Britannia Radio

Biased BBC

Friday, October 24, 2008 Hugh # Just because he always does it... doesn't mean it's not worth pointing out how far Justin Webb's blog goes in ignoring the BBC's obligations on impartiality. If the rules really do permit the Beeb's North American Editor to suggest that Palin would be the number one choice (after McCain) to lead America for those that hate the country, what's the point of them? Comments: 14 (unread) - Biased BBC Home Laban # "Who controls the present controls the past ...." Dominic Casciani has been briefed by the Home Office, or Justice Ministry, or whatever they're called this week, on the underreporting of violent crime. Decent of him to pass the briefing on to us verbatim. But does this serious error in one particularly crime affect all the figures? No, insist the statisticians and ministers. What's more, police chiefs say it's purely a technical problem with how some forces have recorded violence, rather than how they have investigated incidents and pursued attackers. They say that all recorded crime is still going down and overall violence in April to June 2008 was down 7% on the same period of last year. The British Crime Survey, the authoritative rolling study of experiences rather than police records, says your chance of being a victim is at a historically low level. You'd never know that there were any serious criticisms of the BCS, but let that pass. It's the regurgitation of the government spin that's so misleading. Strange, but "history" doesn't go back very far when it comes to BBC crime reporting. Not so for all crimes committed in the past, eh ? For New Labour, statistics tend to start in 1997, when they gained power. A longer time perspective is rare, especially regarding crime. The claim that 'the risk of being a victim of crime remains historically low' relates specifically to a comparison of the British Crime Survey of 1981 with the figures for 2003 - as if the nation enjoyed a low crime rate in 1981. I think this graph, taken from this parliamentary report, may give us more perspective than Dominic Casciani can as to whether crime is "historically low". Comments: 3 (unread) - Biased BBC Home