In ten days time we will remember the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India 60 years ago, followed later by the [later] breakaway of Bangladesh. To mark this there are several programmes on radio and TV. I declare an interest – I was in army intelligence in Bombay in the days leading up to the end of the Raj – I left on the Georgic, the last ship … Continue reading
, near the end, Jeremy Paxman announced: Well, that’s all from Newsnight tonight. Before we go, a correction to our markets, the Dow Jones was actually, aw, this is bad, up this evening, not down as we reported. How do we manage to get it so wrong so frequently on the markets? Well, I don’t know Jeremy, but I could hazard a guess or three! Then: It was the 100th … Continue reading
by Nick Higham about an ITV documentary about the death of terminally-ill Malcolm Pointon. Here’s a transcript of Nick Higham’s report: An ITV press statement implied the end of the film showed the point of Malcolm’s death. Newspaper coverage reflected that, so did interviews with Malcolm’s widow. One of those interviews, on Radio 4’s Today programme, prompted this email from a listener: We then cut to a mock up of … Continue reading
of twenty-three South Koreans, with reporter Robin Denselow opening with: Close-up footage of dumped body (that wouldn’t be shown in this detail if the victim was British): “Another death in Afghanistan. The body a South Korean information technology worker who’d volunteered to join a Christian church group hoping to be involved in missionary and aid work was discovered yesterday morning. Cut to Al-Jazeera film of frightened kidnap victims: He was … Continue reading
Five years of monitoring, recording and publicising the biases, inaccuracies, omissions, foibles, stupidity, waste and arrogance of the BBC, and, just occasionally, some of the BBC’s good points too. There have been more than 2,100 blog posts from the Biased BBC team, over 83,000 comments from our readers, more than 350,000 views of our Youtube clips and nearly 2,000,000 visits to Biased BBC – not bad for a small team … Continue reading
, includes this item: When Radio 4’s The Food Programme devotes itself to wine, as happened on 22 July, it hands the presenter’s chair to genial wine hack Andrew Jefford. In his latest programme Jefford worked in a startling number of plugs for Waitrose and its wines, while making no mention of any other supermarket or wine merchant. What Jefford forgot to tell listeners is that he writes a monthly … Continue reading
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
BBC Radio 2 DJ Jeremy Vine has decided to mark the occasion of the British Army leaving Northern Ireland by playing the racist hate song “Go on home British soldiers”, which not only wallows in the slaughter of the last four decades, but also delivers up these delighful lines to all Unionists still left in Northern Ireland: “Throughout our history We were born to be free So get out British … Continue reading
a number of longer posts that are in the pipeline, you might very well enjoy the delicious Beeboid satire on offer at the Secret Blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/4) – it does for Shepherd’s Bush what The Thick of It (post the awful Chris Langham) does for Westminster – very funny, hits the mark and has an air of insider authority about it. For example: The … Continue reading
The Today programme’s love affair with the counterculture continues. Sarah Montague interviews the widow of Neal Cassady (aka “Dean Moriarty”) on the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s “On The Road“, the hippie handbook written in the Beat Age. “It must have been quite a life to be part of this amazing gang” she gushed. Carolyn Cassady seemed less starry-eyed. “Well, it was hard for Neal to see Jack drinking himself to … Continue reading
