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Biased BBC

Sunday, November 02, 2008 Hugh # General BBC-related comment thread! Please use this thread for comments about the BBC's current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog - scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It's your space, use it wisely. Comments: 105 (unread) - Biased BBC Home ed thomas # The One campaign The BBC's latest entry from their journalists following the US elections tells us far more about the BBC than it does about the campaign. Gavin Hewitt's (following Obama- did we scare off Justin Webb?) is a long and lyrical piece including lines like the following: "What I can attest to, however, is enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that keeps you standing in a queue at a polling station in Franklin county in Ohio today for five hours. The enthusiasm that persuades you to bring your children with you on a beautiful autumn day to the polling station, knowing they will be bored." Matt Price meanwhile, following McCain (guess who the senior journalist is between Price and Hewitt so who got the short BBC straw) offers a terse little piece. Its BBC headline was promising- "breaking stereotypes" - so I assumed something a bit different from the usual snide comments. In fact it sets up a video which is pure Obama commercial. It accuses those who are against Obama of racism. It says McCain simply favours the rich. The BBC journalist who is supposed to cover McCain puts forward the argument for Obama from the mouth an apparent middle-American he's come across. He claims it is "what this election is all about". Two BBC jouralists, apparently balanced missions. One, and only the One's, side of the story. Update: Price video here. "I have a lot of friends that... they're ignorant, they're not going to vote for him because he's black". Oh yes, breaking stereotypes with the McCain campaign indeed. Comments: 30 (unread) - Biased BBC Home ed thomas # Consistent double standards She was fooled. She was duped. Sarah Palin gets the full unquotemarked treatment after listening politely to an imposter's ramblings. I don't know when it's right to switch off a call in disgust, myself. Perhaps if the caller had made remarks about having sex with Palin's daughter, eh? In the end Palin recognised instantly that she was talking to a radio DJ, and asked too quickly for the DJ's own mind about their station's listener call back facility (full audio, not on the BBC, here). The BBC meanwhile should know this only cheapens politics and public life, and that listening politely is a virtue not a vice. I can't say I can fully defend Palin in this instance, but actually I don't know what it must be like in her position with all the demands on her time, to be patient and polite and diplomatic in all manner of circumstances. What I do believe is that the BBC is selling this story with intemperate unqualified demeaning language which they would certainly not use of The One. Another note about these consistent double standards- Martha Kearneyrejoices here in a gotcha interview with George Osborne. She says, with a BBC hack's usual mental rigour: "What took me by surprise was George Osborne's immediate admission that he had made a mistake. I cannot recall the last time a politician did that (without being on the verge of resigning)." Well let me help the dismal memory of this hackette out a bit- let me take you all the way back to, well, April, and to an obscure and unknown politician called Gordon Brown. I am sure he must have resigned after admitting mistakes? Otherwise we'd know that Martha Kearney's memory was worth about as much as the BBC's broadcasting standards and indeed their committment to impartiality. Comments: 16 (unread) - Biased BBC Home