Monday 25 March 2019

Has BBC Reality-Checker Chris Morris been caught out again? (Spoiler: Yes)


Chris Morris, or Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan?

Organisers say more than one million people joined the demonstration, which called on the Government to hold a second referendum.
   (Christian Fraser, Beyond 100 Days, BBC News Channel,       7.37 pm tonight)

So, according to 'the impartial fact checkers' Full Fact (who, to to put it mildly, weren't helpful to the Leave campaign during the EU referendum), "there almost certainly weren’t a million people on the People’s Vote march".

They put the number at "between 312,000 and 400,000". 

I grinned at the Guido Fawkes write-up of this as it goes on to say:
Not that it stopped the BBC’s risible “Reality Check Correspondent” Chris Morris from endorsing their claim of a million. 
Being Is the BBC biased? I needed quotes from Chris Morris to back that up.

And, yes, checking TV Eyes, there he was blabbing away - even today (at 3.17 pm and 5.51 pm on the BBC News Channel) - parroting that "they estimate there were a million people on the streets calling for another referendum" and "we had an estimated 1 million people outside this building on Saturday".

Guilty as charged then.

Yes, here's the BBC's chief reality-checker who doesn't always check the reality of things - especially when it seems to suit him not too.

I think they call that 'bias', don't they Chris?

4 comments:

  1. Is the man a fool or a brazen liar? Take this from the latest "Reality Check"...


    "Under WTO rules, after Brexit, cars would be taxed at 10% when they crossed the UK-EU border. And agricultural tariffs would be significantly higher, rising to an average of more than 35% for dairy products."

    He is referring to "maximum potential tariffs" not "tariffs". Any normal person reading those two sentences would reasonably conclude that we would be obliged to levy such tariffs.

    It's all contradicted by what follows in the article, but in some sense that makes it worse, suggesting he knows exactly what he's doing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MB, Craig ... you know for me Morris is a brazen liar.
      I always switch him off.
      He commonly uses the "up to" sleight of speech in which the very worst case figure is used in a headline and portrayed as a base case figure.

      Delete
  2. The rest of the Reality Check team are just as useless (or mendacious). Here is the Single Market explained by the EU Commission:

    QUOTE:

    1) What is the Single Market?

    The Single Market of the European Union is the common area between the 27 EU countries where goods, services, capital and persons can circulate freely. The Single Market also ensures that European citizens are free to live, work, study and do business where they want in the EU.

    UNQUOTE

    http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-10-528_en.htm?locale=en

    Does the BBC understand this? No.

    Here is their Reality Check:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47639946?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2rgt/reality-check&link_location=live-reporting-story

    "The European Economic Area (EEA) includes all 28 EU countries and three nations that are not members of the EU: Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, which are part of the Single Market but not the EU or its Customs Union."

    So despite everything said on the EU Commission website the BBC want you to believe Norway is part of the Single Market. It is not, as the EU Commission make clear. Norway is simply part of the European Economic Area which replicates many but not all of the features of the Single Market.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That seems factually cut and dried.

    Pop in a complaint.

    I just fired one off whose eventual reply I can only anticipate with gary amusement.

    ReplyDelete

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