Well, it’s a dramatic if not ruthless decision by the Murdoch empire to close The News of the World. In a sense one less trash newspaper is to welcomed, although it reduces competition and choice whilst ensuring that the leftist point of view increases, something I am certain the BBC will be delighted about. I’m just hoping that the disgraceful practice of phone hacking was restricted to NOTW and did not extend to papers of quality such as the Daily Mirror, to name but one. At another level, this decision by Murdoch shuts the attack on NI down, the crowd have gotten the (deserved) scalp they wanted. I suspect the BBC will now move to focus the attack on Cameron.
CLOSURE?
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Cameron had his chance to take on the BBC and blew it; it would be poetic justice if it brought about his end.
And with a bit of luck the next guy will be a real conservative who will smash the Beeb to pieces.
A ‘win-win’?
Snap. This is what I was writing as you were posting your comment, RCE:
“I suspect the BBC will now move to focus the attack on Cameron.”
Perhaps they’ll bring him down too and the Conservatives will replace him with an actual conservative. Who that would be escapes me.
Wouldn’t that mean Clegg being in charge temporarily?
Clegg is more of a Tory than Cameron
Cameron won a battle…well, even that wasn’t an unqualified win. He has a war to go yet. So who is going to vote rightwing Conservatives into government? And who threw everything it had to stop even Cameron?
You won’t find a Tory in the tory party and the Guardian/BBC will attack ANYONE they see as a threat to the liberal elite.
The only chance the right had was to castrate the BBC on election day, but the Tory right have been either gassed or silenced.
Serves them right and serves the nation right, with Labour in charge we will end up like Ireland and Greece within a couple of years.
Robert Peston looks like he’s got a dildo up his arse on BBC 1 now.
“Robert Peston looks like he’s got a dildo up his arse on BBC 1 now.”
Belated welcome back, Martin.
The illiberal pro-Statist Leftist elite you mean. There is nothing liberal about Guardian readers. Their fantasy is living in a One Party State with themselves in charge. They make Islamists look broad minded.
Martin, we’ve missed your pithy comments.
Ah the Beeb will be strewn with mirrors and credit cards tonight ! they have started dismantling a free press and have been helped by nearly the entire lurvie army twotter fools and blogger bores who have done the bidding without checking for facts or waiting for a truth to emerge one is even now bogging [well that’s the word I use to describe s$%T] that some mad cow a real proven fruit loop and faker is claiming this and that !
Well this might just be a wake up call for the right wing in the Country, especially in the tory party. We’ve got Nick Robinson spouting on about panic in Downing Street and making an utter arse of himself.
But I suspect nothing will change, this blog will continue to highlight lefty bias at the BBC all propmted by the Guardian, but nothing will happen.
Twats like Cameron and Patten will babble on about the greatness of the BBC whilst the BBC openly smears anyone who expresses a view opposed to the lefty liberalism the BBC/Guardian sees as the norm in society.
Robinson and Peston are just hoping to get back on the inside track of No. 10. They want the access back that they lost at the last election.
By the way have you seen Toenail’s new glasses? Makes him look like a Nazi torturer.
Martin – welcome back from me!
I can’t wait for comments that equate homosexuality with paedophilia and accuse all BBC staff of being drug taking child-abusers. Really raises the tone of debate round here. Does the B-BBC cause no end of good.
of FFS
we have another Dez on our hands
just when you thought there could only be one tosspot like that idiot
Hmmm, as I’ve said before you don’t have to look far to find the reason why BBC staff don’t really feel it’s worth engaging with B-BBC. Shame. It used to be very different.
exactly
quote-
“I can’t wait for comments that equate homosexuality with paedophilia”
we really need contributions like that
nothing like a few good straw men to knock down,eh Dave?
The BBC strategy is transparent. Make the subject taboo so that nobody will feel able to discuss or defend it. Like they did with immigration/racism.
Speaking up for the freedom of the press and thus challenging the BBC’s market share will be portrayed as defending the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone.
Pure Gramsci.
I still say it’s a brilliant move by Murdoch. If it was me, I’d have done the same thing, and would spend the rest of the week standing there with my hands spread out, saying, “What more do you want?”. And let the BBC and the rest of them reveal their true goal. Then it’s libel and restraint of trade lawsuit time.
If Murdoch had the half the balls they say he does, he’d have already started proceedings against Lord Prescott for what he said today.
Well I wish you were right, the BBC have been allowing Prescott, Campbell (who in my opinion should be in jail for war crimes) and Bryant to say the most outrageous things, things BBC hacks can’t say but would like to.
There is no evidence tha these huge lists of people have had thier phones hacked, just because their name is on a list means nothing.
Murdoch doesn’t really get it, why is Fox News so popular, it’s because it offers a view on politics and the world 180 degrees opposite from the liberal elite.
Print journlisn is dying, Murdoch can go behind pay walls but that is not the answer.
The Daily Mail and Guardian (and the BBC) have huge powerful online websites, Sky News have a rather pathetic site, Fox have some great live online stuff.
Murdoch really should be looking at pumping into the UK from the USA a UK Fox News just like CNN do.
That would really piss the BBC/Guardian off.
I heard Simon Heffer was looking to do just as you suggest.
David it’s the only way to go, print journalism is dying, Murdoch can’t rreally see it, pay walls don’t work, you only have to look at sites like the Huff puff, as much as I despise it, it’s very poweful, more than much on the web. But Murdoch needs to wake up the BBC/Guardian are only just starting, they will not only want to stop his takeover of Sky but actually see Sky broken as a broadcaster, I suspect Sky will be their next target.
The HuffPo is far more balanced than the BBC. They talk about stuff the BBC censors, although it’s mostly red meat for the Leftoid crowd. The UK version will be more of the same, I’m sure.
I don’t really want a straight-up opinion piece challenger to the Leftoids at the BBC. I’d prefer something that challenged both sides equally, and had different points of view as a constant instead of a gesture, and tried to tell it straight. Even that would be a strong challenge to the BBC’s propaganda machine, though.
If only the Beeboid Empire could be shut as swiftly.
I see that hypocrite and freeloader Prescott who is never off the Beeboid screen these days as if he had some authority on these matters is mouthing away on Sky News as well:
Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott told Sky News: “they’ll put the ordinary people out of work and not one of those senior people who are involved in this, including Rebekah Brooks… they never get sacked.”
Did “senior person” Prescott get sacked for misconduct with the office staff when he was a Minister? I seem to recall that the remember that the member of staff was sent home and ultimately moved to a different department.
Are there any Tories left? They are cowed and bowing in apology to the left that run the culture/media nexus. I just wish they would stop trying to be nice. Who cares about nice? Nice doesn’t get you any credit. Thatcher didn’t win and win again because she was nice. What would be really nice is if a Tory had some real conviction and wasn’t afraid to vocalise it.
Actually, Lord Lard Arse Of Spud-U-Like never was a minister, was he ? Just the perfroming buffoon New Labour kept as a pet to reassure the more traditional members of the party of their socialist idiot credentials.
And while I’m here, why is he invariably referred to a “former Deputy Prime Minister” Lard Arse, when that is no more an actual job than Father Of The House ? Much better to refer to him as the ex and present Lard Arse, surely ?
What does it say about this lousy country that a campaign spearheaded by the verminous “national” broadcaster, the BBC, and paid for by a compulsory tax can close down a newspaper ?
Freedom, democracy ? Died in the UK years ago. RIP.
Except the News of the Screws was never a ‘news’paper – just a scandel rag. Good riddence to bad rubbish.
And now for the BBC revelations about labours involvement with NI from 1997 to 2009. Oh look a flying pig.
Hmmm, this is going to become a B-BBC meme isn’t it? So iplayer Newsnight last night to see Kirsty Wark going after Milliband on this very point. And Andrew Neil asking Alan Johnson why he didn’t do anything at all about all this when he was Home Secretary. *sees flying pig, shoots it down. Bacon anyone?*
Speaking of Newsnight, the first two slots were given to Rusbridger and Miliband, this took up the first 30 minutes of the programme. And what was that weird camera/lighting they used in the Miliband interview?
I didn’t see that but there was one night recently when they had some weird lighting that was turning guests’ heads bright red.
From the king of the cherry orchard, in defence of the most editorially narrative enhancing medium out there, this is quite something.
A ‘going after’ on Newsnight and ‘a’ question here and there. Against a tsunami of double standards, led by the BBc and such paragons as Prescott, Campbell and any other one degree of separation ‘guest’ from a clearly limited iPhone list that can be crammed in to express ‘outrage’ over nothing they are not up to their necks into?
Mr. Miliband is being crowned God Emperor as we speak for eventually deciding to emerge from the bunker and cynically ride the bandwagon paved for him by the BBC and Guardian, along a path paved with victims cynically sacrificed and dropped as yesterday’s news in service of ‘greater goals’.
NotW, NI and even Cameron can reap what they have proactively sown or tried to avoid for all I care, but not at the expense of the country’s best interests when I look at the alternatives being sown politically and via media monopoly patronage in simply another form.
I would have many questions to pose, as you dip in and demand of so many here, but your selectivity has gone beyond the pale, especially when topped with naked attempts to tar all with a single brush (a ‘B-BBC mem’e… to a blog poster… are you that crass to still be trying to push this notion; or within the BBC does the notion of individual thought not occur? From the Borg-like responses from within, it seems not) whilst placing an escape in reserve for an ‘ism flouce (temporary… always temporary) if arguments get too tricky.
Before trying that… again… get your entire, paid by the public house in order first.
Such hypocritical dissembling seems a technique being pioneered by the BBC at the moment. Quite successfully. Can’t say it stands up to much scrutiny outside the bubble.
I had respected the engagement outside of home turf, but in the way now being attempted with the dubious boost of what’s worked, so far, in the febrile sewer of today’s MSM in the UK, too much.
Those pigs are still up there. But as part of the whole sorry mess, your credibility in argument is covered in what they have dropped.
David Gregory,
The fact that any small, infrequent departures from the unremitting Left-wing bias of the BBC stand out, surely proves the point that many of us on this blog are making time after time.
The occasional lapse doesn’t render the whole of the BBC’s output unbiased. On the contrary, it draws attention to the bias.
I used to listen to R4 on the way to and from work but I just can’t anymore. My steering wheel has so many teeth marks, it looks like a gravy-filled wellie in a dog breeder’s yard. The constant switching to hear the opinion of some Labour MP is chronically infuriating. Nowadays we get the sullen, sordid 20 minute ranting opinions of the shadow cabinet before a 5 second snippet of someone from the govt or some poor sap with non-leftie views who usually ends up walking into an ambush anyway. Bollocks to ’em!
Aaah, the sweet gentle sound of just rubber on tarmac.
Fuck. Not sure I can watch QT tonight. Guess what the main subject will be? Watching the Guardian loving slime crowing at their success will make me ill. And boy will they try to link Cameron to the scandal via Coulson. The leftest elite hate, hate, hate, Murdoch. Like a cross between Darth Vader and Satan.
For me, the one saving grace of the day has been that Stage Performer Maitlis had the day off. Her emoting and posing and shrieking would have been unbearable.
If you think that’s shrieking, have you heard Anita Anand? 😉
That Obamessiah worshiper is nothing compared to the awful Maitlis.
Old Horseface would have been unbearable
But where are the Tories? I haven’t seen ONE prepared to come on TV, it’s the same three twats every time (Shagger, dirty pants and the mass murderer) from Nu Liebore. All we need now is Mandelson.
The Tories are just pathetic, they really can’t see that they are being taken apart whilst Cameron is doing a Brown and hiding under the dining table humming to himself why Samcan and Nick Clegg try to entice him out from under it.
The News Channel did talk to James Forsyth and Tim Montgomerie, but I think that just proves your point.
And Dame Ann Leslie, which is always a joy, although one could be forgiven in the past for thinking she had been awarded a royal title of ‘doyenne’!
And what do you suppose the Tories should do or say?
Well they could point out the following
1. All this hacking took place under Liebore who did nothing and certainly didn’t distance themselves from Murdoch as Cameron is bieng asked to do now.
2. Brooks admitted paying plods back in 2003, so what did Liebore do then?
3. Blair and Brown and Alistair Campbell were all ‘good friends’ of Brooks, not just Cameron. Brown went to her wedding.
4. There is no evidence of mass hacking, other than the Milly Dowler case it’s mostly been z listers and the odd politician who probably deserved it (like Prescott).
Indeed…………….
But why for a Tory to come out and say it?
Afterall the blogs are a good place to start-and a blog with time and inclination on its hands could put the pieces together.
Anna Racoon of course, sees where this is all going:
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/pick-a-date-any-date/#comments
The BBC should be seeking a Tory response to the tendentious comments being made by Labour spokesmen. They should be, but as the BBC is a thinly disguised propaganda arm of the left, they haven’t been.
You know what the Tory answer will be:
“Disgraceful” “Bad newsroom” “can’t be condoned” etc…all hang wringing.
I’m just working out what the BBC/Guardian will do next. I think the closure of the NOW has probably caught them off balance, it’s also clear that the takeover of Sky can’t go ahead now for some time regardless.
The BBC know though that at some point in the future Murdoch will come back for Sky again, that is a dead cert. So I think the BBC will try to see Sky weakened, the BBC will probably attack Sky over sport, especially football, which has been Sky’s big jewel for years, the BBC will probably demand that more of the live football is stripped from Sky, then the BBC will probably attack Sky for not being impartial enough, we know Murdoch was looking to hive Sky News off, expect the BBC to demand that happens now even without the takeover, that would allow the BBC/Guardian to campaign for some retard ex BBC leftie to become its boss and then move it leftward in its output. The BBC would also oppose a UK Fox News, that is a cert.
The BBC and the Guardian probably know at the most they have a year to make their move, Murdoch will be back for Sky.
“I’m just working out what the BBC/Guardian will do next.”
Sh*tting themselves.They really did not see this coming-and you could see on ITN and Al Beeb a sense of panic-if the largest newspaper can get closed down-where is this going.
You forget that the 4th estate is, unlike even 20 years ago,is an insestious industry. And freelancers who might work one day for the NOTW, could end up working for the BBC the next.
If the coppers have been doing their job, highly unlikly I know, the hacks would also have the names and address’s of other hacks that use the same source in other media outlets.
Follow this to it’s logical conclusion…….I doubt Mr Murdoch will settle loosing NoTW without thinking of not getting some sort of comeback.This could have all the looks of a “night of the long knives” as hacks and other asorted scum prepare to settle scores.
No wonder Michael White sounded contrit regarding “free press”- and the more intelligent within the BBC know it too……..
Hmmmm…….
his is all smoke and mirrors from the media bubble if you ask me.
At a time when the dead tree press (and TV) is dying on its feet, this will accelerate the rise of You tube and “Me TV” user generated content.In itself that will bring benefits and problems, but this is not the forum for that.
Put it another way-if I wanted to know what is going on inside Syria, for example, it is now more likely to be from a blogger from Damascus than say John Simpson or Jeremy Bowen.
The more thinking of us have long been cynical of the MSM- people here have mentioned the Dr Kelly saga, forgetting that we were presented with a narration from the BBC-a lop sided, anti-Bush narration that had more to do with domestic politics and American partisanship than anything to do with WMD or Iraq.
And it goes on- cash for questions, cash for peerages,the BBC and the Balen Report, Wiki-leaks, Damion Mcbride,the media circus during the Madeleine McCann saga,Johann Hari made up interviews, just to name a few examples of how rotten the 4th estate actually is.
If anybody is stupid enough to think its just the Murdoch empire up to know good is living in cloud cuckoo land- all of them have been at it for a long time,with the political classes too timid and cowed to take them on and reform them,the lobby’s cozy relationship with the political classes has turned us into a “media-ocracy” .Its little wonder that “hacking by hacks” has been going on-and I suspect a lot worse.
You only have to look over the pond at the American MSM role in the “culture wars” to see where this is going-it will be tit for tat of “revelations”, this month NOTW, next month the BBC,as we get nearer to its charter being renewed.
It’s all part of the modern day political and commercial pressure of keeping their markets, and settling old scores-which is why the BBC is enjoying this at the moment. It has nothing to do with “honest reporting”-but trimming sails and market positioning. However like the MP’s expenses sage, the whole corrupt edifice starting to crumble, exposing the whole rotten structure.
All of which leads me back to my original comment.The difference now is we have a market led alternative, Veoh, You tube, Google, My Space, Facebook and live streaming.Like the music industry 5 years ago, the MSM is facing its greatest economic challenge from social media-anybody can be a “journalist” now. They are trying also to fight it, as the music industry tried to fight P2P file-sharing, the more they fight, the more people will look to the alternative.
The MSM cannot take for granted the consumer anymore. It will not be David Cameron reforming (protecting) the media, but the consumer turning off the TV and not buying newspapers,that will force reform.
If DC was wise he would let the whole rotten lot sink without a trace-it would certainly save the taxpayer money…….those asking for the state to sort it out needs their heads tested.
I wonder if there will be a question tonight on QT about Tom Baldwin snorting cocaine at party conferences while he was a journailst for the Times and being a conduit for Labour Party propaganda whilst he was there.
Martin welcome back mate, ever thought of running the Country ??
Cheers, but I’d rather run a brothel at least I’d be the one doing the screwing.
I’m watching Clive Myrie conduct coverage on BBC News 24, and boy, I’m having to duck the sparks from axes grinding, tendentious comments that suit the left agenda going unchallenged.
He just had a very incestuous sounding interview with some media pundit ‘Steve Hewitt’ I think, who made the appallingly hypocritical comment that Greg Dyke resigned over the Gilligan report into WMD when it had nothing to do with him. Dyke gave him blind backing. Gilliigan’s report suited the left wing agenda to discredit the Iraq War. A carefully selected guest on the BBC indeed pushing the BBC propaganda in that ‘look, no hands’ way that the BBC so love.
I’m now watching BBC Correspondent Iain Watson making highly tendentious comments about David Cameron that dovetail with the politicking of the Hon Tom Watson MP a little earlier. The Prime Minister’s condemnation of what has happened has been unequivocal, yet scandalously, Watson claims it doesn’t exist.
The BBC – ‘Milibanding’ together with Labour.
I think you called it right- and the Iraq reporting question has never been investigated properly.
Robert Peston just running a report that features comment from Lord Prescott and Ed Miliband .. and for balance .. no balance.
The presenter guy Chris whatsisname seems to have been supplanted tonight by Clive Myrie to give the pro-Labour line that BBC management wants. He’s very keen to lead interviewees with comments that serve ‘the agenda’.
Oh my goodness, we’ve now got Kirsty Wark in an Iain Watson BBC incest interview piece asking Ed Miliband to tell people what she thinks. The Tory Party is spent. It’s been killed by the Gramscian BBC. There’s nothing on the horizon to give True Britain a voice. One can but hope and pray.
There’s a part of me that wonders whether, in this instance, the Guardian is acting as a proxy for the BBC?
The BBC were already prepared for this situation. Watson leaning on them meant they already had a vast amount of Labour Mp’s lined up to fire broadside into evil Murdoch and News International. The BBC’s reporting in the last few days has been disgraceful. An “impartial” organisation smearing a (formerly?) respectable paper all because of political connections. I just hope the Telegraph havent got themselves into hotwater somewhere along the line or the BBC may well overload and stores in Islington will run out of Palestinian-bottled Champagne.
The BBC’s obsession with Murdoch surfaced in an odd way on Radio 5 this evening. On a short report about the Tour de France the Sky cycling team was mentioned.
The reporter told us the team was formed to raise the profile of British cycling and to sell satellite dishes.
This is entirely correct, but I’ve never heard a BBC reporter mention a sponsor of a sports team or event in this way before. As someone who listens to a lot of football coverage on Radio 5 I’ve never heard one single comment on a sponsors motives.
It seems when Murdoch is the sponsor we need to be gently reminded that he is doing it for vulgar commercial reasons – ie for nasty, evil profit.
It’s not even correct. The team was formed to win cycling races.
If it raises the profile of cycling, that would be a positive side effect.
Sky sponsor it because Britain happens to be good at cycling at the moment and it’s a good investment, but it wasn’t formed to sell dishes.
The formation of the team was announced well in advance and then they went looking for sponsors. Initially at least, I think they were even looking for several small sponsors rather than a large company.
Yes; and similarly, BBC-NUJ chums at ‘The Guardian’ report today’s stage of the Tour de France without reference to cycling, and this is on its sports pages:
“Team Sky’s first Tour de France stage win gives Murdoch some good news”
No doubt this sort of political sports ‘reporting’ is what is taught at the BBC (plus ‘Guardian’) College of Journalism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jul/07/team-sky-tour-de-france-stage-win
And at least Team Sky is still in business and delivering the goods.
Unlike Linda McCartney’s “Eat, drink, and be veggie” equipe which went belly-up in very short order a decade ago…..
Myrie conducting a disgraceful interview with Dan Wooton (?) of NoW hectoring and cajoling him to put the words in his mouth the BBC want to be there.
Myrie expressing outrage at the phone’s of 7/7 victims and widows of British servicemen being (allegedly) hacked.
Let’s see now, when the BBC/Guardian was working hand in hand with Wikileaks exposing information that put the lives of Aghan informers in danger, I didn’t detect much concern for the jeopardy they had placed our mililtary mission in and the lives of these people. Cant? I doubt a Sally Toksvig type joke about putting the ‘u’ in this word would pass the BBC censor.
“What’s really motoring this anti-Murdoch crusade?
What the News of the World is alleged to have done is terrible and indefensible. But the fury about it is being driven by something else.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10681/
Huw Edwards playing his usual blinder in presenting ‘Left Wing News at Ten’.
Meanwhile, BBC-NUJ is planning the expansion of its GLOBAL EMPIRE, using British licencepayers’ money, no doubt to continue to operate in conjunction with Al Jazeera and Huffington, etc.
As is known, the BBC takes over the direct responsibility for operating the World Service (including BBC Arabic TV service, from East Wing of Broadcasting House, London) in a couple of years.
The ‘impartial’ political ideology of this expanding global empire will continue to be:- support for ‘multiculturalism’, for a world without borders, for an expanding E.U., and opposed to British national sovereignty and to capitalism.
The BBC-NUJ global empire project is already being planned at the College of Journalism:
Video: Rome Hartman – America and the Future of the BBC
Rome Hartman is media scum. He ran BBC World News America into the ground, and then jumped ship to create a news program for NBC, which is owned by GE, whose CEO once instructed his news employees to bias their reporting in favor of the President and is now part of the Obamessiah Administration as a “jobs czar”. When GE then magically got massive contracts with China, Hartman’s stalwart team of journalists, led by award-winning Matt Frei, were silent. Hartman also defended Dan Rather over those “fake but accurate” Bush memos.
He’s the last person to be trusted on how to take over the US. If his advice is to suck up to The Obamessiah, he’ll only be preaching to the chorus, as all BBC employees in the US – and the vast majority of the rest of them, it seems – are already dedicated to Him.
While this extraordinary circus is obsessing our elites in the real world there is a serious economic meltdown about to hit us 1929 style and this show will be irrelevant.
I could be wrong but I get around and listen. There has been a sudden real slump in economic activity. Tax revenues are crashing. Business is really tough and getting worse by the week.
Out of peak periods the roads are as empty as they were 50 years ago. Shops are closing by the day. Businesses cutting wages out of sheer desperation.
The productive section of the economy is in free fall.
Insulated as they are the rich media/political elites just have not noticed.
What is about to happen will dramatically affect every last one of us ordinary folk.
The double dip is here and none of us are going to have the time to worry about Murdoch and the rest of the idiots.
Caveat. I could be way of the mark. I really hope so.
dave s,
No you are spot on. And there is no way out. If anything, it is going to be worse than you portray.
“What the papers* won’t say” (*and BBC)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7079708/what-the-papers-wont-say.thtml
“Why The BBC And The Guardian Are Gunning For Murdoch And The Sun: That News Of The World Ethos Is Not Dead Yet”
http://www.anorak.co.uk/286494/news/why-the-bbc-and-the-guardian-are-gunning-for-murdoch-and-the-sun-that-news-of-the-world-ethos-is-not-dead-yet.html/
Evan Davis last words on Today this morning
“Interesting….. we’re getting as many messages on University places as on the NOTW issue”
… and why? Probably because like me they are fed up with the self-righteousness of the BBC on this issue. Personally, I don’t like Murdoch, I haven’t bought one of his publications for 30 years and certainly wouldn’t subscribe to Sky (I thought they already owned it), but to listen to the BBC and its crowing has actually made me feel sorry for the redundant employees. Why don’t I like Murdoch? because of the same reasons I don’t trust the BBC – No one organisation should have such power in the media.