Monthly Archives: November 2008

PROSECUTING THE WAR.

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You have to hand it to the BBC, they are relentless in their opposition of our armed forces participating anywhere in the world where they might make a difference. And so this morning, the State Broadcaster is flogging a poll that IT has commissioned which suggest that the majority of people here agree with the BBC contention that we should withdraw our soldiers from Afghanistan. This is a trailer for a BBC debate this evening hosted by Eddie Mair “Should troops leave Afghanistan?”. First it was troops out of Iraq, Now it is troops out of Afghanistan. I recall the BBC cheer-leading for the troops out of Northern Ireland movement some years ago. Whatever the military question, the BBC answer is always the same; troops out.

I also am interested in the idea of the BBC determining news by commissioning loaded polls. Here are a few suggestions for some more BBC polls.
1. Should Jonathan Ross be sacked forthwith?
2. Should people have the choice whether they pay the license fee?
3. Should the Burqa be banned?
4. Should all illegal immigrants be deported?
5. Would it not be best if the UK left the EU?
Got any more to add? It would be nice to have a list of questions we can be sure the BBC will never commission a poll on!

General BBC-related comment thread!

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Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

No faults allowed

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Following the recent criticism of the BBC’s coverage of the US election, it’s worth mentioning this piece from yesterday’s Independent. It’s an interview with Peter Horrocks, head of news, and it’s classic Beebish. For anyone discomforted by the recent humility the Beeb’s been forced into over the Sach’s affair, Horrocks it the perfect tonic: he simply admits no criticism.

So, the cringe inducing interview with Gore Vidal: a highlight of the evening, says Horrocks. Political editor looking tipsy on screen? A very human moment. Dimleby past his prime? A very respected and experienced person, he says (somewhat dodging the question). Appalling graphics? Not at all.

So the Beeb’s perfect? Well, not quite: The BBC news executive admits that he was concerned by the lack of black faces in the BBC’s coverage on such a moment in history.

Further fallout

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It’s been hard to avoid comment about the Beeb’s bias in the national press lately, but this article by novelist DJ Taylor on the Beeb’s US election coverage is worth flagging up:

While everybody in the room – party cheerleaders excepted – clearly wanted Obama to win, those in charge were doing a very good impression of studied neutrality. It was all a far cry from recent British general elections, where the anti-Conservative bias of certain BBC pundits… has been so flagrant as to make you wonder exactly how they got away with it… There is no great mystery, of course, behind this sudden excess of timidity. In the wake of the Brand/Ross disaster the corporation is simply terrified of offending anybody.

Worth mentioning, too, that Taylor’s a member of the Labour party, and this is from the left-leaning Independent.

And, sticking with leftist newspapers sticking it to the Beeb over the last couple of days, here’s Sue Carroll in the Mirror on Ed Stourton’s description of the Queen mother as a “ghastly old bigot”:

When the Queen Mother died, Ed Stourton condemned a tabloid newspaper for publishing details of her last moments, claiming the publication was “quite comfortable in the gutter”… Would his book about political correctness have made news without him shopping the nation’s favourite gran? In a word No.

Welcome to the gutter, Ed.

Compare And Contrast …

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The BBC News home pages for the 2004 Presidential Election and the 2008 Presidential Election

They’re .. er .. somewhat different in tone, to put it mildly. And they must have used up all the website’s scare quotes in 2004. Then we had :

‘Liberty’ at the heart of President Bush’s foreign policy.

Rice begins work on ‘great cause’.

Not to mention

What Bush means by ‘liberty ‘US vote ‘mostly free and fair’

Admittedly the 2004 page is post-inauguration – but I don’t remember coverage of the result being quite so “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, that the King of Glory may enter in“. Indeed, I recall a certain gloom creeping in at the time the results were announced – one observer claimed that “every single BBC reporter looks like they have just swallowed a wasp“.

You may remember that after 2004, the BBC’s post-election theme was ‘Divided America’.

Although the 2004 vote was 51/48 and the 2008 vote was a not-radically-different 53/46 percentage split, I somehow think that the ‘Divided America‘ theme will go back in the toybox for a few more years.

Not that the BBC weren’t following the pack.

(via Booker Rising)

General BBC-related comment thread!

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Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

HAPPY HOUR.

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There’s been a lot of debate on the BBC this morning on the report from the Home Affairs select committee calling for the banning of what is called “below-cost” selling of alcohol. The idea of government setting minimum prices for alcohol is one idea put forward by the Committee’s oleaginous chairman, Keith Vaz.

Now before we get caught up in the debate about whether it is the price of alcohol or the availability of alcohol which is leading to widespread reckless drinking, I notice that the BBC pays no attention whatsoever to the totalitarian instinct behind this report, namely that politicians will decide the price we pay for alcohol. What next – the government to set minimum pricing for food “in order to combat obesity”? What bothers me is that way in which government continues to intrude into our lives and the only issue the BBC wants to discuss is just how great this intrusion should be. The other aspect of this debate entirely missing from BBC coverage is that those who drink excessively and who commit crime get away with blue murder if and when they are apprehended and brought to court. Judicial weakness is as much of issue here as the price of a can of lager, but somehow that is never mentioned by the BBC. In framing the debate in this particular way, the BBC helps ease through the totalitarian instincts of our political class and that is enough to drive anyone to drink!

TAX CUTS.

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If there is one concept that is guaranteed to raise hackles at the BBC, it is the idea that government might seek to cut taxes. For years now the BBC has assiduously retailed the Labour line that any cut in taxation would result in less doctorsnursesnteachers and so as Prudence Brown has cranked up taxation, the Conservative Party backed away from the idea of cutting tax (wrongly in my view). But now that dear Prudence has mired the UK economy in recession, all of sudden Labour is now making noises of tax cuts. As are the Lib-Dems! So the Tories under Boy David have been forced to come out and say that a future Conservative government would look to cut taxation. However what got my attention this morning was on Today circa 6.30am when John Humphrys was sneering at the Conservative notion that tax cuts could be paid for through efficiency savings. Humphrys seemed much more comfortable with the Labour notion that in order to cut taxes you just borrow more and more and more. It might be news to fat cat BBC presenters like Mr Humphrys BUT there is no organisation in this land that, if pushed, could not find efficiency savings. In fact this is a central engine of effective capitalism. But in the neo-socialist cossetted world of license-payer funded indulgences, Humphrys seems unable to grasp this key economic tenet. Labour under Brown has built up a bloated public sector which, like the BBC, could provide substantial savings were the axe to be taken to parts of it. But the BBC prefers to wallow in the tax and spend philosophy of Labour and that is why it will prove very difficult for Cameron to obtain a fair hearing for his (belated) tax cuts.