True that

Also on the subject of The World This Weekend, the tone of its Trump-Kim coverage put me in mind of a tweet I'd read earlier from the ever-excellent Alex Deane:

Donald Trump literally walks into North Korea. 

If Obama had done it - in media, fireworks flare from eagles’ wings as choirs of angels sing hymns of praises, the clouds part and the face of God emerges to call the President wonderful, counsellor... 

As it’s Trump... not so much.

"Wide-eyed, adolescent-style affection"

The BBC's New York correspondent Nick Bryant is not pleased with Donald Trump. In a tweeted editorial, the opinionated BBC man is today accusing the US president of showing "wide-eyed, adolescent-style affection" for Kim Jong Un:

Three opinions

I'll set three opinion pieces side-by-side here and let you judge....

*******

North Korea's answer to Fiona Bruce

The first comes from John Simpson on this morning's Today programme:

The exultant voice of Ri Chun-hee, North Korean television's top newsreader. She tells her audience the good news. Apparently even North Koreans find her hard to take. Still, the main thing she announced was - to use a familiar Trumpism - fake news. President Trump had, she said, promised to lift the sanctions on North Korea. Well, no-one knows for sure what went on when the two men were just talking alone together with their interpreters but if he did that really would have been dynamite. Even so Mr. Trump, who'd said beforehand he wouldn't be doing any preparation for the summit, did promise (apparently off the cuff) to stop the joint military exercises which the US has always carried out with South Korea without telling the South Koreans first.

Donald Trump: We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should.

Until now North Korea has always wriggled out of promises it's made to the Americans and others about its nuclear programme, but, if it suits him, Kim Jong-un could perhaps agree to cut back on his nuclear weapons and even let international inspection teams check that he's keeping his word.

Donald Trump: My meeting with Chairman Kim was honest, direct and productive. We're prepared to start a new history and we're ready to write a new chapter between our nations.

For the leader of one of the very poorest and least democratic countries in the world to meet the American President face-to-face is a fantastic achievement. It wouldn't have happened, of course, if Donald Trump hadn't been desperate for some big diplomatic success. But that just means that Kim Jong-un is lucky as well as daring. But he isn't nice. Already, at only 34, he's ordered the murder of his uncle and, apparently of his half brother too. Hundreds of people have been executed on his say-so, and more than 100,000 prisoners toil under appalling conditions in his labour camps. On Donald Trump's plane home a Fox News reporter daringly put this to him.

Fox reporter: He's done some really bad things. Donald Trump: Yeah, but a lot of other people have done some really bad things. I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done. 

Kim Jong-un, for all his youth and inexperience, knows that the North Korean deal will now become crucial to Trump's presidency and that Trump will have to defend just about everything North Korea does and says in order to keep the deal afloat. 

Donald Trump: I think, honestly, I think he's gonna do these things. I maybe wrong. I may stand before you in six months and say 'Hey, I was wrong'. I don't know if I'll ever admit that [laughter from audience] but I'll find some kind of an excuse!

History, of course, is not on Kim Jong-un's side. The past 30 years have seen dictatorship after dictatorship fall. His overriding concern is to stay in power. But any autocracy is at its weakest when it starts to ease up. So Donald Trump's promise to make North Korea rich is precisely the opposite of what Kim Jong-un wants. The only way he can survive is to keep it dirt poor and easy to control. So what will the rest of the world make of all this? There can't be a single ally of the United States which feels more confident as a result. And Russia and China? Well, Trump's unpredictability worries them too, but mostly they think it shows how diminished America is now compared with its days as the world's only superpower.

*******

The second comes from Martin at Biased BBC:

MartinW June 16, 2018 at 8:51 am

And on the Today programme this morning another of John Simpson’s highly partisan opinion pieces on Donald Trump, presented in his usual insufferably smug and condescending tone. Notable, as usual, were his sound-bites of President Trump truncated carefully to put him in the worst possible light, and by other careful omissions, effectively broadcasting lies. Simpson again repeating his mantra that the President “reportedly made little preparation” for his meeting with Kim Jong Un, whereas we know from administration reports that such a meeting has been subject of intense Presidential discussions for many months. Again, for example, readers of other (and reliable) news sources know full well that the President’s stated wish to withdraw the military from South Korea is entirely conditional on completely verified denuclearisation of the North (and would obviously have been a matter for prolonged WH discussions between Trump and his military and political staff) but, incredibly, Simpson decided to omit that condition and opine that that policy was apparently made up on-the hoof. Disgraceful. All Simpson’s pieces need fisking line by line and the results published, preferably in a sympathetic newspaper.

*******

And the third is a piece by Roger Boyes in The Times the other day. (I never quote paywalled Times pieces in full, as it's wrong to do so, so this must be a one-off exception.) It covers some of the same ground as John Simpson's closing section - the bit about Kim Jong-un being on 'the wrong side of history' - but Roger Boyes's piece takes a very different line to that taken by John Simpson. It gives Donald Trump a good lot more credit. It's well worth reading in full and then comparing with the piece by the BBC's World Affairs Editor:

Trump has calculated that Kim is for sale

Getting North Korea’s leader hooked on cash instead of nuclear weapons might bring peace

All leaders can be corrupted, absolute leaders absolutely. The Trump-Kim summit was framed as an elaborate act of seduction. How the 120,000 labour camp inmates must have applauded when they heard on the gulag grapevine that the US president had described their jailer-in-chief as “very smart”, a gifted leader with the best interests of his country at heart. And yet beneath the strategic if stomach-curdling flattery, Trump was playing a more basic game: he was putting in a bid to buy Kim Jong-un. 

No one, certainly not John Bolton or Mike Pompeo, had any illusions that a tyrant who imposes ten-year jail sentences on people for watching smuggled western films, who has created a network of secret police snitches even denser than the Stasi, would suddenly turn into a great reformer. That would be magical thinking and neither the hard-nosed US national security adviser nor the secretary of state subscribe to that brand of self-delusion. 

It’s a jump of faith to believe that a rogue leader of a hermit state who has used a nuclear programme to grab the attention of the White House would then give up missile development. What happens when he scraps his very last rocket? Will he be pushed aside like Muammar Gaddafi? Or just slip into obscurity? At the very least it would be a betrayal of the legacy of his grandfather Kim Il-sung, who has been mythologised into the greatest of all independence fighters, capable of turning pine cones into bullets. 

There is, however, a way of recasting the conversation. Young Kim is a materialist. 

The streets of Pyongyang have been changing recently. Visitors report more cars, more mobile phones, more entertainment. New residential zones are being built. These are concessions to an emerging middle class, whose loyalty is as important as the regularly purged military elite. No matter that behind the facade of modernisation there is a widening gulf between the impoverished masses and the relatively prosperous kleptosocialists. It is a system of control, or regime survival, and a path to the personal enrichment of his family.

So the Americans have calculated that Kim is for sale. Trump, author of The Art of the Deal, smelled it first. How then to convert an intuition into a policy? The aim has to be to trap Kim into a process whereby sanctions are lifted step by step. North Korea is bending under some of the heaviest restrictions imposed on any state in the world. For every concession on nuclear containment, a sanction can be lifted. Something for something, the core of Trumpian transactionalism. Until Kim disarms eventually, or pretends to do so, and earns his visit to Washington. There are plenty of problems with this approach but the goal is clear: to make Kim progressively more addicted to western cash than to nuclear weapons. Seen from the White House, that’s the deal of the century.

Sanctions relief has to be used to stop Kim from backsliding in his commitment to denuclearisation but also to nudge the country towards eventual integration into the global economy. The first phase should be to build goodwill and maintain momentum. Kim has promised to return the bodies of American soldiers from the Korean war. A tweak to the current US ban on non-governmental organisations forming partnerships with any branch of the North Korean government would boost humanitarian work there. 

The US needs to establish itself in North Korea as the good guy: since kindergarten days northerners have been brainwashed into blaming America for any misfortune. Allowing US charities to work in North Korea to treat and control drug-resistant tuberculosis in the country would be a good start. So would an easing of travel restrictions.  

Serious sanctions relief would have to be carefully calibrated with verifiable disarmament. Pyongyang should be allowed to export some coal, seafood and textiles and import fuels and machinery. It is easier to reverse sanctions on commodities than on finances if Kim drags his feet. South Korean commercial investment would be difficult to reverse if Pyongyang was found to be cheating, so only inter-Korean projects should be allowed initially. 

The end goal would be full verifiable North Korean compliance with all UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear and ballistic missile activity in return for the complete lifting of sanctions. At that stage, the US should also make its demands for human rights improvements. Throughout the whole process there will be a constant risk of Kim reverting to the trickery of his predecessors, figuring he can get richer quicker by having a finger in multiple smuggling and money-laundering rackets than in US-sponsored patronage. 

Naturally Trump does not mean half the things he said in Singapore yesterday. Without nuclear weapons, a defanged Kim will be a nobody, not someone feted at Davos. But a rich nobody, sleeping safe in his bed. The past weeks, the elevation of Little Rocket Man, were a mere precursor for Trump of the big geopolitical duel with a rising China. If Kim somehow enters the US sphere of interest, then China’s influence in the Far East will start to be questioned, its challenge slowed. If Kim takes the bait, then China loses face. 

That would indeed be a prize for Trump. It will come at a price: a spreading uncertainty in Japan and South Korea about the solidity of US security guarantees in Asia. They will learn, as the Europeans and Canadians discovered last weekend, that allies and friends have to wait at the end of the queue while Mr Trump travels the world claiming victories.

...albeit with somewhat biased prose

I was driving to work the other morning and heard a John Simpson op-ed on Today about Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un's on-again-off-again-possibly-on-again meeting and was struck by his tone. He even made a crack about John Bolton's hair and moustache being different colours. ("John Bolton - he of the differently-coloured hair and moustache"). But even that was nothing as compared to Anthony Zurcher's op-ed on Donald Trump's letter to Kim for the BBC News website. Here's one brief example:

The business letter template kicks in again in the closing paragraph, albeit with somewhat tortured prose. "If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write". We have operators standing by!

If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016 I suspect the BBC's coverage of her administration would have been pretty much irony-free, indeed respectful approaching reverent. 

BBC Reality Check v Jon Sopel

According to CNN, who interviewed Kang Kyung-wha, "South Korea's foreign minister has said she believes President Donald Trump is largely responsible for bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table". 

According to CBS, "National security experts, and even the South Korean foreign minister, are crediting Mr. Trump for bringing North Korea to the table."

Well, that's their view, but it's not the view of the BBC's ever-so-impartial Reality Check.  

"Does Trump deserve the credit for peace talks with North Korea?", it asks. before answering its own question with a clear 'No':

So there you go. It's the South Koreans and the Chinese who deserve the credit, according to the BBC, and not Donald Trump. 

Indeed, the article goes out of its way to give Donald Trump no credit whatsoever.

And all the BBC's chosen experts agree with the BBC - and disagree with CBS's chosen experts. 

Intriguingly, the BBC's Reality Check is also at odds here with the BBC's North America editor, Jon Sopel. On last night's BBC One News at Six, he was asked, "Is Donald Trump claiming much of the credit for this?" and replied:

I think Donald Trump could justifiably say, "I have done this and no other President could probably have brought this about". Look, he inherited a policy of strategic containment. That was going nowhere. Then North Korea were suddenly doing these tests which showed they were much more technologically advanced. And Donald Trump, unlike another other President I think would have done, ramped the language up to Volume Ten, "weapons being locked and loaded", there would be "fire and fury", and he even talked to the UN about the total destruction of North Korea. I think that had two effects: I think it made North Korea realise that they were dealing with a rather different US leader and I think it made the Chinese worry as well about what could happen to the peninsula. The Chinese have played a key role in this and Donald Trump has acknowledged that. Now, of course, all these talks could go wrong. They may not happen. But at the moment it looks almost certain that talks will happen with Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, and six months ago we were talking about the possibility of a nuclear confrontation. Now we are talking about the possibility of peace. And, in anyone's language, that must be seen as progress.

Maybe the BBCs Reality Check needs to give Jon Sopel a 'reality checking'. 

Or vice versa.

BBC partisans

The news about Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un's agreement to meet for talks has drawn some interesting reactions so far. 

So is the BBC being "partisan" over this? Well, all I can say is that their main BBC News website report about it waits for Paragraph 21 to devote one paragraph alone to citing someone giving President Trump credit.

And the usual suspects are being sour about it on Twitter. 

Anthony Zurcher's Twitter feed (so far) is particularly "partisan" and, yes, he gives North Korea all the credit for a possible "diplomatic triumph":

As for Katty Kay, well, she's been very quiet about it (so far), simply re-tweeting a rather sour comment from a former Clinton Era Democrat defence secretary: 

Take a look at Laura Bicker's prominent 'analysis' piece on the BBC News website, and you'll see that her take is just as jaundiced as Anthony Zurcher's.

Her write-up of South Korean president President Moon Jae-in's role is measured in tone and full of respectful language. He's the one she's giving credit to.

When she deals with Donald Trump, however, a disrespectful tone crashes in:

• "His administration has had very few victories, despite promising his voters there would "so much winning".
• "Reporters say he casually mentioned in the White House briefing room that he hoped they would give him credit for Kim Jong-un's offer. His voters certainly will".
• "...his Art of the Deal book will not be the guide he needs to deal with Kim Jong-un".
• and an expert whose quote begins, "Trump doesn't study or even read. He tends to fly wildly off script....".

How typical this is of the BBC's reporting of the story I'll try to find out after getting work out of the way today.

Update (17.15): And what's the first thing I see on my Twitter feed after getting in from work? This from the BBC's ever-so-impartial World Affairs Editor (his one tweet on the subject):

I can't help but think that if President Obama had done what President Trump has done John Simpson would be praising him as a peacemaker rather than damning him as a dupe.

#partisanBBCreporting.

Further update (20:28): From last night...

Who indeed?

Laughing at North Korea and sexist jokes

Steve Evans, the BBC's correspondent in Seoul, was on Today this morning talking about North Korea's latest fulminations against that U.S. comedy film which mocks its (very) big baby of a leader.

The North Koreans have gone too far this time though, way beyond minor things like mass executions, horrific gulags, three-generation family punishments, threats of nuclear war, and the like. Yes, they've said something racist about President Obama and not even the BBC feels it can be neutral in the face of that level of offensiveness. It's wrong, and BBC reporters like Steve Evans are saying so.

Steve himself enjoyed the film at the heart of the story. He thinks it's a good film. He laughed at it, and even admitted to laughing at what he described as its many "sexist" jokes - though he added that he probably shouldn't have done so...

...which is a very BBC way of thinking. Why shouldn't he laugh at sexist jokes? Why all the public hand-wringing?

Of course, there's a whole world of even more po-faced offence-takers out there just gagging to be offended (some, no doubt, at the BBC itself), so maybe his caution is understandable.

Cue some righteous academic on Twitter:

@BBCr4today - so #stevenevans is telling us that unintended #racism is deeply offensive, but deliberate #sexism is "a laugh" #TheInterview
— Dave Wibberley (@davewibberley) December 27, 2014

Hmm, not so sure comparing Barack Obama to a monkey [something the North Koreans apparently do all the time] is all that "unintended", especially given North Korea's obsession with racial purity. But then again I'm no North Korea-defending academic, so what do I know?

Still, in the spirit of the BBC's reporting of those UKIP supporters who say the kind of things right-thinking people (like those at the BBC) reckon ought never to be said, can we please start a Twitter storm to get Steve Evans sacked for admitting to laughing at sexist jokes, when (obviously) he should have remained as stony-faced as that Rosa Klebb-like auntie of Fatboy Kim throughout every single one of them, and then publicly registered his unqualified disapproval of them on Radio 4 like a good boy? 

No, come to think of it, let's not do that sort of thing. Ever.

Anyhow, here are some North Korea jokes which might not be to Mr Wibberley's taste but at least he can breathe a little easier knowing (in advance) that they aren't sexist:

"So, how's life in North Korea?"

"Well, I can't complain."

North Korea is back online after internet outage. Sources say South Korea changed the wifi password.

Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" has been banned worldwide following fears it may piss Adolf Hitler off.

So Kim Jong-un is claiming he personally hacked into Sony's servers in retaliation to them broadcasting a spoof interview. Is there no end to this Olympic gold Medallist's talent?

The bad news is that North Korea have built an atomic suitcase bomb that they could slip into this country. The good news: Ryanair lost it.

Chris Huhne, climate change, toddler victims of the government's benefit reforms, Kim so-fat and Alex Salmond (not at all fat) & the EU

Despite my pledge to let it fester...

Last night's Newsnight, presented by Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire, opened (as it ought to have done) with the subject of the floods.

The introductory seconds of the programme, however, included a clip of disgraced Lib Dem ex-minister Chris Huhne denouncing right-wing 'climate sceptics' in the Tory Party (in his capacity as a Newsnight 'talking head'.)

[Chris Huhne was, you may remember, released only last year after being sent to prison for perverting the course of justice and, from the moment of his release, Newsnight has been at the forefront of the BBC's attempts to rehabilitate him back into the community (along with the Guardian.)]

Curiously his attack stood unattacked, as no right of response from those right-wing Tories was granted in the course of Laura Kuenssberg's subsequent report on the issue (and, yes, Laura has now finally arrived back on the BBC). 

Curious indeed.

The other 'talking head' in Laura's report was another Laura - Laura Sandys MP, one of the leading 'greens' in the Conservative Party (retiring in 2015), who expressed further criticism of 'climate sceptics'. 

So far, so BBC. 

(If you're of the Steve Jones persuasion, that's good; if you're of the Bishop Hill persuasion, that's bad).

The following Victoria Derbyshire interview did, however, balance a 'climate sceptic' with a 'climate non-sceptic'. 

We heard from Kevin Anderson of Manchester University, who Vicky introduced as a "professor of energy and climate change", and from Andrew Montford, who Vicky introduced as an "author". 

Hmm, so Kevin Anderson is an expert and Andrew Montford merely an author, eh? 

My 'bias by authority' antennae began twitching slightly at that point. 

They twitched even more when, after asking Prof. Anderson a couple of questions, Victoria turning to Mr. Montford (aka Bishop Hill) and began her first question to him with the words:

Andrew Montford, you're not a scientist, you have been writing sceptically about this for a while now

which seems to me to have been a less-than-subtle attempt to paint him as a non-expert in the field - as opposed to the scientist (expert) Prof. Anderson. 

Andrew Montford, however, responded - as if in passing - that "Kevin isn't a scientist either. He's an engineer", and Kevin didn't demur from that statement either. (His subject really is Engineering.)

Still, despite Vicky's question's seeming (at several points) to urge Kevin Anderson on, both guests got to make their points. 

Now, if you believe that 'climate sceptics' are no more deserving of either airtime or respect than flat-earthers, deniers of the germ theory of medicine, creationists or moon-landing 'debunkers', then you'll probably find this kind of blatant bias acceptable, maybe even right and proper. 

Next up came a one-sided report about people adversely hit by the government's benefit reforms. 

It was undoubtedly one-sided in that everyone was (in some way) 'aggrieved' about the reforms. We heard from a charity leader, and from two benefit claimants who have had their benefits 'sanctioned', for various reasons. Everyone of them was feeling down.

The background music chosen told us to feel anxious too, and the sorry-sounding plight of the two hard-hit benefit recipients was presented without counter-balance. (I could almost hear Iain Duncan Smith fuming about BBC bias as the report preceded.)

Still, if people who deserve our sympathy are being adversely hit by the government's benefit reforms, then such cases should be brought to our attention...

...and a supporter of the government should immediately be invited on to put the other side - the case for the defence.

Such a government supporter was indeed then summoned for interview by Newsnight - namely, Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi. 

However, he was put up against a further critic, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams. (Quite why she was needed after such a one-sided report may be questioned).

Still, things could still balance out if Mr Zahawi was treated fairly and allowed to put the other side of the argument without too much interruption. 

That didn't really happen though. Debbie Abrahams was given a gentle devil's advocate treatment by Victoria Derbyshire while Nadhim Zahawi (standing, as he was, 'in the dock') was given a surprisingly emotional grilling by Vicky, with talk of poor benefit-sanctioned Zak and his "toddler", and a remarkable grilling of the Tory MP over his father's experiences of being on benefits. 

Balanced it certainly wasn't - and, as further evidence of that, Debbie was interrupted on just two occasions while Nadhim interrupted ten times - i.e. five times as often.

I can hear BBC supporters at this point saying that this is just an example of the BBC holding power to account on behalf of vulnerable people (regardless of which party is in power) - i.e. the argument that it may not be balanced but it's 'ultimately' fair. 

I'll leave you to judge the truth of that.

Next, North Korea.

The U.N. has spoken, and Newsnight leaps into action.

North Korea is perpetually fascinating - and horrifying.

Those digital channels which broadcast endless programmes about the Nazis know that pure evil fascinates audiences. The North Korean regime is pure evil too.

I've noted before that, almost alone among foreign news stories, stories about North Korea seem to generate large numbers of hits on the BBC News website or the Telegraph website - or any website, presumably.

Why? Well, here's my best guess...

We laugh and we simultaneously chill and thrill at the spectacle of the young Mao-suited Fatso and his applauding, glitteringly-be-medalled lickspittles: The god-king communist leader, descended from the smiling, mass-murdering Great Leader (teeth, fancy suits) and his curly-haired, porn-loving son (grey Mao suits, fancy shoes), waddling along, looking at some new construction (probably built by prisoners from his vast gulag), surrounded by adoring, note-taking, diminutive generals (each with more medals than Michael Phelps). Mountains, earthquakes, heavens dances at their birth. Ha ha.

Young Kim's fatness (in a land of famine) seems disgusting yet absurd - and the funniness of that absurdity tends to blunt the edge of our disgust.

His attractive but probably-soon-to-be-machine-gunned-to-death wife also arouses our interest (disgust? concern?). Will she live? Will she die, like 'the excellent horse lady' ex-girlfriend of Young Kim, recently machine-gunned to death.

An uncle (by marriage) is denounced as 'scum' and butchered. His Rosa Klebb-like widow (aunt to Young Kim) lives on. How fascinating!

Whole families imprisoned for the supposed failings of one individual member of that family, like something out of an ancient barbaric myth.

Almost perpetually drunk, porn-fixated proles (a la 1984).

To describe it is to at once recoil and revel in its evil and totalitarian glamour...and, yes, we've probably been here before.

The BBC's blessed United Nations concurs, as of yesterday. It has compared North Korea to Nazi Germany. It has excoriated the North Korean regime's ongoing crimes against humanity.

Newsnight duly runs the UN flag up its pole and salutes - and who can really object to that, in this case?

Enough laughter, more action. Something must be done. Etc.

Scotland and the EU. That was the next subject. The BBC's Matthew Price reported. Will Alex Salmond's independent Scotland even get into the EU? We heard from Pia Ahrenkilde Hansem, EU Commission spokeswoman, equivocating publicly but being very emphatic privately (according to Matthew) - that if Scotland votes 'yes' to independence it will be out of the club and find it hard to get back in. Matthew cites Alex Salmond doubting that will really happen. "But", said Matthew. But, he said, European anti-separatist nations - like Spain, under the Partida Popular, will make an independent Scotland wait and sweat. Still, said, Fabian Zuleeg of the pro-EU think tank the European Policy Centre [fancy Newsnight talking to a pro-EU think tank!/sarc], Scotland won't be kept out indefinitely. And Matthew ended outside a building that "maybe, just maybe" could "eventually" be Scotland's embassy to the EU.

I doubt either Scots Nats or Eurosceptics would have reckoned must to that report.

Finally, David Bailey. A plug for the photographer's retrospective. I'll say no more about that.

'Soft power' and Fat Boy Kim

Kim Jong-un

The Sunday Times had a bit of a scoop this morning, reporting that William Hague and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are "helping" BBC Worldwide to negotiate with the sick, mass-murderous regime in North Korea to encourage them to allow various BBC programmes to be broadcast on the totalitarian dictatorship's airwaves - an exercise in 'soft power' by the British government.

[This is probably the sort of thing that gets our friend Tom wound up about the BBC. Has he given up already?]. 

The Sunday Times's headline went for one BBC programme in particular - Teletubbies on stand-by to soften up hardline North Korea - as, when it copied The Sunday Times - did the Daily Mail a couple of hours ago. 

The Daily Mail is where David Vance at Biased BBC spotted it - using the title TELETUBBIES FOR NORTH KOREA - and I'm doing to DV what the Daily Mail did to the Daily Telegraph. 

We bloggers call it 'borrowing'.

The Baby Sun from 'Teletubbies'

David missed an open goal that I'm not going to miss for all the tea in Pyongyang. 

Billy and the Beeb are clearly pushing Teletubbies in the hope of appealing to North Korea's Teletubby lookalike, Kim Jong-un. 

As we know from Gilbert O' and Sullivan, oriental types have funny names like Tinky Winky, Dipsy and Po, so that might well help.

Plus Kim Jong-un is bound to empathise with a character called Laa-Laa, as he and his regime are as la-la as a psychotic hatter.

Teletubbies say, Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun! 

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Both this afternoon's Feedback on Radio 4 and tonight's Newswatch on the News Channel led with the 2000+ complaints about the BBC's coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela. Those complainants felt (like me) that the BBC has gone Malala...Madiba mad in recent days. 

Also on both programmes, the BBC's Head of News, Mary Hockaday, was wheeled out to say that the BBC always takes viewers'/listeners' concerns on board but that, despite that, those viewers/listeners are all wrong and the  BBC's coverage was absolutely spot-on. 

Moreover, she made it perfectly clear that the corporation will continue to completely ignore those complainants' concerns and carry on regardless, clearing its schedules on Sunday (for example) to cover Nelson Mandela's funeral in full - however long it takes - on both BBC One and the BBC News Channel. 

'Isn't that too much?', asked Samira on Newswatch.

No, replied Mary, as BBC Two will carry Breakfast (and presumably the Andrew Marr Show) - as if that means that viewers who don't want to watch the funeral in full, live, can find alternative BBC viewing. 

I have to say that such asylum-seeking viewers are extremely unlikely to find that this Sunday morning's Breakfast or Andrew Marr Show (if it's on) will be havens at all. Both programmes are bound to be just as full of Malalamania Madibamania as the live coverage on BBC One and the News Channel, to be sure, to be sure.

She also said that the BBC has had good stats about the license-fee payer's interest in their coverage, citing (among other things) the BBC News website...

...but we here at Is? and commenters at Biased BBC have been presenting regular snapshots of what is interesting BBC website readers through the site's 'Most read' function (featured on their homepage) ,and that has revealed a staggering lack of interest from BBC website readers, with Nelson Mandela stories almost entirely absent from their Top 10 for much of the time.

[The sign-language interpreter has sparked some interest though!]

If you're wondering what's interesting BBC News website readers now it's:

1: 'Shooting' at school in Denver, US
2: Explosion in Cathedral Quarter
3: N Korea purge sparks stability fears
4: Prince Harry reaches South Pole
5: James Bond is an 'impotent drunk'
6: The death of an aspirant journalist
7: Pupil, 14, found hanged at school
8: BT apologises for 'poor' TV service
9: Nigella 'lied in court', PA says
10: Failing free school ordered to close

By the by, foreign news stories aren't always a pull, but I have noticed that whenever a news site (and not just the BBC) offers its readers a juicy North Korea/Kim Jong-fat story, they do seem pretty eager to read it.

I can understand that as I almost invariably click on North Korea stories. There's something about that murderous, communist-monarchical madhouse with it's young, fat, oh-so-ronery leader that just makes articles about it very hard to avoid clicking on.

Talking of which, a joke...

BBC foreign correspondent: "So, how's life in North Korea?"
North Korean citizen: "Well, I can't complain."

Update 8.45 (14/12/2013)

The BBC website is again leading with Nelson Mandela. The most read articles now are:

1: The map that caused a century of trouble
2: Lord Roberts of Conwy dies, aged 83
3: Forecasters predict 'severe gales'
4: 'Left for dead' dog makes recovery
5: Alcohol link in Briton's US death
6: Man and woman found dead in house
7: Online scam targets ski tourists
8: Readers' radical solutions to protect cyclists
9: Bomb explodes in Cathedral Quarter
10: Shooting in Colorado high school

The BBC, the L.S.E., North Korea, Paddy O'Connell and Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan

Well, the BBC can certainly give itself a right good whacking at times. If you want to hear a BBC reporter getting violently slapped around (figuratively-speaking) by a BBC interviewer then please give this morning's Broadcasting House a try. The interviewer displaying a surprising amount of rudeness was Paddy O'Connell and the BBC reporter on the receiving end - though he fought back a bit - was John Sweeney, presenter of tomorrow night's Panorama, North Korea Undercover. 

As you may be aware, this is the subject of a heated and headline-grabbing row between the BBC and the London School of Economics. Three BBC reporters - including Mr Sweeney - posed as students during a group tour of North Korea in order to carry out undercover investigation inside the world's most secretive  (and terrifying) state. That's a brave thing to do of course. The charge from the L.S.E. is that is that it also put its students at risk. Had the North Korean authorities discovered that three BBC reporters were entering their country under false pretences it's highly unlikely that only the reporters would have got into trouble (imprisonment or a heavy fine). The innocent students being used as cover by the BBC team would, in all likelihood, have been taken into custody too. The L.S.E. contends that the students weren't properly informed and that the university itself wasn't informed at all. Mr Sweeney denies this and counters that there was no need for the university to have been told, as it wasn't an L.S.E. trip. The L.S.E. wants the BBC to pull the edition of Panorama while the BBC insists it will go ahead. Mr Sweeney says that it's ironic that the university is trying to censor a programme which is informing the world about a country that practises the most extreme censorship in the world.  

There are many, differing accounts of who knew what and who told what to whom and who didn't tell what to whom and who didn't know what. Other details are disputed too. It's hard for the reader/listener to know what happened, therefore, and who to believe. You too can try and work your own way to the truth through clicking on a variety of newspaper websites. They are all eagerly reporting it. I'm personally uncomfortable with the thought that a BBC reporter might have put students in danger, but I don't really know what actually happened.

John Sweeney has also written an account of his undercover investigation for the Mail on Sunday:

Inside North Korea: No ads, no planes, no internet, no mobiles, no 21st Century... A rare dispatch from deep within the lunatic rogue state enslaved by Zombie and Sons

• John Sweeney enters the secretive state to see 'the true North Korea'
• Travelled undercover as journalists are barred from entering it

Mr Sweeney certainly doesn't mince his words in this brilliantly-written article which, presumably, is a close anticipation of tomorrow's Panorama. Having read all manner of pieces about North Korea over the years, the word 'sensationalist' popped into my head while reading it. North Korea is a famously extreme and bizarre country, so that is probably deeply unfair to Mr Sweeney. Maybe all accurate articles about North Korea will come across as sensationalist.

One passage particularly intrigued me though:

Many people think of North Korea as Communist. One year ago Marx and Lenin still had pride of place in a big square in town. But on our trip, they’re gone.

If North Korea is not Stalinist, what is it? Former British ambassador to the country John Everard was blunt: ‘There are sad parallels between North Korea and Nazi Germany and although some people describe  North Korea as a Stalinist state, it’s actually much more accurate to describe it as neo-Nazi. It is deeply racially biased.

‘Kim Jong Il [Kim The Second] was an unabashed admirer of Hitler and copied the Nuremberg marches that are staged in Pyongyang to this day.’

John Sweeney described North Korea as "neo-Nazi" or "Nazi" several times on Broadcasting House (displeasing Paddy O'Connell for so doing). 

I find this puzzling and will make a rare excursion into general matters to share the reasons for my puzzlement with you (so please forgive me this lapse!)... 

From all that I've read about it, North Korea most certainly is a Communist state - i.e. Stalinist, with a tinge of Maoism chucked in for 'good' measure. Being Stalinist doesn't rule out the nationalist element (re "Socialism in one country" in the Soviet Union, "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in China, Juche in North Korea). Autonomy is not ruled out by Communist regimes either. Likewise the personality cults surrounding the living leader and the extreme reverence for dead leaders in North Korea is only an amplification of similar cults found in the Soviet Union and China. The growth of apart-from-the-people elites has been common to many Communist regimes (and was most famously satirised by Orwell), several of which have kept the highest reaches of power within a tiny circle or even a single family (as in Cuba!).

Moreover, North Korea retains complete control over its economy and over property. Privatization and globalisation are out. The language of socialism, anti-imperialism and 'class consciousness' still pours out of North Korea, just as it used to do out of Communist Russia and China. The extreme denial of individual human rights in the Land of the Kims in favour of collective obedience was shared by Stalin and Mao's dictatorships. If Kim Jong-il admired Hitler and staged Nuremberg-style marches, then so did Stalin. (Stalin's admiration for Hitler is hardly a secret known only to specialist historians and the admiration was mutual). I still remember being shocked at just how Nuremberg-rally-like Mao's mass gatherings during the Cultural Revolution actually were. (We see too few documentaries about Maoist China). 

And as for the "deeply racially based" character of the regime necessarily making it Nazi rather than Communist, well that's to underplay the deep strains of racialism in many manifestations of Communism - the genocide perpetrated by the Maoist Khmer Rouge strongly targeted ethnic minorities and is only the most blatant example. A streak of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union is also impossible to deny.

The fact that many of these features were also shared by Nazi Germany doesn't detract from the point, as Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China had plenty in common beyond the mere fact of their shared totalitarianism. 

(Well, that's one blogger's opinion anyhow!) 

The L.S.E.-BBC story looks as if it's got some distance to run yet. Where it will end up is anyone's guess. It would be wise for bloggers to watch and wait.

Incidentally, for those who thought the exchange between Paddy and John Sweeney on Broadcasting House this morning was a bit brutal, well, it could have been even worse for the reporter:

UPDATE - Shaun lays one on Ceri Thomas:

Something similar (albeit rather less rude) happened on The World This Weekend this lunchtime. Presenter Shaun Ley probed the L.S.E.'s Deputy Director, Professor George Gaskell, and then turned to the BBC manager with responsibility for Panorama, Ceri Thomas (former Today editor). Shaun rather blew the whistle on Mr Thomas of the BBC here:

"You're sitting next to him [Prof Gaskell]. You're both in the studio. You could respond to his points directly. We were told you wouldn't discuss with the professor. It seems a bit odd. I presume you didn't like that when you were editor of the Today programme - interviewees not wanting to engage in discussion?"

Ouch!!

As I say, the BBC certainly knows how to beat itself up on occasions. (Ask George Entwhistle and John Humphrys!).