Courtesy of MB, here are a fine couple of examples of biased language from the BBC this morning. First, here's Radio 5 Live's Eleanor Oldroyd using the e-word about the ERG (at around 7.40am):
There seem to be some interesting clash points all over the place really, aren't there? There are plenty of people who want to avoid a no deal, including the former Chancellor Philip Hammond. There are the extreme Brexiteers, if you like, the ERG, who are potentially coming to clash with Boris Johnson, the new Prime Minister, and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings.
Secondly, here's William Crawley on Radio 4's Sunday using one of the i-words (no, not that one!) in connection to Boris Johnson's column defending the right of Muslim women to wear the burqa (the one with the letterbox joke):
Philip, what about Boris Johnson's relationship with faith communities? That infamous column we heard reference to earlier about the burqa and comparing it to letterboxes, just one example of that I suppose.
Sometimes the BBC appears like someone gawping at animals in a zoo. How strange and exotic these creatures they gaze upon. It struck me this morning that this programme that it combined a love of sensation with extreme boringness and pointlessness. There was a long bit about food banks and a poor woman from Manchester - yes, BBC, everyone knows there are food banks and people who don't have enough money but what was the point of this? Then we had a long piece about some ritual in Bengal - I switched it off and waited a bit then switched back on again and it was still going! Dear God on a Sunday was it ever going to end? What was the point of this interminable sensational boringness? The next thing was something about Muslims, was it? I forget as I fell asleep from boredom and didn't make it to the Johnson piece which no doubt was equally sensational, boring and pointless.
ReplyDeleteYes, the piece about some ritual in Bengal did take up a lot of time. At the end it was revealed to be part of a BBC documentary airing on the World Service. So there's even more of it!
DeleteThat makes a kind of sense as far as the BBC seems to want to make Radio 4 increasingly indistinguishable from the World Service which trails about the world gathering 'stories' we are supposed to find enthralling late at night.
DeleteThe Sunday programme seems desperately short of ideas, thought or originality, just picking up bits here and there and adding neither insight nor interest to them.
There's a similar lack with that awful Sunday Morning Live programme on BBC 1 presented by a grinning former football or sports presenter who whatever the topic feels the need to tells us about his own experience of it. Oh, I have one of those or I used to do that. Scintillating. They never got David Coleman or Harry Carpenter to inform or entertain us similarly on Sunday mornings did they? Just as well.
When looking up the Sunday programme's twitter account, I saw there was a link to the Muslim-Jewish Forum in Manchester.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/MJF_Manchester
Had to smile - about 95% of the tweets are about Islam, Muslim majority countries, issues of concern to Muslims, charitable Muslims, Muslim health issues...so on and so on.
Tells you something I think. As a bit of light relief, they do take time to retweet a hateful message about Katie Hopkins (alleging she propagates hate for financial reasons). It's amazing how Lefties can never register their own hate directed towards other. They don't hate the rich, the privately educated, Conservatives, pro-Brexiters, or Katie Hopkins...all their responses are rational and logical and designed own to make this world a better place - like Stalin's Russia circa 1930 or Mao's China circa 1960.
The "extreme" label is no joke these days. May spent a lot of time declaring she was going to vanquish all extremism and Sajid Javid stated in a recent speech this was his aim to - to eradicate ALL extremism (no exceptions given).
ReplyDeleteSo by labelling someone as "extreme" the BBC is saying they are subversive of our society and must be eliminated in line with government policy.
May herself was labelled a racist by some of her own party's Cabinet / MPs so she must have felt that pressure and Javid has a particular agenda.
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