, the ever miserable Caroline Haw-Hawley managed to get out of the BBC’s private enclave in central Baghdad to report from Halabja, largely bemoaning: “but it’s not for this that Saddam’s going on trial, at least not yet, relatives of the five thousand Kurds massacred in Halabja in March 1988 will have to wait for their day in court, the first legal proceedings against Saddam are for separate killings in … Continue reading →

, the presenters announced “and we’ve got a new phone number, 020 8535 1000…” – what they didn’t mention was that their old phone number was one of the many 0870 disguised premium rate rip-off numbers (where the caller pays the recipient at high rates, often paying to be held in a queue!) that have proliferated across the BBC, government departments and second-rate call centre operations across rip-off Britain over … Continue reading →

, Alan Connor of News Online (a sometime follower of Biased BBC), has written an interesting article about the relevance or otherwise of David Cameron’s privileged education and the ever-shifting public perceptions of class, private education and Old Etonians. The following comment from the (Don’t) Have Your Say selection below Alan’s article caught my eye: Old Etonians ruin the fabric of society. Oxford is infested with them like an old … Continue reading →

So says this BBC story by Alfred Hermida. It continues: It is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of the world wide web, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think. It has even lost the support of the European Union. Like David Davis has even lost the support of Gordon Brown. It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the internet heads … Continue reading →

– a BBC report about Nalchik (the centre of terrorist violence recently) which accomplishes their wish not to include even a mention of Islam. I commented on the general trend here at my own site earlier on. In this report they are militants they are rebels they are rebels affiliated with Chechens; but for all we know from this report, they are not Islamists- nor are they terrorists. Now, I’m … Continue reading →

Hat tip: JBLM and others. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

A reader writes: The report out today from the Crime and Society Foundation – which points out that most murders in Britain are of relatively poor young men – is reported on the BBC website (link here) as follows: Increasing murder rates over the past 25 years were triggered by a recession in the early 1980s, a report says. Pointing the finger of blame unambiguously at the Tories. The tenor … Continue reading →

: there’s only one thing missing from this BBC journalist’s view of the airborne relief effort in Pakistan- a mention of the US ‘copter contingent. The Pakistan military’s effort gains all the mentions, though numerically the US is a close second (as a matter of fact). The pictorial display is slightly better (giving the US a mention on page 2), though I do wonder how many helicpopters the French have … Continue reading →

Having misrepresented US aid commitments to Pakistan (as noted previously), the Beeb found it convenient to do so again. This report says that the aid effort has been ‘stepped up’, immediately following this with the statement that ‘In Balakot, close to the epicentre in Pakistan, US helicopters have been used for the first time to ferry supplies.’ This is a report dated today- I’m pretty confident it wasn’t around yesterday. … Continue reading →

“The second obstacle is that it is hard to know exactly what a world without the BBC would look like. The ramifications on media, cultural, political and social life would be so profound that it is very difficult to predict what they might be. It is not too dissimilar, for example, from envisaging a country without a national electricity grid.” – from Measuring the Value of the BBC: A report … Continue reading →