Shedding a tear for Yasser Arafat.

This morning’s BBC Breakfast News has been noticeably sombre so far – Natasha Kaplinsky (daughter of South African political refugees and former employee of Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and John Smith, for those who don’t already know) looks as if she’s in mourning. Barbara Plett and Lyse Doucet, reporting from the West Bank, are both suitably attired in black (a privilege the BBC didn’t have the grace to afford to … Continue reading

The Scandal of Ashcroft.

How does the BBC portray him? The usual patterns quickly surface. 1) Sneer at his faith. So, being a serious Christian makes one illegitimate to govern? The whole article is shot through with this kind of anti-christian bias. Former NY Times reporter, now conservative pundit, Cliff May reports on his recent BBC interview re Ashcroft: But the TV interviewer essentially took the position that perhaps Mr. May is correct to … Continue reading

“…To make the universities do what they should.”

A reader writes: Wanted to draw your attention to another case of BBC bias on the Today Programme this morning. [Monday 8 November] In an interview with the Director of OFFA, Sir Martin Harris, the BBC presenter attacked OFFA from a left-wing point of view. No mention at all was made of the argument that favouring state school pupils might lead to a lowering of standards. The only criticism from … Continue reading

The Power of Camera Tricks

– the picture below (in a radical new departure for Biased BBC) is an unretouched screen grab of Richard Perle being interviewed in the third part of the BBC’s recent series The Power of Nightmares*. Note how Perle was filmed with a bright window behind him and little, if any, lighting in front of him – leaving one side of his face washed out and mis-shapen, the other dark and … Continue reading

Tory collusion? or just another BBC News Online smear?

On Friday morning BBC Views Online’s front page News Ticker’s headlines included: Commons speaker’s press chief quits after secretly colluding with the Conservatives This then linked to a story headlined Speaker’s aide quits in Tory row. Both of these headlines suggest some Conservative, sorry Beeboids, Tory skulduggery or wrongdoing. The real story – in fact, there are three real stories – is that, according to the BBC’s own report (once … Continue reading

Grinning and bearing it

: with the partial (in both senses of that word) exception of Matt Frei (the BBC’s Washington corespondent, already often featured on this blog), and within the usual limitations of their analysis, the BBC 10’o’clock news handled Bush’s reelection more calmly than his doings in Iraq. I think this is because elections are a part of the world that the BBC accepts; somehow the concept of impartiality in reporting an … Continue reading

It’s a wrap!

Stephen Pollard was on a roll as he reviewed parts of BBC coverage of the US elections. Some trademark Beebisms on display, from ‘no-one wanted to believe this was happening’ to ‘it was the religious nuts wot done it’ to ‘anyway, back to the ‘so-called’ war on terror’ to ‘didn’t everyone want Bush to lose anyway?’. Great stuff, if one can use that phrase about responses to blatant bias. Click … Continue reading