Impartiality flies out of the window

There's another spot-on post today from David Keighley over at Conservative Woman. 

Here's how David ends his post:

Shame on the BBC. Their duty, as defined by the public purposes, is to offer balanced reporting that reflects all sides of this massive story [the migrant crisis]. Instead, we are getting the Gospel according to the Liberal Left. On Friday night, elements of coverage were actually accompanied by epic movie music. This was not news reporting. You could call it instead what it actually was: propaganda.

I don't doubt for one second that epic movie music was used for some of the coverage, although I didn't hear it myself (as I was away on Friday night and didn't have much time for BBC-related matters). As I returned home on Saturday morning there was a moving piece about Palmyra on Today that made use of one of the most haunting pieces of modern classical music (Howard Skempton's beautiful Lento) to flood listeners' hearts with sadness. (An emotional 'flooding' I fully related to).

It really does seem to be propaganda that the BBC's pumping out though at the moment, doesn't it? 

When Sue and myself started this blog I really wanted to avoid that kind of accusation and to be as fair as possible to the BBC. Well, being as fair to the BBC as possible, I think it is propaganda they are pumping out now. And they ought to stop it.

As well as all the other evidence we've posted here in recent days to back that up I'd just like to add another line of thought - one that's also struck me over the past couple of days, though one I've hesitated about posting about (for some reason)....

There seems to be almost a template for certain BBC reports at the moment. Whether it comes from Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany or Sweden (or wherever) and whichever BBC reporter is doing the reporting, the template usually seems to be: 

Report stories of individual suffering (preferably women's stories, or stories involving children). Tell stories of 'good' people helping/welcoming migrants. Contrast them with 'the other side', using far less positive language about those people. And, above all, keep linking those opposed to the present 'influx' to the far-right. And use the term 'far-right' or 'hard-right' at every opportunity.

There are so many examples of this I've rather lost track of them, but there was Nick Thorpe in Hungary (besides all the other faults in his reporting we've outlined here over the past couple of weeks) welding himself to pro-migrant activists there (all female) and constantly mentioning the far-right in opposition to them. And Bethany Bell in Austria repeatedly talking about a far-right party there leading the opinion polls (as indeed the Austrian Freedom Party does, by quite a significant margin in poll after poll), and only about that party, in contrast to all those nice Austrians rushing across the border to help the migrants in Hungary. And Jenny Hills's cheering crowds v neo-Nazis in Germany. And Graham Satchell and Tom Bateman's ever-present hard-right/far-right Sweden Democrats, getting 20% in a recent poll according to Tom Bateman, always contrasted to all the nice pro-migrant people in Sweden (who stage rallies in favour of migrants). And Rob Cameron's extraordinary From Our Own Correspondent piece from the Czech Republic where nice pro-migrant people were juxtaposed with Hitler-supporting, obnoxious anti-migrant people. 

There may be grains of truth in all of those, but so lop-sided, so intense, so didactic is this kind of BBC reporting that impartiality seems to flying out of the window and doesn't look likely to return any time soon.

A Saturday night smorgasbord (Part 2)

And on we go...

*****

I have to say that James O'Brien isn't growing on me as a Newsnight presenter. 

I don't appear to be alone. In recent days I've seen his interview style described (on Twitter) as varying between "patronizing questions and leading questions" and his "modus operandi" in general being characterised as "abuse, smearing and pretending he is some kind of genius". Others have been less kind. 

An example of JO'B's use of leading questions could be seen with his interview on Thursday's Newsnight with John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International on the migrant crisis - or "refugee" crisis as Mr Dalhuisen terms it. ("So the only way that this could be assuaged is for them to be, for want of a better word, welcomed?"). 

Contrast that with his later interview with UKIP's Douglas Carswell, where he pounded away, repeatedly interrupting, trying to make the point that people in low-immigrant-dense constituencies tend to be (unreasonably) anti-mass immigration. Or with his relentless interrupting of Corbynite Labour MP Cat Smith on Friday's edition.

[Vis-à-vis our Cat, our next-door-neighbour MP for Lancaster...she sounded surprisingly cocky for someone who squeaked in as a Labour MP, just defeating the sitting Tory MP (despite polls predicting she'd win by an absolute landslide)...and she only managed that thanks to the total collapse of the Lib Dems, the sharp rise of UKIP and most Lancaster voters not having the slightest clue what she actually stands for.]

Now, maybe Cat and Douglas deserved to be relentlessly interrupted by James O'Brien (they weren't admitting what he wanted them to admit), but I always think it's very bad form for a BBC interviewer to do what JO'B did to Mr Carswell on Thursday - namely contradicting him and not allowing him to respond, moving onto the other guest and changing the subject:

Douglas Carswell: We often argue in UKIP that we need an Australian type system of immigration. That is to allow us to choose people with the skills we need to come and work here and contribute. If you look at the detail of some of these figures it shows that for every one non-EU job created over the past year there have been 35 EU jobs created. That clearly suggests - unless anyone's going to suggest that Europeans are 35 times more able - it clearly suggests that actually the system we have at the moment is preventing us from recruiting the brightest and the best from around the world.  

James O'Brien: And, of course, if you look at the detail of the Australian points system you'll see that in per capita terms the rate of immigration is about twice as high as it is into Britain at the moment.... 

Douglas Carswell: It, it... 

James O'Brien [pointing at Fraser Nelson]: I just want to put to Fraser Nelson...

That's a BBC interviewer forcing his views on his audience, isn't it?

*****

Anyhow, at least we can take some satisfaction in seeing 'hard man' James O'Brien's obvious discomfort later in that same edition on having to eat a dead squirrel live on TV.

That was when Newsnight well and truly jumped the squirrel. 

And it did so courtesy of Newsnight editor Ian Katz's old chum at the Guardian, George Monbiot. 

It's not the first time Ian has invited George onto the show to air his latest moonbattery. His plans to expunge the Lake District of sheep and 're-wild' the fells got him an invite soon after Mr Katz took over. And here he was again, following on from his latest piece in the Graun extolling the thrill of eating a recently-deceased grey squirrel and his parallel dislike of conventional animal farming. 

So there was the Moonbat himself, wielding an axe and butchering a squirrel live on BBC Two, with James O'Brien looking on and then trying to eat 'one we prepared earlier'. 

James introduced George Monbiot, at the start of the show, as "the nation's favourite environmentalist".

All very odd.

*****

As this is a smorgasbord, I really ought to include something about Sweden. 

Sweden has been much in the news recently, with BBC reporter/commentator after BBC reporter/commentator noting that Sweden has taken in far more migrants per head of population than we have (a point always made at our expense).

I may be missing something but what none of those BBC reporters/commentators ever points out is that Sweden has a population of 9.5 million and an area of 449,964 km². We have a population of 64.1 million and an area of just 243,610 km². 

*****

Anyhow, matters Swedish came to the attention of other commenters about BBC bias through a recent BBC TV report from BBC Breakfast's Graham Satchell. 

It was another of those reports, featuring attractive migrants cast amid glowing Swedish scenery and various pro-immigration voices, including a Swedish mayor. It also (very briefly) featured an opposing voice, introduced as being "hard-right". 

Well, the Sweden Democrats (the party of the "hard-right" lady featured) are pretty hard-right (though much less than they used to be). However, it struck me that Graham didn't give us any political label for the featured mayor. I had to Google her to find which party she represents (the centre-left Social Democrats).

'Bias by labelling' is a common bugbear of those concerned about media bias. This was surely a case of it, wasn't it?

You may also remember Graham Satchell from his reporting of the Rotherham abuse scandal. I certainly remember one report (which I've just found again) where the Muslim angle was only mentioned in connection with fears of a backlash - an absolute BBC classic of its kind. 

*****

So far, so typical of the BBC in this smorgasbord. However, sometimes something unexpected happens....

....such as a BBC reporter expressing the view that it's a very good thing that the UK isn't part of the EU's Schengen Agreement on the free movement of people. 

That shocker came on Monday's The World at One and emerged from the mouth of the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner (about 27:35 in): 

I think that one of the problems here is that in the Schengen Area - which, thank God, Britain is not a member of - but in Schengen you can pass across border with no checks in theory...

Thank God indeed, Frank!

And if you think that's weird, please try getting your head around Jon Donnison posting a piece from a libertarian perspective, denouncing the nanny state in Australia. Yes he grounds his piece in the opinions of the only Ozzie libertarian MP, but (as is his way) JD doesn't disguise where his own sympathies lie - and they aren't where I expected them to lie:

And for me personally, I have to say Australia is without doubt one of the most rule obsessed and bureaucratic places I have ever lived.

We all know he's not a great fan of Australia but, still, criticising the country from a 'Classical liberal' position is just about the last thing I'd ever have expected from JonDon (though obviously not the last thing I'd ever have expected - which is him reporting it from a pro-Israeli position!)