Dumb Britain - Dumb BBC
>> Thursday, August 19, 2010
As we celebrate record A-level results for the umpteenth successive year, let's spare a thought for those BBC Online staff who don't know the difference between fare and fair.
"How Wimminz Won The War"
Dumb Jon, who's (wo)manfully taken on the task of watching BBC Breakfast so you don't have to, reports on the shock BBC revelation about the Battle of Britain - women were involved, too !
"This is the other thing about the BBC's crappy reporting. Not only is the bias bad in and of itself, it also blinds them to actual points. It is genuinely interesting to hear from a - still lifey - 100 year old veteran plotter, and there is a serious point here about how the real difference wasn't Britain's technically meh radar, so much as that it integrated with a purpose-designed home defence system. But no: chicks fought too, that's all you need to know. "
At the time, of course, in the bad old sexist world of the 1940s, the existence of women in air defence roles was a little-known secret.
COALITION TO BRING BACK CHIMNEY SWEEPS?
With the electorate having engendered the wrath of the BBC for daring to throw out Labour. it's only natural that every story be taken and given a twist that puts the knife into the evil Coalition. And so it is that on an item on an exhibition of life in the Victorian workhouses, there is the suggestion that "in a way" this is what the Coalition is proposing bringing back. Next week - Cameron to send kids up chimneys?
BETTER GAY THAN PARENTED..
Wonder if you listened to this interview on the BBC this morning? It's one more of those which in essence is gay advocacy dressed up as anti-discrimination. It concerns the news that the Roman Catholic Church has lost it's campaign to restrict adoption services to heterosexual people. Naturally the BBC sees this as a judicious move, ensuring that gay couples are not denied that right to adopt kids. (Not sure where they stand on the transgendered community having the same right but I am sure we will get there in due course) My question is why did they choose to only interview the apparatchik from the government quango Charity Commission without allowing those genuine folks in the Catholic Church to posit their opinion? I know the BBC thinks that nothing could be more normal, more desirable, that children should be brought up by two fathers and no mother, but not everyone accepts that notion so why are THEY denied a voice on this debate?
DEFEATED IN IRAQ
Anyone else catch THIS disgraceful commentary by Hugh Sykes on the news that the last US combat brigade has left Iraq. Note the sneering contemptuous tone he adopts, note how he mocks the US soldier that dares to suggest they won (Where's Saddam today, Hugh) and note the clear suggestion that it was all a waste of time - in line with the BBC narrative even before we liberated that wretched country. For years the BBC opposed the notion we would want to remove a terror-enabling mass murderer in the form of Saddam and now that Obama has delivered them the retreat that they want, they put the knife in even deeper. Sykes is not balanced, he is not neutral, his miserable commentary could come straight out of a Guardian editorial.
No Change
>> Wednesday, August 18, 2010
It could be that the tide is turning in the BBC/Israel conflict.
But one swallow doesn’t a summer make or whatever jumbled up sentence means ‘don’t think one tiddly Panorama signifies light at the end of the tunnel’.
If the BBC was really the pro-Israel outfit that the Israel-haters say it is, they’d hardly approach the subject in the way they've consistently done to date.
We don’t know whether it’s ignorance or malevolence, but whatever the cause, the result is the same. If there’s a momentary let-up, as we saw with the aforementioned Panorama, the Israel-haters they’ve created are up in arms expressing outrage. The thing they find particularly upsetting is hearing the Israeli perspective.
That’s it. It’s as if there was a court in which the entire case for the defence was ruled inadmissible, and if any of it leaked, the leaksmith would be deemed almost as guilty as the accused.
The small but perfectly formed ways the BBC sticks the boot in are relentless and cumulative, comprising such things as gratuitous reminders of the body count during Cast Lead, or the new improved variation, the death toll of the nine Turkish peace activists. Either way there are too few Israeli casualties for the BBC's complete satisfaction.
In this report about the armed Palestinian at the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv who was thought to be seeking asylum in Turkey and probably got lumbered with the wrong sort of asylum, the BBC helpfully concluded with this reminder:
“Correspondents say Tuesday's incident appears to be unrelated to a recent diplomatic dispute between Israel and Turkey.
Ties deteriorated after nine Turks were killed in late May in an Israeli commando raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip.”
Does an incident that involves one Palestinian, suffering from a delusional psychotic episode, combined with a possibly arbitrary connection to Turkey really require such a reminder? Maybe if it was an in-depth analysis, but this wasn’t that.
If the BBC feels it’s essential to attach such reminders to everything relating to Israel, they should equally attach a reminder of the Hamas charter to everything related to Gaza.
What is this headline? Israel ‘to blame’ for child death. Follow the link, and it’s this:
“Israel was responsible for the 2007 death of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl, a court in Jerusalem has ruled.”
So an Israeli court accepted responsibility for the death of a 10 year old girl hit by a rubber bullet, overturning an earlier ruling where there was uncertainty over whether she was hit by a Palestinian protester’s rock. Not exactly ‘Israel to blame for child death’ more ‘Israel accepts responsibility for girl’s death.’ Subtle difference but emotive, and telling.
Last but not least, the BBC article about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The BBC is keen to tell us that since 1948 Lebanon has been tolerating their unwanted Palestinians who really belong in Israel, (booo!) and that permission has generously been granted for some of them to actually work, legally, in Lebanon. (Hoorah!)
The BBC is less keen to tell us that many have never been to “Palestine.” They were born in Lebanon, wish to work in Lebanon, and hope to jolly well stay in Lebanon.
Other news organs have quoted Ahmed al- Mehdawi, 45. Why can’t the BBC?
So; one Panorama does not a light at the end of the tunnel make.
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