Thoughtful in the comments links to this story in the Manchester Evening News: Twenty people a day are being hauled before the courts for TV licence dodging in Greater Manchester. Figures from the Ministry of Justice show nearly 7,000 people were prosecuted last year for failing to pay the charge.   What was really interesting was this: The vast majority of non-paying viewers were hit with fines, but none … Continue reading →

    Kipling talked of the “the truthful well-weighed answer that tells the blacker lie”. The BBC are the masters of deploying the truth to hide the truth. Whenever the BBC reports something verbatim without further explanation or background colour and context you know they are trying to sweep something nasty under the carpet.   Labour’s little spot of trouble with their Union sponsors, Unite, hasn’t really kept any BBC … Continue reading →

On American Independence Day, here’s a new and independent open thread for y’all! Enjoy.

I can’t resist sharing my glee at the BBC’s obvious horror that Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood puppeteers are on the run in Egypt.  I know it is very unclear where things may go but the BBC meme that the “Arab Spring” is an irreversible force for good has been shattered and all we get is BBC talking heads bemoaning the loss of “democracy”.  Watching Jeremy Bowen has been a … Continue reading →

Remember this? “I always think that impartiality is in our DNA – it’s part of the BBC’s genetic make-up.” That was Helen Boaden, the then director of BBC News. It was 2011 And then today…. Helen Boaden, the BBC’s former news director, has admitted the corporation held a “deep liberal bias” in its coverage of immigation when she took up the role in 2004. Oh my.

    The BBC’s latest review on impartiality says: Today’s BBC gives due weight to all significant strands of opinion on the subject of immigration.    Well Sir Andrew Green from Migration Watch was certainly given a fair interview recently on the Today programme, and David Goodhart from Demos has had a few interviews on his ‘controversial’ book about the effects of immigration…but he is a ‘safe’ lefty. How much longer … Continue reading →

Thanks to A.D who posted this in the comments: Toxteth mosque ‘suspect’ suitcase: Danish man cautioned. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-23142432 Police confirm man cautioned after bomb alert at Liverpool mosque is Somalian NOT Danish . http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/man-cautioned-following-bomb-security-4803983   Reading the Liverpool Echo version it looks possibly like a Muslim was posing as a non-Muslim with the intent of implicating the ‘right’ in a hate crime: Officers had taken away CCTV footage which showed the … Continue reading →

  It doesn’t take long for things to start to unravel.   The BBC’s impartiality review, conducted by Cardiff University, has some major flaws. Even without reading it you can already pick holes in it. Its terms of reference were obviously far too narrow..ironic for a review that was concerned with ‘breadth of opinion’.   Two major topics of concern are missing…climate change and Israel. Strangely Israel was also missing … Continue reading →

    The BBC Trust has just published its ‘Breadth of Opinion’ review into impartiality.   Not had time to look at it but you can see it here. A taster from the press release: As part of the study, the BBC’s coverage of immigration, religion and the EU was analysed through content analysis by Cardiff University.  While the findings of this were largely positive and indicated that the breadth … Continue reading →

Over at Telegraph blogs Sean Thomas recalls how the BBC nicked one his ideas, and how this ties in with the ludicrous pay-offs, the unadvertised job appointments, and the overall sense of impunity within the Corporation: …I was tempted to write a blog post on the Telegraph mentioning all this, explaining why the BBC is, for all its wonders, actually an outrageous, malign, monopolistic force in British broadcasting, like a … Continue reading →