Author Archives: Robin Horbury

EU VOTE: BIAS BY OMISSION

By | |
31 Comments

One of the biggest failings of the BBC is bias by omission. That is, they conveniently ignore the issues that really matter because they don’t accord with the BBC mindset. An organisation that spends £800m a year on newsgathering – probably the biggest operation of its kind anywhere in the world – fritters the money away.

Take coverage of the EU, for example. Five years ago, the Wilson report damned the corporation’s analysis of EU affairs as narrow, boring annd unchallenging. The BBC responded by saying – as it always does when criticised – that it’s coverage was actually OK, but even so it would do better.

Spool forward to today. The Lisbon Treaty remains a matter of massive controversy which millions of people in England – as the recent EU poll showed – think is a major step towards a tyranny that they don’t want. So how does the BBC cover steps towards its ratification? By providing measured, in depth debate, as it promised? Not a bit of it.

On BBC1 Breakfast Time this morning an item on the Irish vote on Lisbon was sandwiched between coverage of the cervical cancer scare and – far more important – a lengthy item on the importance of dog-tagging. The Irish piece boiled down to a soundbite from a fish and chip shop owner who was intending to vote ‘yes’ and a fisherman who would say’no’. In between, a bland BBC reporter told us that the reason that Ireland was voting yes was because of the recession. And that was it.

Nothing about the implications of the vote, the claims of vote-rigging by Brussels, or the lies being told about the Treaty. No attempt to show the importance to people’s lives, or to do anything but the bare minimum.

This is what the BBC’s £800m news operation now routinely does. Items of major importance are reduced to their lowest, most simplistic, denomininator, while other matters its judges closer to people’s lives (like dog-tagging) are elevated to inflated over-importance. The BBC sold its soul to the EU years ago, and while Britain moves inexorably towards being a satellite vassal state of Brussels, its journalists sit on their hands refusing to analyse the issues that matter. “Bias by ommission” indeed.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

NEVER MIND THE FACTS

By | |
Comments Off on NEVER MIND THE FACTS

Have you heard of Anna Coote or Aleski Knuutila? No? Well, neither had I until today. But these are the luminaries of a body called the New Economics Foundation. I hadn’t heard of that until this morning, either, but it turns out that they are self-appointed “experts” on economics and the welfare of our planet. And immediately, in the eyes of the BBC, that makes them very important gurus who can spout the most arrant nonsense but still be given endless, unbalanced publicity. In this case, this body of eco-loons has spent lots of time working out that planet earth has reached a point in the year where we have used more resources than are available. There’s no way of checking their methodology, but to those at the BBC, it’s an important pronouncement that doesn’t need qualification or challenge. All that matters is that their creed agrees with that of our Corporation friends. And it does, as the Foundation’s “about us” page clearly shows:

The international economic system creates damaging inequalities between rich and poor, and fuels climate change and environmental degradation.

It’s a mantra that’s probably on every BBC office wall and computer screen. They chant it every morning. The more guilt they instil in us about living at all, the better.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

PREZZA: MORE HOT AIR

By | | , ,
Comments Off on PREZZA: MORE HOT AIR

As a Biased BBC reader for at least five years, I know that its essence is variety. My second post as a new contributor, therefore, was going to be about something other than the wretched BBC obsession with climate change. However, that was before I heard the unspeakable John Prescott lecturing me on R4’s World at One this lunchtime. He, a jumped-up, thuggish shop steward with no scientific training whatsoever, told me that he knew beyond doubt that the science of global warming is settled. His rant – as a bonus – also included a major attack on the US, the nasty industrialists of which he regards as the villains responsible for impending global catastrophe.

Martha Kearney, his so-called interrogator, rolled over like an admiring puppy dog in the face of his onslaught, and was concerned only to ask him how bad the situation really was.

It goes without saying that Prescott was never much known for his intellect; this item showed exactly why. This was a former (or maybe current) trade unionist arguing for steps that will progressively de-industralise and impoverish not just Britain, but also much of the Western world; at the same time, his measures, on the government’s own admission, would lead to increases in the cost of heating that will put millions of pensioners and our least well-off into fuel poverty.

On these topics, Kearney was strangely – eerily – silent.

As a lesson in pig-ignorant biased propaganda it was not bad (Goebbels would have approved – the science of racial superiority is ‘settled’ don’t you know?), as an exercise in balanced journalism, it was simply appalling.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC PEDDLES HORSES**T

By | | ,
Comments Off on BBC PEDDLES HORSES**T

Six nutty females yesterday deposited a load of horse manure on the drive of Jeremy Clarkson. The reason? They don’t like free speech and especially his sceptical views on global warming. Most people would view such mindless, antisocial behaviour as worthy of a court appearance. But for the BBC, they are heroes, climate change warriors doing what they do best. It’s here.

Still on the subject of excrement – the journalistic variety – Corporation climate change fanatics are still pushing relentlessly the totally untrue story that the so-called North-East passage of the Arctic has been navigated for the first time. Richard North of EU Referendum debunks it in a cracking post this morning. Well worth a read to show the depths to which BBC journalism has dropped in its mindless pursuit of global warming moonshine.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.