Friday 2 September 2016

Keeping tracks



Sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple of days (a case of 'events, dear boy' for both me and Sue)...

....but as a follow-up to Double Standards (from a couple of days ago), please take a close read of David Keighley's latest post at News-watch

It chronicles three other examples of the BBC (over the course of Wednesday evening and Thursday morning) pursuing the same line that "The fear is that this was a frenzied racist attack triggered by the Brexit referendum" (h/t the BBC's Daniel Sandford) across its flagship programmes (Newsnight, News at Six and Today). 

I've only seen the Newsnight example, but that was bad enough, even by itself.

I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks very soon (and can't wait, despite all the manifold delights of Morecambe)...

...so please keep noting any further examples you see of BBC Brexitophobia either here, or anywhere else you find fit (including either BBC Complaints or BBC Complaints - or both). 

That same Newsnight, for example...

...(whose answer to its selected vox pop's charge that Nigel Farage literally had "blood on his hands" was simply to say that "Nigel Farage has always denied this allegation" {as if that was adequate balance})...

...featured an interview with mournful Remainer Ian McEwan. Evan Davis interviewed him, an allowed him to slag off Brexit and then, in conclusion, pronounced him to be a nice guy.

(Are the police going to start investigating cases of Brexitophobia any time soon? Is Evan going to be in prison soon?). 

The only other thing I've managed to hear tonight is Radio 4's More or Less on that apparent post-Brexit rush of would-be Irish passport holders, with Tim Harford talking of the "turmoil", politically and economically, post-Brexit. (The stats were fascinating though.)

This kind of thing is fairly subtle but only adds to my impression that the BBC is being utterly relentless.

I think I'd need to retire very early to properly monitor all of this kind of thing (which isn't going to happen).

7 comments:

  1. Jon Sweeney has produced some good stuff over the years but perhaps he's at an age where he feels he has to demonstrate he's more Beebist than the Young Turks (very appropriate) of the BBC. Still, it was outrageous the way he encouraged an East European migrant to blame Farage (a man who has been subjected to thuggish interventions and death threats against him and his family, though that is never reported on BBC) for the horrific murder of a migrant worker in Harlow.

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  2. This kind of thing is fairly subtle but only adds to my impression that the BBC is being utterly relentless.

    I suspect the bias has become so subconscious that they don't even realise they are doing it now.

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    1. Sometimes they do know what they're doing, but as Mark Easton has explained, they believe they have a divine right to do it, as they are on the side of the angels. I paraphrase slightly.

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  3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046hndy

    Well, well, well! Al Beeb discovers Father Dave Smith, Australia's answer to Stephen Sizer - here below is an example of Father Dave's Israel-bashing:

    http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/anglican-father-dave-al-quds-day-is-day.html

    (I wonder whether Little Jonny Donnison knows about Dave)

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    1. Is JonDon still in Oz? He seems to have a roving brief when the batsh*t sign is projected on clouds above cities worldwide.

      As to Newsnight, if anything embodies 'he who controls the edit', it is Newsnight and Ian Katz.

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  4. Is it acceptable impartial broadcasting for a presenter to make positive statements about a guest like that?

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  5. Anybody else listen to Broadcasting House on Radio 4 this morning?

    When discussing the papers the guests were allowed by Paddy O'Connell to:

    1. Claim that the murder of Arkadiusz Jozwik was a race hate crime as FACT
    2. Claim that it was linked to Brexit as FACT

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