Before : Another BBC reader observes; Biased BBC reader "As I see it" has provided us with the following thoughtful analysis - give it a read! I’m forever guarding the BBC’s output, day and night. I watch all channels simultaneously, whilst listening to radios one two three four five six and seven, and the BBC World Service. Only Joking. I’m bemused if anyone has that impression, and quite flattered. From the bits I do watch, I recognise many of the biases mentioned on this blog, but I find the anti Israel bias the most painful, and somehow the most insidious, because it leads to things like the incident at the Prom. Palestinian Solidarity Campaigners committed a profoundly self-defeating affront when they disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Music lovers regard Zubin Mehta and Gil Shaham as the crème de la crème. The audience at the Albert Hall eventually got to enjoy the treat they were waiting for. First they had to sit by and watch while a bunch of nobodies who presumed they had the right to caterwaul and chant and drown out the finest musicians in the world, gave an embarrassing display of their insensitivity and ignorance. The radio 3 audience missed out altogether. The BBC made an unfortunate decision to abandon the live transmission. However, when the fools were finally ejected, the performance went ahead triumphantly, to prolonged, tumultuous, joyous, applause. The incident has generated thousands of comments on the internet. There are four hundred and forty four on the BBC News website, and forty nine on the BBC Proms website, several hundred below other articles, such as Brendan O’Neill’s piece in the Telegraph.(689 and counting) The ignorance displayed by some of the contributors is mind-boggling. The Palestinian Sympathy Orchestra, let’s call them, is equipped with clichéd, half-understood gossip, myths and distortions. Helpfully, they nearly always set them out in full before launching off into the tirade proper. “Stolen land, illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing, diverted water supplies, bulldozed houses, white phosphorous, apartheid, UN resolutions, illegal this that and the other” they excrete, indignantly. Particularly common is: “Israelis are killing innocent Palestinians everyday.” They *know* these things, and they use them to justify their largely predetermined hatred of Israel. Where do they get these ideas? Comments also appear on Norman Lebrecht’s ‘Slipped Disc” webpages. Today there’s a contribution by famous tousle-haired cellist Steven Isserlis.It was submitted to the Guardian, and for some reason they chose not to publish. He begins: “The protesters who disrupted the Prom by the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta are not only guilty of cultural hooliganism, but are deeply misguided.” and ends: “To wreck their very rare and special concert over here gives a terrible impression of us all – haven’t the rioters done that already?” You may as well read the middle as well. 
Comment As Fact
>> MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 05, 2011
Correspondence from Frank Fisher : {Feedback Type:} I would like to... Make a complaint {Summary:} You have published a Polly Toynbee opinion piece in your News section - it is not factual, it is opinion {Complaint:} Separate news from opinion, make clear that the views expressed in the article are opinions, suggest that other views regarding 'equality' exist, for example cite the debunking fo the Spirit Level arguments in "The Spirit Level Delusion". I shouldn't have to tell you this. Putting a byline on a piece doesn't make it clear to people that it's stepping outside your usual zone. It sits *within* your usual page and menu structure and appears for all the world to be a factual article, rather than the routine Pollyanna ravings of the country's leading champagne socialist. Remedy it please.
Reply : Subject: RE: Complaint Reply Required Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 11:56:13 +0100 From: newsonline.complaints@bbc.co.uk To: frank@frankfisher.org Dear Mr. Fisher, The piece was not clearly-enough labelled as a personal viewpoint. It has now been changed. We will also be running pieces in the near future from commentators from different parts of the political spectrum. Regards, BBC News website
After : 
"We will also be running pieces in the near future from commentators from different parts of the political spectrum." Hmm. Notice "different", not "all". I guess that means Iain Dale and maybe Michael Gove for the far-right view, plus half a dozen Greens. Listening to the trailers for their 9/11 coverage its like deja vu all over again - they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. While I don't think we'll get quite so much "they had it coming" this time round, we're already getting the "why didn't Bush sit down and negotiate" splashed all over the news. Given that Bin Laden's demands included the restoration of the Caliphate and the return of Al-Andalus i.e. Spain, Bush might have had a few problems doing a deal. I can't imagine what Michael "Private Peaceful" Morpurgo's view (one of the 5 literary types writing their "9/11 letters") of the War on Terror will be, can you? The BBC's a bit like one of those small sects that occasionally announce the end of the world or the imminent socialist revolution - you almost have to admire the dogged disconnection from reality which, for example, gave Ms Toynbee, former BBC social affairs correspondent and one of the chief architects of the decline in social mobility over the last 40 years, a R4 programme last week bemoaning the decline in social mobility. But we're not forced to pay for the small sects. ANY QUESTIONS?
>> SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2011
"Friday 19 August (I think). Jonathan Dimbleby at his worst and most transparent. He gave Harriet Harman a free run with little or no interruption on the riots etc. He then acted as agent provocateur by inviting her to blame the cuts and she got another full go without interruption. Baroness Warsi was then interrupted as usual, something both the Dumbellboys feel free to do, presumably because she's a relatively inexperienced young woman (and a Tory). Then it was Peter Hitchens turn. I'd be the first to concede that Peter Hitchens can sometimes appear bonkers, but this time he was lucid, articulate and challenging, but crucially, he wasn't playing to JD's agenda, so he was unceremoniously unterrupted. Hitchens protested that he'd like to make his point but JD became abusive and said Hitchens wouldn't be interrupted if he didn't go on at such length, and anyway he, JD, makes the rules. Dimbleby appeared to be oblivious to how much time Harriet Harman had gone on without challen! ge. This wasn't the first time I've had the impression there is an organised effort by the BBC to blame the cuts for everything because they have a vested interest in not being cut themselves.
Later in the program there was a discussion about moral decay and absentee fathers and so on. Dimbleby bleated like a child caught with his hand in the sweetie jar that we mustn't make people stay together because this is even worse for the child, a tired old cliche that he's run past us before. My assumption is that he feels guilty at his behaviour at the end of his marriage to Moon Belly, but it just shows what we are up against in trying to get moral justice for our children versus the right of our betters to think of themselves first."
AS IS SEE IT....
"It is my contention that there is a left-wing bias in the output of the BBC.
I happen to have a group of friends with whom I meet at regular intervals for a particular leisure activity. (And no, it doesn’t involve either caravanning or dubious sexual practices in secluded locations - nor does it combine the two. So don’t try to guess). The point is the members of this group are all employed in charities, trades unions and the public sector and they are all fairly staunch Labour supporters - indeed in most cases longstanding party members.
Some may regard my keeping up with these people as masochism on my part but I find it fascinating. (And no, as I already explained there is nothing in the least exotic about this activity). I recall meeting up with these people in the dying days of the last government at the time when they knew they were staring down the barrel of defeat. After thirteen years of power the political situation was causing some soul searching, I can tell you. Needless to say they are not particularly strong on the economics. They tend to focus on social, political and media issues.
What had gone wrong they asked?
Not personally coming to this debate with the view that the fall of the Brown premiership was entirely a bad thing, I nevertheless threw in my two-pennyworth as a bit of a digression. I put forward the contention that the BBC had only ever seemed to criticize the Blair/Brown government from the left. I was not surprised with the general response that this was some form of heresy. You see Labour supporters on the one hand tend to convince themselves that there are actually too many conservative voices on the BBC – however they still see the old Corporation as a pretty hallowed institution. In other words although they say that they believe it is not left-wing enough for them they still don’t see any pressing need for change. A suspicious position don’t you think? I think it is odd, given that people on the left usually tend to be pretty iconoclastic when it comes to British institutions. They certainly don’t hold back when it comes to wanting change in the Police, the! Monarchy, the House of Lords, Devolution, etc, etc. When it comes to the BBC they seem to want more of it!
Despite the reluctance of most to openly admit the truth that the BBC’s centre of gravity is several steps to the left of where the British general public stand there were still one or two guilty nods and winks of recognition to my observation that the Labour government had only really been criticized by the BBC from the left side of any debate.
In order to persuade anyone who may remain unconvinced I would cite two topical examples that show up how the BBC is out of kilter with the outlook of the British public: the AV referendum and the recent rioting. The AV Referendum. This was not a simple left ‘v’ right debate. In fact it was much more interesting than that. The Conservatives were against it but so was a significant section of Labour MPs – a section of what you might call old Labour. Ed Miliband and his new leadership were in favour, even though he might have been supposed to be in the process of reconnecting with traditional supporters and wishing to differentiate himself from the aloof and metropolitan Bairites and New Labour, he still came down squarely on the side of something that was dubbed “progressive”. Now there were political and tactical complications but the debate was framed as one pitching “progressives” against British tradition and the existing constitution. Now don’t forget the public were still seething from the MPs’ expenses scandal and might have been thought to have been keen for some new politics - yet the referendum revealed only a tiny section of the British public would vote f! or this so-called “progressive” measure. In the event the metropolitan “progressives” were left high and dry. I don’t suppose we will be having any further referenda on other cherished progressive propositions of the BBC liberals any time soon. I’m sure the British publics’ views on EU membership, capital punishment, global warming, immigration, etc will all now continue to go untested for the foreseeable future.
It was a similar situation with the issues surrounding the August riots. There was an obvious disconnect between the BBC opinion and the British public reaction on all the relevant issues. This was apparent from the initial ‘careful now, stand off’ Police control methods, to the typical profile and motivations of the rioters, right through to the handing down of sentences by the Courts. Now there are those in the BBC and their supporters on the left who will cling to the concept that the BBC is there to challenge our views and to come with ideas from ‘left field’. I wholeheartedly disagree. These left-liberal views have had a fair old crack of the whip and look where we are now.
It must be time that the licence paying public should tell the BBC enough is enough. Please stop visualizing yourselves as being some elite cadre leading us dumb prols ever leftward by the nose. Please get back to the basics of what we pay you for: informing and entertaining us."
EVAN A CLUE; BETRAYING THE BBC'S HIGH STANDARD OF BIAS
"I was alerted to this Evan Davis interview with the Prime Minister on the TODAY programme this Friday via the Daily Mail.
LYING OR JUST BAD?
'I find it interesting that I can't recall any allegation that the allies used, or discussed using torture during World War II, although there must have been occasions when it might have saved lives or even the liberty of states. If you know differently please let me know.'
Mark Mardell 2011It has always intrigued me that when Britain really stood in peril of foreign conquest, when the blitz was killing more people than died on 9/11 night after night, it seems torture was not used. Perhaps they simply never captured a Nazi senior enough to be worth putting to the question. What is the tipping point ?'
You might find it difficult to believe he had not heard of 'The Cage' especially as it was a story run by the BBC's print version, The Guardian, in 2005.... Here describing conditions in a post war torture camp run by the British in Germany....'a place where prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg. Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the "living skeletons" on their release. Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency.'
Mardell could of course just be echoing his idol Obama: 'Is Barack Obama reading blogs, particularly the site of one of his campaign's most committed supporters, Andrew Sullivan? At his press conference on Wednesday evening, the president defended his decision to end the use of torture on detainees, by citing an article he had recently read, in which it was noted that during World War II, Winston Churchill refused to use such tactics on the spies captured by the British. "I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees," said Obama. "And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' when the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat."
MARX WAS RIGHT!
Keeping Watch
Monday, 5 September 2011
Biased BBC stalwart Graeme Thompson aka Hippiepooter writes;
A Biased BBC commentator asks;
"Is Mark Mardell lying or just a very bad, ill informed journalist? In 2006 Mardell asked the same question about torture as he asks now.
A Biased BBC reader writes;
" I've just seen this ridiculously left-wing piece on the BBC News web site: "Karl Marx may have been wrong about communism but he was right about much of capitalism" "...more and more people are starting to think Karl Marx was right." "Marx... was far more perceptive than most economists in his day and ours." "As capitalism has advanced it has returned most people to a new version of the precarious existence of Marx's proles." "...just as he predicted, the bourgeois world has been destroyed"
Ah, they DO love old Karl, don't they?
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