Note: updates below. (I also added a few more comments to the P.S.) Throw them into a room and hope it works: I’ve just been watching one of the most superficial-ever episodes of Newsnight. A whole load of “experts” — although Paxman admitted to one transport “expert”, a completely obscure local Labour figure, that they had asked 48 other people before alighting on him — were collected together in a … Continue reading →

: when being right sounds like being wrong. It was DFH who first drew attention to Kim Howells’ comments on the Hezbullah initiated war in Southern Lebanon. Howells framed his comments thus: “Look, a nation has got a right to defend itself against this kind of action…” And he meant Israel. The BBC then headlined: “Minister Condemns Israeli Action” Now it would seem that they are at it again: that … Continue reading →

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. 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 … Continue reading →

: so easy. I admit I rarely post something about BBC bias in UK politics, and I regret that personally. I’m usually too despairing to do so [or busy- ed.]. However I listened to Andrew Marr interview Gordon Brown today, and it was laughable how Marr merely accepted Brown’s repeated assertion that he would back Blair “in the decision he made” (yes, this was a disembodied claim, sans context), but … Continue reading →

at the Beeb continues with this piece naysaying any Saddam-Osama link in a politically suspect report by a committee of the US Senate. As Andrew McCarthy in The Corner helpfully notes, that’s exactly what the Clinton administration thought. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

. Stephen Pollard thinks the BBC might have memory issues Could be right. The main BBC online story tonight is the same as it was in 2004, coincidentally in the run up to another US election. Something about Saddam and Al Qaeda- yawn- not. Why bother with news when you can recycle? It’s so much more eco-friendly. Still, maybe it’s to avoid headlining something about this. It’s what the Americans … Continue reading →

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts. Oh, and I BTW recommend … Continue reading →

It occurred to me, as it usually does reading coverage following Bush speeches, that the BBC had missed the point about Bush’s speech containing his statement on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al when they headlined it “Bush admits to secret prisons”. They were not alone in their absurd focus- which is really a kind of ‘told you so’ journalism, the ‘told you so’ involving restating the unnecessary- and, of course, … Continue reading →

Blame it on the USA. Don’t blame it on the muslims. Gearing up for the 9/11 anniversary, I suppose. This is no invitation to vent, though constructive rants are always welcome. The vast majority of commenters I trust to observe this; those in doubt should read the sidebar guidance. I think that the greatest disservice a journalist can do is to depart from the relevant facts. Coincidentally I just got … Continue reading →

UK media, including the BBC, seem to have moved on from the ambulance attack story. Not so in Australia, where foreign minister Alexander Downer’s description of the story as ‘a hoax‘, citing the evidence also linked to by Biased BBC, has kept it very much alive. Oz blogger Tim Blair rounds up the contradictions in the various descriptions of the ‘attack’. And a story in Australian newspaper The Age, titled … Continue reading →