Britannia Radio

 

ON THIN ICE (AGAIN)

>> SATURDAY, MAY 08, 2010

Election or no election, the BBC continues to spew out with wearisome predictability tendentious nonsense about global warming. This time, it'sanother melting glacier alert. This one ticks all the boxes for a BBC scare story because the mountain in question is in Africa, and of course, a central axiom of the BBC's belief system is that Africans urgently need more money to fight the endless injustices heaped upon them by the filthy, capitalist West. The glacier is on Mount Margherita (Africa's third highest peak), in the Rwenzori mountains on the border between Zaire and Uganda. The area in question is virtually inaccessible because of continuing warfare, but hey-ho, the local Africans know with certainty it must be global warming to blame and are keen to tell the world it is, so it must be true. 

Completely absent from the BBC story is any mention of that the combined area of all glaciers in Africa, including those on Kilimanjaro, is less than 11km, and that it has been repeatedly pointed out that the causes of melt are both cyclical and to do with other man-made factors such as deforestation. Nor does the BBC care that not a smidgeon of detailed research appears to have carried out at Mount Margherita; papers that do exist acknowledge their lack of accurate information. A crack appears, the local authorities say it's global warming and that's all that it takes for our eco-freak friends at the corporation to spread at full volume yet another baseless scare story.

Righteousness and Wrongteousness

>> FRIDAY, MAY 07, 2010

Recently some of us linked to a comprehensive study of the BBC’s institutional hostility to Israel and its biased reporting of the I/P conflict. It mentions much of what we’ve been highlighting here for yonks, and includes a systematic analysis of emotive partisan terms and references. They submitted it to the BBC, and awaited a response. So far all that has materialised is a rejection, conveyed indirectly, via the Jewish Chronicle.

The BBC is impartial, so it ignores pressure groups.

“It's not uncommon to hear these sorts of findings from pressure groups but our role is to provide independent reporting and analysis of all perspectives of a story, so our audiences can make sense of what's going on themselves.
The independent panel set up by our board of governors found no deliberate or systematic bias in the BBC coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”

By labelling every individual and organisation that supports Israel a pressure group, the BBC absolves itself from having to look into any complaints about its reporting, or anything at all that happens to be brought up in Israel’s defence.

It doesn’t, however, consider the pro Palestinian, anti-Israel NGOs that shelter under the protection of Human Rights or charitable status pressure groups, no matter how partisan they obviously are.
If audiences are to be expected to make sense of anything, they must be given the whole story. But the BBC thinks of one side as independent reporting and the other as propaganda.

A response to another separate complaint contained the following:

“We're committed to honest, unbiased reporting and are determined to remain free from influence by outside parties, whether political or lobbyists. Our Corporation's Charter and Agreement allows us independence from political pressure and the licence fee gives us independence from advertising, shareholder or other commercial interests. Impartiality forms the cornerstone of BBC News and Current Affairs and we've nothing to gain by weighting our coverage in political terms or by allowing influence from any other outside body.”

...but maybe much to lose from not allowing influence from other outside bodies?

I suspect they really believe all of the above. If they don’t, they really really want to. They believe in their own righteousness, even when it means turning reason on its head.

From the BBC’s perspective, Israel has been delegitimised, (mainly by the BBC itself), till it’s a given that it’s just plain wrong.

Heinz meanz beanz, and Impartiality meanz Israel is wrong.