As the US at last gets to vote on the most important election in human history (it must be, to judge from the legion of BBC staff running around over here to cover it), the BBC’s coverage of the whole scene has been making me think of the following from Through the Looking Glass:
‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.
‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
The BBC definitely wants you to believe some impossible things when it comes to the President and the current situation in the US. You’ll most likely hear some of these at some point today during the BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage.
(NOW UPDATED TO INCLUDE LINKS, because defenders of the indefensible have decided to be intellectually dishonest today and pretend they’ve never read anything on this blog. I’ll add more later today and this evening when I have more time. Everyone is welcome to post examples in the comments.)
1. Tea Party-led Republican intransigence has blocked His every move for the last two years, but the President has saved the economy, and we’re on the road to recovery.
2. The country is more divided and polarized than it has ever been before due to Tea Party and Right-wing media rhetoric, while at the same time you’re expected to believe that the President did not begin His term in office by sitting down to the negotiating table and telling Republicans, “I won”, and that He has not said or done anything divisive, ever.
3. The Democrat super-majority in Congress – absolute control of both houses – for His first two years which let Him do whatever He liked (except pass a budget, which even the Dems in the Senate weren’t stupid enough to vote for) without bothering to get a single Republican vote, was a Golden Age of Congress getting things done.
4. The only real reason people are voting against the President is racism, or crypto-racism, even though nobody complained when George Bush had a black man and then a black woman as the second-most powerful person in his Administration, and the Tea Party movement was ready to support Herman Cain. All those people who voted for The Obamessiah in 2008 and are not voting for Him today have suddenly reverted to being racist.
5. It’s perfectly natural for Hispanics to vote for their own kind, and want more of their own kind to come to the US. Any laws which impede that are immoral, and the only reason to oppose this kind of racialist thinking is racism.
6. Romney, like George Bush, is a walking gaffe machine, and the President has made only two minor missteps in five years (including the 2008 campaign).
No, thank you. I’m off to vote as soon as I finish my breakfast.
Most people here will by now have read that the US is sending 50 marines to help guard what’s left of the US consulate in Libya. The BBC reported it here, and gives a brief mention here. The latter article has an “Analysis” inset by BBC security correspondent (a weird title for a war reporter) Frank Gardner. He says this:
In Benghazi, in eastern Libya, the US consulate was not so fortunate.
The security team there had worked out a fallback plan in case of an attack, evacuating staff to a second building, but this too came under attack and it is clear in hindsight that the consulate was under-prepared for the sort of concerted, heavily armed assault that killed four US staff.
“Security team”. And an admission that the consulate was “under-prepared”. Sure, if it was only a handful of marines, that wouldn’t have been sufficient. But that’s not why Gardner chose the term “security team”, as we’ll see in a moment.
In their time-line of events, the BBC editor who put it together similarly refers to a “regional security guard” and “security team”. Oh, that’s “accurate”, alright, but doesn’t tell you the real story.
Gardner and this editor chose to put it that way because there weren’t any marines stationed there at all, and they don’t want to report it.
The consulate where the American ambassador to Libya was killed on Tuesday is an “interim facility” not protected by the contingent of Marines that safeguards embassies, POLITICO has learned.
Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed with three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the city of Benghazi, where Libyan rebels ousted strongman Moammar Qadhafi last year.
Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Kendra Motz said that Marines were not posted to the consulate, unlike the embassy in the capital, Tripoli.
This is in Politico, ladies and gentlemen, which means the Beeboids know about it. Like I said before, a handful of them wouldn’t have made much of a difference against what’s clearly a coordinated quasi-paramilitary attack. But they should have been some kind of security there, given the overall situation. I know it’s only a consulate, and they’re traditionally not so set up, but it’s insane to think having “regional security” (translation: locals who might be about as trustworthy as all those Afghan soldiers who keep turning on and killing US soldiers) in a place like this and at a time like this is a good idea.
Worse, CNN reported yesterday that it’s not unusual to leave these places unguarded (by US marines or other proper troops) because they can be “viewed as politically sensitive”. In other words, it’s not just about how I’m wrong to complain because consulates are never guarded properly. We bowed to caveman sensitivity at the expense of our own peoples’ safety.
This is just another glaring foreign policy fail, a sign of sloppy thinking and poor planning. But we don’t want the audience to know about it, do we, BBC? Yes, the mainstream media in the US is also keeping a lid on this, not wanting to make too much out of it. But the BBC’s top man in the US, Mark Mardell, has already pretty much admitted that most of them are Left-wing liberals. So if the BBC follows their lead as to what’s important and what isn’t, that’s tacit approval of a Left-wing agenda.
This isn’t about my personal opinion of how consulates should or shouldn’t be guarded, or whether or not this is a failure of the current Administration. I’ve given my opinion because I’m not bound by the BBC’s Charter and Agreement, nor am I pretending not to have one. It’s also a way to draw attention to the fact that there don’t seem to be any voices let through by the BBC censors editors who are expressing that viewpoint.Note, though, that there are people now admitting that this incident – and the one in Egypt – is making people worried about the craziness unleashed by the so-called “Arab Spring”. Suddenly we’re allowed to think it might be a problem, but until the other day there was no reason whatsoever to put real guards on the Libyan consulate? No, I think not.
Really, though, this is about how the BBC follows the Left-wing agenda of the US media on certain issues, and fails to inform you in the process.
Since I don’t work in a news room, so couldn’t possibly understand what Mardell really meant, our news and media professionals who like to defend the indefensible here are welcome to explain it to me.
Look that the garbage Katty Kay is reduced to (re)tweeting, because she apparently has nothing of substance to say about the Republican National Convention last night:
“Allegedly”. It’s from the far-Left (naturally, as Katty retweets little else) Talking Points Memo. It’s just a claim, no video, no proof. But the BBC’s Washington correspondent, anchor of BBC World News America, and well-paid representative of the BBC on shows like “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and as regular guest host for NPR’s Diane Rehm show, has no problem spreading this as yet unsubstantiated rumor. Because it suits her agenda and biased worldview.
UPDATE: It’s substantiated now. RNC staff admit what happened, and the BBC has rushed to report it. The offenders were tossed immediately. Of course, in the interests of “balance”, the BBC finally mentioned the existence of Mia Love. Having now done the bare minimum, they still refused to tell you about the great reception she received, or that today she’s the top search query on Google. BBC very much not with the news trends on this one. I wonder why? Artur Davis’s appearance is still being censored from BBC output.
What’s most disgusting about what Katty’s done here is that it distracts from something the BBC seems to have overlooked in their coverage of the RNC: Mayor of Saratoga Springs and candidate for the House from Utah, Mia Love, gave a speech which received a rousing reception.
Anybody think the crowd was filled with racists? Not only that, but Artur Davis, The Obamessiah’s 2008 campaign co-chair, also spoke last night. No reports of monkey chants or anything. Yet Katty Kay wants to help spread rumors to make you think Republicans are racist. Even if it’s just one lone idiot doing it, Katty wants to discredit the entire Party.
This is not professional behavior, but sadly is what we’ve come to expect from her. Keep in mind that, unlike the other Beeboid twitterers we like to bust for bias here, Katty’s page is an official, BBC-sanctioned account, with logo and everything. There is no “views my own” get-out-of-bias-free disclaimer here. This is not the out-of-school, anything goes, stuff which BBC management has decided is outside their jurisdiction. This is a BBC-sanctioned Twitter account, and Katty is officially representing the the BBC here.
UPDATE: Funny how Katty isn’t tweeting about how some lovely Democrats defaced Mia Love’s Wikipedia page by calling her a ‘dirty, worthless whore’ and ‘House Nigger’. (screenshot of the offending text at the link). Wikipedia has since sent it down the memory hole, but you can still see the evidence that there was an offensive edit they had to fix. But Katty’s interested only in spreading rumors harmful to Republicans, not real evidence of acts that make Democrats look bad.
Come to think of it, where are the mentions of Mia Love or Artur Davis in the BBC reports about last night’s convention launch? Nothing from Mardell, nothing in the pictures the BBC posted, nothing from Mark Mardell, nothing in the video clips. It’s like it didn’t happen. Which, of course, is the impression the BBC wants you to have.
Apparently, their fellow travelers at MSNBC cut back to the studio for commentary when Love and Davis took to the podium, so their audiences weren’t allowed to see them. Does anyone know if the BBC did the same thing during their broadcast? Do BBC audiences have any idea that they even exist?
Considering just how much effort has been spent – by Democrats and their supporters in the media, especially including the BBC – over the last five years (I’m including the 2008 election campaign here) trying to tell you that any opposition to The Obamessiah is based on racism, one might think it’s a big deal that Love and Davis both spoke at the national convention. At least the BBC could have mentioned them just to sneer at such blatant tokenism, right?
Please, defenders of the indefensible, at least show me evidence that the BBC didn’t censor these people’s presence entirely. The BBC wouldn’t be so dishonest, would they?
Most people here will have noticed that the BBC has gone overboard this week with the hand-wringing over US gun laws. The same agenda – US gun laws are too permissive, gun ownership laws lead to a high homicide rate, etc. – has spread across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting, from the website to radio to television. All of it from the same angle: too much gun ownership, ordinary citizens probably shouldn’t be allowed to own guns, and all that. Not a single report or interview – as far as I’ve been able to find, and defenders of the indefensible are welcome to correct me and point out the exception – coming from the opposite viewpoint. Anyone seen a Beeboid challenge someone who says US gun laws need to be much, much stricter, or similar?
The BBC also made a big deal out of the President turning up in Colorado to pose as the caring leader, uniting us all under the banner of Hope, that the Beeboids know He really is. Not a single raised Beeboid eyebrow or sarcastic aside at how this might be a nice bit of political opportunism in a tough election cycle. He’d never do that, would He?
With all the whining about US gun laws and gun crime, there’s really something else you need to know. The BBC, of course, is censoring this news, refusing to tell you about it. Mark Mardell seems to have been on vacation for the last couple of weeks, so there isn’t even a word of wisdom from the BBC’s top man in the US, whom you are supposed to trust on these things.
Here’s a perfect example of what the BBC doesn’t want you to know about US gun laws and gun crime. It even concerns the President’s adopted home town, so one would think the Beeboids in the US would be aware of it:
As Chicago residents face a murder rate that, thus far this year, is worse than U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Chicago Police Department has assigned at least 100 officers to secure the wedding of White House advisor Valerie Jarrett’s daughter.
President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Malia and Sasha arrived in Chicago Friday evening ahead of the Saturday wedding of Laura Jarrett, which will be held in a backyard in the city’s Kenwood neighborhood. And that wedding is, expectedly, set to be a high-security affair.
This is the HuffingtonPost, folks. So the Beeboids know all about it. And this can’t be dismissed simply as extra security for the President, happens all the time.
The directive for police to cover the Jarrett wedding arrives at a time where Chicago is facing a surge in its homicide rate. The Daily pointed out in a Friday column that more Chicago residents — 228 — have been killed so far this year in the city than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan – 144 — over the same period.
The war zone-like statistics are not new. As WBEZ reports, while some 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, more than 5,000 people have been killed by gun fire in Chicago during that time, based on Department of Defense and FBI data.
More than 5000 people. How many of them in random acts of mass murder by lunatics like the guy in Colorado or Loughner in Tucson? Pretty much zero. (Gang activity and drive=bys aren’t really the same thing at all, even when innocents are killed in the process.) That’s a body count high enough to make any Beeboid’s head spin, so Chicago and Illinois must have pretty lax gun laws, right? Must be sub-machine guns and RPGs for sale on every corner, a free shotgun with every Slurpee at the local 7-11, right?
Er…no. Illinois and Chicago have just about the toughest, strictest gun laws in the country. In fact, the local county currently has a law banning the very kind of assault weapon the Colorado lunatic used. And yet, Chicago has a much, much higher rate of gun murders than the whole State of Colorado: 120. That includes murder by other means, like stabbing, which means that the number of murders with actual guns is even lower. But that doesn’t help the BBC’s anti-gun agenda, so they don’t bother to check it out and instead push partisan propaganda at you. Hell, even Washington, DC – the President’s current place of residence (when He’s not golfing or on vacation with rich white folks, that is) = with something like 12% of the population, has more murders per annum than Colorado. And DC also has very strict gun control laws. They’ve even tried to ban people from keeping a loaded handgun in the house for self defense, never mind buying a semi-automatic weapon and a high-capacity magazine.
Of course, there’s one very important difference between the victims in Aurora and those in Chicago and DC. The vast majority of the people shot and killed in Chicago and DC were black. The President isn’t going to be giving a Hopey speech to their families any time soon, I can assure. And it won’t even occur to single sycophantic Beeboid to ask why not. It also puts all the BBC long faces and rending of garments over the troop deaths in Afghanistan in perspective, no? Not such a high body count when taking reality into consideration. But I digress.
Furthermore, while the BBC spent all that effort discussing gun laws and gun crime, did anybody bother to ask how many guns Timothy McVeigh or the9/11 mass murderers or the 7/7 mass murderers needed? No? Funny, that.
Just a couple months ago, some lunatic went on a rampage with a knife in a grocery store in Salt Lake City. Utah, of course, has slightly more “lax” gun laws than Chicago or DC, but that isn’t going to prevent some idiot from grabbing a kitchen knife and running around with it. Even the BBC knows that. So a legally armed private citizen shot the f@#$er before he killed too many people. Again, the BBC won’t be bringing this kind of thing up because it doesn’t fit in with the Agenda.To balance out the constant stream of people advocating stricter gun laws, where are the guests saying that the massacre could have been stopped if somebody in the theater had been carrying?
There’s plenty of evidence – even begrudgingly admitted by the liberal New York Times – that European countries with more guns per capita have lower murder rates. But then, those countries are probably more homogenous, eh, BBC? Oh, my, better tone down the racism inherent in those facts.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. That’s good enough for the BBC, and they don’t want you to think any different.
Glad to see I am not the only one who found the BBC’s response to the John Terry verdict a few days ago to be somewhat odd; A B-BBC reader notes;
“The BBC were clearly rather miffed that Terry was cleared, and ran a feature on the matter on The World Tonight, Radio Four. This consisted of an immigrant (I didn’t catch the name but he wasn’t a mother tongue English speaker), being invited to sound off about how wrong it was, how such behaviour needs stamping out and how much ‘hurt’ it causes. None of this was challenged by presenter Ritula Shah (surprised?) Nor was any other speaker invited on to give an alternative view or debate the matter. Terry has been found NOT GUILTY, yet the BBC are trying to stir up hatred.
The latest edition of my report is up on EyeTube now (no embed possible at the moment). It clocks in at 15:23. Some stuff the BBC covered badly, and some they haven’t covered at all. Sources are below, and my thanks to all those who took the time to listen to the previous editions.
For the second year running, the US version of the BBC website has won the top award in the US for its international news coverage. Nobody else has the same 80 years of infrastructure, or can bring in content from other branches of their network, but don’t take my word for it.
BBC.com won the accolade for overall excellence, with its online operation described by the judges as “uniquely situated” to cover world events.
Quite.
In their citation, the Peabody judges highlighted the BBC’s global reach and long history of covering events in all corners of the world.
No kidding.
The award for BBC.com comes after a year of increased focus on news operations in the US.
Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, said the Peabody Award was “fantastic news”.
“It is recognition of BBC News as a whole against very strong competition. Investment into BBC.com has helped us expand our operations in the Washington bureau to create an even better showcase for BBC News for audiences in North America.”
Well, that is part of their remit, bringing the UK to the world. But let’s face it: this is all done in the search for ad revenue – evil profit. Good thing the BBC isn’t as sacred as the NHS, for which no profit motive shall be permitted.
On Saturday a number of national and regional media outlets reported the story of 10-year-old boy attacking two female teachers at his school ‘in Avalon Road, Orpington’. It resulted in both teachers being taken to hospital – one with a broken leg and dislocated kneecap and the other bearing facial injuries.
None of the outlets went into any more detail, not even the name of the school or its background. Instead the Autonomous Mind blog was left with an exclusive about the school, Burwood School, an establishment for boys with special educational needs that has a number of troubled and previously excluded youngsters on its small roll. No other media sought out and reported these details.
Some hours later the details carried on Autonomous Mind, including the elements of the 2011 Ofsted report cited in the blog post, were picked up by BBC London who despatched Paul Curran to the previously un-named school to deliver the details in a BBC London news report.
But being the BBC, the report just had to include a different slant that furthered a favoured and seemingly unrelated pet narrative. This saw Curran lead in to a televised quote by a teaching union official from an un-named union, who himself was also un-named, by saying:
One teaching union expects the situation to get worse because of the economic downturn.
But can you spot any mention of the economic downturn in the official’s broadcast assessment of attacks on teachers by their pupils, quoted in its entirety below?
In today’s society, where lives are difficult, stressful, often chaotic, it’s no wonder that very occasionally children go completely off the rails.
There could be any number of causes for lives being difficult, stressful or chaotic. But the BBC has decided the cause of an increase in attacks on teachers will be as a result of the economic downturn.
This isn’t factual news reporting, it is opportunist speculation mixed with personal opinion, pushed on viewers without any supporting evidence whatsoever. And it deliberately ignores the particular circumstances of the incident at Burwood School given the challenging nature of the school’s troubled pupils.
It has no place on a publicly funded service broadcaster, but it happens over and over again.
There’s yet another BBC North America correspondent pushing an agenda these days. Ian Pannell has gone to Detroit to spin a tale of woe and misery, blaming all of it on the current economic situation. He even clearly articulates the message one is meant to take away:
“The gap between the rich and poor in America is now bigger than it’s been for 30 years.”
Pannell closes the piece with this line, followed by a statement that “what we’ve seen” all over the US is a similar problem. In case anyone didn’t bother watching all the way through, the message is spelled out equally clearly in the blurb accompanying the video.
Now, before we get into the problems of Detroit, let me just say that I’m in no way denying that there’s a severe economic problem in the US right now. I’m on record here many times complaining about exactly that. In fact, I believe we’ve been in a Depression for the last 18 months or so, and will continue to be unless there’s a drastic change nationwide. So this post is not meant to challenge Pannell’s last sentence. Instead, I mean to challenge the agenda being pushed and the myth being spun specifically from Detroit.
Detroit, of course, is definitely a problem city. Unemployment in the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn region is the worst in the nation among what we call “greater metropolitan areas”. As of May 2010, Detroit had about 90,000 (!) abandoned homes or residential lots, and the city has had to spend money demolishing them. If that seems like an awful lot of homes emptying over a relatively short period of time (we’re meant to assume that this is all about the “downturn” since 2008), you’d be right to be suspicious. Yet Pannell wants you to believe that Detroit is just like the rest of the country, a victim of economic inequality thrust upon it by outside forces. Well-trained BBC audiences will already know the approved causes: greedy bankers and the evil rich appropriating more than their fare share of wealth.
Except it’s simply not true. Detroit has been going down the tubes for years and years. Here’s what Pannell and the BBC don’t want you to know, because it detracts from their agenda: First of all, Detroit suffers from relying far, far too much on a single workhorse: the automotive industry. The fact that the industry has been in decline for a couple of decades or more – so bad that the President had to bail out the unions out GM and sell Chrysler off – is an inconvenient truth which interferes with Pannell’s tale, so he leaves it out. White flight and urban blight have been a problem for decades. How could Detroit’s struggles as portrayed by the BBC be largely due to a recent phenomenon if a site like “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit” won a local award in 1998? There were 12,000 abandoned homes as of 2005. In 2008 – at the beginning of the economic crisis, mind – unemployment was at 21% in some areas, and criminals were re-offending to stay in the safety and comfort of prison rather than trying to get by in a disaster area.
Detroit’s population has declined by 25% over the last decade. This has very little to do with the “downturn” (it’s only a recession when conservatives are in charge, right?). Pannell provides none of this context. The problems of the last three years have obviously made things tougher, but to portray Detroit purely as a victim of the recent economic crisis is false. But it does help feed the class war mythology which the BBC loves to push.
Another Detroit problem Pannell doesn’t want you to know about is that Detroit was on the brink of insolvency by 2005. It was driven there by powerful unions and poor management from a series of economic denialist Democrat mayors, and capped off by a Democrat mayor who ended up in prison over a sex scandal. To be fair, I’m pretty sure Republican mayors in that area wouldn’t have done much better, considering the corruption and cronyism that went on, and that precious few Republicans over the last decade have been fiscal conservatives. Regardless of who was in charge, though, the city lost 39% of its manufacturing jobs – mostly in the auto industry – in the 1980s. Unemployment ten years ago was among the worst in the nation. This has nothing to do with the current economic situation.
As of 2002, five of the ten largest employers in the area were state-run organizations. Indeed, the top two employers were the public school system and the City government itself. Does that sound familiar? This is never a recipe for growth and success. The Post Office was the #7 employer, and I think we can all guess how that works out after the city loses a quarter of its population. Even a media studies graduate can do the math here.
But none of this context is provided to the BBC audience. All you see is a tale of woe, people struggling to survive in tough economic times. The struggle is real, but the direct cause presented to you by Pannell is false. Using Detroit like this to highlight the current economic crisis in the US is like using Grimethorpe to highlight what Tory Cuts have done over the last couple years without telling you about the closing of the mines.
This is the result of agenda-driven newsgathering and reporting. It’s a dishonest report, pushing a specific agenda, intended to support the BBC’s Narrative about income inequality. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.
Can somebody please read this update of the BBC Agreement (as in “Charter & Agreement”) and tell me if “Editorial Independence” actually translates into “Unaccountability”?
Continuing Agreement
Concerns have been expressed that the NAO reviews could lead to individual star’s salaries becoming public, or the details of managerial decisions on finance, because the NAO can ask for any information it needs for its audit. The wording of the agreement makes no specific reference to those concerns and no such information has been revealed in previous NAO reports on the BBC.
A Trust spokesperson said: ‘The NAO already have full access to the information they need to carry out reviews of the BBC; today’s announcement confirms and continues that arrangement. In addition it will now enable the NAO to decide which areas to look at, but in an arrangement where it will continue to submit reports to the Trust. We believe that the terms agreed build on the BBC’s existing relationship with the NAO to the benefit of licence fee payers, while preserving the BBC’s independence.’
Editorial Independence
The agreement makes clear that whilst the NAO is ‘entitled to review any BBC decision’ it is not entitled to ‘question the merits of any editorial or creative judgment or policy decision about the way BBC services are made or distributed.’
The Trust will still do its own value for money reviews, in fact the agreement requires it to lay out its own programme of such work each year. The NAO can’t examine the same area as the Trust in the same year.
The NAO will submit its reports to the Trust, which will prepare a response before sending both to the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament.
There’s more at the link. The NAO (or anyone else, presumably, like OfCom) can say what they like, but the Trust will decide what to present to Jeremy Hunt, decide what is value for money, and decide if the BBC can syphon off extra Government/taxpayer cash to spend on the World Service. (Hopefully not for hiring yet another field correspondent to cover the US.)
This sounds like unaccountability by any other name.
Bill Nighy, wooden, crinkled and oozing bus pass angst, meets up with earnest young woman (Rachel Weisz, born 1970!). Nighy, as per usual, autocues his lines in a monotone to nobody in particular, is hardly ever out of his overcoat and sacrifices his career and pension to flag up the evil Americans.
You’ve guessed it – “Page Eight” (BBC2 28/08/11) another glossy drama of beautiful people in NW1 (and weekend rural retreats) pumping out a subliminal version of the eternal and unchanging BBC philippic against capitalism, America (pre Obama, of course) and those vicious, conniving Je…whoops….Israelis.
Written by Richard Curtis David Hare, the storyline is as predictable as a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 boss hands Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 agent (Nighy) a file fingering UK PM as the The Evil One Covering Up US Rendition. Said agent discovers his next door neighbour had a boy friend killed by Israeli soldiers while innocently protecting defenceless Hamas protestors. This has also been covered up by the same UK PM.
Usual ending of any Nighy drama….he forces UK PM to publish the truth about the evil Israelis in return for remaining schtum about rendition. Nighy then heads off into the sunset until the next BBC drama.
Production values – AAA+ Characterisation – pure unadulterated cardboard Message – BBC Goebbels TV at its most blatant
Obviously over the last few days the great and the good at the BBC have become rather unsettled as control over the urban mob violence and looting narrative began slipping through their fingers.
Shocked by the tsunami of contempt that hit them when they tried to frame the discussion in terms of “protestors”, poverty and/or race the Beeboids and their allies in the left wing media/academic cultural elite have been desperately searching for a way of regaining control of the issue by shifting the parameters of the debate.
The initial attempt was laughably unsubtle. Making much of a bevy of leading police officers, spearheaded by ACPOs big cheese Sir Hugh Orde, the aim was to portray the Cameron government as being out of touch. “Leave it to the boys in blue” became the watchword.
Unfortunately the evidence of a lack of leadership and control from the higher echelons at the Met over the first 2/3 days of mob rule in parts of London was so overwhelming that the utterances of Orde and Co. had a very hollow ring.
But, as David at noted yesterday, a new editorial line had been adopted by the BBC suits and programmed into the robotic Sarah Montague as she fed the appropriate cues to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, over sentences handed out to looters. Naturally he came back with the appropriate response – “a collective loss of proportion” This triggered Sarah’s circuitry and produced the key phrase we shall be hearing over and over again at this weekend’s North London dinner parties.
Moral panic.
It’s all out of proportion, you see. There’s no real threat but a lot of opportunists have jumped on this bandwagon to further their own political agenda.
Moral panics allegedly arise when an event is perceived as a threat to society and its values. Those who foment the panic are said to be motivated by a fear of losing control. They therefore attempt to channel potentially disruptive energy by portraying another person or group – “folk devils” – as more of a danger than they actually are. So the Sarah Montague/BBC line appears to be that Cameron is using the riots as an opportunity to demonise the disenfranchised and divert attention from his austerity drive and, strangely enough, that was the angle recently taken by The New York Times…..surprise, surprise….
Heavy stuff, indeed…
But wait a minute – “no real threat but a bandwagon to further an agenda”……”folk devils”…..that seems to ring a bell….
Rupert Murdoch, Anders Breivik, bankers, EDL, AGW deniers, Israelis – now there is a collection of folk devils for you, always presented as the symbols of dark forces ever ready to take us back to some Thatcherite nightmare away from sweetness and light.
With a sister who wears the hijab and a cowboymad Muslim father who dresses like John Wayne, Seema Jilani enjoys a diverse family life. The Texas-based paediatrician, who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan and written extensively on health and social issues, is an engaging contributor to a new BBC documentary, American Muslim: Freedom, Faith and Fear.
Sure, why not? The whole family is Muslim, but their clothing is diverse, so that counts as “a diverse family life” when seen through the agenda-tinted glasses.
Other participants include a fashion designer, an imam, a comedian, a Marine, a Republican congressman and a forthright newspaper columnist – all with something to say about Muslims who live in the Land of the Free. The illuminating 60 minute tv programme, to be accompanied by a World Service radio documentary, emerged from a competition that invited proposals for a collaborative project between BBC Arabic and BBC Persian.
Which means it’s meant to be targeted at Mohammedans in those regions, and not for your consumption. It’s nice, though, that the BBC is actually presenting these people with a positive image of the US, for a change.
‘The original idea was to concentrate on the Bible Belt where there are fascinating similarities between devout Christians and devout Muslims,’ explains BBC Persian reporter Karen Zarindast.
You mean like how they think of women as childbearers first and foremost, subject to the absolute rule of the husband, and their feelings about homosexuality, for example? I won’t hold my breath.
The remit later broadened out and the resulting programme, commissioned by Global News, will be shown on BBC World News, BBC Arabic and BBC Persian in the run-up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
I bet it did. But we’re not at the ‘fear’ part yet. The BBC Persian reporter involved says this:
Originally from Lebanon, he went to university in the US in the mid-80s and this was his first trip back. ‘It was interesting to return after so many years, and I have to say that I fell in love with the country all over again.’
Again, nice to see a positive image about the US from the BBC, for a change.
It’s a familiar sentiment. ‘Everyone we met, from the most recent Muslim arrivals to the surgeon who left Pakistan 30 years ago, told us how much they loved America,’ says Farah. Zarindast, who moved to the UK from Iran 15 years ago, and travels regularly to the US, where her mother and brother now live, was also struck by Muslims’ loyalty to their adopted land.
What shock, eh? People move here on purpose to escape the sh!thole Mulsim countries they live in, and don’t hate it as much as certain Beeboids do.
‘Muslims in America are better integrated than in Britain,’ Darius Bazargan notes. ‘The country is more of a melting pot where people go to escape repression and really value their freedom.’
Shall we examine why that is, BBC? Any future documentaries about what’s preventing Mohammedans from becoming better integrated in Britain? Or have you already decided that it’s down to the inherent racism of the indigenous population, full stop?
Not that Muslims’ love of the States means they are always loved equally in return, he points out. ‘There seems to be more Islamophobia now than immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
Do you think it might have to do with the fact that there have been a few more attempted terrorist attacks by Muslims since then, not to mention Maj. Jihadi Nassan at Ft. Hood? Nah: it’s the inherent racism of the indigenous population:
‘Attitudes have hardened since the election of President Obama. People know they can’t express anti-black opinions but think it acceptable to be anti-Muslim. In fact, [in the case of politicians] their ratings can go up if they appear to be anti-Muslim.’
There you have it: we’re still bloody racists, only we keep quiet about the blacks now. And just like Baroness Warsi said, it’s acceptable to hate Muslims at dinner parties instead. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that not a single second of this is spent discussing any attempted terrorist attacks, or any incident which might even remotely have caused concern about Mohammedans wanting Shariah Law to take precedence over domestic US law in certain cases, or Mohammedan cab drivers in Minnesota refusing to pick up fares at the ariport if they have alcohol on them, or jihadi imams who are forced to leave. Nope, it’s all just racism.
And of course, the best bit:
In another side of the story, the documentary features white Americans who have converted to Islam as a reaction against Western materialism and the constant pressure to look slim and attractive. They include a woman who used to make her living photographing people in nightclubs and is now a devout Muslim.
You couldn’t make it up. It’s White Girl all over again. Remember, this is specifically meant for Muslim audiences in the Muslim World.
What you might call a step change…
What you might call pandering….
A positive message about Islam and Muslims, with a qualified mixed message about the US, and not even meant for you to see or even know about. All at your expense.
The current top story on the BBC’s US & Canada News page is about the President meeting with the Dalai Lama. How many people really care? I realize that this will probably get pushed down the page within a couple of hours as new stories are posted, but why is this even worth reporting at all? Surely there are far more important issues to cover. It’s very revealing of the BBC’s newsgathering priorities that a non-functional meeting with someone who isn’t head of state and isn’t ever going to be one is more important than, say, the news that Standard & Poors just upgraded the state of Ohio’s credit rating because the Governor passed a budget that will mostly fix the state’s economic troubles. Oh, but that’s a Republican Governor, while the Democrat-led US is about to get spanked by S&P instead.
No, the Beeboids love the Dalai Lama, their favorite ex-feudal lord, and so anything about him is more important than mundane economic issues, especially when it makes Republicans look good.
What else is the BBC ignoring in order to make room for celebrity gossip, non-stories about LA road construction, and a non-story about a possible technical glitch in the statehood status of North Dakota (this last one is actually pathetic in that a real story worth reporting is mentioned as an aside near the end: the movement to break Southern California away from the destructive far-Left Northern half. But again, that would be a real story that makes Democrat economic policy look bad, and we simply cannot have that at the BBC.)?
Lots of stuff to cover this week. The BBC thinks you don’t need to know about the following:
Remember when the President signed that “landmark” ObamaCare into law, the one which the BBC championed for ages and lied to you about how it would provide free health care for all those uninsured? One of the President’s favorite anecdotes in His fight for it was about how His mother battled evil profit-driven insurance companies while on her cancer deathbed. The BBC included that anecdote in their report of Him signing the bill into law. Turns out that it’s a little white lie. Book Challenges Obama on Mother’s Deathbed Fight
The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama, in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.
During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.
In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.
But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.
And the BBC will be silent. While the BBC used to spend time searching for even a whiff of angry behavior from Tea Party groups and the Right, they always censor news of violence and violent rhetoric from the Left. Like in Wisconsin (remember Wisconsin?), where the Left is protesting against a non-Left State Supreme Court justice and has a big effigy of him being lynched at a lamppost. Nothing to see here as it’s not the Tea Party doing it, move along. There’s a whole story behind that about how one Justice attacked another in a “he said/she said” incident. The Left has behaved angrily and violently like they did when Gov. Walker was trying to pass a budget, but none of the intrepid platoon of Beeboids covering the US is interested in that kind of story.
Democrats in the US seem to be prejudiced against certain religious groups (just like the BBC), and are less likely to vote for a Mormon to be President. What a shock, eh? The BBC isn’t going to inform you about that kind of poll result because, well, you know….
Newly appointed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta – kicked upstairs from being CIA boss – just said that the reason the US went into Iraq was 9/11. Oops. BBC not interested. Gaffes are only worth reporting when George Bush or a Republican does it. Tax-dodging GE boss Jeffrey Immelt saw 36,000 jobs cut at his company in the last two years, and even sent jobs overseas (well, to Mexico anyway), but now that he’s the President’s Jobs Czar he is scolding business owners to start hiring whether it hurts their business or not. Hypocrisy from The Obamessiah Administration? BBC not interested in telling you.
The BBC has done plenty of reporting on how the dictator of Syria is cracking down on his people and killing protesters, but they have not told you about how the US Ambassador spoke out – on Facebook, no less – and got praised for it – by Syrians.
When was the last time the BBC mentioned the name of one of The Obamessiah’s top campaign fundraisers, Tony Rezko? Not since last summer when his name came up in a news brief ex-Gov. Blagojevich’s criminal trial, I think. Rezko is in jail and Blagojevich has been convicted. Now Rezko’s partner’s trial reveals the possibility of illegal payments to The Obamessiah.
Daniel Frawley has been convicted on massive bank fraud charges (unrelated to the campaign money fraud of the other two guys), but his sentencing is being delayed because he’s apparently been secretly cooperating with prosecutors about something else: Blagojevich’s abuse of power, which landed the ex-Gov in jail.
Details about Frawley’s cooperation with the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and the Illinois attorney general’s office can be gleaned from a 65-page court deposition he gave seven months ago in a legal-malpractice lawsuit that he filed against his former longtime lawyer, George Weaver. In the lawsuit, Frawley accuses Weaver of having overbilled him and telling him to “withhold certain information from the government” when he was cooperating with authorities.
You may well ask, what information was that?
That sworn statement, given Dec. 1, 2010, is posted at suntimes.com/news/watchdogs. In it, Frawley talks about three meetings he’s had with law enforcement authorities since 2006. The deposition outlines how he secretly recorded Rezko, and it raises a new and unsubstantiated question about Rezko’s once-close relationship with Obama — an issue that dogged the then-U.S. senator during his presidential campaign four years ago.
A relationship which the BBC casually dismissed. Too bad they’re not so casual about Tory friendships, eh? But I digress.
Later in the deposition, Weaver’s lawyer, Daniel F. Konicek, asks Frawley about what specific information Weaver is supposed to have told Frawley to withhold from federal authorities.
“I’m assuming the information is about the payments made by Rezko to Obama, so we know we’re talking about the right conversation, right?” Konicek asks Frawley.
Frawley doesn’t answer. So Konicek presses him: “Am I correct it was about Obama being paid by Rezko?”
Frawley replies: “I’m not answering that question, based upon my attorney’s instructions.”
Yet another revelation possibly tying The Obamessiah to fraudulent activity in Chicago, and the BBC isn’t bothered. If Frawley is getting his sentence lightened because of this cooperation, then it’s worth paying it heed. BBC: ZZZZzzzzzzzz
On Friday, the President claimed that 80% of the public“support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts”. The problem is that He made it up. No polls back up this claim, and actually 50% of the public would prefer a deal with either only spending cuts, or mostly spending cuts and very little tax increase (that’s what “revenues” are when they’re at home). The 80% figure comes from a Soros/MoveOn.org poll of only Ohio, Montana, Missouri, and Minnesota, and is not meant to represent the majority opinion of the country. The Obamessiah lied again. BBC: Look over there: Republican intransigence!
An email has been “leaked” revealing the Obamessiah Administration’s real goal of Operation “Fast and Furious”/”Gunwalker”/”Gunrunner”: passing more restrictive gun control laws.
“Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.”
Which is what I’ve been saying all along, and which the BBC has censored all along. Instead, when reality forced them to report on the heat the ATF has been getting over this scandal, they dutifully shifted blame away from Him. Since the BBC is ideologically set against private gun ownership of any kind, and must support Him at all costs, they’ve treated this story with the softest of kid gloves. When they haven’t buried the story completely, that is.
On Wednesday, the debate between the President and Republican House leaders got so heated that He walked out. The BBC reported that He told them, “Enough is enough,” but they censored out this part:
“Don’t call my bluff,” the president said. “I am not afraid to veto and I will take it to the American people.”
I guess that finely-tuned brain of His doesn’t know you’re not supposed to tell them you’re bluffing. Another Obamessiah gaffe hidden from you by the BBC. As the ABC report I’ve linked to shows, He’s willing to sink the entire country for His class war ideology, and the BBC is blaming only the Republicans’ ideology (and dishonestly portraying it as protecting the rich, full stop) instead.
That’s enough for the week, I suppose. Does anyone feel properly informed by the BBC about US issues? The solution to all this is simple: Shut down the BBC’s newsgathering operation in the US and replace them all with a news aggregator. You’ll be better informed about what’s going on over here.
W. Joseph Campbell, proprietor of the Media Myth Alert blog has busted the BBC for the same kind of Narrative-supporting BS we often call them on. It’s worth featuring here. BBC calls Hearst vow apocryphal, quotes it anyway
Apocryphal but still quotable.
That’s how Britain’s venerable broadcaster, the BBC, treated the mythical anecdote about media titan William Randolph Hearst and his purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century.
In an article posted online yesterday, the BBC described Hearst as the “definitive [news] baron” and declared:
“He’s credited with the invention of tabloid journalism in the 1890s when his New York Journal began a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He also had a reputation as a warmonger.
“‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war,’ goes an apocryphal instruction he was supposed to have sent in a telegram to an illustrator in Havana.”
That’s right, the line is apocryphal. What, then, is the point in using it? As a none-too-clever, back-handed way of buttressing the dubious notion that Hearst and his newspapers were capable of fomenting a war?
That’s sloppy journalism from a leading international news organization.
Someone at BBC News Online instructed Peter Jackson and Tom de Castella to whip up a piece that would give everyone the idea that nasty Uncle Rupert might be responsible for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they used an apocryphal quote to help create that context of a press baron “known” to have instigated war, knowing full well that’s what they were doing.
The Beeboids are that arrogant. Journalistic standards? Yawn, it’s for the ankle-biters. If it’s for a just cause, anything goes. They have their agenda, and they know they can get away with it.
trains porter { you haven't got it have you....the immigration issue was not a "mistake"...it was calculated. People from the left knew they... } – May 23, 4:50 PM
DB { Well done to all the champions of political correctness: In #Woolwich, some laying flowers won't give their views openly-for fear... } – May 23, 4:46 PM
DickyJim { The problem is that while Christianity promotes 'peace and kindness' that is perceived in many parts of the world, not... } – May 23, 4:45 PM
Deborah { I remembered reading that the push by David Cameron to promote 'gay marriage' had some EU interfering in the background.... } – May 23, 4:42 PM
David Preiser (USA) { Looks like Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt division at the center of the scandal, is going to be... } – May 23, 4:39 PM
