Britannia Radio

BBC POSTER BOY BINYAM BECOMES COCKNEY SPARROW...

>> SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2010

Cor Blimey, but ain't Binyam Mohammed become a true Brit? The Mail has the details here and I cover it here. But in the context of the BBC, it's worth contrasting how they salivate over the Jihadist and how the rage againstthis anti-Jihadist, Odd that.

GAY - THE FINAL FRONTIER

Right, let me start by saying I abhor intolerance and violence towards ANY group of people. (Except terrorists). So reports of mob violence at a Gay Pride parade in Belgrade are concerning - as would be the case if they were happening to any lawful parade, anywhere. But I was surprised at this comment by by BBC reporter Mark Lowen in Belgrade;

This is not the image Serbia wants the world to see. A successful gay parade was supposed to be an indication of how far this country has come from the ultranationalism and violence of the 1990s.

Really? Is the acceptance of gay parades now the marker of a civilised society? Is tolerance of public expression of a particular sexual lifestyle proof of a move away from "ultranationalism"? I missed that memo - maybe it is instilled into BBC reporters when they are young but it seems to me that seeking to equate an tolerance of gay activists in the public square with a sophisticated modern Nation is, at least, somewhat peculiar. Mark seems quite interested in this topic area, having filed a story about Albania"approving gay marriage" I must admit that I had not realised the centrality of the gay issue to these emerging societies, so thank goodness for Mark.

IMPARTIALITY GENES?

Piers Scholfield, one of the many BBC journalists reporting from the Chilean mines, was a new name to me. Just had a little look back through hisTwitter account. You couldn't make this stuff up:


Caroline, please listen to my gushing report about your election chances, slurp slurp.

A Brighton-based BBC Green Party supporter reporting on the Green Party in Brighton during the election. Your licence fee at work.


I'm getting quite a collection of screenshots of BBC employees expressing political opinions on Twitter. They're all lefties. Funny that. I guess the BBC's thousands of right-leaning employees take their duty to uphold the concept of impartiality more seriously. Unless - and I know this might sound crazy - there aren't many right-leaning employees at the BBC, and they don't express political views on Twitter because they fear opprobrium and career stasis.

THE BIAS IS ALWAYS THERE

Interesting piece of analysis sent to me by a Biased BBC contributor...

"I have looked at the BBC Website Politics Home Page stories for the 3 weeks covering the party conferences. The analysis was done by reading the headline of the story where possible since this is the impression any reader of the page first gets. If unable to allocate the story I clicked on the story to read it in order to categorise it as good(in favour) or bad(adverse).

The categories were good and bad for each of the 3 parties and the rest were allocated to Other.

Over the 3 weeks there were 496 headlines, 35% related to the Conservatives, 37.5% to Labour, 13% to the Lib Dems and 14.5% to Other.
The ratio of good stories to bad were: Conservatives - 3 good for every bad story. Labour - 6 good for every bad story. Lib Dems - 8 good for every bad story.
The coverage figures were reasonable since they equate roughly to the size of each party and/or to the current % vote in Opinion Polls.
But the content of each story was twice as likely to be adverse for the Conservatives compared to Labour and nearly 3 times as likely to be adverse for the Conservatives compared to the Lib Dems.
I would call this BBC bias against the Conservative party."