Tuesday 31 January 2017

Talking of fake news...


Yalda Hakim

Last night's Newsnight featured a report on the Trump executive order from the BBC's Yalda Hakim, who had her own personal tale to tell about it:
We've just arrived at JFK and I must say I've been quite nervous the entire flight over. I was born in Afghanistan but I travel on an Australian passport and I just wasn't sure if the policy had changed mid-air between London and New York.
She went on to say:
Despite the mounting pressure and criticism, President Trump is not backing down. He criticised the tears of Chuck Schumer and asked where the lefty outrage was from Democrats "when our jobs were fleeing our country". He also reminded protesters that a crackdown on Muslims was a big part of his campaign.  


As you can see, she added "lefty" to the bit about the "outrage from Democrats" (and dropped the bit about the media).

Must worse though was her characterisation of what Donald Trump said yesterday about his campaign: "He also reminded protesters that a crack down on Muslims was a big part of his campaign"

No, he didn't say that. That's highly misleading reporting.

His tweet said that "searching for terrorists before they can enter our country" was "a big part of my campaign" not that "a crackdown on Muslims" was "a big part of my campaign". 

And the BBC has the nerve to complain about 'fake news'!

7 comments:

  1. Looks like they have a proactive version of BBC complaints in the form of James Harding's new propaganda ministry department: 'it's what we believe might have been said or done'.

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  2. Yep, that report has taken the BBC fake news operation to a whole new level: direct lying, not simply misrepresentation, omission, distortion, over-emphasis, picture placing, dodgy polling, biased analysis or all the rest we are used to. I did also wonder whether sending this unknown to me reporter to the USA was part of a BBC sitng operation - hoping she would get stop by immigration authorities. She sounded almost disappointed she had got through without a problem.

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  3. You may need to file this under "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you..." because BBC bias is so comprehensive, from the Archers to Front Row, to Farmers Today that one begins to see it everywhere, but maybe rightly so.

    I saw a trailer for an upcoming BBC TV "behind the scenes" documentary on the House of Lords. At first it was just washing over me...then I thought "oh this looks a bit old fashioned, like the way they used to do BBC documentaries..." and then it struck me "They are trying to make the Lords look loveable"...and then it finally hit me: "Of course, the House of Lords is now favoured by the Remainiacs as a potential last redoubt in the Battle of Brexit. That's why they commissioned the programme."

    There is bias by programming as well as bias by content!

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    Replies
    1. Yes I thought that too when I saw the trailer, timely efforts to make the HOL look so relevant, important and necessary. After years of suggesting the opposite of course.

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    2. Yep, bit like the last days of Obama's CIA, when the BBC finally discovered it loved the CIA, a reputable, reliable truth-telling agency, after years of suggesting it was a rogue,lying lair of assassins!

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  4. Good catch, Craig. It seems that the deliberate lies about the US from BBC journalists never stop.

    The travel ban is on country of travel, not birth. Fake News upon Fake News.

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  5. His statement was ambiguous. He said "this" was a part of his campaign. You say that "this" refers to "searching for terrorists before they can enter our country" - logical, given that that was the preceding statement. But also fair to interpret it as referring to the "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" that he promised (and later modified to "extreme vetting"). But it would be preferable if they actually had some staff willing to neutrally introduce an alternative viewpoint as well.

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