O'BAMA IN IRELAND
>> MONDAY, MAY 23, 2011
The BBC runs an item here on Obama's visit to the Irish Republic and suggests that this will bring much needed economic benefit. How? It seems to me that this just the beginning in a series of items the BBC will run this week eulogising the imagined powers of their man in the White House. It's hard to see how a 24hour visit from the US President can revive the long deceased Celtic Tiger but try telling that to the BBC!
AND THEY CALLED IT...PUPPYLOVE
You will need a strong stomach to listen to this fulsome tribute to Obama from Mark Mardell on the BBC this morning. Note the total lack of objectivity - this is full-on Obamalove and an utter disgrace. If we recall how the BBC reported similar events during the Bush years, never was a contrast greater.
TWISTED VALUES
A bit of a revolution is going on in Canada. The Conservatives won athumping election majority on May 3, and new premier Stephen Harper has wasted no time in cutting taxes, asserting national sovereignty and boosting defence spending. His resolve puts the Cameron government to shame and shows how far we are from having a truly conservative administration. Top of Mr Harper's agenda, too, was scrapping climate change legislation. Hallelujah! Unlike in the UK, there will be no suicidal carbon tax, and he's also binned plans to phase out old-fashioned light bulbs - which may seem minor, but the imposition in the UK of mercury-filled monstrosity bulbs symbolises to me all that is insane and fascist about greenie zealotry. The BBC, of course, has scarcely metioned this major outbreak of common sense - a tectonic shift, I would argue, in that it's the first government to comprehensively disagree with climate change lunacy - saying instead only that Mr Harper has "avoided" climate change legislation. In BBC speak, that means he's a right wing, shifty, denialist who is taking his country to hell in a hand cart. Meanwhile, in sharp contrast, BBC climate change zealotry is in full sympathetic flow this morning in the reporting of Australia's continued descent into climate change lunacy. Premier Julia Gillard has blatantly broken election pledges not to introduce carbon taxes, and now, crows the BBC, has induced - in true Pravda style - the Climate Change Commission to file a report that warns that sea levels will rise by one metre by the end of the century. Oh yes? These people are such shameless propagandists that they are beaneath contempt. Nothing ever dents or blunts greenie arrogance...as this report shows. But as usual, the BBC reports the nonsense with only a nodding mention of scepticism, and of course, it's emphasised that "Australians are one of the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world". In the BBC's creed, governments are always right if they support climate change lunacy; those that don't are simply right-wing nutters.
Complicity in Israel-Bashing Jamboree
“The Israelis appear in studios wearing suits. They’ve learned all sorts of tricks. They are wizards at communication; [....]He added that the tone of complaints against those giving the Palestinian viewpoint was “vituperative, pestering and controlling.”‘Bad News From Israel’ is a rich source of material from which BBC spokespersons tediously produce morsels to attest to the BBC’s impartiality. (the antidote is Stephanie Gutmann’s The Other War) Author Greg Philo and his colleague Llewellyn use the technique, much cherished by Arabs, of attributing your own most malevolent inner thoughts, suspicions and shortcomings to your enemy. To employ one anti-Israel polemicist as Middle East correspondent seems careless; two appears more than mere coincidence. Yet more still ...... looks positively purposeful. When the Arab uprisings began to make the headlines, one of the experts on the BBC’s speed dial was kindly grandfather Kamal Helbawy, spokesman for the Islamist group Jeremy Bowen calls moderate, the Muslim Brotherhood. Moderate in comparison to something in his own head no doubt. Meanwhile, Bowen, himself a man with attitude, has temporarily forsaken his Palestinian pals to support Gaddafi, and Jon Donnison is following in Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston’s well trodden footsteps, like a kidnap waiting to happen. So Is Wyre Davies. Yasmin Alabhai Brown is on the BBC so often that she acts as if she owns the place. She and Mehdi Hasan are incessantly called upon to review the newspapers. Why? Abdel Bari Atwan’s eyes bulge constantly from our screens. Thought for the Day regular Oliver McTernan runs Forward Thinking.
“Have a look through Harry’s Place archives and you’ll understand very quickly that this is merely a euphemism for “we support Hamas”.I could go on, but I won’t. Tim Llewellyn is consumed by his hatred of Israel. He’s beside himself, a man possessed. He and Mr Philo are continually beavering away alongside other Israel-haters, spreading the word. Amnesty International has unequivocally aligned itself with the Islamists. In the UK the BBC, the rest of the MSM, and probably the global social media network have convinced the majority of the idiocracy that taking an anti Israel stance is cool. Occasionally the BBC administers Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips to take the bitter taste away, but that’s just a drop in the bucket of balance. Next time a human rights report from Amnesty headlines a BBC news bulletin, remember the BBC’s charter. Because of the BBC, Zionism is a pejorative, and the very word Israel has come to embody evil. Heedless that they’re recreating 1930s Germany, the BBC carries on regardless.
How The Establishment Closes Ranks Around the BBC
This is a cross post from Autonomous Mind "Regular readers may recall a couple of posts back in January where we told the story of an Autonomous Mind reader who complained to the BBC about an edition of Hardtalk.
This is the one in December 2010 where President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives was allowed to state, without challenge, that due to human induced climate change sea levels around the Maldives are rising. The lack of journalistic rigour and blind acceptance of such a controversial viewpoint as fact led to the complaint being made and the BBC’s two fingered resp0nse in January which included the immortal words:
We’re committed to honest, unbiased reporting and are determined to remain free from influence by outside parties.
Following the response, our reader then filed a Freedom of Information request to the BBC asking for details of:- how many complaints/ accusations of bias the BBC received from the public about the BBC’s coverage of climate change
- how many of the complaints received about climate change were upheld by the BBC, i.e. were accepted
- brief details / a list of all the complaints upheld, i.e. the details of the upheld complaint and the BBC’s response (excluding details of the person complaining)
In publishing the story in a follow up post we shared the unsurprising news that the response from the BBC to our reader’s request was a refusal to provide the information sought. Once again the BBC was hiding behind its establishment-given provision to withhold any information the BBC considers to be held for the ‘purposes of journalism, art or literature’.
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