Well, didn’t the BBC do a good job of selecting a representative audience of normal citizens to ask questions of Blair, Howard and Kennedy?

Well, didn’t the BBC do a good job of selecting a representative audience of normal citizens to ask questions of Blair, Howard and Kennedy? And there I was thinking that the audience would be full of the BBC’s usual partisan, grimly self-righteous, ranting loons, shaking with rage and shouting out abuse. How wrong could I have been? And didn’t that man with the funny-coloured (NHS?) teeth who was in charge … Continue reading

Hard-liners

Slugger O’Toole notes that the BBC World Service describe the Ulster Unionists as ‘loyalist’ and the Democratic Unionists as ‘hardline loyalist’. The SDLP are ‘moderate nationalist’. Then there’s ‘republican Sinn Fein’. Good to see that the BBC know who the real hardliners are. A year ago the Today programme was describing the ‘gulf between republicans and unionist hard-liners’. By republicans they meant, of course, Sinn Fein/IRA. Click through to read … Continue reading

The BBC advises the electorate.

I am rebuilding from memory an email I accidentally deleted. It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember the author’s name as he did not want it used. He pointed out this entry from the ‘Election Monitor’, the BBC’s campaign weblog: PM Tips By Mark Mardell Chief Political Correspondent POSTED: Thursday 21 April, 1610BST A tip from a colleague for getting rid of Labour canvassers. Just tell them: “I will give … Continue reading

Admin notes.

I’m afraid I might not have time to post for the rest of the week. So any emails you send me pointing out examples of BBC bias might be even slower than usual to appear. I have a bleg. I would like to be able to do screenshots on this blog. I know how to do a screenshot on Windows XP: press CTRL + PRT SCR or ALT + PRT … Continue reading

The EU Serf writes:

The EU Serf writes: An important way to understand what someone thinks is the way in which they use certain words. The BBC’s insistence on words like Militant is the best known example. Yesterday evening on the BBC World News bulletin at 18:00 GMT I came across another misuse of phrase which surprised me even for the BBC. Yesterday Bulgaria and Romania signed EU accession treaties. The story was about … Continue reading

Ghana is growing.

Alex Singleton sent me this link from his Globalisation Institute Blog. In this BBC article by Peter Day, Day says that the Ghanaian economy has shrunk for much of the last twenty years. No it hasn’t. This case study on Ghana by Andrew McKay and Ernest Aryeetey takes a long time to load but has a great deal of info. What I noticed most about the graph Alex cited, the … Continue reading

Selling your birthright for a mess of pottage.

This is about Dr Who. Be warned: spoilers coming up. Reader Mark comments: Surprised the biased BBC blog hasn`t made a post about the two part Doctor who programme, the second part of which was shown last night. Basically the story turned out that a family of aliens (high up and powerful in government) wanted to start a war for profit despite not having a UN resolution, one of their … Continue reading

And still they claim to be unbiased!

If anyone doubted the BBC’s bias before they’ll surely be having second thoughts today: The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. I do think that the Conservative response is far too mild. If I were Michael Howard I’d announce that no Tory would … Continue reading