According to a letter to the editor in today’s Times from an NUJ official, BBC Monitoring has been hit by successive cuts.
I wasn’t sure what BBC Monitoring was, but it’s explained in the letter.
“.................we need to be aware of how others, not just the Russians, project soft power. This is the purpose of BBC Monitoring, to observe and report the sometimes distorted way in which other countries’ media present the world. It was mostly funded by the government until 2010 when the BBC was forced into paying for it alone.”
This struck me as distinctly eerie. The BBC is monitoring other country’s distorted media, whilst ignoring the monitoring undertaken by thousands of viewers and reviewers of its own distorted output on a daily basis.
It’s a very serious and urgent case of ‘physician, heal thyself!’.
Speaking of which, on the BBC Monitoring site I found this piece about Israel’s media.
“Researched and written by BBC Monitoring’s regional specialists, the Israel Media Guide provides overviews of the broadcasting, press and online sectors, along with extensive listings of individual channels, publications and other sources, and details of key media owners.”
I was curious about the diligence of these regional monitoring specialists, because if they are indeed monitoring the region’s media, it does seem odd that there’s a kind of blanket embargo on the sometimes, nay, always, distorted way the Palestinian media reports matters.
Rather like Jeremy Corbyn, Palestinian media can’t even bring themselves to use the word “Israel”
The BBC trained the Palestinian media, didn't they? So of course they won't find fault there.
ReplyDeleteAs for the monitoring, remember that the Beeboids believe themselves to be above the rest of the world. They believe they have a divine right to "spread influence", as Jeremy Paxman put it. How this is considered impartial I have no idea.
Has anyone seen an a link to the YouGov poll on the Guido Fawkes website? Where the majority would still vote leave? Initially I was thinking this was BBC bias by omission but I can't find anything else about it on the web.
ReplyDeleteAs always, the BBC is obsessed with the US Presidential elections.
ReplyDeleteNot to say that they aren't important, but it's not as though anything said or done here has much effect, so it is purely left-liberal OCD that keeps them obsessing about the narrative. They could save a lot of money by just using local reporters.
Of course all pretence at bias has been abandoned. It is British Broadcasting for Clinton. Personally I dislike, possibly despise BOTH the candidates. But the treatment of Trump is completely unbalanced. On Today (around 8.34 am) they had two commentators both anti-Trump. Of course the BBC Presenter was only too eager to set up the anti-Trump comments and even the question at the end, designed for "balance" defence, conceded he was behaving like an irrational and dangerous loon now.
But what really p'd me off was the way they slipped in at the beginning of the item that one of Trump's supporters had "even suggested that Khizr Khan was a supporter of Sharia law" as though that was the most outrageous suggestion ever. Did they follow it up? Of course they didn't - BBC News knows better than to follow up something it realises full well to be embarrassingly true...It got no further mention. For the record it has so far been established Mr Khan senior wrote extensively and approvingly on Sharia law, defended OPEC, represented Saudi interests, lived for many years under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia with no complaints about the system and is currently working as an immigration lawyer specialising in getting American citizenship for rich clients from the Islamic world. But all that is being kept hidden from the BBC listener. Instead they air the very valid concerns and questions about Trump's character, mental health, business dealings and so on,knowing that in the mind of the listener this will suggest any concerns about Mr Khan senior must be invalid.
No mention either that Mr Khan has - surprise, surprise - taken down his law firm website (but thankfully it was already archived and so he cannot deny what was there).
Typical Taqiyya!
[BTW I think I may have discovered whilst composing this post a new medical condition - LLOCD (Left-Liberal Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Examples of LLOCD include: reporting on US elections in minute detail, American gun crime (not South African or Jamaican gun crime), wanting to listen all the time to the views of Muslims (especially westernised Muslims - but no other religious groups), government cuts (but not increases in expenditure), Scots and northerners (but not Welsh, East Anglians, Southerners, Midlanders or West Country folk)...the symptoms are many and varied but remarkably specific!]
Well said. They have refused to have any serious discussion about Hillary's emails or the corruption of her using her office as Secretary of State to drive funding for the Clinton Foundation.
DeleteGiven the selective nature of their editorial output, it is hardly a surprise that the GI that generates the GO is likewise carefully filtered.
ReplyDeleteAs to how they handle any questions on their practices, these range from invoking blanket exemptions to banning the questioner.