Ceefax is a bit of a poor relation nowadays. Even so they ought not to let this through: yesterday’s page 120, headed “Algeria’s leader wins landslide” said, Mr Bouteflika is credited with taming an Islamic insurgency which has claimed some 100,000 lives in two years. No dout the insurgents themselves claim to be the true representatives of Islam. But there is no reason for the BBC to underwrite this claim. … Continue reading →

A reader writes: As of 00:21 UTC this story is linked on the BBC’s front foreign web page: “End of an era: Debate still rages over the toppling of Saddam’s statue” To his credit, Mr. Wood includes his firsthand recollection that the crowd at the Saddam statue (which some have claimed was faked) was in the several hundreds. To his shame, he mentions that wide shot of the square as … Continue reading →

isn’t so happy. He recounts one of those little gems of newsreader wit that the BBC fondly imagines make the newsreaders more lovable. The post below about the three headed toad is also interesting. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Today I found a little scrap of paper upon which I had written these words. Shows you how often we tidy the coffee table. However, better late than never I must say the word of praise to the BBC that I wrote the note to remind myself to do. A few weeks ago I caught the end of Crufts dog show. Just as a dog made of candy floss was … Continue reading →

If you are like Lawrence, the bloke who ventures to utter a valid criticism at BBC news coverage, be warned. The drones in the ‘editing’ cubicles are just waiting to ‘balance’ it for you. They’ve got their Jack Thomases at the ready. The media give undue prominence to such actions. And because of that the militants and terrorists take the actions to exploit the media coverage. Would they be doing … Continue reading →

: Natalie Solent has already posted below about the BBC’s characterisation of one of its old-time greats, the late Alistair Cooke, as having ‘particular dislike of the shallow flag-waving of the Reagan presidency’. Let me add my testimony. For several years, from the very end of the seventies though the early eighties, my Sunday schedule let me hear Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’ week after week. Unlike the obituarist, so cocksure … Continue reading →

asks whether old B-BBC fave Michael Rosen (“the real world isn’t that simple unless you’re George Bush”) and Marie-Noelle Lamy of the Open University are playing out of their league in sneering at Pres. Bush academically. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

how the Radio 4 news starts with a summary and then goes on to cover the same stories in more detail? Well, in today’s 1 o’clock news the summary said that a fax had been sent to a newspaper by the Abu Nayaf al-Afghani group saying that Spain would suffer more terrorism if it did not withdraw its troops from Iraq. Just Iraq. I thought it sounded odd, given the … Continue reading →

And Andrew Ian Dodge has said it. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

died the other day, aged 95 and just weeks after broadcasting his final Letter from America. This page contains well-merited tributes to him and excerpts and transcripts from the longest-running speech radio programme in history. I remember listening to his distinctive, gravelly voice literally as a child at my father’s knee. I liked his voice. After a while it dawned on me that I liked and was learning from what … Continue reading →