A belated hat tip to PJF and The American Expatriate for pointing out an exquisite use of ellipses. Please note that the Dowdified quote originally appearing in this article has now been removed by the BBC. Still, purely out of historical interest, here is what Scott Callahan observed: Quoth Rumsfeld: You just can’t hear day after day after day after day things like that that often aren’t true, with a … Continue reading →

In the comments to this post, Angie Schultz of Machinery of Night commented on a startling phrase in this piece by Steve Schifferes on the subject of President Bush and Africa. She said: Talk about your weird sentences: And now that Mr Bush is essentially a lame-duck President, no longer facing re-election, he has even less clout with Congress… Apparently, one runs for a second term as President so as … Continue reading →

I think it’s worth saying that the BBC often misses the point- where it wants to- while appearing to be covering matters fairly. They give an article over to Blair’s (alleged) apparent discomforture at Prime Minister’s questions, which today I watched (though I can’t comment on the BBC’s tv coverage of it as I watched on another channel). They pick up Michael Howard’s rather inapt metaphor for Blair on Europe, … Continue reading →

Two emails from readers about BBC coverage of African issues follow. Karim Bakhtiar of the uncompromising new blog Nuke Labour writes: Hi Natalie, I came across the following example of BBC anti-private-sector pro-government pro-NGO bias. Channel: BBC News 24 Programme: Reporters Date: 12th June 2005 Time: 10:40 UK time “Nomsa is HIV positive. Last year, feeling sick, she bought ARVs [Anti-retroviral drugs] from a private doctor, who didn’t have the … Continue reading →

LYNDA: “How come you don’t watch it?” THE DOCTOR: “I didn’t pay my licence fee.” LYNDA: “Wha-? You get executed for that!” Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

“Tory nuclear waste sites revealed”, says the BBC. A list of 12 sites considered for storing nuclear waste by the last Tory government has been released under the Freedom of Information Act I’m not one to say the Beeb must always accede to Conservative Central Office’s preference for the official name of their party, but count the number of times the word “Tory” occurs in this piece. Mention is made … Continue reading →

I have to respectfully disagree with my colleague Kerry Buttram over his last post. The BBC does some very good work on Zimbabwe, that does it proud. As I wrote last February on this blog Plaudits to the BBC, though, for continuing to do good work on Zimbabwe. Another investigation is on News 24 at the moment. I think some more focus on the latest developments in Zimbabwe would be … Continue reading →

Take a look at this new blog, The American Expatriate. The author, Scott Callahan, is what it says on the box. He says his primary aim “is to document and counter the misinformation about America that regularly flows forth from the British media.” Of interest to Beeb-watchers is this post about how the BBC has changed its tune about the release of John Kerry’s military records. But the one I … Continue reading →

Under Mugabe’s heel the people of Zimbabwe suffer with nary a peep from the BBC. Go to the Africa page [at time of posting] and you’ll find one tepid story. Admittedly, there are links to this [2June05], this [15Oct04], this [24June04] , this, [28Feb03] this [2July04] and this [27Nov04] on that page, but nothing ‘above the fold’. Why is this not considered a much bigger story than the extremely rare … Continue reading →

Last night on Newsnight, reader D. Burbage noticed that in a segment on the Euro (called “Shaking the Currency”), the presenter Paul Mason (subtitle: “Business correspondent”) was explaining some economics to us — which was presented as fact, not as opinion: This graph shows the contribution public spending has made to GDP. While Gordon Brown has been able to use public money to help sustain economic growth, his counterparts in … Continue reading →