a result of the surge. And that’s absolutely not because that’s the view that all callers to the programme have taken. I know that for a fact – because I called in to redress the balance. And have I been put on air? Of course not. It is thus an editorial decision to air … Continue reading

Re-thinking their position

Reflecting on the BBC’s current coverage of Iraq and the Petraeus report which is due today, I was led to have a nostalgic look at the much-missed LastNight’sBBCNEWS blog, which gave panoramas of Panorama and other BBC programmes during its existence. Here’s an interesting post. It reminded me of the old BBC line that the trouble with Iraq was “the Sunni insurgency… a nationalistic struggle against foreigners”. That was yesterday’s … Continue reading

It’s time to go a-comparing and a-contrasting again at Biased BBC:

Here are four recent news reports, reproduced in full. Can you spot the relevant fact omitted from one of them: First, BBC Views Online: Man in court faces terror charges A man has appeared in court accused of preparing acts of terrorism in his home town in South Yorkshire. Nicholas Roddis, of Reedham Drive, Bramley, Rotherham, appeared at London’s Old Bailey on Friday by video link from custody. The 22-year-old … Continue reading

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts. Click through to read and contribute comments on this … Continue reading

And tonight on Newsnight Review with Kirsty Nark

: academic, writer and anti-semitezionist, Tom Paulin: Paulin, who appears regularly on the panel of the BBC2 arts programme Newsnight Review (formerly Late Review), allegedly made the comment in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.The interviewer wrote that Paulin, a consistent critic of Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians, clearly abhorred “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers. Paulin, a lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, was then quoted as saying: “They should be shot … Continue reading

MediaGrauniad.co.uk reports Yentob in ‘noddy’ controversy

: The BBC has admitted that Alan Yentob, the corporation’s creative director, has performed “noddy shots” on interviews that he did not personally conduct for his arts series Imagine. In the first instance of a senior BBC executive being drawn into the TV trust issue, a senior corporation source admitted to MediaGuardian.co.uk that Mr Yentob often does not conduct all the interviews on Imagine – even though he appears nodding … Continue reading

Building tomorrow’s schools today gushed Hannah Goff

on BBC Views Online yesterday – a fawning and uncritical analysis of Labour’s school building program – a nice companion piece to last night’s BBC Ten O’Clock News that featured Gordon Brown visiting the very same school on the same day – what a happy coincidence.   Gordon Brown: “This school’s great!”, BBC: “It really is a school of the future!” Biased BBC reader Ayayay commented: The story basically says, … Continue reading

Studied ignorance.

The Beeb does Fred Thompson. Here. “The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says the former senator from Tennessee is enormously popular on the right of the party where he is seen as a new Ronald Reagan. He is known for his conservative views on issues like abortion and gun control.” Well, not really. Three things the BBC overlook. Deliberately. Firstly, the debate on the Right is specifically whether Thompson really … Continue reading

A little blog housekeeping:

I’ve set up an RSS feed for Biased BBC via Feedburner (with a redirect from our previous blogspot provided RSS feed). Those who wish to use RSS to read Biased BBC can do so by clicking on the link in our right hand panel. So far, according to Feedburner’s daily estimate, we have around ~250 daily readers that we didn’t know about before, in addition to our normal web readership, … Continue reading