BBC News Online’s front page prominently featured this important

news for most of Tuesday:


Bottom boost

Testing out the pants

that give you a bottom

to rival Jennifer Lopez

It’s reassuring that News Online are getting to the bottom of some stories – it’s a pity though that others, such as this one, Christian doctor ‘was forced out’, seem to pass the BBC by.

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66 Responses to BBC News Online’s front page prominently featured this important

  1. TomL says:

    Gotta love ’em. The ‘pants BBC,’ that is, not the ‘pants pants.’

    Notice the headline to the right of the pants story –
    “Captive audience
    Anger, sympathy, fear… what hostage pictures do to the public”

    Nice.

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  2. dave t says:

    And such an up to date story too! I wonder if the Beeb has a stock of stupid news stories that they throw in when there is something they need to ignore…Christian doctor in a BRITISH hospital forced out by MUSLIMS? Quick! Get Lopez’s bum on the front page and distract them (although this particular story itself might annoy some non-Christians and lead to riots in the streets….).

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  3. Joe says:

    Does anyone know – Is it just a part of the BBC PC belief system, or are the BBC paid by Muslim backers to downplay anthing that shows the all to real and truly nasty aspects of islam?

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  4. Alan Connor says:

    Third most-viewed story of the day, that was. 🙂

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  5. Bill says:

    The BBC reports allegations of Christian on Muslim abuse but won’t report actual Muslim on Christian abuse the same way they mention little about the race and religion of the WPC murderers in Bradford.

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  6. simo says:

    So everyone posting here, write to them and ask why this is so.

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  7. Adrian D says:

    The Lincolnshire story is the thin edge of the wedge.

    The story doesn’t fit with the BBC’s ideology that whites are the most racist group. Anyone who has travelled anywhere in the world would realise how laughable this idea is. Can a Pakistani girl freely bring home a black person, or a Christian or Jew to meet mum and dad? What about the Japanese treatment of Koreans? What about the treatment of Palestinians by their so called Arab brothers? Not a subject you will hear on the BBC soon.

    The Radio 4 news at 6pm last night was dominated by the conviction of Anthony Walker’s killers. First, let me say that this is just an utterly horrific murder and I am glad the perpetrators have been caught and convicted so quickly. But the emphasis in the story on the racial aspects were, I suspect, a cynical excuse for the BBC to wheel out a story on a pet topic • the unique racism of whites. Otherwise, why has there not been similar space allocated to equally horrific murders of whites by Asians and blacks (and there have been some in recent times)?

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  8. Andrew says:

    Doesn’t surprise me Alan – the Super Soaraway Sun was the most viewed newspaper that day. Is Super Soaraway BBC News Online going to have a page 3 of feisty Beeb-approved babes next? Clare Short anyone? 🙂

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  9. Andrew says:

    Having said that though, the Super Soaraway Sun did at least cover the doctor case, Christian row doc payout, unlike the Super Soaraway BBC. Interestingly, when I searched for Erian on News Online, most of the references that came back were Middle Eastern. The Sun points out that Dr. Erian is from Egypt originally – I wonder if he’s a Coptic Christian, hired by his colleagues at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust in the belief that he was a Muslim, only to get the bum’s rush when they discovered the truth. Shame on them, and shame on the BMA too for failing to back their member.

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  10. bc10 says:

    It was the same with the way they reported the French riots, they can’t bring themselves to report stories that show Muslims in a bad light. And if they do have to report on them through the fact that the story is so ridiculously huge then they slant it so that us evil Brits with our past empire and our nasty American friends are the root cause of it all.

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  11. Venichka says:

    Andrew: very interesting discussion on that started yesterday at Harry’s Place- hope you don’t mind me mentioning it.

    But to the topic of the thread – this banality is one of several reasons why I always use the “world edition” of the BBC online page. I’m sure its a ridiculous waste of money having 2 versions of each news page – tagged “world edition” and “UK edition”, if that is waht they do. Public sector finances. huh

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  12. D Burbage says:

    OT

    Beautiful final paragraph.

    >>
    And two week’s ago. Sony announced a Skype-like free net phone service with an emphasis on video conferencing.

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  13. D Burbage says:

    that last one was from

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  14. dan says:

    R5 “Upallnight” had a piece on the reluctance to use the word “Christmas” by certain government & commercial concerns in the US, including a dispute over the name of the fir tree set up on the WH lawn.

    All a symptom of the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism, it would seem. After all Christmas day co-incides with Hannukah.

    The BBCoids in conversation did not appear to notice that the ABC news bulletin that they had just broadcast had, more than once, avoided using the word Christmas, prefering Holiday.

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  15. dan says:

    Another annoying bit of “Upallnight” (does this dead of night programme allow the BBC to be at their most hideously PC, because less than an hour of it produces several biased items?)

    Discussion on the US Supreme Court case on notifying parents of New Hampshire girls seeking abortions.

    Throughout the R5 discussion these people were refered to as “underage WOMEN”.

    Rhod Sharp asked whether a ruling so restricting abortions in New Hampshire would result in these women traveling into another, more liberal state. The fact that they were discussing girls never entered his head, nor did the thought that parents should be involved in such matters.

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  16. simo says:

    Latest on the list of spineless chief constables, lovingly feted by 5Live… Assistant Chief Constable Rob Beckley, who warned that closing mosques, as police are now allowed to do, could be seen as an attack on Islam.

    Begging the question, what exactly does your average imam NOT consider to be an attack on Islam?
    Whimpering, gibbering, hand-wringingly spineless chief constables certainly could never be construed as such.

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  17. Lurker in a Burqua says:

    had they been impregnated by middle aged white men they would pretty soon revert to the status of girls.

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  18. Pete_London says:

    dan

    Upallnight is just about the most ridiculous piece of broadcasting imaginable. There are times they appear to parody the left and their causes, such is their earnest right-on-ness.

    It makes the appearance of the great Charlie Wolf on the Friday and Saturday night graveyard shift at TalkSport all the more welcome. Not only are his instincts right but, having met him at the Beaufort Hunt last season, can testify that he’s a damn fine fellow too. One Of Us, indeed. That he follows directly on from Mike Dickin simply makes for pure, listening heaven.

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  19. TottenhamLad says:

    Of course the BBC are going to go overboard with the Anthony Walker story now.

    If you look at the Home Office figures for inter-racial murders from 2001 until 2004 blacks commited 132% more murders against ‘Whites’.

    Who would believe that for every Black person killed by a ‘White’ person that 2.32 ‘White’ people are killed by a black person if you only source of information is BBC.

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  20. Venichka says:

    Why do you put white in quotation marks with a capital letter, and black not in quotation marks with a lower-case letter? I find the differentiation intriguing.

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  21. Rob Read says:

    Maybe it’s because “whiteys” are light pink coloured?

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  22. Venichka says:

    and “blacks” are which colour exactly?

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  23. Bliss says:

    there, now you`ve used quotation marks and lower case!

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  24. dan says:

    Most wise readers of this blog will of course read The American Expatriate, but here is a plug anyway.

    In the fiscal year from from April 2004 until March 2005, the BBC spent a total of £568,343 on recruitment advertising in a total of 49 newspapers. The recipient of the largest amount of revenue from such BBC advertising was, by far, The Guardian. Nearly 41% of the BBC’s expenditures, or £231,944, went into The Guardian’s coffers.

    http://www.theamericanexpatinuk.blogspot.com/

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  25. Pete_London says:

    dan

    Only 41%? Surely some mistake, unless the 59% went to the Indy, Marxism Today, Le Monde and the in-house journal of the Stop the War coalition.

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  26. gudone says:

    stop you all wondering why the L3 acts like it does!… and read the *10 Rules of Political Correctness* to cut to the chase.

    http://www.randomnotes.co.uk/other/rules.htm

    (apologies if this has been linked to in a previous thread!)

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  27. Jack says:

    I hear Orla Guerin is being pulled out of the Middle East and moved to Johannesburg 🙂

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  28. Ritter says:

    OT –

    Questions of murder
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4480000/newsid_4489300/4489328.stm

    I agree with the editors laying out of the facts in terms of how these horrific murders are covered by the BBC. I don’t agree with his conclusion though. One horrific murder is not much more newsworthy than another simply because it is classed as ‘racist’.

    But at the BBC, this fact is all important.

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  29. Susan says:

    Ritter,

    To me it just sounded like a lot of mealy-mouthed excuses strung together, one after another.

    They know they don’t give equally prominent coverage to racist violence against whites, and why.

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  30. DumbJon says:

    Indeed, Ritter – they just don’t get that claiming racist murders are worse than non-racist ones is, in and off itself, an inherently political judgement.

    Anyway, what’s happened to all that questioning authority the BBC claims it’s doing when Iraq’s mentioned ? Suddenly they’re quoting judges and police as though their opinions were defintive. Suppose it defends what that authorities used for.

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  31. amimissingsomething says:

    i don’t think this is off-topic, since the idea seems to be the bbc desire to distract from possible muslim (islamist?) discrimination and avoid offending we-all-knbow-who…

    anyway, i have a question: was it ever alleged or discussed that the true reason for the bbc not wanting to use the word terrorist was that at the very time of the london terrorist murders, the bbc were likely concluding their agreements with middle east countries they did not wish to offend?

    it seems a case could be made.

    and the doctor’s story being downplaid might really be just a continuation…of a situation which will likely worsen

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  32. disillusioned_german says:

    Let’s hope someone’s going to produce a non left-wing substitute brain that can be given to BBC “journalists” in the near future. Maybe they’d report with less bias then.

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  33. disillusioned_german says:

    amimissingsomething:

    a) They’re no terrorists, they’re victims – we’ve established that.

    b) They’re not downplaying the doctor’s story. They’re not reporting it at all!

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  34. Rob says:

    That “Newswatch” article is pathetic – their excuse for not covering the conviction of Ross Parker’s racist murderers is because there was another high-profile murder conviction that day. So…an organisation which extorts over £3bn annually from its victims cannot cover two big stories in one day? Surely they don’t expect people to swallow this, their arrogance is unbelievable.

    Oh, and just because the judge made a similarly feeble effort to explain away the racist nature of Christopher Yates’ murder doesn’t mean that the BBC should blandly accept what he said. Except, of course, that they so desperately want an excuse to explain it away, any excuse, no matter how flimsy.

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  35. Rob says:

    Following up on what the BBC considers a racist murder, contrast these two headlines:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2590539.stm

    The racist murder of Ross Parker. Hidden away in the “England” section, the headline reads “Three guilty of teenager’s murder”. No mention of the racist aspect of the crime in the headline.

    Contrast with this:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4487208.stm

    Second headline on the front page (it was the main headline earlier), the headline reads “Cousins jailed for racist murder”. Note the racist aspect prominently reported.

    No doubt this multi-billion dollar organisation was distracted by far bigger news stories, such as Amnesty International releasing yet another report criticising America. It can’t possibly be anything to do with the race of the victims and attackers, surely?

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  36. simo says:

    “I hear Orla Guerin is being pulled out of the Middle East and moved to Johannesburg”

    Yes, Jack. In anticipation of Nelson Mandela’s demise, the ever-thoughtful Beeb wants someone on-site they know’s going to blub on cue.
    ‘And Orla, tears in 3-2-1…’

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  37. Carl Bergquist says:

    OFF TOPIC

    I sent this e-mail to the BBC re: Newsnight’s interview with Judith Miller.
    You can still watch the interview (though not the entire show) on the Newsnight website.

    In the 30 November segment featuring Gavin Esler’s interview with Judith Miller, there was no mention of the main source of the intelligence in the yellowcake affair. If you had shown the 16 words from President Bush’s State of the Union speech, your viewers would have been reminded that this source was MI6. How convenient that a British public broadcaster did not mention the role of British intelligence in this affair. Nor that this intelligence agency still stands by the story. Not very professional I must say, or was it perhaps a Freudian slip?

    sincerely,

    Carl Bergquist

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  38. Allan@Aberdeen says:

    I’ve just been watching Question Time for 5 mins – but no more because the Gramscians have taken it over. However, on the subject of the Anthony Walker murder, Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP stated that blacks and asians are much more likely to be victims of racial crime than whites. That is an absolute lie as is demonstrated by the Home Office’s own figures:

    Click to access s95race04.pdf

    A question is, why do they do it? They are paid to know these things.

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  39. disillusioned_german says:

    As Dimbleby said re. the Yates murder: “The judge found it was not a racist crime” so that’s good enough for the Beeb.

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  40. Pete_London says:

    Allan@Aberdeen

    Dear God, that Sturgeon woman is useless, and not for the first time is she making a fool of herself on QT for the Scottish National Socialist Party. AA Gill has just ripped her apart over Iraq, and he eats food for a living.

    On 5 Live during its Drivetime(?) programme at about 6.00pm tonight the female presenter interviewed the Chief Constable of the Cheshire Police Force. She actually asked him if whites are ever the victims of racist murders. She genuinely didn’t know. Useless, useless, useless. The Chief Constable was hardly any better, giving a girlie-man response that … yes … well … some are. He didn’t know the facts of the matter either.

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  41. Anonymous says:

    Only 41%? Surely some mistake, unless the 59% went to the Indy, Marxism Today, Le Monde and the in-house journal of the Stop the War coalition.
    Pete_London

    _______

    No, that’s reality impacting.

    Media workers, or potential media workers, read the grauniad, the Times, the Indie, and (in London – most of ’em 🙂 the Standard Media pages.

    Where would you advertise when looking for, say, APs, subs, or SBJs, Pete?

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  42. Lurker says:

    Just watched Panorama. The virtues of the Baltic economic model were highlighted (esp Lithuania & Finland)and its message for Europe, rampant free market + high taxes/welfare. Britain’s permanent entombment in the EU was taken as a given.

    In extolling the virtues of these succesful Baltic states the reporter somehow neglected to mention that most of their recent advances were acheived outside the EU. So no message there then. Lack of time no doubt.

    References to their well educated, willing workforces also made. Somehow not commented on was that these are countries with 99% white homogeneous populations with a very distinct lack of vibrant, diverse, communities to enrich them. Again, lack of time I’m sure.

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  43. GCooper says:

    Anonymous writes: “Where would you advertise when looking for, say, APs, subs, or SBJs….”

    What a perfect example of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Were the BBC to share it’s recruitment advertising fairly, people would look wherever it appeared.

    Remember – this organisation is duty bound to behave without partiality because it spends our taxes. So spare us the weasel words, eh?

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  44. Anonymous says:

    I ask again – where would you advertise for media workers? Cut by share of all readership? By population? Or by effectiveness/ reach of ad.

    ‘Were the BBC to share it’s recruitment advertising fairly, people would look wherever it appeared.’

    ‘fairly’?

    What on earth does that mean? According to this, all media jobs wouldn’t be advertised at all – because more people don’t read newspapers than do.

    Or if advertised, would be advertised in redtops – which reach media people less than the average.

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  45. Big Mouth says:

    Are the beeboids getting advertising money for the continuing George Best saga? This morning just after 7 we heard that the alcoholic’s coffin, presumably with the deceased in it, has arrived in Northern Ireland. Stop press! This shunts aside such items as suicide bombings, bird flu, and the ever popular learning to read stories. Next week there will be an item that, wait for it, George Best is still dead! And next year at this time we’ll hear a piece about how the man is expected to remain dead for the foreseeable future.

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  46. Anonymous says:

    Our Anonymous contributor is promoting an entirely circular argument. If the BBC chose to spend the largest part of its recruitment advertising revenue at the Pig Farmers Gazette, by the following week a publication with porkers on the front page would be appearing on desks throughout media land. Inevitably other employers wishing to recruit in the field would be drawn to think pig when it came to placing advertising and before long the Gazette would be able to mount full page colour pin-ups of Wessex Saddlebacks with nary a thought to the printing costs.
    In truth though, Scott only exposed a cutlet of the truth. The Guardian also receives a vastly diproportionate allocation of education and local authority recruitment advertising making it effectively the inhouse publication of the State Sector, largely subsidised out of public funds.
    In passing, if followers of the Religeon of Peace find the porcine references above offensive…. tough.

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  47. Ritvars Eglājs says:

    Offtopic – a new bias example!
    BBC World homepage features the 1000th execution in the US since 1976 as the top news right now. There is a smaller article on torture in China
    below too – see enclosed attachment. BUT CHINA HAS CARRIED 3400 EXECUTIONS MERELY IN 2004! (Comparing to 59 in the US; data from Der Fischer Weltalmanach 2006.) Talk impartiality, heh.

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  48. Hugh says:

    I know this is OT, but it’s not often the guardian suggests the beeb might be biased:

    http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1654881,00.html

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  49. DAW says:

    If only Tony Blair could have George W standing behind him at these European Negotiations. It’s the only time the weasel’s got any balls when he’s got George with him..

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  50. the_camp_commandant says:

    OT: another story you won’t read much about on al-BBC

    http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4F2F7ABC-B09C-430D-BA51-F30CF4E1F4FE.htm

    We have here the evidence that Palestine will never be a secular democracy.

    Al-BBC, in supporting Palestinian terrorism at every turn and weeping for its paedophile leaders as they die long-overdue and regrettably peaceful deaths, has given little if any thought to what a Palestinian state might actually look like. It would look a bit like Ulster ruled by the IRA.

    If a terrorist organisation can win half the seats in a student election, we may be sure that any Palestinian quasi-secular democracy would go exactly the same way, and would not be a democracy for too long.

    This makes the attitude towards Israel of the likes of Orla Goering and Barbara von Plett even weirder. If the BBC got its way, and Israel were destroyed and replaced by a Palestinian state, it would be one that systematically and institutionally repressed and disenfranchised big-mouthed, opinionated women like themselves.

    In the Middle East that the BBC wants to see and is working to bring about, Barbara and Orla’s role would be to wear the burqa and leave the kitchen only when summoned to service their husbands.

    This is IMHO the main reason why Islamic states will remain morally backward for many years to come: Islam, uniquely among religions, is intellectually wedded to the subjugation of women. To the extent that this happened in the west, it was by way of social custom, from which people could be persuaded by logic and an appeal to justice. In the Middle East, it is the consequence of mediaeval doctrine and dogma which admit no possibility of error.

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