Britannia Radio

BANG BANG

>> SATURDAY, APRIL 02, 2011

BBC Moral Maze presenter and former newsreader Michael Buerk has reviewed Peter Sissons' memoirs - When One Door Closes, in which he attacks the BBC with both barrels - for Standpoint magazine. It's a delicious, grumpy read in which Mr Buerk makes it clear that he concurs that the BBC is stuffed full of right-on, Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, mostly incompetent lefties. My day was made by this par:

Sissons bowls over the other targets like a crusty old farmer shooting rabbits. Autocuties, "Elf ‘n' Safety", the Corporation's now pathological aversion to risk of any kind, its culture of conformity, its vulnerability to political pressure, its uncritical love affair with environmentalism, the callow opinionising of some of its reporters, the flatulent masses of its middle management and, as he sees it, the BBC's complete lack of leadership. Bang, bang, bang.

However, Mr Buerk qualifies this by contending that the Sissons attack on BBC management is not entirely fair. I don't think it went far enough.

CAMERA Captures BBC Bias

>> SUNDAY, APRIL 03, 2011

This has already been linked to on the Open Thread, - H/T La Cumparsita - but it deserves further attention. I posted here on this programme “A Walk in the Park” at the time. It was so one-sided that I saw it as a recipe, cooked-up and formulaic. What a contrast with Jane Corbin’s unique Mavi Marmara Panorama, which was more thoroughly researched, not unsympathetic to Israel’s point of view, and, unusually for the BBC, it included some context. CAMERA’s meticulous debunking of both “A Walk in the Park” and the Editorial Standards Committee’s original response to their complaints disposes of potential accusations of using selective criteria to make that comparison. It also underlines very clearly why we are engaged in a constant battle against endemic anti Israel reporting, which frequently breeches BBC editorial guidelines. CAMERA demolishes “A Walk in the Park” on so many counts, and highlights so many breeches of the BBC’s impartiality guidelines that we should insist on being treated to the BBC’s and Jane Corbin’s updated responses. Would she, like Judge Goldstone, say hindsight is a wonderful thing, or would the BBC close ranks and defend the programme in their usual way, namely shrugging off individual accusations with a nitpicking approach that avoids all cognisance of the general impression given. It's as if doing that blinds them from recognising or admitting the overall slanting and bias their programmes exude. I don’t see how they could possibly get away with that for a second time. What they should do is simply to show this video on a forthcoming Panorama. For balance.