Denis Boyles wonders if the BBC might want to spew its newslurry in other direstions. A report in the Guardian isn’t very encouraging: “Today, a senior BBC news executive will make a controversial case for desanitising the presentation of war on British television. In a speech to a conference of broadcasters in Budapest, Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC News, will say the current position is a ‘disservice to democracy’.” … Continue reading →

. It can be expressed in the approach and assumptions made about a subject. It can also be much more subtle, such as in the choice of subjects it gives airtime to, or those that receive no airtime at all. One of the more subtle forms of bias is the ‘wrongly imprisoned’ articles which crop up frequently on BBC radio networks. The ‘wrongly imprisoned’ are always concerning subjects close to … Continue reading →

I was surprised and pleased at some aspects of the phrasing in this feature about Israeli checkpoints. “Since the beginning of the three-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada, Israel has significantly increased the number of roadlocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to rising Palestinian violence. “In September 2003, a group of 20 aid agencies issued a statement calling for the removal of the travel restrictions, which they … Continue reading →

of the multi-lingual blog

is Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme. Yesterday, the US Government passed a USD87 billion programme for operations in Iraq – of which is USD18.6 billion is for genuine civil and economic reconstruction. This money is paid as grants (not loans), so does not need to be repaid. To discuss this significant event with the BBC’s Derek Bateman, the BBC wheeled out Martin Lewis, announced as a ‘US-based political commentator’. … Continue reading →

. Andrew Sullivan is onto their games in two recent posts (Tues and Mon- scroll down a little). Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

if the gun-control lobby had a plan which “backfired”? Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

, the BBC cauldron continues to bubble and burp with a ‘story’ on Bush administration ‘corruption’. (Hint: if you give to GW’s re-election fund, you’ll be sure to get in on the ground floor in Iraq.) As one aptly named myth-buster notes here, the study on which the ‘story’ is based is just plain horsefeathers. Here is an email sent to Glenn Reynolds in response to his post on this … Continue reading →

What do you do when you have a female racial minority employee with a great employment record at the BBC? You sack her, because she sounds ‘posh’. This highlights the folly of the left’s ardent desire to groupthink (whatever happened to ‘I have a dream‘?). Black people are OK so long as they are left wing, but if they are somehow not proles (or lefties) then the left hates them. … Continue reading →

Where are those highly-skilled investigative Beebots when there is news? Sleeping it seems. First, this postwar anti-war demo was a mere sliver of pre-war and mid-war moonbat confabs. That should be reported, not spun. The march was thought to be smaller than the mass demonstrations before and during the war. But the BBC’s Jon Leyne, who was at the Washington rally, said it was probably more in tune with the … Continue reading →