“…To make the universities do what they should.”

A reader writes: Wanted to draw your attention to another case of BBC bias on the Today Programme this morning. [Monday 8 November] In an interview with the Director of OFFA, Sir Martin Harris, the BBC presenter attacked OFFA from a left-wing point of view. No mention at all was made of the argument that favouring state school pupils might lead to a lowering of standards. The only criticism from … Continue reading

The Power of Camera Tricks

– the picture below (in a radical new departure for Biased BBC) is an unretouched screen grab of Richard Perle being interviewed in the third part of the BBC’s recent series The Power of Nightmares*. Note how Perle was filmed with a bright window behind him and little, if any, lighting in front of him – leaving one side of his face washed out and mis-shapen, the other dark and … Continue reading

Tory collusion? or just another BBC News Online smear?

On Friday morning BBC Views Online’s front page News Ticker’s headlines included: Commons speaker’s press chief quits after secretly colluding with the Conservatives This then linked to a story headlined Speaker’s aide quits in Tory row. Both of these headlines suggest some Conservative, sorry Beeboids, Tory skulduggery or wrongdoing. The real story – in fact, there are three real stories – is that, according to the BBC’s own report (once … Continue reading

Grinning and bearing it

: with the partial (in both senses of that word) exception of Matt Frei (the BBC’s Washington corespondent, already often featured on this blog), and within the usual limitations of their analysis, the BBC 10’o’clock news handled Bush’s reelection more calmly than his doings in Iraq. I think this is because elections are a part of the world that the BBC accepts; somehow the concept of impartiality in reporting an … Continue reading

It’s a wrap!

Stephen Pollard was on a roll as he reviewed parts of BBC coverage of the US elections. Some trademark Beebisms on display, from ‘no-one wanted to believe this was happening’ to ‘it was the religious nuts wot done it’ to ‘anyway, back to the ‘so-called’ war on terror’ to ‘didn’t everyone want Bush to lose anyway?’. Great stuff, if one can use that phrase about responses to blatant bias. Click … Continue reading

Glenn Reynolds

of Instapundit fame has up a column in the Guardian that makes some good points and links to this blog. (A good point in itself, we always think.) Here’s a quote: Those of you across the Atlantic may wish to take a lesson from this. As the BBC’s atrocious handling of the Gilligan affair – and, indeed, its war coverage generally – illustrates, media bias is hardly limited to the … Continue reading

B-BBC US Election special:

Hannah Bayman, a BBC journalist, well known to longstanding BBBC readers, has her own blog at bayman.blogspot.com. Hannah’s posts are usually quite banal, but yesterday’s post, reproduced here in full, offers an interesting glimpse into the thoughts and objectivity of a doubtless up and coming BBC journalist: Only hours to go before the Land of the Free starts to vote and I already have butterflies in my stomach. My mother … Continue reading

I have just picked up a little of the BBC1 coverage of the US election.

Seems OK. As so often when the BBC is concentrating it is pretty good, it’s the off-the-cuff remarks that let it down. I haven’t seen enough to make any better assessment than that. More interesting by far than the TV was this real-time vote counting thingy that clocked up the votes as Bush took Florida. This similar doodad for Ohio says that Bush is likely to take that state, too … Continue reading