Introspective Post (with parsley sauce)

As it's Sunday night and my Sunday dinner [pork with crackling, roast potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and parsley sauce, if you were wondering] is digesting, I'll post something I was going to post much earlier in the week. 

Despite things improving, it still holds true [including my Disqus problems]. And you've continued to 'mind the gap':

 

My trusty old laptop, which has seen me through a lot of blogging, decided to take against the letter 'e' the other day. 

Now, there have been novels in the past - Ernest Vincent Wright's 1939 Gadsby and Georges Perec's 1969 La Disparition - written entirely without the letter 'e', but I don't think a blog about BBC bias can be written without it. 

After all, I'd have to refer to *mily Maitlis and L*wis Goodall and Mark *aston and Mik* W*ndling and Gary Lin*k*r, etc, and it might looks as if I was swearing about them. 

So I've gone onto my reserve laptop and can't get back into Disqus yet to reply to the discussion on the open thread. So I'll do it here instead:

Things are undoubtedly getting worse with the BBC, and to a startling degree. I thought they were getting a bit better in the early 2010s, but things began deteriorating again after 2016 and have spiralled downwards over the past couple of years at a dizzying rate, especially in recent months.

It used to be fairly manageable keeping up with it, but it's getting harder almost by the week to wrap a mere blogger's cerebral cortex around it. At this very moment I'm looking at everything's that gone on over this past couple of days and almost despairing about even beginning to sum it up, never mind do justice to it.

This is where you, dear readers, come in. 

When we withdrew last year, you stepped in. 

In preparing my favourite post of last year - 2021 in a Nutshell - I drew heavily on your comments on the open thread, especially for the missing months. 

You barely missed a thing. 

So please keep commenting and pointing things out - when you've the time and the inclination.

As you've been saying, we may be small but it's good to have another separate, distinct, manageable gathering place for sharing what we've all heard and seen, alongside other likeminded sororal and fraternal sites. 

I still believe we're a very useful resource with a fascinating and ever-expanding archive, like a village library - even if much of what we've been saying for years is now pretty mainstream and even though we've probably been superceded.

And, of course, it's a library with lots of beautifully-crafted, profoundly-thought-out and often very funny pieces by Sue, highlighting matters that really matter. She's the George Eliot of ITBB compared to my George and Weedon Grossmith.

So onwards!

And thank you again. 

A Saturday evening rant

I'd value your advice here...

*******

The BBC pays - and I probably pay - far too much attention to the demented cries of bias from the Corbyn mob. 

I do it because it's important for a blog called 'Is the BBC biased?' to consider the question as broadly as possible and to dwell sceptically on the 'complaints from both sides' defence. 

And it's important to consider other perspectives too.

*******

Ah but...

The issue which I think I've somewhat lost sight of is that the BBC has normalised far-left extremism, thus paving the path to making the idea of a Corbyn-led, antisemitic, far-left-heavy Labour Party government seem worthy of acceptability in a country with a centuries' old tradition of democracy and reasonableness and a marked aversion to (European) continental fanaticism.

*******

If we get a far-left, antisemitic government after 12 December I'll hold the BBC partly responsible for failing to ring the alarm bells and warn the public anywhere near enough.

*******

Yes, I know that's exactly the same sort of language that Newswatch's Samira Ahmed has used in the past to complain about far-right extremism being platformed by the BBC. 

And by that she, very openly, meant the likes of Nigel Farage. 

But Nigel Farage isn't a far-right extremist...

...unlike, say, John McDonnell, who is a far-left extremist (albeit with a great taste in middle-class jumpers and a tendency to try to disguise his privileged background).

*******

From Ash to Grace, from Aaron to Owen, the far-left have been platformed to the nth degree by the BBC. 

No matter how extreme their views (and they are often very extreme), the BBC invites them on again and again and again. 

They're young and dashing and pretty and not working class, and none of them have ever been the leader of the EDL. 

They're acceptable extremists, and the BBC indulges them.

*******

Why? 

*******

The reason, in part, is because they represent one of the two main UK political parties.

The problem is that one of the two main main UK political parties has been invaded, conquered, hollowed out, and turned upside down and inside out by far-left extremists.

The extremists are now in charge of Labour, and it's now no longer the Labour Party that people have always voted for - including me, in the past, from time to time. 

It's now a weird, far-left cult stuffed with Israel-obsessed antisemites - and people who can't or won't see that their party is stuffed with far-left Israel-obsessed antisemites, and other forms of antisemites (including Muslim antisemites). 

And yet the BBC grants Jeremy Corbyn's far-left cult-of-a-party equivalent respectability with the Conservative Party, rather than leading the charge against them on behalf of moderation, democracy and opposition to antisemitism. 

It's just what they do though, isn't it?  It's all about due impartiality, isn't it?

And Jeremy Corbyn isn't Nigel Farage after all.

And the BBC is broadly soggy-left, so the far-left doesn't worry them as much as the moderate, pro-Brexit right does.

And Labour isn't pro-Brexit (despite JC, who might be).

*******

I fear that the BBC just don't see it. 

They have blinkers on. Lots of blinkers. Blinkers galore.

They should beware though, because the far-left aren't anywhere near as fixated as they are on Brexit and the Tories. 

The far-left, being far-left, are largely preoccupied with enemies closer to home and, so,  much more fixated on  soggy left types - such as the BBC.

They will come for the BBC, if elected. And many people at the BBC - who didn't see it coming - will not like it one bit.

*******

Rant over. What do you think?

Confession time

I've been blogging about BBC bias, on and off, for nearly ten years now, and I think it might be starting to skew my political priorities. 

This week's European elections may or may not have transformative effects on UK and EU democracy, but none of that matters to me anywhere near as much as the fate of Change UK's lead candidate in London - ex-BBC megastar Gavin Esler - because I really, truly, madly want him to fail. Hopefully very badly. 

I know I should be ashamed of myself, but if my dream comes true and he loses I'll be cracking open my bottle of Jane Garvey 1997 Vintage Champagne overnight on Sunday night/Monday morning. 

I will now say two dozen Hail Marys. 

Hubbub

The cacophony of voices all jabbering at the same time which erupts every time I click on the home page of our homely blog at the moment may seem deeply irritating - and it ruined my attempts to enjoy that Rolling Stones video I posted earlier - but it's almost as though it was meant to be, written in the stars, or as if we intentionally designed it (which we didn't') as a artistically magnificent metaphor to sum up the hapless state of Parliament at the moment or the babble of similar-minded voices being incessantly poured into our heads by the BBC at any moment. Or whatever.

To compliment it, here's some Charles Ives (which echoes the effect to perfection) as various military bands march past each other playing different tunes at the same time:

Of course, none of you will ever manage to listen to this wonderfully haywire music while browsing the blog given those voices endlessly chattering away. 

As far as conceptual art goes Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have nothing on Is the BBC biased?

Evan's Song

(In honour of the latest manipulative John Lewis advert...

Evan, this one's for you. 

And you can tell everybody.)

Well, I put my arm bands on and took the plunge tonight, and decided to give Evan Davis's new-look travelling-show version of PM a listen. 

(As a blogger about BBC bias, I'm not one of those who can easily hide from such things.)

I managed the opening Brexit-focused quarter of an hour and then climbed out, shivering and grasping for the gift of someone's (maybe David Furnish's?) towel.

Given what you've already said in the comments, I had a strong feeling inside that there would be some biased editorialising from Evan worthy of blogging about, but this wasn't just 'some' editorialising; it was full-on, hardcore editorialising, replete with staggeringly biased language (and metaphorical feather trim and flamboyant glasses).

It's a little bit funny but, as a blogger, it seriously made me groan. So, excuse me, and I hope you don't mind, but I'm about to moan (as it made me quite cross): 

Should I spend an hour transcribing the whole thing to put down in words its bias for posterity? Or should I just put myself through a few minutes of less-than-pleasurable re-listening in order to quote only its most biased highlights (of which I registered several)? 

Yeah. Dilemmas, dilemmas!

And then came the interview with a Tory minister, broadly reinforcing Evan's editorial, with help from Evan's biased questions. 

And then came the very end of that interview, when the previously obliging minister refused to oblige Evan over a different point. 

What happened? 

Well, Evan took the 'then again, no' approach, and (literally) laughed at him, and put him straight, and then told him they'd run out of time, and then moved straight on without giving him a chance to utter even so much as a grump of objection - a classic 'getting-in-the-last-word' kind of point-scoring behaviour that's my own pet hate when it comes to BBC political interviews - a kind of behaviour Evan Davis is particularly prone to. 

I know some of you (unlike me) didn't take to Eddie Mair (my favourite ex-Radio 4 political presenter), but this was just so atrociously opinionated and bad that even the most ardent Eddie-haters must surely be longing for his return if this is what Radio 4 listeners are going to have to put up with from now on. 

Maybe I'll transcribe the whole thing tomorrow. I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do. And if I do, it's for people like you who keep it turned on. After all, you have the sweetest eyes I've ever seen...

Apologies for the Elton John-themed nature of this post, but it's midweek and I've been exposed to This Song all flipping day.

Saturday Bonus Transcripts

Posted below are two transcripts - one prepared by my own loving hand, the other by the diligent hands of Andrew and David at News-watch. I thought it might interest you to read them, and compare and contrast them. 

Transcriptions

The transcriptions below may not make for scintillating blogging but I hope you find them useful nonetheless.

Pledge

Though being (fairly) characterised by BBC types as being 'critics' of the BBC, we are a blog that's called 'Is the BBC biased?', and that leads me, from time to time, to highlight and criticise charges of BBC bias which I find to be wrong or silly or downright perverse. 

I've already posted one such piece tonight, and all of my 'Rob Burley Fan Club' pieces derive from the same impulse. 

Raising my eyes nobly to the stars and placing my hand on my blogging medals, I do think that it's my blogging duty to do so because there's wheat and there's chaff out there when it comes to allegations of BBC bias, and the chaff is becoming ever more plentiful and it's blowing across the wheat and starting to choke it. And we wheat growers really do need to resist its spread lest it cross-contaminate us all. 

And, before I extend that metaphor across the entire breadth of the US prairies, let me confess that, yes, I do tend to focus on the examples of chaff which strike me as the wrongest, the silliest and most perverse and that, by a truly remarkable and fortuitous coincidence, those examples tend to be those that are least in tune with my own way of thinking on things in general. 

Yes, I post quite a few pieces slamming right-wing newspapers for misrepresenting the BBC (whenever they do) but, otherwise, especially as regards social media (particularly other like-minded blogs), I really do tend, more often than not, to merely tut or groan at examples from 'my own side' and move on without posting tut-tutting blogs about them. 

And that's really not right. It's a failing. It's a bias. And chaff of every variety is worth burning for the wheat's sake. 

In that spirit, I read a comment at a blog somewhere else tonight which read, "I notice that today a Gay man has been found guilty of murdering a baby girl he and his ‘husband’ have adopted. Yet the BBC doesn’t want you to know he is a Gay man, and in ever (sic) news report they have neglected to mention the fact. When the liberal agenda gets in the way of the news then omitting the facts make it fake news. Just more bias". 

This is pure chaff. It's the actual fake news here. The BBC has not hidden the fact that the male murderer in this horrible case has a husband - i.e. is "Gay".  They simply haven't - see here and here and here and here and here and here and here for starters.

Therefore, with hand on blogging heart, I pledge from hereon in that I will be as merciless towards any 'chaffery' from 'my own side' as I am towards the 'chaffery' from 'the other side'. 

Long live wheat!

Introspective Post 207

Bloggers are, of course, all-knowing and all-seeing. We're not the sort of buffoons who'd waste an entire Sunday evening preparing a transcript of an Andrew Marr Show interview only to realise, having finished the transcript and begun tidying it up to make it presentable for our dear readers, that the Andrew Marr Show itself was bound to have posted its very own transcript several hours earlier. 

The piece posted directly below this one proves that beyond doubt.

Now please excuse me while I go outside and shoot myself.

A Thank You Open Thread

A thumbs-up from Eric too

Thank you to all of you who have kept commenting during our Rip van Winkle tribute act these past couple of weeks or so. Much appreciated.


P.S. Time for a bit of celebrity name-dropping.

On the Wolverhampton to Stockport leg of my train journey home yesterday I had Radio 4 presenter Michael Rosen sitting across the aisle from me. It was nice to see that his Trotskyite principles didn't prevent him from opting to travel first-class with me instead of showing solidarity with the downtrodden proletarians in standard class.

It was the first time I've travelled first-class on a train. You get free cups of tea, fruitcake and crisps and a bit more leg room. If you're lucky you might also get a free breakfast bun. (We weren't, as the trolley service took two and a hour hours to get to us and it wasn't on offer by that stage. Mustn't grumble though.)

I wonder which Radio 4 presenter will be joining me next time? My money's on Laurie Taylor. 

More Random Thoughts

It's proving very difficult to focus on BBC bias at the moment. The time for posting is proving harder and harder to find, and without the time to do proper research it feels as if I'm dipping in - and I really don't like just dipping in. I like nailing things down, with hundreds and hundreds of nails and twenty varieties of hammer. I feel that only when you listen to every edition of a BBC programmes (like Mark Mardell's The World This Weekend or Dateline London) do you get to appreciate that it is possible to work out how BBC bias actually functions and, with enough time and energy, to prove it.

I've proved it (beyond doubt) to my own satisfaction and, maybe, to yours but why don't I feel that I've proved it beyond anyone's reasonable satisfaction. Why? Because I haven't systematised it enough probably. Timings for every Brexit-related segment showing the massive disparity I know there's been (on both The World This Weekend and Dateline London) between the time given for pro-Brexit voices and anti-Brexit voices would help. Listing every question put would also help. And, yes, counting interruptions would help too. As would focusing analytically on the words used. Anything else? 

Is nailing things down as tightly as possible actually necessary though? Why shouldn't just 'dipping in', saying it how you see it, be enough? Doing so might make more of an impact than timing and counting?

Answer (after blinding flash!): There's room for both. If only there were time for both. Or time for anything really.

******

Yolande Knell

There have been some horrible events in and around Israel in recent days. I've seen some of the BBC reports. One from Alan Johnston - back (to my surprise) as a BBC Middle East editor a decade after his kidnapping by Palestinian terrorists (prompting claims of Stockholm syndrome after his release) - showed violence from Palestinian rioters in Jerusalem and the Israeli response. It contrasted sharply with Yolande Knell's much-broadcast and very gimmicky report which used only images of the Israeli authorities responding (to something) with skunk water, stun grenades, etc, and Yolande (twice, because of the gimmicky repetition) fleeing from their tear gas. No violence was shown from the Palestinians. It was as if Israeli was just using force for no good reason.

The most gruesome event there in recent days has been the murder of members of the Salomon family eating a Sabbath meal in celebration of their newborn grandson in the Israeli settlement of Halamish. The teenage terrorist knocked on their door, they opened it, he began stabbing them, murdering the grandfather, his daughter and son, and injuring the grandmother. The grandchildren were rescued. Not untypically, the human details of the Israeli family and their story, including their names, haven't been included in the BBC's online report of the attack.

This sort of thing raises serious questions about BBC reporting, doesn't it?

******

Meanwhile, down the road in Tel Aviv, Radiohead - ignoring Ken Loach and all manner of other BDS campaigners - performed their longest concert for years this past week. Thom Yorke was typically gnomic but (just as typically) left no doubts about where he stood. "A lot was said about this, but in the end we played some music", he said. (And Radiohead will be back in Israel next year). The BBC's write-up, Radiohead defy critics to play Israel, began like this:

The rest of the article wasn't so bad though.

As Israelis say to all those terrorists who keep trying to slaughter them, "This is what you'll get/This is what you'll get/This is what you'll get/When you mess with us"...

******

And talking of musicians, Daniel Barenboim's anti-Brexit speech at the Proms has drawn a lot of flak, most incisively from Douglas Murray at The Spectator. We know that the BBC were aware in advance of an earlier pro-EU bit of point-scoring by pianist Igor Levit and allowed it to go ahead, so what did they know about Mr. Barenboim's pro-EU speech in advance? What did they say to him about it? And what's coming next? And who's doing the Last Night this years? Maestro Guy Verhofstadt? 

Mr B's two concerts - Sibelius, Birtwistle and Elgar (both symphonies) - were excellent though. I even ended up re-listening to the Birtwistle three times. 

******

Radio 4's Dead Ringers is provoking some comment this series. There's no doubt, from Twitter, as to which new 'character' has been its main talking point. It's chirpy "Brexit Bulldog" David Davis, whose negotiations skills usually end up in his death. (He even ended up in Hell last week). The cartoonish nature of the Brexit Bulldog's self-delusions and self-induced disasters are hard not to laugh at. It's proving popular because it's essentially an old-fashioned comedy routine (despite being put to an anti-Brexit purpose). Is it effective satire? Well, it may be 'fake news' but it might still make Mr Davis a laughing stock with Radio 4 listeners, however representative (or unrepresentative) they are - though I (with hope in my heart) credit many of them with the ability to differentiate Mr Davis from his Dead Ringer caricature. 

That said, Dead Ringers is also presenting us with an impersonation of John McDonnell - another of its new regular characters - and making him out to be a mentally unhinged Marxist who is trying (and failing) to appear cuddly. His every attempt to talk about his allotment turns into a murderous Maoist diatribe against the bourgeoisie. 

******

I'm still, of course, keeping up with Dateline London. I noted the way centre-right commentator Alex Deane (quite superb as ever) was introduced as a "Conservative commentator" while far-left commentator (and Corbyn fan) Rachel Shabi was introduced as a "Middle East expert". That was very flattering to Rachel. If she's really a Middle East expert then I'm hoping to be called 'an expert in loop quantum gravity' some time soon. "Middle East expert" my posterior!

Introspective post

Does the BBC read blogs like this? And does it react to what we write?

The company I work for is assiduous in monitoring social media for adverse comment, so it's hardly difficult to imagine that the BBC keeps an eye on sites like this from time to time (even if just for amusement). And lower-lying BBC people especially are bound to Google themselves.

In the early days of this blog programmes like Broadcasting House and Sunday actually used to link to some of our pieces on their official BBC websites (which they must have found by searching for reaction) - at least until we became too critical of them. And an edition of BBC Correspondents Look Ahead alluded to one of our posts. Other than that though it's mainly been hints and suspicions - except for some complaints that have paid off (though that's obviously not a question of them reading us voluntarily). 

Commenters at sites like Biased BBC have often wondered whether BBC News website articles (in particular) have been surreptitiously edited in response to criticism there. Given how 'surreptitious' the BBC can be, it's very hard to know whether such 'stealth-edits' really have come about because of alert BBC eyes monitoring critical blogs, or whether such changes have  merely been coincidental and either (a) self-motivated or (b) prompted by direct complaints. (And they certainly wouldn't tell us if they had 'stealth-edited' such a piece). But, nonetheless, it's certainly a real possibility. And, as I say, why wouldn't they?

*******

Such thoughts also struck me after the BBC bumped up the distressing story of Hannah Bladon mid-morning this morning, a couple of hours after we posted (again) about their failings over the coverage of the story - the BBC having 'buried' the overnight news of Hannah being named and the growing tributes to her deep inside the less-read sections of the BBC website. Why would a story that the BBC had 'buried' overnight (even after Hannah's name was made public shortly after midnight) - and been so reluctant to fully report - suddenly get brought to prominence and the young woman at its heart finally given the proper humanity due to her unless someone - some website maybe? - had shamed someone at the BBC into doing the right thing?

Now, even if this isn't the case (and it very well may not be the case and the BBC could just have been catching up with most other media outlets), it still remains the right thing for blogs like this to do to keep on pointing such shameful BBC behaviour out, just in case someone at the BBC does pass by, reads the criticism, takes it on board and then acts on it.

We can only live in hope.

*******

I also had that strange (paranoid?) sense that we're being read on the sly by the BBC whilst listening to this week's More or Less, which also engaged in a spot of introspection. 

The feature focused on the question of whether fact-checking of the kind More or Less engages in is a pointless exercise because people who don't want to believe the programme's 'facts' not just don't believe their 'facts' but might actually go the other way and become even more resistant to the 'truths' More or Less is telling them about. Such 'fact-checking' might, therefore, 'backfire' on the likes of More or Less. 

What made me think they were talking about this blog was that Tim Harford framed the programme's angst in the context of complaints about BBC bias, implicitly including complaints against his programme - and, as regular readers will know, this site has been particularly intent on nailing More or Less over its biased Brexit coverage. So it's evidently 'people like us', if not explicitly us, that Tim had in mind - though he employed the classic 'Complaints From Both Sites' defence during the programme. 

Even then I wasn't really thinking that he actually meant us until a passing comment about people getting vexed about More or Less's coverage of EU cabbage regulations. That was something we did write about, to the detriment of More or Less. I can't find any evidence that anyone else on the internet wrote about that at More or Less's expense. 

The upshot of More or Less's introspection was that they should try and avoid the 'backfire' effect by refraining from treating those they are debunking as idiots ('Coco the Clowns' you might say) and try instead to ingratiate their 'facts' with us by intriguing us by them...oh, and by using a 'debunking handbook' by Stephan Lewandowsky which Tim recommended. (This turns out, on Googling, surprise, surprise, to be a handbook mainly to debunk 'climate sceptics'). 

All I can say to this is that if you are reading this at More or Less, well, hello and thanks for reading us. 

And please don't forget that your cautionary psychological tales apply to you too. You too aren't free from the failings and the cognitive biases you evidently think 'people like us' are prone to. You don't float above the rest of us. You're not disembodied Platonic souls, immune to the kind of things Daniel Kahneman writes about, anymore than we are.

You might think of yourselves as the impartial guardians of truth but don't you need watching too? What if your facts, however true, are skewed by 'groupthink'? What if your chosen 'facts' are highly selective, however unconsciously? What if, say doing the EU referendum, your coverage was overwhelmingly tilted, also however unconsciously, to 'help' one side (the Remain side) - as I think it indeed was? Was that really you just telling the truth, spreading the facts, in a neutral, dispassionate fashion, merely governed by 'a bias towards understanding' (as Nick Robinson put it), or was that you, perhaps despite yourselves, betraying an actual, heavy (pro-Remain) bias? And maybe we 'BBC bias-bashing' types aren't wrong after all?

Blogging matters

A marmot who appears to understand the frustrations of Blogger

Neither myself nor Sue can exactly be said to be gifted when it comes to the technical side of blogging, so this is just to say a big 'sorry' to the commenter whose comment ended up in our automatic but over-vigorous 'Spam' box a couple of days ago. I've only just noticed, fished it out and restored it to its rightful place. 

Gawd alone knows why the comment ended up there, as it was wholly un-Spam-like and bang on the mark (in my opinion).

Anyhow, it's back where it should have been in the first place now.

Sorry again.

Introspective post

Sue and I began this blog in a genuine spirit of open-mindedness towards the BBC. We wanted to start again, fresh, from scratch, and to try and be as fair as possible to the BBC. The BBC would be given the benefit of the doubt whenever there were doubts about bias. (You can read all our early posts if you don't believe us.) 

And that spirit persisted for some time. (You can read all our slightly later posts if you still don't believe us.) 

It also began to fray over time, and this year has frayed to the point of snapping (at least for me). Why? Because the BBC has regressed, and its regression has got much, much worse this year and is now, frankly, becoming insufferable.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt has started to seem naive. They aren't naive; and I should stop being so naive about them. (Sue has never been naive about them).

When I posted recently about reports of parliamentarians speculating that "a group within BBC senior management have decided that they see their job as actively campaigning to thwart Brexit", I sounded a very tentative note, wedded as I've long been to the 'collective ethos/groupthink' view of BBC bias rather than the 'conspiratorial' take on BBC bias. I just couldn't quite believe it was possible.

Some of you, however, said you had no doubt that the BBC was carrying on the 'conspiratorial' way. And I've since been told from a source I trust that the 'speculation' about a group within BBC senior management deciding to actively campaign to scupper Brexit actually comes from impeccable sources (presumably within the BBC)....

....which is severely alarming - especially as it chimes so closely with what I'm hearing and seeing on the BBC (huge amounts of outrageous bias)....

....and if it can be proven that such a group exists it would sound the death knell for the BBC's claims of impartiality, once and for all. It would surely be the end for them.

If true - and I now think it is probably more probable than not that such a group exists - please, please let the hounds of hell descend on the BBC. 

Meanwhile, I'm also starting to get to the stage where I'm even considering breaking a cardinal rule of mine for this blog - that nothing should be commented upon unless it's been heard - on the oft-mooted grounds that you sometimes don't even need to listen to something on the BBC to just know what it will be like. Among the items listed on the website for today's From Our Own Correspondent, for example, are:

• Justin Rowlatt, in the smog of Delhi, hears how Theresa May's hopes of brokering a free-trade deal with India could be much harder than the government would admit to. 
• Gabriel Gatehouse is shown a decades old piece in St Petersburg as the authorities tell people to prepare for the worst.
• Alexander Beetham, on the US-Mexico border, comes face-to-face with some of those Donald Trump says he will keep out of the US. 

I'm guessing the first won't be a happy listen for Brexit supporters, the second won't make pleasant hearing for Putin supporters and the latter will raise the blood pressure of Trump supporters.

Of course I could be wrong about those items! - he says, the old spirit still lingering on, weakly.

And, thus, just before posting this piece, I gave in and thought I'd better listen after all. It's my duty. But it was, of course, just as I knew it would be. No unexpected perspectives came. The biases were exactly as predicted. Will I ever learn? 

Back (for a day)

This is embarrassing. I was a little premature in posting that 'Out Of Office' post, as you will see....

Incidentally (and on a related theme), it appears that Mark Twain's famous quote “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” is a misquote. Apparently, he wrote the slightly less quotable (but still rather good) “The report of my death was an exaggeration”. 

Alas poor Mark. I knew him well Horatio.

The Open Thread will duly rise back to the top of the blog later!

Three points

A question from our Melanie re the ousting of BBC Trust head Rona Fairhead by Theresa May: 

Melanie was reacting to a typically sharp piece by David Keighley at The Conservative Woman headlined Failure to tackle endemic BBC bias could derail Brexit, where David considered the same question (and has some fascinating stuff on BBC trustee Richard Ayre).

A trio of comments below David's post, however, raise familiar, nagging points: 

1. Everyone knows the BBC is biased anyhow, so why bother spelling it out?
2. Spelling it out is all very well but shouldn't you be actively campaigning to getting the guilty parties (at the BBC) punished? 
3. The BBC, despite decades of pro-EU bias, completely failed to prevent a vote for Brexit, so relax! The BBC will fail here too.

To which the following three answers may be given:

1. Not everyone thinks that the BBC is biased. Lots of people still trust the BBC. 
2. We're busy people . We can only do so much. And who says we don't already (as much as we can)? Still, If you really want a no-holds-barred campaign to get biased BBC employees publicly reprimanded or sacked, why not do it yourself? (Go on! Go on! Go on!) Feel free to use our 'spelling out' to help you. (Consider it a team effort!)
3. A fair point and, hopefully, you're right. But complacency on that front would be the very worst thing here. Just because something hasn't worked out before for someone (or some organisation, like the BBC) doesn't necessary mean it won't work out for them next time, if they work hard enough. Plus who's to say that the pro-Brexit vote might not have been even more decisive without the BBC's long shadow of (pro-EU) influence? Discuss (if you want to).

Impartiality

Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson (after R Justin won gold)

This, of course, wouldn't be ITBB without a bit of properly balancing praise for the BBC. 

I've very much enjoyed their Olympic golf coverage - though it's been very hard to find at times. (I've usually found it via the remoter corners of the BBC iPlayer). 

And I very much enjoyed Justin Rose winning Gold for Great Britain (and Northern Ireland) tonight.

My 84-year-old dad didn't think golf should be an Olympic sport. I've just phoned him. He's much more relaxed about golf being an Olympic sport now. And I agree with my dad.

All of which gives me the opportunity to post something that's also very ITBB: a poem that never fails to cheer me up:

Seaside Golf, by John Betjeman

How straight it flew, how long it flew, 

It clear'd the rutty track 

And soaring, disappeared from view 

Beyond the bunker's back - 

A glorious, sailing, bounding drive 

That made me glad I was alive. 

And down the fairway, far along 

It glowed a lonely white; 

I played an iron sure and strong 

And clipp'd it out of sight, 

And spite of grassy banks between 

I knew I'd find it on the green. 

And so I did. It lay content 

Two paces from the pin; 

A steady putt and then it went 

Oh, most surely in. 

The very turf rejoiced to see 

That quite unprecedented three. 

Ah! Seaweed smells from sandy caves 

And thyme and mist in whiffs, 

In-coming tide, Atlantic waves 

Slapping the sunny cliffs, 

Lark song and sea sounds in the air 

And splendour, splendour everywhere.

ITBB and R Vladimir

Even those of you who don't own blogs will probably guess that we bloggers look at our blog stats from time to time. 

And ours at ITBB, already quite impressive, even in comparison to comparable much-more-high-profile blogs (despite our relative lack of comments), have (like those comparable blogs) frequently benefited from eager 'bots'. 

We recently had a very strange 'spike' from Russia. We're putting that down to pectastic President Putin and his myriad multitudes of buff 'bots'.

Unfortunately, that 'spike' has now fallen away and we're really, really missing our beloved, holy  and patriotic Russian Krembots. 

So: 

(a) We firmly believe the BBC, acting on behalf of MI5, was responsible for Russia getting banned from certain Olympic events and from the Paralympics and that the widespread evidence of drug-taking among Russian spokesmen and women is a BBC-led Western conspiracy against Russia.

(b) Putin is super-hunky. 

So, please, please come back, Vladbots. Come back! (We promise never again to insult[the disgraceful propaganda outfit] the utterly splendorous RT).

All of which calls for a truly magnificent Russian tune:

You think?

Sue and I have always loved our 'introspective posts' and we haven't done many recently, so...

******

Will that last post about Mishal Husain's EU/immigration documentary provide yet more 'proof' of 'ITBB bias'?

I ask that because an anonymous commenter has just recently commented "Is this blog biased? Not a tricky one either" on a defunct thread about Mark Mardell's EU referendum coverage. 

(I'd written, "Is former BBC Europe Editor Mark Mardell biased? Not a particularly tricky one that!"?)

I'm guessing he (or she - or, in these times of transgender awareness, they) thinks this blog is a pro-Brexit blog and, thus, completely biased in its criticism of the BBC's EU referendum coverage. And, being so, worth discounting.

Is there any truth in that? Was I biased against Mishal Husain there? I, as you might expect, think I was absolutely spot on and showed why Mishal was biased, but you might disagree. You might have found me 'biased' instead.

Well, I can well understand why he (or she, or they) might assume that we're pro-Brexit. (I'd assume that too if I read this blog). But, whether we are or not, would that necessarily make us biased in our coverage of the BBC's coverage of the EU referendum? 

We started out pledging to be scrupulously fair to the BBC. Have we slipped over time then?  

******

I read that comment immediately after I'd posted my latest stats post. In that post I provided verifiable evidence that strongly-pro-Remain trends have emerged on Newsnight and on BBC One's News at Six over many weeks and months. I've posted similar stats showing a similar bias on other BBC platforms too.

But I've also (as on that very post tonight) tried to be fair and provided the counter-evidence - in this case that Question Time has been scrupulous in balancing its panels between Remain and Leave. 

And I didn't hesitate to post, in a previous post that otherwise highlighted plenty of strong pro-Remain bias, that Newsnight's 'My Decision' video series had strikingly gone the other way, bias-wise. It had heavily favoured Leave.

Have we done enough of that? I know some people (beyond that commenter) think we haven't. And I know other people think we've actually been far too kind to the BBC. 

Ooooh! Complaints from both sides! Ergo, we must be as impartial as the BBC. QED. (Not!)

I've always tried to lay out the evidence for any claim of bias I've made. (Unsupported Assertions R Not Us.) And I've always invited people to point out any errors that I may have made - and will continue to do so for as long as I keep on blogging, as I could very well be wrong. 

And I'll issue that invitation again here: If you think that post about Mishal Husain's immigration documentary isn't quite right please tell me why (as I see you already have! - and thank you for doing so). And if you think that stats post tonight is wrong please tell me why. I really won't mind (much).

******

So have I (not Sue, of course) been guilty of failing to give the BBC its due, as some very dear to me have told me in no uncertain terms recently? 

They say they've heard lots of impartial stuff from the BBC. They think the BBC has, by and large, been just fine over the EU referendum (just as the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens, Peter Oborne, Sir Bill Cash & Co. think the BBC has been just fine too - to their great surprise).

They've made me seriously doubt myself.

All I can say, as I've said before, is that I've seen, read and heard what I've seen, read and heard. And I've seen, read and heard a lot. And, yes, I've heard a lot that's been broadly balanced and yes - if truth be told - I should have highlighted those more often. But I've also heard lots and lots and lots that's appeared pro-Remain-biased and much, much less that's appeared pro-Leave biased. And I've provided evidence to back everything I've written to that effect.

And the stats I've monitored (on Newsnight and BBC One's News at Six) were - as credible monitoring demands - reasonable choices, chosen in advance. The bias they've shown is the bias they've shown. That bias isn't any of my doing. It's been the BBC's doing. And I've always given every possible piece of evidence (including all available links) to back it up and allow readers to check what I've written and judge for themselves.

******

Swallowing my happy pill and putting my blinkers on, I know that not one of you will think, even for a second, that this delightful post has been in any way overly defensive.

None of you will presently be thinking about the term 'flapping around like a headless chicken'.

After all, I'm an eternally happy, 'Onwards and Jedwards' kind of blogger. My blogging motto is famously 'Damn the speedos, full torpedoes ahead!'. (Not really, of course, for any newbies).

Now where are all my Leonard Cohen albums when I need them?

That was then. This is now

We received an interesting comment the other day on a very old thread concerning how to monitor BBC party political bias. 

Part of the comment struck me as worth expanding on because it contained an assertion which I'm seeing more and more often (from the Left) on Twitter:

The overwhelming objective evidence found from analysing political coverage showed that even during a Labour government the amount of Conservative voices aired remained consistently higher than those on the left and under a Conservative government this increased significantly in disproportionate bias. 

I'm guessing that "the overwhelming objective evidence" in question is that (in)famous Cardiff University study (by various far-leftists and ex-BBC high-ups) which used a ridiculously small sample - just five day's worth of various flagship BBC programmes in 2007 and 2012 respectively (including, bizarrely, only half (7.00-8.30) of the Today programme) -  and 'found' that not only was the BBC pro-Tory-biased and anti-EU-biased but also 'found' that Jon Snow's Channel 4 News was pretty right-wing-biased too!!! (Well, Owen Jones, the Corbynista multitude and, intriguingly, various BBC types on Twitter liked it!!)

As I may just have mentioned before, my own intensive period of research from June 2009-April 2010 covered some of the topics in the Cardiff report and examined every interview with a party politician (some 2,200 of them) on all of the main BBC current affairs programmes over this period (including Today, Newsnight, The World at One, PM, Today, The Daily Politics, The Andrew Marr Show, Broadcasting House, The World This Weekend, Westminster Hour, among others!) - all the results of which can be seen at my old blog. There was nothing 'ridiculously small' about that sample!

Between July 2009 and January 2010 (inclusive), I laboriously counted up all the lengths of all the interviews involving those party politicians and, by further laborious counting, derived a monthly 'airtime' total for each political party.

It's the most precise thing I've ever done in the blogosphere, and what it shows is that there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to the claim that "even during a Labour government the amount of Conservative voices aired remained consistently higher than those on the left". 

In fact, the exact opposite is the the case. Except for the month when the BBC covered the Conservative Party conference, the then-Labour government got more airtime than the Tories every month - usually massively more. 

Strikingly, in 5 out of the 7 months survey the Labour government got more airtime than all the opposition parties combined. 

And, looking back at these figures again, isn't it striking just how little interview time UKIP got back then? 

July 2009

Labour - 60.92%

Conservatives - 24.08%

Lib Dems - 10.82%

SNP - 2.08%

Greens - 0.82%

BNP - 0.76%

UKIP - 0.32%

Plaid Cymru - 0.22%

August 2009

Labour - 6 hours 5 minutes 33 seconds, 52.3%

Conservatives - 2 hours 37 minutes 57 seconds, 22.6%

Liberal Democrats - 1 hour 32 minutes 15 seconds, 13.2%

SNP - 1 hour 7 minutes 6 seconds, 9.6%

Greens - 7 minutes 11 seconds, 1%

Independents - 3 minutes 47 seconds, 0.5%

UKIP - 3 minutes 33 seconds, 0.5%

Plaid Cymru - 2 minutes 42 seconds, 0.3%

September 2009

Labour - 12 hours 25 minutes 26 seconds, 61.51%

Liberal Democrats - 4 hours 5 minutes 10 seconds, 19.98%

Conservatives - 2 hours 52 minutes 1 second, 14.03%

SNP - 19 minutes 35 seconds, 1.58%

UKIP - 10 minutes 52 seconds, 0.86%

Plaid Cymru - 7 minutes 34 seconds, 0.62%

Independent - 5 minutes 16 seconds, 0.43%

Greens - 2 minutes 51 seconds, 0.23%

English Democrats - 2 minutes 47 seconds, 0.23%

UUP - 2 minutes 27 seconds, 0.21%

DUP - 2 minutes 15 seconds, 0.19%

SDLP - 1 minute 56 seconds, 0.13%

October 2009

Conservatives - 10 hours 51 minutes 29 seconds, 43.20%

Labour - 10 hours 42 minutes 41 seconds, 42.61%

Liberal Democrats - 1 hour 45 minutes 39 seconds, 6.99%

SNP - 1 hour 0 minutes 22 seconds, 3.99%

UKIP - 11 minutes 17 seconds, 0.74%

DUP - 9 minutes 2 seconds, 0.60%

BNP - 8 minutes 8 seconds, 0.54%

Sinn Fein - 6 minutes 16 seconds, 0.41%

Greens - 5 minutes 20 seconds, 0.34%

Alliance - 3 minutes 26 seconds, 0.22%

Plaid Cymru - 3 minutes 16 seconds, 0.21%

UUP - 2 minutes 27 seconds, 0.15%

November 2009

Labour - 7 hours 44 minutes 21 seconds (41.1%)

Conservatives - 6 hours 25 minutes 11 seconds (34.1%)

Liberal Democrats - 2 hours 16 minutes 19 seconds (12.0%)

SNP- 1 hour 15 minutes 4 seconds (6.7%)

UKIP - 29 minutes 10 seconds (2.6%)

Greens - 16 minutes 34 seconds (1.5%)

Sinn Fein - 9 minutes 35 seconds (0.9%)

Independents - 8 minutes 1 second (0.7%)

Plaid Cymru - 4 minutes 59 seconds (0.4%)

December 2009

Labour - 56.20% (7h 49m 56s)

Conservatives - 29.01% (4h 2m 40s)

Lib Dems - 11.65% (1h 37m 30s)

SNP - 1.21% (10m 13s)

UKIP - 0.99% (8m 25s)

Independents - 0.65% (5m 40s)

Plaid Cymru - 0.29% (2m 46s)

January 2010

Labour - 54.81% (12h 13m 18s)

Conservatives - 22.81% (5h 5m 13s)

Lib Dems - 12.65% (2h 49m 19s)

SNP - 2.25% (30m 10s)

Sinn Fein - 1.68% (22m 49s)

UKIP - 1.44% (19m 28s)

DUP - 1.22% (16m 34s)

Independents - 0.90% (12m 1s)

Greens - 0.60% (8m 4s)

SDLP - 0.48% (6m 46s)

Alliance - 0.46% (6m 18s)

TUV - 0.46% (6m 18s)

Respect - 0.24% (3m 16s)

Of course, that was then and this is now. UKIP gets a lot more airtime these days. The Conservatives are now the government and the BBC, I don't doubt; will have been inviting them on more than their political opponents (even before the present EU referendum debate). 

But how much so?

I half-regret not monitoring these airtime figures in the months after the 2015 election to see just how much more coverage the Tories got than, say, Labour - if they got more coverage. 

I only 'half-regret' it because I've got absolutely no intention of ever putting myself through such a wearying (if strangely enjoyable) monitoring exercise again - even if such a monitoring exercise has now proved its value by totally disproving a much-tweeted assertion about BBC pro-Tory bias from the Left. 

Maybe, if there's still a Conservative government in 2019, I might return to the fray and seriously monitor this issue again for, say, a couple of months (and not during the party conference season) in order to test how things stand under a Conservative government as opposed to a Labour government. 

It really would be fascinating, I think, to see if the Tories are dominating the BBC's airwaves to the extraordinary extent that Labour did when they were in power (in a non-referendum period, of course). 

In the interests of democracy, that is surely a question worth investigating. I probably ought to step up to the mark and do it (in 2019 - if, post-referendum, the government hasn't completely fallen apart to such an extent that the fixed-term parliament act is overridden, an election has been held and Jeremy Corbyn (or John McDonnell) is PM).  

What questions would it answer? Well, questions like:

• Did Labour rule the BBC waves back then simply because they were the governing party? (The 'pro-establishment' v 'pro-Left-biased' question). 
• Would a similar survey show as much of a 'bias', airtime-wise, towards the Tories in the latter stage of their term in office? - and if so, what would that prove? (and if not, what would that prove?)
• Is the BBC biased?