“Radio silence was imposed.”

Nick Cohen writing in the New Statesman reports that the BBC editors would not publish stories about the takeover of the leadership of the anti-war movement by the Socialist Workers Party, nor about the at first sight rather suprising alliance between the SWP and the Muslim Association of Britain. Two interesting points: – the story was leaked to Nick Cohen by disgruntled BBC reporters. – Harry’s Place, a left-wing pro-Iraq-liberation … Continue reading

Enduring the BBC.

Hugh Hewitt, LA-based blogger, professor of law and former NPR broadcaster, has just ‘endured’ two weeks of the Beeb. I am just returned from two weeks in Europe, which meant having to watch CNN International, with its wall-to-wall anti-Bush anchoring, reading the International Herald Tribune –a New York Times lite– and of course enduring the BBC. I don’t know if the world hates us, but American and British media reporting … Continue reading

Good start.

Normblog points to an article in Ha’aretz about Malcolm Balen, the man the BBC has appointed to oversee its coverage of Israel. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

How many incubators does it take to win a war?

I don’t have any special knowledge of medical matters myself, but would like to pass on these comments from a reader writes: I am an medical equipment engineer and installer, my wife is a mid-wife, so we both for different reasons take a keen interest in medical stories, ESPECIALLY at teatime, when we eat and watch the evening news. So tonight 28/5 we were both intestested in in a news … Continue reading

For various reasons over

the last couple of weeks I have had much less time for the internet and blogging. Belatedly, from Jim Miller, here is an example of BBC bias from a couple of weeks back. I missed it then, but the issue is still current. I think the B-BBC posters have between them the full range of possible opinions about gay marriage (my own view is the standard libertarian one, and Jim … Continue reading

The BBC and the ‘so-called war on terror’.

Frank Gardner, so-called ‘BBC security correspondent’ provides an ‘analysis‘ asking Is US winning its war on terror? [emphasis added] Much has happened in the past 12 months. Some of al-Qaeda’s leading lights have been caught and interrogated. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Baghdad. Numerous plots and attacks have been thwarted. And yet, depressingly, the so-called war on terror is still with us. [emphasis added] If we were … Continue reading

Confessions of a racist

Yes, it’s time to own up. I have just been watching the BBC’s Reporting Scotland programme. Tonight they were covering the “fringe” parties contesting the elections for the European Parliament. I almost fell off my chair when I heard this about the British National Party: “The BNP is no stranger to controversy or protest. It maintains that it isn’t racist, though it’s opposed to immigration, the Euro and the European … Continue reading

About That Wedding…

(Further to Kerry’s post) Caroline Hawley has one of her fact-lite, mood-heavy pieces in which she reasserts the likelihood of US foul play (but it’s buried at BBC In Depth, and no mention of kiddies because that piece of propaganda has been, er, exploded). This after Gen Kimmitt releases even more convincing evidence that the target was correctly identified and successfully destroyed. Kimmitt says “The more that we look at … Continue reading

Wedding party or war party? The Beeb knows.

The Belmont Club has some help for the Beeb and other media outlets. It is hard to determine if some reportage is deliberate bias or lack of careful analysis or human laziness. Although the news media functions as the civilian intelligence system, collecting raw data, processing it and distributing it to the public, for historical reasons it lacks many of the features which professional intelligence systems have evolved over the … Continue reading

BBBC reader, Andrew, fisks BBC coverage of all things Green

Via email: BBBC reader, Andrew, fisks BBC coverage of all things Green. Monday (17MAY04) evening’s BBC Ten O’Clock News covered the launch of the Green Party’s European election campaign. The presenter, Huw Edwards, mentions the Green Party’s ‘alternative’ policies on the environment, transport and energy, and states that “Greens said people would also be drawn by their opposition to the war in Iraq”. We then cut to a filmed item … Continue reading