Is it just me, or does the much repeated advert

(on the supposedly ad-free BBC) for Andrew Marr’s new Sunday morning programme have him saying what sounds like “What we’re trying to achieve is the television equivalent of a crappy little newspaper”? I presume he’s trying to say ‘cracking’, but if he does mean crappy then he need look no further than the BBC’s Six O’Clock news crew for inspiration – telly-taxpayers haven’t forgotten the depths of dumbing-down exposed a year or two ago when one of the BBC’s supposed ‘talent’ responded on air to the presenter with something like “yes… and on the show tonight… we have”. Bring back Richard Baker, Kenneth Kendall, Robert Dougal et al! Please!

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the BBC, we have Torin Douglas, ITV cheerful as it hits its 50th, bemoaning the passing of the much missed ITN News at Ten. What Torin doesn’t remind us about though is how, once it became painfully obvious to all, incuding the short-sighted executives at ITV, that ITN News at Ten would have to come back, the tellytax-funded opportunists (bloody Greg Dyke, again) at the BBC made sure it could never work again by cynically moving the BBC Nine O’Clock News to 10pm. Good old BBC – public service at its best!

As an aside, a (Don’t) Have Your Say contributor at the time asked “What next? An advert break for News at Six?”. Why yes indeed, the supposedly ad-free BBC now has an ad-break in the Six O’Clock News, stuffed in to the gap between the national and regional news parts of the programme!

Telling the IRA arms story ‘is vital’

, according to Brian Rowan, BBC Northern Ireland security editor. A surprising part of Rowan’s conclusion is his assertion that “Even the loyalists accept that there is no threat from the IRA”.

Really? Well, I suppose you might concur if, like Brian, you omit events such as the IRA’s grand larceny at the Northern Bank in December (see The Adams-McGuinness technique: rob banks to buy your way to power in today’s Times*) from your analysis, or the vicious IRA murder of Robert McCartney, complete with thorough forensic cover-up (and a pub full of IRA/Sinn Fein witnesses saying, all together now, “we was all in the toilet at the time, so we was”).

On a related note, now that attention has shifted, intimidation of and violence towards the McCartney family and their friends has resumed. Strangely, the BBC’s sole article on the subject, headlined McCartney intimidation ‘growing’, has been watered down with a new headline, Families discuss justice campaign. Way to go, BBC!

* Channel 4’s Dispatches, The Big Heist, is on at 9pm tonight.

In the run up over last weekend to this week’s Liberal Democrat Party conference

in Blackpool, BBC News Online featured a few pre-conference puff-pieces, including one with millionaire* Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone, Liberal gets tough on pub hours, by Justin Parkinson, BBC News political** reporter, focusing on Ms. Featherstone’s “biggest hit so far”, her “querying of the impending liberalisation of pub licensing laws in England and Wales”.

Curiously, amongst all of Featherstone’s ‘tough’ words, Justin omits to mention the Lib Dems policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16! Just the sort of typical two-faced Lib Dem hypocrisy that any journalist worth his or her salt ought to be probing.

From Hansard, Jan 25th, 2005:

Kevin Brennan: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is Lib Dem policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16? Does he think that that will contribute to a reduction in binge drinking?

Mr. Foster: The answer is yes. I do not think that I could explain the position more clearly.

Link courtesy of the excellent, if currently somewhat sporadic, LibDem Watch.

* Not mentioned by Justin either. ** And here was me thinking they were all political reporters at the BBC – just like criminal lawyers: “why? aren’t they all criminals?” šŸ™‚

Lost in translation – indeed!

Harold Evans’ most recent opinion column at BBC News Online was described as: “Evans on words – Don’t say ‘precipitation situation’ if you mean ‘it’s raining'” – this from the corporation that goes out of its way (re-writing history as necessary, even) to say militant/insurgent/bomber/etc. whenever it means terrorist!

Note to the producers and staff on the BBC’s Six O’Clock News

, re. your story this evening about the clothes horse known as Kate Moss: her boyfriend, Pete Doherty, is not “a well known drug user”. He is, in fact, a well known drug abuser.

Next time you take the trouble to broadcast to the nation’s watching families please try to remember this important distinction, and perhaps even point out to the children watching your coverage the typical outcome of abusing drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Thank you.

P.S. Logging on to BBC News Online to watch their recorded version of the Six O’Clock News just now, after 8pm, reveals a message stating “This broadcast has ended”. If only!

Two sides to every story.

That is the maxim followed by whoever wrote this article. It prompted this post from Squander Two, who says:

The level of duty on diesel is a fact, not an opinion. It is published every year in the Budget, and the BBC report on it then. All they need do to get the facts of the matter is to check their own archives. But they don’t. Instead, they report the claims, the opinions, of two lobby groups, without then telling us whether those opinions are right or wrong. This isn’t a discussion about the nature of the soul or something. It’s a real, easily discoverable fact, but the BBC seem unable to tell us what it is.

I am taking a break from being enraged with the BBC today. I would like to feed the writer of this article a nut.

Today’s Sunday Times also reports an undercover investigation

of BBC programme makers, revealing that:

COMPANIES are paying fees of up to Ā£40,000 to advertise their products covertly on BBC programmes, often in breach of the corporationā€™s rules.

At least 50 cases have been identified where top brands have bought favourable exposure on BBC television by paying specialist agents.

The article goes on to point out that:

The licence fee payer is the loser from the multi-million-pound trade. By maintaining the fiction that ā€œbrand placementā€ agencies are no more than tradesmen supplying props, the BBC can fend off pressure to sell conventional advertising. But for relatively paltry benefits in kind it hands over promotional slots worth thousands of pounds.

Read the The Sunday Times’ Insight Team’s accompanying article for the full story of how BBC shows connive with those with products to promote.

In an article in today’s Sunday Times

we learn that Lance Price, a former BBC reporter who, surprise, surprise, went to work for the Blair government as a spin doctor from 1998 to 2001, says:

The media was bullied, browbeaten and bribed with favours to report Labour favourably.

and worse, that:

The BBC reveals its questions in advance to Blair at press conferences in return for their reporters being chosen to ask their questions first.

A fuller version of Mr. Price’s revelations are serialised in today’s Mail on Sunday, where Price is described as remaining “a staunch New Labour supporter”.

According to Rupert Murdoch

, Tony Blair said the BBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina was “full of hatred of America.”

Tony Blair wasn’t the only critic. This article from the Financial Times says:

Bill Clinton, the former US president, and Sir Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony Corporation, also criticised the tone of the BBC’s coverage during a seminar on the media at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York.

Sir Howard Stringer is also a former head of CBS news.

Mr Clinton said the corporation’s coverage had been “stacked up” to criticise the federal government’s slow response.

Even if we add a pinch of salt to the views of Mr Murdoch, a commercial rival to the BBC, here we have the Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the former Democratic President of the United States, not to mention the former head of a media organisation that has itself been heavily criticised for liberal bias, all criticising the BBC. They may have spoken more freely because they were at a semi-private gathering.

Now they really are taking the

obsession with Bush to new extremes. Yes, the BBC has reported that the president once needed to pee. (Hat tip: Susan)

Stop the presses! In another blow for media credibility, “Susan” a reader of “bloggs”, has thrown a googly to demonstrate that his handwriting’s not like that.

I await the retraction from the BBC. (“Correction: Bush Did Not Need To Urinate After All.”)

Some may suspect that the whole thing was a Karl Rove put-up job to make the BBC look silly. After all, just how likely is it that some amateur could detect and disprove the so-called hoax in a mere six minutes, when trained professionals had taken it at face value?