Vote early, vote often

. I can’t get used to these newfangled polls where it is positively encouraged to vote every day. You can vote for this blog as Best UK blog in the 2005 Weblog Awards. You can even vote for other blogs if you feel so inclined, although if you do one of¹ our fleet of dreaded Biased BBC detector vans will drive past your house in a menacing manner. It’s a Ford Transit. Driver’s name is Alf.²

¹”One of” as in “all of”.

² He’s actually delivering free newspapers to a warehouse in Worthing but kindly agreed to help out by keeping an eye out for anyone who might have voted the wrong way. Thanks, Alf.

Q.

Can you spot the missing word(s) from this BBC News Online article, Thousands march for HK democracy, about a major pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong?

A. Yes, you got it, the missing word(s) are communism and variants thereof, with bonus points if you also noted the omission of any reference to the Tiananmen Square Massacre (sorry Beeboids, that would be the Tiananmen Square Tragedy to you).

One by One

Reading this article at BBConline one has to try to follow the tortuous logic of a journalist trying to justify after the event the BBC’s skewed approach to the news, in this case to ‘Questions of Murder’. As Dumbjon points out, the notion of challenging authority doesn’t apply when the BBC agrees with that authority- when, for example, the race-based news quota method is applied.

Anthony Walker died, and that’s sad, and I have a different feeling about what priorities should be employed concerning such cases from the floundering BBC journalist who drew the short straw of attempting a Beeb apologia. I feel that all cause celebre murder cases should be left to the few gutter press publications who can really thrive on them. There should be no Danielle Jones, no little Rorys, no Holly and Jessicas etc- and no Anthony Walkers- on the BBC, and thus less likely to be such a style of journalism in the rest of the media. Instead there should be some dedicated continuous coverage of murder cases on a daily basis- complete with court records, legal diaries, verdict analysis etc (I suspect this would really be the reintroduction of certain features of coverage which have been dropped over the years). If the BBC want their moral leadership role (which they pride themselves on in bringing ‘social value’ to the British people) to count for them in the debate over their future, that’s what they should do.

And meanwhile, they might consider fitting this kind of information somewhere into their grand moral compass:

‘these murders need to be set out one by one, in all their horror, describing their nature and affirming that which is too often forgotten: Saddam was one of the worst tyrants in history and it was urgent to rid the Iraqi people of him.’

Roundup

Peter Cunningham writes: “The following article on BBC online “US abortion rights in the balance?” ends with the sentence “And for many women with unwanted pregnancies in that southern state, little would change.” It is interesting that the author choose not to use the equivalent, “And for many unborn babies in California, little would change – they would continue to be killed.”

Ritter pointed out this Newswatch article on the higher coverage of the white-on-black murder of Anthony Walker compared to the coverage of the black-on-white murder of Richard Whelan, the asian-on-white murder of Christopher Yates, or various other killings. Ritter writes, “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.”

Another correspondent pointed out this story: Gaza gang seizes lion in zoo raid. She writes, “This is an item about how a “mafia-style gang” may be holding a lion-cub and two ‘Arabic-speaking parrots’ – fine as far as it goes. She adds:

But please note the following:

“The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Gaza says human abductions in the Gaza Strip usually end with the victim being freed quite quickly and unharmed”.

There is something soooooooo nauseatingly mild and reassuring about this. It’s saying, well there are kidnappings, but absolutely no need to condemn or worry about them because, don’t you see, nothing happens to the victim, it’s quite lot of fun really for them, takes them out of their boring routine.

Where is the condemnation of such a horrible crime against humans, and awful for animals too?

There have been a number of kidnappings in Gaza, which is in a state of chaos and lawlessness since the israeli withdrawal. Often the kidnap victims are foreign aid workers and journalists. I just wonder if Alan Johnston and the BBC are worried he could become such a victim if he doesn’t say the right things on the BBC website to appease potential kidnappers.

So we are forced to pay for such appeasement through our licence fee.

As usual, could correspondents note that I will quote their names if and as they appear in the text of the email, or, if taken from a comment, using the form of their names that they have filled in the comments box. Let me know if your name has been quoted when you would prefer it was not, or omitted when you would prefer to have it quoted. Do not rely on my memory!

John Sentamu

became Archbishop of York on November 30. This report by the BBC’s Religious Affairs Correspondent, Robert Pigott, describes his enthronement. It touches on his political views:

“He denounced the war in Iraq and demonstrated against it. He criticised racism in the police after being stopped and searched eight times during six years as a bishop in London.

“He said of the Church itself that it was socially glued together by a monochrome – white – culture.”

A correspondent notes that this article is striking for its “selection for attention of its [the BBC’s] own favourite litany of left-wing issues … and the complete ignoring of his clear, on-the-record, outspoken and thoroughly newsworthy concern for British tradition and identity.”

The BBC had reported the new Archbishop’s concern for British and English identity, in this report from November 22:

Multiculturalism has left the English embarrassed about celebrating their true national identity, Britain’s first black archbishop has said. Dr John Sentamu, who will be enthroned as Archbishop of York next week, said a failure to rediscover English culture would fuel greater political extremism.

“England is the culture I have lived in, I have loved,” the Ugandan-born cleric told The Times newspaper.

He called for the English to properly mark St George’s Day on 23 April.

– but it was tucked away in BBC North Yorkshire.

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.