Britain's Promise to the Holy Land

Given the climate of low expectations in which Israel-related programmes poise precariously in BBC world, Stephen Pollard’s positive review of Jane Corbin’s Balfour programme was par for the course. 

If that’s too convoluted, to put it another way, anything less than the default Israel-bashing to which we’ve become accustomed is a small mercy for which we should be truly grateful.

Still a bit obscure? 

(Last attempt) It makes a change to see a smidgeon of balance on an Israel-related programme on the BBC and, arguably, that absolves Stephen Pollard from some of the harsh criticism he’s getting for his Tweet. 

Superbly balanced and fair documentary by Jane Corbin on #Balfour100. Really recommended https://t.co/7u1FVsx61R

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) October 31, 2017

However, as some of his critics have pointed out, the programme was littered with omissions. But of course you can’t fit everything into a one-hour documentary that attempts to cover one hundred years of conflict about such a complex issue. 

What might illustrate the situation equally sharply is that the leftie press has seized upon one segment that implies that the intractable religious zealotry comes solely from the Israeli side:

“In the garden of his home in the Orthodox Jewish Israeli West Bank settlement of Tappuah, Lenny Goldberg rubbished the idea that it was us Brits who made modern Israel possible. “The only reason we have a country here,” he told Jane Corbin, “is not because of the Balfour Declaration. It’s because Jews sacrificed themselves with blood and fire and bullets.” 

Goldberg, a tough New York Jew turned tough West Bank settler, is among half a million Israelis living in 140 towns and villages that have sprung up on the ostensibly Arab West Bank in the past 30 years. When Corbin told him that these settlements were illegal according to international law, Goldberg replied that he didn’t care about mere secular laws. He was interested in the word of God as expressed in the Bible and that, according to that higher authority, there is no Palestine and so there can be no question of Arabs having a claim to live there. “This is where Abraham walked. Why should we give it up for a bunch of murderers?” he asked rhetorically.”

However, neither the Guardian nor the Indy reviews mention the part when Corbin speaks to Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, in which  the real and insoluble sticking point to a peaceful outcome is revealed in all its malevolence. 

"Quran tells us to drive Jews out of Palestine's entirety"

Since the programme was created to commemorate the Balfour declaration its focus was, quite rightly, on Britain’s part in the creation of the Jewish State, and Corbin didn’t shirk from recounting the cruelty of the British in imposing strict limits on Jewish immigration in what is recognised as the Jews’ darkest hour of need. This was a welcome contrast to the BBC's customary portrayal of the British military in Palestine as victims of Jewish terrorism, wherein the bombing of the King David Hotel is presented as an unprovoked atrocity against innocent civilianrs rather than a targeted attack on a British military headquarters. 

You can read about Orde Wingate here.  The Palestine Arab revolt occurred in the late 1930s, well before Israel's declaration of Independence, and  the Arabs’ hostility to the Jews is longstanding, religiously based, and demonstrably not a result of “What Israel is Doing” a commonly held belief encouraged by ill-informed broadcasting.  

You don't say!

Courtesy of the Independent, here are two recent screengrabs from the BBC News Channel:

The BBC and half the story

Is the BBC News website the worst UK media outlet when it comes to reporting Israel? Does it even out-Guardian the Guardian sometimes? 

Well, here (in its entirety) is an article published on the BBC News website yesterday: 

Israel bans Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert from Gaza

A Norwegian doctor has been permanently banned from entering the Gaza Strip by the Israeli government.

Dr Mads Gilbert says he was stopped trying to cross into Gaza in October. He called the move "totally unacceptable".

Israel cited security reasons for imposing the ban.

Dr Gilbert has treated patients in Gaza for more than a decade. He worked at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during the 50-day summer conflict.

He told the BBC he had never broken any Israeli rules during his spells working in Gaza.

But he suggested that his open reporting of the medical situation in the territory had angered the Israeli authorities.

"The fundamental reason for the ill health of the population in Gaza is of course the siege and the bombing," he said.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, described Dr Gilbert as a "Jekyll and Hyde" figure, hiding behind a cloak of being a humanitarian doctor.

He said an investigation was under way into Dr Gilbert and that the decision would be reviewed.

The Norwegian foreign ministry has said it will challenge the ban.

In July, Dr Gilbert was one of the co-signatories in a strongly-worded letter denouncing Israeli action in Gaza, published in the medical journal, the Lancet.

He also described scenes in the Shifa Hospital this summer as the worst he had ever seen.

With BBC online articles about Israel it's always advisable to Google around in order to see what they've missed out. So what have they missed out here (if anything)?

Well, the BBC report simply describes Dr Gilbert as a "doctor" and emphasises his medical role in Gaza. That makes him sound like a disinterested medic simply saying what he sees, however inconvenient it may be for Israel. It also makes his banning by Israel appear unjustified. 

The Independent, however, reveals another side to Mads Gilbert. Whilst acknowledging that he's a trauma surgeon the paper also describes him as a "far-left political activist", and adds:

Dr Gilbert is on the left-wing fringe in Norway. In 2001, he told Dagbladet that the 9/11 attacks in the US were a result of decades of Western foreign policy and that he supported terrorist attacks against the US in that “context”.

Why did the BBC not tell us that? It's highly relevant, isn't it? It puts into context the otherwise inexplicable comment in the BBC article from the Israeli spokesman describing him as a "Jekyll and Hyde" figure, "hiding behind a cloak of being a humanitarian doctor". 

The BBC then says,  

Dr Gilbert was one of the co-signatories in a strongly-worded letter denouncing Israeli action in Gaza, published in the medical journal, the Lancet.

The Independent, however, adds 

He also joined with two other doctors, who it later turned out had endorsed an anti-Semitic video, in writing an “Open Letter for the people of Gaza” that was published in The Lancet in August. 

That endorsement of an anti-Semitic video by those two other doctors caused something of a storm. Why didn't the BBC mention that either? Or that the editor of the Lancet later expressed his regrets about publishing the letter, saying it "did not convey the level of complexity that is the reality in Israel"?

When you learn all this - that an anti-Israel activist from the Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party who justified the 9/11 attacks and openly said that he supported terrorism in the light of U.S. foreign policy has been banned by Israel from visiting Gaza - then Israel's decision to ban him becomes easier to understand.

That ease of understanding was certainly not helped by the BBC News website.

UPDATE 17/11: And to demonstrate that the Guardian can in turn out-BBC the BBC, here's CiF Watch blasting that very paper from doing pretty much what the BBC was doing here: Guardian omits key context in quote by Israel spokesman about Mads Gilbert.  

Missing!

I’ve been picturing homes all over Britain, switching on the telly or the radio and hearing about the missing girl from Bristol who has probably run away to be a ‘Jihadi bride.’

Straight on the back of a real missing British girl, whose parents  really did make a moving,  dignified, but alas futile appeal for her return, the BBC’s treatment of the Somali family’s self-proclaimed “heart-breaking’ appeal for their runaway daughter gave implied moral equivalence to the two, which many people deem highly offensive.

Judging by some of the comments on blogs and the online press, like, for example, the Independent, people all over the country are baffled at the way this story is being framed by the BBC. 

I’m picturing thousands of living rooms from Land’s End to John O’Groats with people inside going “WTF?” in unison.

The only ones who think it’s perfectly credible that a “Bristol” family could wake up one day to find your headscarf-clad 15 year-old has managed to pick up her passport,  book a plane, get, somehow, to Istanbul, no doubt for the sole purpose of deliberately offering herself to some brainwashed savage, all without your knowledge, or your slightest prescience, suspicion or malice aforethought, must be the BBC.  

The BBC must be the only ones who assume that the public is as concerned for Yusra’s self-inflicted predicament as they were for Alice Gross, whose murder appears to have been at the hands of a deranged previously convicted offender who shouldn’t have been allowed here in the first place.

The mind boggles.

The Fisk jumps another shark

Do you know the original of the phrase 'jumping the shark' (when something reaches such a low point that it becomes utterly absurd and passed-its-sell-by-date)? It came from an episode of 'Whacky Days' when The Fisk got off his motorbike, donned jet skies, raised his thumbs, said 'Heyyy!' and, yes, jumped a shark:

The Fisk (real name Robert Fiskerelli) has been jumping sharks every since and, as CiF Watch points out, jumped a particularly huge great white over at The Independent yesterday in an article called:

It's not just radicalised Islamists – what about foreign fighters who flock to the IDF?

Is the Government interested in UK citizens who have been fighting in Israeli uniform in Gaza in the past couple of weeks?

Yeah, right, Fiskie. We Brits need to have sleepless nights about returning Jewish fighters serving with the IDF? They are going to blew us up, are they? I don't think so - and neither does anyone else who isn't an 'multi-award-winning' anti-Israeli fruitcake who jump sharks on a twice-weekly basis.

Helping Hamas?

The Israel-bashing Independent columnist Mira Bar-Hillel has been gloating this weekend:

...a YouGov poll this week found that only 15 per cent of Britons support Israel’s actions in Gaza. The credit for that goes to brilliant, brave reporters who have brought graphic images of the Gaza atrocities to our newspapers and television screens.

Mira forgets to mention that those those YouGov results show even less support for Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel (with 7% taking the David Ward line) and that more British people blame Hamas than Israel for the civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip.

Mira B-H, presumably, has the likes of Jeremy Bowen, Paul Adams, Yolande Knell, (etc) in mind when praising those "brilliant, brave reporters" for helping to turn the British public against Israel here.

If so, I think she's spot on. Their reporting, including their use of distressing images, must surely have had a - and, probably, the - major impact on the British public's apparent lack of support for Israel's actions, given that the British public still tends to see the news through their eyes.

On their use of graphic images and distressing stories, are they actually doing more harm than good though?

Spiked's Brendan O'Neill certainly thinks so:

The message that all this morally pornographic promotion of images and reports of Palestinian death sends to Hamas is this: victimhood works. The feverish Western marshalling of emotive imagery of Palestinian corpses to the political end of seeking sanctions against Israel or greater international protection for the Palestinian territories surely has the effect of encouraging Hamas to try to provide more of the same, more ‘telegenically dead’ Palestinians. There is a logic to Hamas’s alleged encouragement of great risk among the Gazan civilian population and certainly to its ‘parading’ of dead bodies before the press: it’s a response to the grotesque Western fashion for looking at, sharing and using as political tools images of dead Palestinians. Hamas is best seen as a kind of drug pusher to those in the West who have developed a very ugly habit of exploiting images of brutalised Palestinians both for their own needs (to advertise their emotional awareness) and for political purposes (to exert pressure on our leaders to condemn Israel).

And so does BBC Watch's Hadar Sela.

She appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast Show this morning (from about 1hr 51m in):  

I think one of the most significant factors has actually been what we aren't seeing. There's been dozens of Western reporters in the Gaza Strip for the last two weeks and more now, and yet we haven't seen one picture...I haven't seen one picture...of armed terrorists. I haven't seen one picture of terrorists shooting up RPGs, anti-tank missiles or mortars. 2,300 missiles fired. We haven't seen one picture of that in action in the Western media. Around 10-15% of those missiles fall short and actually land in the Gaza Strip and often, unfortunately, injure civilians there. We've seen no pictures of that. We've seen no pictures of injuries caused by shortfall missiles. There's been at least four summary executions taken place by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the last week or two. We've seen no pictures of that. We've seen no pictures of Hamas people at all, even at the Shifa Hospital where they hide out, and yet we've seen journalists attending news conferences there, but nobody's actually talking about why these people are hiding and what's going on...

At which point the presenter, Rachel Burden, interrupted, putting the BBC/Mira Bar-Hillel point :

I suppose the story really is though the story of the 700+ people in Gaza, most of them civilians, many of them children, who've lost their lives and some of those pictures of children some people will find uncomfortable, others will find distasteful, others will say "That's very powerful and those are pictures that have to be brought to the world".

Hadar replied,

They are certainly very powerful pictures, and they're obviously very tragic and very sad pictures. I think there's a question here as well, you know...we've seen a lot of..as you say..a lot of pictures of dead people, dead children, injured people. We've seen at least one BBC crew actually filming in a morgue! Now, one of the things that struck me is, would the BBC go and film in a morgue in the UK? I'm not sure they would. Would they show pictures of blood on the floor in a morgue in the UK? I'm not sure they would, and so you have to ask yourself, why the different standard and what does that actually say about the journalism?

Now, as you quite rightly said in the beginning, at lot of these pictures are actually intended to influence world opinion, and this is a very big factor in this conflict because Hamas and terrorist organisations know they can't win this war militarily...they just can't...so they seek to win it on the public opinion field - and on what we call the 'lawfare' field - and so pictures like this obviously, beyond the fact that they are obviously a terrible documentation of what is happening, but they also serve a purpose and...

And which point Rachel Burden interrupted again and brought Hadar's short but important appearance to an abrupt halt in order to talk to a Palestinian journalist.

This is a genuine moral dilemma, isn't it, though? Do you not show such powerful images in your reports and, therefore, risk being accused of censorship (and bias), or do you show them and help a terrorist organisation like Hamas win the battle for public opinion by putting their own people in harm's way? 

Independent-minded

Sometimes a newspaper's commentariat really surprises you. 

There's an article in the Independent about being the BBC being "deluged with complaints that its coverage of the elections was biased in favour of Ukip."

The 1,190 complaints logged by the BBC are thought to be the most the broadcaster has ever received about its coverage of elections.

A further 149 complainants accused the BBC of being unfairly anti-Ukip, while 73 said the coverage was biased against Labour.

There are ten comments beneath this article at the moment. Given that it's the Independent, a left-liberal newspaper, what kind of things would you expect them to say? 

Well, here's what they did say!:

DavidAScottUK 17 hours ago

My hunch is these complaints have been organised by the Labour Party.

tauntonmishap 

Mine too.

Ileftindisgustattheleftyswine 

Mine three.

Kevin T 16 hours ago

I think every single BBC interview, and indeed every TV interview with a UKIP politician could be summed up as "Are you racists?" If that is preferential bias in the eyes of Labour supporters, I suggest BBC interviewers ask that of every Labour politician from now on.

Maybe if Labour had bothered coming up with some policies related in any way to the European elections, they might have got more coverage themselves. It struck me that they were trying desperately not to let their white working class voters know they worship the EU. 

Ileftindisgustattheleftyswine 14 hours ago

There was merely a reduction in the bile and vitriol the BBC has poured on the head of UKIP over the years - they sense it is a coming power, and they fear it. They are right to do so.

It will not tolerate a guardianesque BBC any longer when it gains influence.

The BBC is a peddler of orthodox left wing bias. That needs to stop. Or it will stop one day, and that would be a great shame for those of us who loathe its political bias, but admire its cultural depth and breadth.

Alan_Honiton 17 hours ago

Complaints for bias in favour of UKIP, complaints for bias against UKIP, complaints for bias against Labour?. No complaints of bias, for or against the Tories (especially the Tories) or Lib-Dems (the ones in Government)? Amazing! That must be a first for the BBC. Methinks these people do protest too much!

Salthepal 4 hours ago

I had expected 'BBC swamped with complaints about UKIP bias' to be all about bias against UKIP. In fact, it was the reverse. However, the figures are roughly two complaints about bias for UKIP for every one complaint about bias against UKIP. Since UKIP got about a quarter of the votes cast, the way the complaints panned out seems about what one might expect. The bias of the audiences to Question Time and Any Questions is another matter altogether. Woe betide any panelist who does not express liberal-minded views.

Alan Davie 5 hours ago

Question Time should be renamed as Ambush Time. Select audiences.

Tom Snood 4 hours ago

and the BBC picks the questions, controls the national agenda. It is the biggest hindrance possible to democracy in this country 

Tom Snood 4 hours ago

Did all these honest decent campaigners against media bias complain when the BBC was deliberately excluding ukip? They're losing and they're whinging!

Goings-on in the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets

I see that the perfectly proper goings-on in the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets, where Sheikh Luftur Rahman (the district's founding father) won re-election with 99.2% of the vote, have finally caught the attention of the state broadcaster of the former colonial power (Great Britain).

BBC Radio 4's Today reported the story this morning. 

It featured two British Labour activists and one British Conservative activist alleging voter intimidation outside polling stations and illegalities within polling stations (h/t Zoe Conway of the BBC). 

PM continued the story this evening and, in the ample form of Eddie Mair, interviewed the returning officer of the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets [soon to be renamed "the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Halal-lets"], one 'Comical John' Williams. 

'Comical John' said that everything was for the best in this best of all possible boroughs. There was nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

Eddie went for him like a West Highland Terrier with novelty false teeth. 

Now, to me - a plain-speaking, black-pudding-loving Northerner who never goes to Blackburn, Burnley or [God forbid!] Bradford [in Yorkshire, pah!] - such allegations, if true, are wholly remote from my experience.

Yes, folk in Lancashire it's true [in the Jeremy Bowen sense of the word] may occasionally cheat in cheese-rolling competitions and have been known to intimidate fellow ferret-racers in ferret-racing competitions, but claims about this kind of thing seem kind-of incredible to me.

For example, it's reported that police officers are actually stationed outside every polling booth in the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets to prevent voter intimidation. Just think of that! 

Well, all I can say is that it makes you glad to live in Britain, it really does. That sort of thing would never happen here, thank God!

Going back to the BBC though, there were two curious things about both the Today and the PM accounts though which caught my attention today: (1) the way all the speakers [at least in the clips broadcast by Today] refrained from naming the candidate benefiting from the alleged intimidation and illegality and (2) the absence of the name 'Luftur Rahman' from both of the BBC pieces. 

I presume that must be something to do with the fact that the official count in the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets is still ongoing, unbelievably, five days on, incredibly, with declarations still pending, stupifyingly, plus that the accursed Mossad-controlled Electoral Commission is now investigating the perfectly proper goings-on in the People's Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets. So maybe both programme's couldn't name the candidate alleged to be benefiting from such goings-on - whoever that might be - for legal reasons. 

If so I would like to state that the last-paragraph-but-one in no way linked Sheikh Luftur Rahman (may He live for a thousand years) with the BBC's allegations in any way shape or form. Not that that even needs saying, obviously, of course, it goes without saying, and perish the thought.

In matters completely unrelated then, Yapping Alibi-Groan's Independent has boldly gone where no BBC Radio 4 programme has gone before today, and given us the full allegations made by one of the people the BBC interviewed today. 

It makes eye-opening-yet-balanced reading, raising serious questions yet offering possible answers...

...unlike the BBC News website's report on the story, which is about as revealing as an official Saudi strip-tease act - a 'Nothing to see here' piece if ever there was one. [Really, please just read the Indie article and the BBC article and let your jaws drop at the difference.]

My election slogan: If you didn't laugh, you'd cry.

To boldly go...into the 'Independent' comments section

You don't have to be Captain Kirk or Mr Spock to experience what it's like to visit a parallel universe. I visited one only this morning.

I was reading an article on the Independent website by the paper's media editor Ian Burrell, outlining the complaints of Prof. Justin Lewis of Cardiff University. Prof. Lewis is unhappy that a report from this university claiming to have proven that the BBC is biased towards the right has been ignored by the BBC. The report 'found' that the BBC is pro-Conservative, pro-Eurosceptic and pro-business. 

You can read my own sniffy take on that report here. 

Partly I played the slightly less-than-reputable ploy of playing the man rather than the ball, noting that the lead author also writes for the far-left Red Pepper and that the report's public face has long been involved with a hard-left media campaign. Other members of the research team were left-wing activists too.

Now, just because several of the Cardiff research team hold very left-wing opinions and are politically active doesn't necessarily mean that their findings aren't correct or that they can't attempt to be as objective as possible whilst doing their academic research. 

Still, their findings, taken as a whole, have the feel of a rogue poll, a statistical outlier - and bias (however unconscious) could be a factor. 

The findings certainly fly against expectation - and not just mine. Polls show that over four times as many people believe that the BBC has a pro-left bias than believe it has a pro-right bias. 

I also questioned the limited nature of the study though, especially its small sample and surprisingly short duration - just five days of one BBC news bulletin, for example, which seems absurdly short, and prone to producing very skewed results. I contrasted that, oh-so-modestly, with my own massive 9-month survey into interruptions back in 2009-10. 

Still, back to that parallel universe - the world of that 4% of people who told YouGov they think the BBC is pro-right in its bias. 

The way to enter it is to read the comments beneath Ian Burrell's report. Here's a selection of them. Enjoy.

The BBC does seem to give Europhobes, Climate Change deniers and other whacky right wingers almost unchallenged platforms for their views. How often is Farage wheeled out on almost any topic? He's on QT more than anyone else and repeats his myths and nonsense and no-one is there to state that facts. Same with Lawson, Delingpole, Philips and other climate change deniers.

At last the truth is out - something that has been obvious since 2010, the BBC has turned right. The frequency with which UKIP and Tory representatives are used on interviews, quiz shows and magazine type programmes, compared to representatives of broader interests, has become so blatant that it is surprising that it has taken this long to be officially noticed.

The BBC has been right leaning for years. Just look at any episode of Question Time. There are usually five guests and at least three are right wing leaning. The Tory, The Lib Dem and usually someone like the right wingers Starkey or Hislop. I have seen episodes where four of the five are right leaning. However I have never seen an episode when more than two are left leaning. A totally biased based program chaired by a mate of HRH Charles. Then there's Nick, our Chief Political Editor, and ex chair of the University Student Conservative group. And doesn't if show in his reports.

"BBC accused of political bias – on the right, not the left". Ain't that the truth I wrote this elsewhere just today: I've been amused by the BBC, who've gone out of their way to play down the Labour win. "UKIP swing was greater than Labour's", they got 18% of the vote

So how awful was the Labour vote? 55% of the vote.. More people voted Labour than all the rest put together, but UKIP had a bigger swing - that's the good news for, apparently, the BBC.

BBC News has actually been "captured" by the British Bankers Asssociation. "Having deduced that Robert Peston is a liar and shill, in a cascade you are then forced to the realisation that he cannot continuously disseminate BBA propaganda so liberally in BBC broadcast News without the collusion and corruption of the BBC News Group."

The BBC has been on egg-shells with this Govt since the Savile debacle and all dodgy pay-offs of recent times. Then you have a spiv like Grant Shapps issuing not so veiled threats to the Beeb from Conservative HQ. The bias to the right has been apparent for some time. Last year 55 000 people marched on the Tory Conference and through Manchester on a pro NHS anti Austerity march and the BBC tried to pretend it wasn't happening. It barely made the local news. Then the "Million Mask March", an anti-capitalist protest in 400 cities across the world including London and, again, the BBC were "LALALALA it's not happening". And yet, the merest micro-hint of anything that might be construed as a bit on the Left, and the Beeb is pounced upon by the Colonel Blimps on the Right as being practically "Marxist". See the foam-mouthed reaction to PJ Harvey's guest editing of "Today" on Radio 4. It seems the Govt is bullying the Beeb into being it's mouthpiece and using the License Fee as leverage to ignore many stories that show up the myriad defects in the Coalition, and the Tories in particular. It's a sad state of affairs that you have to go to RT and even Al Jazeera to see some of the stories the BBC shy away from these days! Will, they take notice of this, I wonder? Maybe after the next election!

The right wing bias has been obvious for years. This is apparent not only in the selective use of news items but in any political discussion programme. Andrew Neil regular has journalist from the right wing press as guests on his politics today. Question Time always loads its panel with those from the right and the worst example of this bias is the Andrew Marr Show.

Some of those comments really do read like mirror images of comments you read at, say, Biased BBC on on Daily Telegraph comments threads. It's quite uncanny in that respect - and very interesting to read. Getting the 'alternative reality' view from time to time on the subject you're interested in is no bad thing, of course.

'Aha', the BBC will probably say at this point, 'You see. We get complaints from both sides, which shows we must be getting it about right then'.

Well, as I've noted before, there really does seem to be a more criticism of BBC bias from the pro-right side of the argument - as can be seen from the wealth of websites that campaign against the BBC on the issue, as well as from the polling evidence. So the 'to be fair, we have complaints from both sides' argument doesn't necessarily hold water. 

You could have 1,000 complaints from one side, and 30 from the other. Those from one side could be genuine complaints while the ones from the other side could be essentially disingenuous. One side could outline specific, detailed examples of bias, the other could just make unsupported assertions. 

So, there's a quantity and a quality issue with regards to the BBC's habitual 'you're going to get complaints from both sides' defence too. 

Plus, just because both sides say you are biased it doesn't necessarily follow that both sides are wrong. One side could be wrong; the other right. 

Still, none of that will prevent BBC editors from continuing to appear on Newswatch and repeating the mantra that 'We get complaints from both sides, which shows we're getting it about right', over and over and over again. They clearly think it's a knock-down argument.

Update: There's a comment at Biased BBC on David Vance's post about this same story, which reminds me of something I forgot to remind you:

Doublethinker says: February 15, 2014 at 12:00 pm
I can’t help thinking that the BBC paid this chap to produce this barmy finding. No sane person would ever publish such tripe unless they were being well paid to do so.

Well, yes. Part of this Cardiff University research 'proving' that the BBC has a right-wing bias was directly funded by the BBC Trust.

Plus one of its authors was Professor Richard Sambrook, who you may recall was Director of BBC News, then director of the BBC World Service for several years. He left the corporation in 2010. 

Hacked...Off the Agenda

The Daily Mail, of course, has its own agenda over the growing hacking scandal surrounding law firms, blue-chip companies and celebrities over their alleged use of private detectives to hack, blag and steal private information. The Mail is clearly using the story to undermine Leveson. Moreover, the Mail is also taking the opportunity to bash its enemies at the BBC and the Guardian. 

Still, none of that means that the Mail doesn't have a point when it writes:

Hacking: Why the silence of the Left?

After almost six weeks of deafening silence, the Guardian and the BBC finally make passing references to the revelations that law firms, blue-chip companies and others routinely hired private investigators guilty of hacking, blagging and stealing private information. 

What a contrast to the hullabaloo they raised two years ago, when they devoted oceans of ink and hours of airtime to the narrower scandal of voicemail hacking by rogue elements of the red-top Press.

To borrow a phrase from a Guardian headline, attacking other newspapers for failing to clear their front pages for the NoW story: 'Why the silence?' 

Isn't it hard to avoid the conclusion that the Left-wing media's crusade for Press curbs was driven less by horror of hacking than hatred of viable papers that express popular opinions contrary to theirs?

Is that fair? As the story has gathered pace in recent months, have the BBC and the Guardian really been downplaying it? Using only the search techniques provided by 'Google', is it possible to either back up or refute the Mail's charges?

It's interesting that the Mail doesn't include the Independent in its criticism. The Independent most certainly has been covering the story. Back on 22 June, its article The other hacking scandal: Suppressed report reveals that law firms, telecoms giants and insurance companies routinely hire criminals to steal rivals' information laid out the allegations of criminal activity on the part of companies and of the failure of Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) to take action. A suppressed official report had been leaked to the Independent. Two days after that article its editorial thundered, "Other hackers need scrutiny too: As this newspaper has revealed, Leveson ignored evidence that most theft of private information was carried out on behalf of law firms and large corporations." The paper has since pursued the story tenaciously. Here are just a few examples (with links): 27 June, 1 July, 7 July, 19 July, 20 July, 23 July, 25 July, etc, etc; indeed, I count 27 important articles on the story in the last couple of months - many of them major 'exclusives' by the paper. 

The Daily Mail itself has covered the story extensively too. It immediately reported the Independent's scoop on 22 June: 80% of hacking was by lawyers and major firms... and the Leveson inquiry knew all about it. Its editorial the following day, Lawyers, hacking and a conspiracy of silence, marked the start of its own tenacious coverage of every twist and turn in the scandal. I count some 25 major articles on the subject over the last couple of months, spaced (like the Independent) at regular intervals. 

What of the Guardian? Is the Mail's charge against them true? Well, 'yes' is the short answer to that - except that the Guardian did publish one article on the story back on 22 June, when the Independent first broke the story: Soca alleged to have suppressed report of hacking by companies and law firms. Illegal activity by private investigators appears not to have been published to home affairs select committee. Thereafter, there was indeed - as the Mail put it - "almost six weeks of deafening silence" from the Guardian until 31 July the the first of 4 major articles appeared. So that's just 5 such articles in total from the Guardian. 

What of the BBC News website? Are they 'guilty as charged', like the Guardian? Well, almost. The BBC didn't report the Independent's story on 22 June. They waited until three days later: MPs consider hacking claims against other industries (25 June) - the latest of all the media outlets reviewed. [As I was monitoring Radio 4's PM throughout the latter half of June and the start of July I know that they didn't cover the story at all]. The BBC News website did, however, report the story again twice during those "almost six weeks of deafening silence", both times on 2 July: Soca defends response on lawbreaking private eyes and a piece by Tom Symonds (BBC Home Affairs correspondent) called Rogue private eyes: The next hacking scandal? Thereafter there were 27 days of silence until 29 July, when the coverage began again with 6 further articles - making a total of 9 in all. During those 27 days of silence though there were 5 more major articles on hacking within the Murdoch empire. Given the way most twists and turns in the News of the World story got top billing on BBC One's News at Six, it was revealing that this story only managed 8th place on the 31 July bulletin, just prior to a Rihanna story. 

So there's certainly plenty of evidence to back up the Daily Mail's charge that the BBC and the Guardian, who pursued the Murdoch empire so relentlessly over the hacking allegations against them, have been seriously downplaying this latest (non-Murdoch-related) hacking scandal. 

The Mail has a stab at explaining why: The BBC and the Guardian aren't interested in the story because...well...because they have no interest or 'interests' in it. Is that really why they've both been playing it down? If it is then that's surely something of a scandal in itself, isn't it? [The Guardian, of course, is a private company and can report what it wants to report. The BBC isn't. It's a publicly-funded corporation with editorial guidelines]. 

Doing the decent thing

Spot the difference time.

Here's Adam Withnall writing in The Independent:

Former health secretary Alan Johnson said there was “reluctance” in the NHS to make its biggest mistakes public under Labour, while the party tabled a motion saying the problems had got worse under the coalition “since May 2010”.

Speaking to BBC Four’s Today programme, Mr Johnson said there was a “resistance to recording harms - when something terrible happens even to the extent of amputating the wrong limb”. He said it happened “very rarely but nevertheless there was a reluctance to make this public”.

Despite these acknowledgements he said that the criticism from the Conservative party represented a “political operation”, and said this contrasted directly with the “statesmanlike and fair” way it had presented the report into the failings of the Mid Staffordshire Trust in 2010.

And here's Rowena Mason and Laura Donnelly of the Daily Telegraph reporting on the very same interview:

The NHS was reluctant to reveal mistakes that caused harm to patients under Labour, Alan Johnson, a former health secretary has admitted.

Mr Johnson acknowledged some failings in the NHS started under Labour's watch amid a furious political row about who is to blame for the scandal of poor care at British hospitals.

Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, Mr Johnson argued that Labour had been forced to rebuild the NHS after decades of neglect. He pointed out that a review by Lord Darzi under Labour had identified a need to focus on quality. But he also acknowledged that there was a "resistance for instance to recording harms - when something terrible happens even to the extent of amputating the wrong limb".

He said this happened "very rarely but nevertheless there was a reluctance to make this public".

"We must focus on this remorselessly," he said.

Compare those takes with the BBC News website's reporting of exactly the same interview and you won't fail to spot the difference:

The Conservatives are trying to "re-write" history about the performance of hospitals during Labour's years in power, an ex-health secretary has said.

Alan Johnson told the BBC that a "political operation" was going on to discredit Labour's record on the NHS.

Mr Johnson, who was health secretary between 2007 and 2009, said the Conservatives' arguments had changed since the publication earlier this year of the Francis report into the 2008 Stafford Hospital care scandal - which attributed no blame to politicians.

"There is a political operation going on here," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"Contrary to what happened over Stafford, when the prime minister presented the Francis report in a very statesmanlike and fair way.

"Something has happened between Francis and Keogh that is almost trying to re-write the Francis report."

Both the Independent and the Telegraph make Mr Johnson's admission that Labour did make some mistakes their main angle. They both, however, also report Mr Johnson's criticisms of the Conservatives.

The BBC, in complete contrast, turns Mr Johnson's criticism of the Conservatives into their main angle. Moreover, they make it their only angle. 

Yes, the BBC account omits all of Alan Johnson's admissions about Labour's mistakes. 

OK, maybe the Indie and the Torygraph articles are biased against Labour (the Telegraph one certainly is), but at least they also have the decency to report Mr Johnson's comments in the round. The BBC article has no such decency. It gives every impression of being completely biased in the other direction.

Whatever shenanigans the Conservatives and their supporters in the press may have got up to in recent days, that still takes nothing away from the fact that this is a clear and unambiguous example of BBC bias. 

Who's telling it straight?

A few media outlets have reported a landmark ruling this week. The Leeds-based Roman Catholic adoption agency Catholic Care lost its appeal against a tribunal ruling which said that it cannot change its Memorandum of Association to exclude same-sex couples from using its adoption service. This could have significant consequences.

I was intrigued to see how this story was reported, bearing in mind Roger Bolton's criticisms of the BBC's failure to do justice to socially-conservative attitudes.

If there's one media outlet you can usually rely on not only to give socially-conservative attitudes a hearing but also to place them well ahead of liberal social attitudes (and sometimes the actual point of a story), there's always the Daily Mail. The Mail article by Steve Doughty, Catholic adoption agency loses five year legal battle over its refusal to accept gay couples, begins with something found in Paragraph 45 of the judgement:

Roman Catholics who  support traditional marriage and oppose gay rights are not bigots, a High Court judge declared yesterday.

Mr Justice Sales said those who follow religious beliefs long established across Europe ‘cannot be equated with racist bigots’.

Rather, he said, these Christian views ‘have a legitimate place in a pluralist, tolerant and broadminded society’.

This makes up the first three paragraphs of his piece. Only in the the fifth paragraph do we get what I would have thought was the main point of the story:

Despite his call for tolerance, Mr Justice Sales rejected the claims of the Leeds-based agency. 

The judge said that Parliament had outlawed discrimination against gay couples and that Catholic Care had failed to demonstrate why it should be exempt from this legislation. Catholic Care's opponents were the Charity Commission. It was they who had make the 'bigot' charge against the adoption agency. 

So, Steve made the 'judge says social conservatives are not bigots' angle the focus of his report. He seems to know what his readership wants from him and the best-rated comments below his article bear that instinct out. There the judgement against Catholic Care is attacked, as are the "bigotry" of the Left, political correctness and (inevitably) Muslims, while the Catholic Church and traditional Christian viewpoints on gay issues are vigorously defended.