This morning’s Radio Four news headlines tell us that David Mills, husband of Labour Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, will learn soon whether he will face trial on corruption charges. “Miss Jowell, who is separated from Mr Mills ….” Well, yes. Since Saturday. Obviously no time for that little detail. The Today programme page adequately describes the first item after the news at seven. “Hear the latest news from Washington where … Continue reading →

…doesn’t mean the Beeb has to agree. This “story” is bogus. President Bush, after all, was not slow to declare a state of emergency along the Gulf Coast. Mayor Nagin’s reaction to this “news” is laughable and hypocritical but the Beeb is happy to serve us New Orleans sludge. Update: DFH, one of our B-BBC commenterati has two very helpful posts here and here. Auntie can’t get away with what … Continue reading →

Both Expat Yank (hat tip: David H in comments) and Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day spotted something odd about the reporting of a recent BBC poll on Iraq. Hello? Three-quarters of the tyrant’s former subjects are thrilled that the old monster is behind bars, but the BBC buries the fact at the very end of the report on its own poll. Talk of selectivity! Talk of bias! Click through to read … Continue reading →

, I have decided to put USS Neverdock’s BBC bias reference page from January last year on the sidebar among “other links”. Lots of good stuff there, although Marc ought to note that the infamous CBBC page on the Holocaust that didn’t mention Jews has since been amended. I know, I know, ought to clean out all the other links that don’t work. Don’t like doing it, for some reason. … Continue reading →

It is said of many a failing company that it was not just the occasional faults in their products that trashed their reputation but the arrogant and evasive way they dealt with complaints. This BBC article says, twice, that terminations were made legal in the US by the 1973 court decision Roe v Wade. In other words it is factually wrong in a typical BBC way. The American Expatriate spotted … Continue reading →

They are the ones with a “nose” for a story. Hard-bitten, often hard-drinking, they are the oneswho “just happened” to be there when the war started or the government fell – or the story first broke that the world would eventually know as “The Oldham Horror”… Extremists have been blamed after a cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was put up in a housing office … Continue reading →

But yesterday’s Today programme interview with Sheik Yosif al-Nasari, who told us, unchallenged by James Naughtie, how American Special Forces had sealed off the Samarra mosque before blowing it up, doesn’t seem to be available on Thursday’s ‘Listen Again’ page. Those of you who like their anti-Americanism untainted by reality can still listen to Wednesday night’s arts review Front Row, where Syriana director Stephen Gaghan states that George Bush has … Continue reading →

A feature of the Today programme is the succession of Americans from the arts world who invited to tell us just how much they dislike George Bush. Today we were treated to this ‘Today’ interview (RealAudio) with veteran American director Robert Altman, in which he was invited to hold forth at length on American politics (‘the wrong war, wrong time, wrong leader’). (One tiny note of reality intrudes, where interviewer … Continue reading →

that got the feminists at Harvard so angry? Was it “Lawrence Summers lost the first vote in March last year after suggesting women had less “intrinsic aptitude” than men for science.”? That’s how this BBC report described what he said. Butterflies and Wheels is scathing about that over-simplification. (Via comments to this post at Crooked Timber) Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

How many times does a BBC writer laugh at a piece of satire in the Wall Street Journal? Three times. Once when he reads it, once when it is explained to him and once when he understands it. This post from the American Expatriate will make you smile. And if you want to hear the audio of the “torture in Gitmo is established fact” issue of Any Questions, it was … Continue reading →