The Kilroy-Silk affair

. As you probably know, Robert Kilroy-Silk’s talk show has been taken off the air following outrage against an anti-Arab article he wrote for the Sunday Express. You can see what I think about his article in this Samizdata post here. You can see more about the case in this BBC article here including a quote from Perry de Havilland, of Samizdata and Libertarian Alliance fame. The CRE threatening the … Continue reading

Reader Mark Adams wrote to the BBC

regarding this piece about Gadaffi and WMD. This is what he said: “This biased opinion piece is just that – biased opinion. The obvious interpretation that Libya acted in response to the Iraq example rather than sanctions which have long been in place is ignored. Do publish biased opinion if you think that’s your role (I don’t) but do not present it as disinterested analysis. Your social and political biases … Continue reading

Blood on the BBC’s hands

Specialist pharmacist Anthony Cox has a disturbing article on his site about how the BBC has fed the public hysteria and confusion over MMR, and what the consequences may be for Britain’s population. It’s one thing to be miffed about the BBC wasting licence fee money on extravagant trips for executives and reporting a stridently left-wing agenda, and it’s yet another to realise that — as a licence payer — … Continue reading

Mr Free Market has a witty reflection

, and a good point to make, about that Andrew Marr report on TB’s trip to Basra. Maybe, he suggests, the soldiers were huffy with Blair because of things like this– which might be filed under that broad BBBC section ‘news the BBC couldn’t care much less about broadcasting’ (and yes, I know army men don’t always love a sailor, but I’d imagine they wouldn’t be impressed, for various reasons). … Continue reading

Andy Hamilton

Whenever I write for this site it’s almost invariably to point out BBC stupidity rather than straightforward bias. And here I am doing it again, pointing out this article by Andy Hamilton, about a series of his being dropped for poor viewing figures. Seeing as one of the justifications for the the existence of BBC1 is that it is supposed to be ‘above all that’, and that Andy Hamilton is … Continue reading

No Change Please, We’re The BBC

. Greg Dyke has spelled it out in fascinatingly bullish fashion in an email to anxious staff ahead of the Hutton report: ‘ “What is important once Hutton is published is that if the BBC is criticised we learn from whatever is written – assuming of course that we agree with what is said,” Mr Dyke told staff.’ Note- not ‘If we are criticised we must learn from our mistakes’, … Continue reading

“The day the UN mattered.”

Another “Yer Wot?” moment, this time brought to us in one of those ‘From our own correspondent’ semi-personal pieces by Bridget Kendall. This is the bit that had me Yer Wotting: The French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, another formidable orator, took the floor. His speech was equally ardent, arguing that the world did not necessarily have to follow America’s lead. Then something extraordinary happened. As he finished there was … Continue reading

Mr Marr just noticed something.

Norman Geras writes: …Marr presented Blair as now going for the humanitarian dimension of the Iraq intervention because of how things had turned out with WMD and as though he had just discovered it. This is becoming one of the major components in the anti-war party’s current mythology. But that’s what it is: mythology. Blair stated the humanitarian argument plain as day, albeit as subsidiary. Incidentally, there is no such … Continue reading