(from Blithering Bunny) Some praise for the Beeb for a change. The show Dragon’s Den is one of the best TV shows in years. If you haven’t seen it, people who have ideas for businesses get 5-10 minutes to pitch their idea to five very rich business people, to try to convince them to invest in their ideas, which range from new inventions to disposable carboard furniture to couches that … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) Last night Newsnight interviewed José Manuel Barroso. I was out and missed it – but it can be seen on the BBC2 Newsnight website. (The streaming video worked fine on my 1Mbit connection – a bit jerky and fuzzy, but really, this spells the end of conventional TV). The first segment, presented by reporter Paul Mason, was actually not too bad. It was very shallow, of course, … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) BBC News 24 covered Kilroy’s launch of his new party Veritas today (which blogger Jonathan Lockhart seems to be involved in). Some people have suggested previously that the BBC would give Kilroy a lot of publicity in order to split the hard right/anti-EU vote (and also so that Kilroy would make himself look foolish with his extreme comments). But it may have backfired. Kilroy raised a lot … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) Earlier tonight there was a new Aussie sketch show on Paramount called “Skithouse”. One sketch featured a man who was interested in buying a car from another man. The buyer’s method was to fire questions at the seller about his life until he slipped up – without thinking, he revealed that the car was a lemon that was costing him a fortune to keep on the road. … Continue reading →

. Nicholas Vance rightly points out the BBC’s awful double standards in its presentation of, for want of a better word, TERRORISM. This contrast in particular is striking: ‘I’ve finally determined how the BBC defines the word “terrorist.” A “terrorist” is someone who kills a Briton, whether civilian or military. … Watching John Simpson on Sunday’s Panorama attempt to clarify Iraqi government claims about civilian deaths caused by “terrorists” by … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) The Campaign for a Euroskeptic TV Series It’s time Euroskeptics united to demand that the BBC provide them with a series – or at least a one-hour show – where they can put forward their view with sufficient time. And I don’t mean on BBC News 24, I mean on BBC1 or at least BBC2. It can’t be denied that this is a hugely important issue, and … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) This excellent leader column from The Telegraph sums it all up really: Compare yesterday’s reports with those by the same commentators during South Africa’s first democratic election. Then, too, there were many technical problems: electors who were not properly registered, voter intimidation, long queues. But these things were set in their proper context, as the backdrop against which the moving drama of people casting their first ballots … Continue reading →

(from Blithering Bunny) Another example of the subtle bias at BBC News 24. In a report on the Balfour Beatty/Railtrack trial, the reporter made sure to get this comment from the prosecutors into the report: Mr Lissack also told the court the crash was a “catastrophe” which marked the beginning of the end of wholly privatised railways in Britain. This wasn’t particularly germane to the charge, but because it came … Continue reading →

Others have posted about use and abuse of casualty statistics on last night’s Panorama programme. It is odd that the BBC should reportedly promise not to broadcast what they then nevertheless did. The body of the programme was in keeping: emphatically-presented bad news for the coalition, about all the many obstacles to the coalition’s finding an exit strategy ‘to let them withdraw from Iraq in reasonably good order with at … Continue reading →

Further to the posts below about the BBC’s erroneous reporting, they have at last quietly published an item, BBC apologises over Iraqi figures, on their hidden away Newswatch and Notes and Corrections pages (I don’t know why they have two slightly different ‘error correction’ pages). They have also replaced the link on the Panorama pages to Iraq data ‘includes rebel deaths’ with the even more anodyne Iraq Health Ministry Figures. … Continue reading →