A little something about ‘scare-quotes’

. Going back to what Natalie was saying about ‘scare-quotes’… I noticed Drudge and the BBC with the same story of the discovery of some of GWB’s military service payroll records. Drudge reported it it “Bush ‘destroyed’ Military records found”. The BBC reported it “Bush 1972 payroll records ‘found’”. Drudge was right, the BBC (typically) wrong- and suggestive. You see, what is called into question by the finding of these … Continue reading

A Fair Sampling of Opinion

…if you’re the Beeb. Reactions to 9/11 report Of the nine statements on the 9-11 Report, one is by George Bush. All but one of the others is in some way critical of the Bush administration or a well-known Bush critic. With the exception of George W Bush and Senator Pat Roberts, every elected official quoted in this piece is rabidly anti-Bush. How is this in any way fair since … Continue reading

Do two swallows a summer make?

Further to Natalie’s post on this subject, yesterday’s (Tuesday 20JUL04) BBC One O’Clock was the usual lightweight, right-on stuff. Stephen Sackur reported on the new session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It was mostly filler – mention of the new Spanish something or other, the translation service, new member states, 480 language combinations, Tower of Babel (not a), etc., with the report closing as follows: “But not everyone finds … Continue reading

One swallow does not a summer make.

As so often, the little instance of bias I am about to point out is so tiny and insignificant that I almost want to feed it some milk on my finger. The fun part is finding out how many brothers and sisters and cousins it has under the floorboards. In this article about UKIP MEP in row over working women we have (in the grey box): Independence and Democracy is … Continue reading

BBC “inadvertently” takes Berger at his word.

This article is either laughable in its gullibility (at taking Berger for a truthteller) or despicable (for enabling him to lie). How did former National Security Advisor (for President Clinton), Samuel Berger, “inadvertently” remove said documents from the US Senate 9-11 archives? Whether they managed to find their way into his socks, it must have been, no doubt, an accident. Here is blogger Hugh Hewitt‘s take on this: This isn’t … Continue reading

Be very afraid

when dealing with the Great Satan. Here’s how the teaser reads: Manila’s Catch 22 The Philippine choice between saving a life and angering the US The question of how this will encourage further terror is lost on the Beeb. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo was faced with an awkward choice – to save the life of a Filipino held hostage in Iraq or support the United States by keeping Philippine soldiers … Continue reading

Lies, damned lies, and the sleazy, dishonest, BBC stealth editors who cover them up.

On Thursday I saw an article on BBC News Online headlined Diplomats mind their language, timestamped Thursday, 15JUL04, 15:03BST. It’s an amusing article about diplomatic faux pas’. One thing that caught my attention was this blatant lie: Margaret Thatcher, again a woman unafraid of speaking her mind, was reported to have told Jane Byrne, mayor in 1960s Chicago, that “the Irish, they’re pigs”, before remembering her host’s family background and … Continue reading

Eating a bit of crow along with that yellowcake

.  How long will it be until the BBC corrects the record on the Iraq-Niger yellowcake story? It must be hard when the ‘Bush lied’ subtext crashes like Joseph Wilson’s house of cards. It is not surprising that Paul Reynolds, in his ‘analysis’,  fails to mention the discredited Wilson/Plame story, so gladly trumpeted by the BBC. Uranium: Here the report stands by the SIS report that Iraq had indeed sought … Continue reading