BBC World News America Boss: Fear And Loathe The Tea Party And Republicans

Dick Meyer, executive producer of BBC World News America, has written another heavily biased viewpoint article for the BBC website. This time it’s published under the hilariously ironic rubric, “Echo Chambers”. Meyer’s purpose here is to frighten you in the way parents used to scare children with tales of monsters in the woods and gypsies come to steal them away in the night. His essay is about as rational and respectable as any folk myth.

Reports of Tea Party demise are greatly exaggerated

Who said the Tea Party was dead again? The Left-wing media echo chamber, that’s who. Meyer thinks differently, so perhaps that’s the blurb about this BBC “Echo Chamber” section (upper right corner of the page) is referring to here:

Unscrambling the noise of the global debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Kathmandu.

Unfortunately, Meyer’s diatribe is proof that he and the BBC are still caught squarely in the middle of an echo chamber, with no escape possible.

Meyer’s basing his tale on the results of a few results in the recent elections around the country. Just like his anchor, Katty Kay, Meyer perpetuates the lie that Mike Bloomberg is considered a Republican. Bloomberg is in fact a life-long Democrat who switched parties specifically to ease his run for mayor of New York City. After being certain of re-election, he dropped the “R” and has pretended to be an Independent ever since, all while pushing Left-wing, Nanny State policies. Even this bio piece about him refers to NYC as “Democrat-leaning”, and explains why Bloomberg was elected and re-elected. For Meyer to present the election victory of ex-Marxist De Blasio as some sort of sign of a magic shift to the Left in NYC is a joke. The city is Left-wing by and large, save for the Upper East Side and a few small enclaves in Queens and the like. Rudy Giuliani was an anomaly, elected to clean up the streets and make the city safe again. He stayed in office largely on the strength of his behavior after 9/11. Bloomberg was then elected not because the city had shifted to the Right, but because Bloomberg was thought to be the right guy to fix the city’s economic troubles. The “R” next to his name was a mere convenience, nothing more. Meyer displays either intellectual dishonesty or simple ignorance. My bet is on a combination of both.

The Virginia result is another example of Meyer’s dishonesty. The Democrat victor, Terry McAuliffe, is a well-known Democrat money-man and former Clinton crony. He had huge support from the national Democrat organizations, including a stump appearance from the President Himself. His Republican opponent, on the other hand, got precious little support from the national party, partly because of the internal struggle between the Republican Establishment and the Tea Party movement. The national Republican Party gave plenty of support to Christie, who didn’t really need it, and plenty of support elsewhere. But not for Cuccinelli. Even so, McAuliffe’s victory was a narrow one, about 2.5%. As it happened, a fake Libertarian candidate also ran in Virginia, quietly funded by one of the President’s old money-bundlers. He got more than twice that number of foolish Virginians to vote for him, thus handing McAuliffe the victory.

Meyer is either unaware of this, or thinks it doesn’t matter. Either way, his own personal political bias leads him to misinterpret the result, and misinform you as a consequence. This is the kind of man the BBC puts in charge of an entire daily news program made under the BBC banner. They and he don’t care, though, as they have an agenda to push: Fear and loathing.

Meyer’s casual relationship with the truth is also evident even his mention of the local Alabama race. He describes it with emotive language:

Further south in Alabama, the national business lobby coalesced behind a standard issue Republican running against a fire-breathing Tea Party man in a special House election – and won, reasserting the power of the Regular Republican Party.

“Fire-breathing”. Cute. It was actually so close they had to have a run-off election. And it was more cash from the business lobby – who backed The Obamessiah and are now moving firmly behind Hillary Clinton (where Goldman Sachs goes, so generally does the rest of Wall St. and the banking industry) so not at all a sign of Republican Establishment power – that really gave Bradley Byrne the win. The NY Times describes this as a sign of things to come, a warning that the Tea Party is still a strong force fighting for control of the Republican Party. Meyer understands this, hence this fearmongering article.

Now for the loathing. First, it’s clear that Meyer has no more idea what the recent mixed election results mean than anyone else does. All he knows is that the Tea Party movement is still out there working on elections. But then we come to the point of the piece. Since it’s an article by a BBC producer about the Tea Party movement, you can guess where this is going.

The difference in the black/white vote in all three of the big elections was as stark as can be.

In the exit polls of the Virginia governor’s race, blacks picked the Democrat 90% to 8%; whites voted for the Republican, 56%-36%. In New Jersey, blacks voted for the Democrat 78%-21%; whites for the Republican by the reverse margin, 79%-21%. In the New York mayor’s race, blacks voted for de Blasio (whose wife is black) 96%-3%.

My suspicion is that black voters feel a growing threat or hostility from the Republican Party, or at least from its Tea Party wing.

This would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous and offensive. All of a sudden blacks are trending more Democrat, eh? A “growing threat”? Not even remotely. As nearly everyone here knows, the black voters have backed Democrats for the last several decades. It’s been a monolithic voting bloc for so long that Dem leaders take it for granted. Every time somebody here made a comment that the blacks were voting for skin color in 2008, somebody else points out that previously blacks voted for Al Gore in almost equal numbers. How can this world-class journalist, with decades of experience producing national news broadcasts, get this so horribly, tragically wrong?

Let’s examine just how wrong and dishonest Meyer is being here. Here’s a link to a couple of charts which show that blacks overwhelmingly have voted Democrat for decades. Note that the percentages in many years pretty much matches the new results Meyer claims as proof of a new trend. Here’s another set of data from an academic paper out of Columbia University (NB: pdf file) showing the same very high percentages – the high 80s and low 90s – again disproving Meyer’s claim. Why would African Americans believe that the Tea Party movement is a threat to them? Because partisan fearmongers like Meyer keep telling them so, over and over, in spite of all the evidence before them.

It isn’t at all surprising the racial dimensions of politics have been exacerbated during the administration of America’s first black president. The reverse would be far more surprising.

Especially considering just how much people like Meyer in the mainstream US media kept telling us that we were too racist to elect a black man, and that not voting for Him was proof of racism.

The Tea Party movement from the start has had to defend itself from accusations of racism. They are increasing in volume, however – allegations that can be heard on MSNBC most days.

Yes indeed, because people like Meyer in the mainstream US media and the Left-wing blogosphere kept saying it was a racist movement. That theme has been perpetuated quite happily by the BBC ever since they finally admitted its existence in April 2009 (even then Kevin Connolly insulted hundreds of thousands of participants with a sexual innuendo on air, and it still remains in print on the website).The BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell, has been telling that tale over and over ever since he set foot in the country with a preconceived notion. I’ve written at length about this as well, and evidence of Mardell’s vicious and dishonest attacks can be seen here, here, and here, just for starters. Then there’s the evidence of his claim at the BBC College of Journalism that, even though he’s never seen over racism at a Tea Party rally, all opposition to the President’s domestic economic policies is racist. The Tea Partiers aren’t racist, he says, “at least not in a straightforward sense.” It’s not a legitimate policy opposition, he believes, but a racist opposition to redistributing wealth “to people not like them”. Mardell will believe in this crypto-racism to his dying day, that there can be no legitimate opposition to anything the President does. All of it must have some more sinister motivation. His BBC colleagues have pushed this for years as well. In addition to the BBC’s top journalist in the US, correspondents like Jonny Dymond engage in fearmongering as well, with false claims that hate groups are on the rise after the election of the black man, and that the Republican Party is doomed to be the party of old, white males. Meyer clearly agrees.

And certainly the antipathy of a slice of white America to Obama is rabid. But polling, focus groups and anecdotal reporting can’t get at the role of race in the Tea Party ethos very precisely or effectively. It is clear, however, black voters feel it.

Well, the evidence Meyer cites clearly doesn’t back up his assertion at all. Yet he sticks to the Narrative like a child to his security blanket. It’s no wonder that blacks feel a threat when people in charge of national news broadcasts keep telling them to be afraid, very afraid. That’s the power of the media.

Meyer winds up his piece with more blind guesses about what may or may not happen. Naturally we get the “Washington is so toxic these days” Narrative thrown in (mercifully he doesn’t follow other BBC journalists and throw in the obligatory exclusive blame on Republicans), it’s all a mess, we’re in dangerous waters here. In other words, be afraid, very afraid, that the evil, racist Tea Party movement is still out there, waiting to wreak havoc and do harm. In other words, a typical BBC article on the topic.

This isn’t the first time the BBC website has given Meyer a platform for his partisan antics. He’s previously defended the President against critics, dismissing “so-called scandals” that we now know to be very real, and – what a shock – placing blame for the recent government shutdown exclusively on Republicans.

Fortunately, Meyer is no longer in charge of a news broadcast on a major US network, so the damage he can do is fairly minimal. He used to be, and it was during his tenure at CBS that Dan Rather destroyed his own reputation over those fake Bush memos. So there’s form on partisan hackery subverting journalistic integrity. Where was he before taking the reins at BBC WNA? The Left-wing NPR, which cultivates an audience of elite, white liberals. Perhaps not coincidentally, anchor Katty Kay is the regular guest host on NPR’s Diane Rehm show. What was that about echo chambers again? However, Meyer’s BBC World News America is still broadcast every day on a few PBS stations around the country. Worse is the fact that BBC News has been increasing its investment in the US section of the website, hiring more and more staff, producing more and more output, and attracting more and more US eyeballs.

Is this beyond the BBC’s remit? It’s a discussion that needs to be had. Either way, it’s important that people are aware of the hyper-partisan, dishonest journalism at the top.

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17 Responses to BBC World News America Boss: Fear And Loathe The Tea Party And Republicans

  1. TPO says:

    Just wonder what these BBC drones would make of an intellect like Charles Krauthammer in the unlikely event that he would deign to go on anything remotely affiliated to the BBC.

       17 likes

  2. stuart says:

    the tea party are the just the ukip wing of the republican party,i am sick to my teeth of these left wing so called acedemics who try to smear and demonise any popular poltical movement with accusastions of racism etc,these left wing bigots are the real racists and extremists who try to turn race against race and divide communitys into being at each other throats,the left and the far left are a dangerous entity that we must be on are guard against,as for the bbc employing these left wing bigots as so called presenters,well thats even more a good reason why the tv licence should be scrapped,as for that left wing love in called question time tonight,i wonder if the will bring up as a subject david dimblebys new trendy tattoo.you bet they will.

       26 likes

  3. Sceptical scientist says:

    More or less on this topic: BBC Ten O’clock News last night (13th Nov) decided, unusually, to put in an item on a film called “The Butler”. They interviewed one of the actresses in this film – a woman called Oprah Winfrey. She took the opportunity (unchallenged) to say that everyone was being beastly to Barak Obama because he is a black guy. No evidence produced. She even said that no one will admit it etc etc. None of this was anything to do with the film. The interviewer could have asked her whether she was only supporting Obama because she herself is a “woman of colour”. Couldn’t the BBC have just gently suggested that maybe people in the US were just a tad disappointed that all the soaring rhetoric of Obama pre election had proved to be totally misleading? No chance.

       32 likes

    • DownBoy says:

      He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a naughty boy – Oh and a rubbish President and spineless leader of the free world.

         26 likes

  4. DB says:

    After Obama’s dire press conference today the BBC’s Katty Kay chose to RT an opinion in favour of single-payer healthcare.

    Yesterday Mark Mardell blamed Obamacare failures on too much “free market choice”:

    In bending over backwards to avoid a government scheme, in order to offer as much free market choice as possible, the administration has come up with something that feels pretty messy.

    Not hard to see what the echo chamber of the BBC Washington bureau thinks is best for American healthcare.

    It occurs to me that BBC journalists in the US have the same outlook as missionaries in 19th century Africa. They want to convert the rough locals to what they perceive to be a superior social model. The BBC Washington bureau is a missionary outpost for European left-liberal ideals.

       22 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      What a joke. The whole point of ObamaCare was to restrict free market choice, not offer as much as possible. Mardell is either a liar or one of the laziest, misinformed reporters around.

         20 likes

  5. GCooper says:

    An excellent analysis David, thank you.

    Meanwhile, the beat goes on. Having almost entirely ignored the disaster that is Obamacare, tonight we are told by the BBC: “Obama vows to fix health ‘fumble'” followed by the usual partial nonsense that is BBC coverage of US affairs.

    It seems that coverage of the ‘great satan’ has to be strained through a very tight mesh to ensure no trace of the truth gets through. We wouldn’t want the British public tainted by nasty American political ideas now, would we?

       19 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      The “fix” is merely yet another extra-legal act from this Administration. He’s not changing or fixing the law at all. He’s simply decided not to enforce the one aspect of it. The President has no legal authority to do this, but that’s never stopped Him before. And it’s not just racist Republicans saying that. Even former Left-wing darling Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean thinks this.

      The BBC won’t see it this way, though, because they believe the President should rule with absolute authority anyway, Congress being a nuisance best ignored.

         16 likes

  6. DB says:

    Note that Meyer’s article doesn’t mention Obamacare, which is kind of central to the whole Tea Party vs Big Government thing. Addressing that issue would invite questions that the Tea Party wing may have been right about this disastrous policy, so best ignored.

       17 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Of course he doesn’t. Just like Mardell and Dymond and Daniel Nasaw and all the Today Beeboids who fly over here occasionally for special segments and whichever Beeboid interviewed Oprah the other day, opposition to ObamaCare – or practically any other policy – is a facade behind which people hide their racism. There is no legitimate opposition to policy, only personal animosity. We hear over and over again that Republicans want to stop Him, want to harm Him, want to take Him down. It’s personal, nothing to do with reasonable opposition to a given policy.

      Of course, that’s the real basis of the BBC’s diehard support for Him anyway: it’s personal. It’s all about Him, not the policies. So of course they’ll never accept that anyone can legitimately oppose one of His policies without it being a statement about Him. Race is all they have left.

         16 likes

  7. John Anderson says:

    So, the BBC fails to keep us informed of the weeks of mounting trouble on ObamaCare – the website debacle and then millions and millions of people losing their existing health insurance and often losing access to their present doctors, plus umpteen video-clip examples of Obama having claimed in 2010 – to get the law passed – that people would be able to keep their health plans and their doctors.

    In other words a perfect storm – a huge IT cock-up, millions of Americans (just the first wave) up in arms about losing coverage from plans they had chosen – and an increasing sense that Obama had repeatedly lied.

    The BBC now says the “fix” is being set up – but why do we need a fix if according to the BBC everything was hunky-dory? The BBC cannot get its head round the idea that Obama could lie. Onviously that is just something put about by those extreme Tea Partiers.

    But a poll today shows that 50% of Americans believe that Obama lied. Not “made a mistake”, “miscalculated”, “misspoke” or some such nonsense. They believe he LIED.

    So who do you believe ? The BBC or the long-suffering Americans.

    “The butterfly upon the road
    Preaches contentment to the toad
    But the toad beneath the harrow knows
    Where every single pinprick goes.”

    There is a great deal of anger that many in the media covered up the lies – when they knew that Obama’s promise “If you like it you can keep it” was actuarily impossible. From the outset there was no way ObamaCare would work without millions of people having to pay higher premiums – including charges for stuff they simply don;t need or want. Old people paying premiums for maternity services and so on.

    The “fix” is a cave-in by Obama. It has been forced on him by Demnocrat Senators as much as by the Republicans. It may well not be legal. Even if it passes, it simply makes matters worse – the sums will be even harder to add up. A lot of people are now saying that the whole ObamaCare enterprise is doomed, will be going into an actuarial death spiral. All the polls show what a disaster this has become for Obama. It is like the Titanic, or the crash of the Hindenburg.

    But nearly all of this has been withheld by the BBC. A lamentable failure of reporting – all because they worship Obama and hate anyone who opposes excessive government.

       19 likes

  8. DP111 says:

    Marxism, and its children – communism and socialism, are political ideologies that claim to have a complete solution for the whole world, which can be had without any sacrifice by the individual. Its free health care, free education, and free benefits.

    Islam though masquerading as a religion, is really a political ideology. It too claims that it has a complete solution for the world’s social and political problems. All four are adamant that they are totally right, and any who disagree are stupid, mental, or the enemy, and thus must be re-educated or killed. That is the definition of totalitarian ideologies – unable to tolerate dissent. .

    It is no coincidence, that each is responsible for the greatest mass murders in history, have never apologised for the genocides by their respective ideologies,, and have a working relation with each other.

       12 likes

  9. AngusPangus says:

    Thanks David for continuing to shine a spotlight on the BBC twisted and perverted US coverage.

    As many other have pointed out, Saint Oprah of Winfrey’s completely selfless multi-platform coverage across the BBC which might have mentioned in passing a movie that she is in (showing in cinemas near you soon. Get a ticket, or else you’re a racist) helpfully informed us that anyone opposing Obama is just a racist.

    Funny, as I don’t seem to remember anyone on the BBC ever claiming that people mocking George W Bush, or George Bush Snr, or Ronald Reagan (and there were many) were just left wing bigots.

    What is even more curious is that those mocking former Republican presidents were, indeed, left wing bigots, whereas those opposing Obama cannot be accurately described, as a whole, as “racists”. What a topsy-turvy world we live in.

       6 likes

  10. David Preiser (USA) says:

    More proof that Dick Meyer is deluded and out of touch:

    The much-coveted youth bracket of ages 18-24 voted majority Republican in Virginia.

    Republican Cuccinelli: 45%
    Democrat McAuliffe: 38%
    “Libertarian” Sarvis: 15%

    Are the young people of Virginia turning racist now? Over to you, Dick.

       5 likes