In February BBC Brazil’s US-based GOP/Tea Party-hating columnist Lucas Mendes wrote an article attacking Texan conservative politicians, the latest in a long line of partisan hit pieces from this lefty journalist (representing the supposedly impartial BBC). His dislike of conservative America is so all-consuming that he based much of this recent column on fake facts from a satirical article in the New Yorker which he believed was genuine. He has since been forced to apologise, but is still employed by the BBC to give his opinion on US affairs. BBC Brazil does not have a right-of-centre columnist to balance Mendes’ views.
Here’s a link to the Google Translate version of the Mendes article. At the top is this editor’s note:
Editor’s Note: This column was written based on a satire published in “The New Yorker”. The information below about Senator Lamar Smith are false. Lucas Mendes acknowledged the error in a posterior column, published on April 18 .
“Posterior column” As in talking out of his arse. How apt.
Read it all. Impartial BBC, eh?
(Some previous Biased BBC posts about Lucas Mendes can be seen here.)
Nice catch, DB. At least he left it up, instead of sending it down the memory hole. I assume Mendes won’t be rushing to write a column tearing the President apart because he read this recent piece from that same magazine (the print equivalent of NPR):
Obama Denies Role in Government
President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.
“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”
The BBC doesn’t have a right-of-center journalist anywhere in the Americas, North, South, or Central. The closest thing to it is probably Jonny Dymond.
And with one bound popular left-wing magazine the New Yorker managed to do more gags about President Jesus in one issue than the BBC has managed in five years.
… but the bloody mag has become an unreadable leftist rag .
Like I said, the print equivalent of NPR. Classify under “stuff liberal elite white people like”. Curiously, both The New Yorker’s management and top talent as well as NPR’s shares a similar tint to that of the BBC. This is probably not aided by having one liberal elite, white woman’s NPR show feature a liberal elite, white woman from the BBC as regular guest host.
Now that “Car Talk” is done, NPR is even less interesting.
…you’d have to ask if any right wing hacks who appear on the Beeb had committed cock-ups but were still regularly taking to the airwaves?
Exhibit A: http://order-order.com/2011/06/23/a-little-more-on-mels-move/
Mad Mel, in case you hadn’t noticed, doesn’t
work or write for the BBC. And the rare occasions she appears on it, is as a ‘hostile witness’
Let’s compare a search of the BBC website; Lucas Mendes vs “Mad Mel”
Lucas; Nothing. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/?q=Lucas%20Mendes
Melanie Phillips; Pages. She even has her own BBC Archive page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/?q=melanie%20phillips
One’s more of a BBC person than the other. And it’s BBC Mel.
Are you a bit simple? Lucas Mendes is employed by the BBC to write a weekly column about the US:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/topicos/columnists/
One is employed by the BBC and one is invited on as an ‘aunt sally’
I think ‘one’ is being is being deliberately obtuse to avoid having ‘ones’ argument demolished
P.S. your last pseudonym was a pretty poor effort
This is a fail. Those search results are mostly references to Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips and her appearances on talking head panels as an opinion-monger, not journalism or analysis pieces she’s been commissioned to write by the BBC. Mendes is BBC staff.
Not even close, Sybil.
Still baffled by the distinction between a pundit offering commentary “from the right” vs a disinterested reporter of fact, huh?
Here’s his posterior column.
‘Mea Culpa’
On February 21 column, titled “In another world,” made a mistake primary. Is not unique, but this genre, was the first.
Research on conservatism and extremism Texans, especially in the area of education, found a telegram with an extraordinary history and precious about the president of the Commission of Science and Technology, U.S. House, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. In it, he doubted the existence of meteors and dinosaurs.
I believed in it unaided by calling the office of the deputy in Washington.
It was a satire that had just been published in “The New Yorker” and someone reproduced on the internet with a different header, as if it were an agency, can not remember which and I can not find it again on the internet.
‘Mea culpa, mea maxima fault.’ I apologize to readers.
Google makes a bit of a mess translating Portuguese, but I’m not liking the look of “and someone reproduced on the internet with a different header, as if it were an agency, can not remember which and I can not find it again on the internet.” And of course, when you’re a hopelessly impartial left-wing Beeboidista researching conservatism and extremism, you naturally believe any rubbish you read and don’t bother running it by anybody in your Washington office.
Be careful with machine translations, they still have certain limitations, in particular as regards the cultural rather than mechanical aspects of language. “Posterior” and “primary” are classic ‘translatorese’, i.e. assuming that the English cognate word will mean the same as it does in the Romance language from which the translation was done. “Mea maxima fault” is another laughable error, probably based on the fact that whereas “mea culpa” (Latin) has been assimilated into English, “mea maxima culpa” has not, so ‘culpa’ (the same word in Latin and the derived Portuguese) is translated into English.
impartiality at the bbc,is like arsen wenger admitting he seen one of his players committing a foul.
OT: Interesting report on BBC bias:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332230/The-BBC-bias-pro-immigration-lobby-Report-accuses-left-wing-Corporation-downplaying-violence-Islamists.html
Thanks for the attachment. I am not clear on the exact origins of this report but it does seem to reflect my own experience of the BBC reports on immigration and those of many of the contributors to this site.
The bias in favour of immigration by the BBC is so overwhelming that it surely proves that the BBC is not impartial but in fact is a campaigning organisation of immense power on behalf of the liberal left.
The feeling in the majority of people in this country is that we have far too many immigrants and that immigration should be limited to those whom we need for economic reasons only. Clearly the BBC are not interested in reflecting the views of the British people but only those of their fellow liberal left elitists. Surely therefore, any government which didn’t particularly relish the constant left leaning bias of the BBC, could use this particular example as a reason to clip the wings of the BBC and have the support of the majority of the people. The question is why on earth don’t they?