A short excerpt to whet your appetite: Later in the programme (8.31) there was an item about why John Kerry’s presidential campaign has gone pear-shaped. The assumption here was that, since no sentient individual could possibly support President Bush, and since therefore it was inconceivable that Kerry would not win the election, there had to be some extraordinary reason why Kerry was mysteriously doing so badly. The fact that he … Continue reading
– or so it seems. On 25AUG04 (the week before the last bank holiday), News Online published a story with the needlessly emotive headline Refugee ‘robbed’ of Oxford place. The story is about a Kosovan refugee, Vildane Berani. She came to the UK five or six years ago with her parents, went to school here and managed to gain an impressive six grade A results at A level. Not surprisingly, … Continue reading
is unfolding at another media outlet (as this blog has noted here and here), the once respected CBS News. Andrew Sullivan explains how the curtain of ‘big media’ has been yanked by the many Totos of the blogosphere. I have a feeling that the biggest news of last week had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the media. We are in the middle of an insurgency … Continue reading
is a typically incisive posting by Laban Tall, concerning a namby-pamby Radio 4 Today programme report on (failures in) youth justice. Well worth a read, especially for the ‘happy’ ending. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
– Martin Stanford was interviewing today’s guest, dear Polly Toynbee. Referring to Polly’s switch from print journalism to the seven years she spent reporting ‘social affairs’ for the BBC and her subsequent return to print journalism at The Guardian, Polly said that she enjoyed the extra space afforded in the newspaper and the freedom to express opinions therein. Polly then added: “And of course, on television, we never express opinions.” … Continue reading
On Friday Ed Thomas observed in this post that the BBC had reported Dan Rather’s very much disputed allegations as undisputed fact. In one of the comments to that post Laban Tall says: Stealth edits have arrived as of Monday morning. Save your old copies before viewing again. Half way down we have “Some experts have questioned the authenticity of the latest documents, released after they were obtained by CBS … Continue reading
, entitled The School Siege – Survivors’ Stories, was a film about the tragic events at Beslan in the week before last, with contributions from survivors and participants. I recorded the programme to observe the BBC’s language – particularly their apparent trouble in recognising that those who murder and terrorise unarmed civilians in the name of politics/religion/ideology are terrorists rather than merely militants. The following are chronological excerpts: 00’00” Presenter: … Continue reading
– a BBC continuity announcer (in the London area) this evening, announced that tonight’s Panorama will be about the Beslan atrocity, and that it will, get this, “look at what the terrorists did and why they did it”. I hope that this terminological rectitude reflects a change of BBC policy rather than an inadvertant blip, although I expect that even once the broadcast wing of the BBC finally ‘gets it’ … Continue reading
? Kevin Myers has written a sterling article on the BBC’s coverage of Northern Ireland. Some might say that the BBC’s coverage of terrorism in that country is the prototype for their muddled and misguided coverage of terrorism worldwide. Myers has some harsh logic for those who see BBC bias as insignificant, who preach that it’s not worth getting uppity over Aunty and her wee antics: ‘We really shouldn’t be … Continue reading
Why was our national broadcaster so keen to get taken in by a likely fraud (likely to be exposed as such despite the protestations of a Rather biased fellow)? When and how will they begin to retract their unambiguous presentation of the story as hard news? Why did they imply at the beginning of their smearticle that the documents came from the Whitehouse (‘The documents released by the White House … Continue reading
