Frogs? Or fuzzy-wuzzies?

 

Further to this post: 

Are we really DOOMED to accept trigger warnings for Dad's Army on BBC Two?

The BBC Press Office has reacted to The Sun's take on the story:

It's the Daily Mail's take that puzzles me though, to which the BBC didn't respond. I'm finding it hard to accept that even the BBC would slap a trigger warning on because of "frogs". As we assumed at the time, it was surely "fuzzy-wuzzies" to describe Sudanese fighters that got that warning put on? Where did the Mail get the idea that it was "frogs"?

Ah, I see the BBC is reacting to the Mail too:

I think we can guess what they'll be telling them!

There's no need for such trigger warnings regardless. That remains the main point here.

"I was able to use bias in my reports"

Just bumping this 'scoop' from this morning back up the blog, as it poses very serious questions for the BBC...

According to The Sun:

A LABOUR frontbencher has admitted broadcasting biased news reports while working as a BBC journalist. 

And last night the revelation by shadow treasury minister Clive Lewis plunged the corporation into a damaging storm. 

Mr Lewis told left-wing Momentum members: “I was able to use bias in my reports by giving less time to one than the other. 

“I reported on both but the angle and words and the language I used — I know the pictures I used — I was able to project my own particular political positions on things in a very subtle way.” 

Mr Lewis made his damning comments last September at a Momentum rally in Brighton.

They were discovered in a secret recording and will be a huge embarrassment to BBC bosses. 

Tory MP Damian Collins said: “He’s boasting about undermining one of our great institutions.” 

A spokesman for Mr Lewis declined to comment.

And the BBC's response?: 

A BBC spokesperson said: “Our editorial guidelines ensure impartiality.”

Clive Lewis was a senior BBC broadcast journalist and the main reporter on the BBC's Politics Show East.

Update: (intervention by Sue to protect Craig's modesty)
You saw it here first! (note to Biased BBC and Notasheep)

Boom Bang a Bang

Has this ever happened to you? You're enjoying a nice nap at work when someone in your office suddenly shouts 'Boom!' and wakes you from your happy slumbers?

Well, it must be like that many a night at the BBC - at least according to The Sun who splashed today with the 'TV scandal' that BBC News Channel staff are snoozing the night away at BBC licence fee payers' expense. 

A BBC snitch told The Sun that "during a 12-hour night shift some staff do around an hour of work" and sent them a dozen or so photos of BBC staff 'sending exclusive reports from the Land of Nod', so to speak. 

Sir Peter Bone MP (and, one presumes, Mrs Bone too) is aghast.

The BBC hasn't taken this lying down - or slumped over their desks fast asleep either. BBC staff have taken to Twitter en masse to mock The Sun and the BBC Press Office has re-tweeted that poll graphic about trust again, with a Sun-baiting tweak: 

Alas, not one person (not even a BBC editor) ever bothered to shout 'Boom!' when I wrote a truly sleep-shattering piece recently about this very poll, but the fact remains that this BBC-commissioned IPSOS Mori poll is old - and some might say [see what I did there?] ' fake' - news. 

It's a reheated poll from January/February this year, which ex-BBC Trust head Rona Fairhead was already using to defend the BBC back in March. 

We've had an election in between then and now. Peoples views of the BBC might have changed over the last nine or more months. The BBC's stock could have plummeted. Who knows? 

Yet the BBC Press Office tried to pass the results off as a new poll with new findings earlier this month - like some dodgy restaurateur passing off last week's leftovers as 'a Chef's special'.

Right, you can all go back to sleep and watch the BBC News Channel now........

The Sun Doesn't Always Shine on Sunday Morning TV

The Sun

The BBC Press Office has caught the Sun out over a 'stealth edit'. 

(The UK Press Gazette has the background to the story here).

The Sun piece originally claimed that Ofcom found that programmes like The Andrew Marr Show and The Sunday Politics have problems with balance when it comes to guest selection. The BBC says that Ofcom never said any such thing. And now the Sun seems to have acknowledged that (on the sly, so to speak):

Here's the 'Before'...

....and here's the 'After':

Ouch!

(Warning: This next sentence may contain sarcasm.)

The BBC, of course, never carries out 'stealth edits' to any of its online articles to cover up mistakes or embarrassments. 

*******

Rob Burley, AM editor. Not impressed.

But what of the Sun's original claims of anti-Brexit guest selection? 

The Sun's analysis found that The Andrew Marr Show has had 129 Remainers since last year’s referendum, compared with just 33 Leavers (84.6% compared to 15.4%) while The Sunday Politics had 78 Remainers compared to 37 Leavers (73.3% compared to 26.7%). 

Those are striking disparities. 

The first thing that puzzled me about those figures and percentages, however, is that they don't match. (Has anyone else spotted that? Or am I missing something?). Surely the AM percentages are actually 79.6% compared to 20.4%? And surely the SP percentages are actually 67.8% compare to 32.2%?

Still, the differences are clearly huge. Are they significant though? 

The BBC's defence is that the figures are spurious. (Andrew Marr called them 'fake news'). They issued a statement saying, "Not considering a Cabinet Minister or even the Prime Minister to be accountable for delivering the Government’s stated policy of Brexit is bizarre, especially when the Sun is willing to count Benedict Cumberbatch who talked about his acting career" and that “Nor was every politician interviewed asked about Brexit.”

Of course, any robust set of figures would have to only include interviews/press reviews where Brexit was raised. Did the Sun confine its analysis to just those interviews, or did they include every interview regardless of what was discussed? If they didn't narrow it down then they are guilty of giving us merely impressionistic findings rather than concrete ones, and the BBC has a point. I can't find the Sun's lists anywhere to check. (If you can, please let me know). 

Did the Sun include all those Remain-voting ministers who are now pushing for Brexit in their Remain figures? Where, for example, did they put Mrs May? Or Liz Truss? That was the BBC's first point and it is where things get tricky for such statistical studies post-referendum. Again, it would be interesting to see their lists. 

On the  Benedict Cumberbatch question, his inclusion would surely be relevant if and only if he was asked about/talked about Brexit as a known Remain supporter. The BBC says he only talked about his acting career during the Marr interview. Did he? Re-watching the interview today shows that the BBC is correct. Brexit never came up, so Benedict Cumberbatch should never have been included in the Sun's study. 

So yes, however much of a truth the Sun's analysis may point to its flaws appear fatal enough to me to render it pretty much dead in the water. You have to be fair-minded, ultra-precise and systematically show your workings for such a survey to hold water. (Not that the BBC's furious reaction suggests that they didn't take it seriously - or at least as a serious threat to their reputation!)

*******

P.S. The more I think about this and discuss it with others, and the more I see on Twitter about it, the more this half-baked Sun survey maddens me (in my usual mild way. Think of me as being like Droopy in that respect).

The BBC are correct about this one. The Sun's methodology was so sloppy and lacking in transparency that they've gifted the BBC an easy goal.

And, boy, from what I've seen on Twitter the BBC are certainly milking it!

Blogs like this one and sites like News-watch have made much of 'numbers' to demonstrate BBC bias - 'numbers' offered to their readers with total transparency, clear and (hopefully) watertight methodologies, a spirit of fairness and precision. When high-profile bunglers come along and botch their 'studies' then, alas, it risks giving the BBC all the justification in the world to slag off 'number-crunching' and 'clock-watching' - and I strongly suspect the BBC will be citing this rubbishy Sun 'study' for years to come. 

Wake-up call (2/3)

This morning, another unsettling listening experience.  More or Less: behind the Stats.  Sympathy for Jihadis.

More or Less is about statistics, so the Sun poll should have been right up its street. 

Early as it was, I thought it would be worth a listen. I think this is an abridged version of a lengthier broadcast on the BBC World service.

We heard that the poll had prompted angry responses online, like one that was read out (I presume we heard the voice of the author)  apparently a college lecturer called Rial Khan (phonetic) from Leicester in the UK. This is a transcript:

“Are you nuts? So you’re telling me I’ve got six members in my family, my bruvver has six members in his family, and my uvver bruvver has six members in his family, you’re telling me each one of us has an extremist in our family? So you’re telling me that there’s three extremists in my extended family? Where d’you get your facts from mate? You’re completely wrong. You know what you’ve just done? You’ve opened the floodgates”

Blimey Mary. I hope I never get into an argument with anyone who’s been lectured by such a genius of advanced logic

Next came a string of ‘hashtag one-in-five‘ Tweets of wit and humour, such as  “One in five Muslims sleeps with his beard on”, clearly demonstrating that one in five Muslims have a Jolly Good SOH. 

Survation has already publicly criticised the Sun’s interpretation of their survey, arguing that the findings did not justify the Sun’s sensationalist headline: “One in five Brit Muslims’ sympathy for Jihadis” 

The Survation representative on the programme was upset at the Sun’s interpretation because he felt the figures represented, if anything, a fall in support for jihadis.

In response The Sun stated: 

“It is not for a polling company to endorse or otherwise the editorial interpretation of a survey. The Sun published the poll’s findings clearly and accurately, including the questions in full.”

The question that caused the most trouble was  “How do you feel about young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria? The boxes were marked (in terms of sympathy) from: 1:A lot; 2: Some; 3: None; 4: Don’t know. 

The answers: 5%, 14%, 71% and 10%. respectively.

So although the vast majority said they had no sympathy, as many as 19%  had some or ‘a lot’. 

One objection was the  ambiguity of the question and in particular the interpretation of the word ‘Sympathy”. Dr Maria Sobolewska, an expert on polling who specialises in ethnicity, religion and race relations, said that some of the interviewees may have misinterpreted the question.

“Did they simply feel that the situation for Muslims was hard, with all the wars around the world and conflict, and perhaps prejudice in Western Europe, and therefore this particular person feels some sympathy with how desperation may lead some young people to terrorism? Is it just a kind of emotional understanding, or is it actually weak or tacit support of terrorism? I really think making that leap into the second conclusion is a bit taking it too far.”

By that token, what’s the point in doing any survey at all? if you’re going to analyse, apologise for and re-adjust uncomfortable findings, why bother with a survey in the first place?

“Desperation may lead  some young people to terrorism?” Now who’s making leaps?  

Dr Sobolewska would have preferred the word ‘Support’ to ‘sympathy’, which I daresay would have produced an equally questionable outcome, simply because ‘support’ implies active, rather than passive involvement in Jihadism, therefore would have been just as ambiguous and just as likely to produce a misleading outcome.  I think Dr S simply didn’t like the Sun, didn’t like the questions, didn’t like the findings, the conclusion, or the negative impression it gave of “the Muslims”. 

The Survation spokesman explained that the question had been phrased specifically so as to compare it with a similarly worded survey that had been carried out earlier in the year. They should have let him  explain that in the first place. It might have saved time.

There are all sorts of leading and loaded questions surveys could devise. “Do you support, say, beheadings and devil worship? “The outcome would, of course, be predictable, and the survey would be pointless. 

Do you think this programme fell short of the standards to which licence payers are entitled to expect?

1: Agree; 2: Don’t know; 3: Don’t care: 4: Elvis

"I'm sick of BBC bias on terror"

Here's part of Katie Hopkins's column in The Sun. (To read the whole of her column - and the rest of this bit on the BBC - you'll have to pay The Sun). It relates to the topic of BBC bias, and may be of interest to you. (Or it may not. In which case, to each their own).

I'm sick of BBC bias on terror

                             by Katie Hopkins 

People keep telling me it's the one thing I am not supposed to write about. And my lawyer says it will be expensive. But to with it all because, frankly, I've had enough. 

I am outraged my country is changing and Great Britain is looking less great. I am also sick of holding my tongue. Enough. 

The simple fact is nearly half of Muslims in the UK think the bearded loons who spout violence against the West are pretty much in line with mainstream Muslim opinion.

According to a BBC poll, almost half - 45 per cent - believe that extremist clerics who preach violence against the West are not "out of touch". 

Do you hear that? Forty-five per cent of Muslims in the UK think that the hooked preacher of hate was dead on the money. They see bearded fanatics ranting in the street encouraging their "brothers" to machete the heads off white boys and nod approvingly as they saunter off to Sainsbury's.

When I heard the BBC celebrating that the majority of British Muslims are opposed to those who want to fight against British interests I wanted to yank my radio from the wall and hurl it through the window of the nearest halal-only Subway.

Even Baroness Warsi thinks that it's all a bit dodge. And she is basically Ken Livingstone in drag.

This is not journalism. This is not responsible reporting. This is the reason we should stop paying the licence fee. 

We must stop funding left-wingers to ingest The Guardian and make biased programmes. 

Just because you ride a bike to work, doesn't make you right, you pompous, soft-shoe-wearing fools.

It is time that BBC reporters were accountable for what they write and say.

Dey do do dat dough don't dey dough

The 'North West Tonight' studio tonight - and most nights

As Iraq and the world falls apart, what better time for another introspective post...and something about Hillsborough?...

When we started this blog I was absolutely determined to be as impartial and fair-minded as could be. I also meant to write in an uptight, scrupulous fashion - as free from the spirit of ranting as possible. 

Well, some of that spirit hopefully remains, but I've definitely slipped over time. 

Like subsidence, bias will always out itself, if it's there - whether it be my bias or the bias of a BBC reporter/presenter - and my biases have certainly been outing themselves over time. It wasn't meant to be that way though. (Ah well, it's Friday night. Who cares?)

In that new spirit, what do my biases make of the the whole 'Ed Miliband, Sun, Hillsborough, BBC' story?

Well, for those who missed it...

Ed - like Nick and Dave - posed with an edition of The Sun in order to promote England's 3% chance of winning the World Cup. Lots of Liverpudlians - including the local Labour mayor - took offence at that ('cos of Hillsborough), started jerking their arms about in a rather robotic fashion, ignoring the rational voices in their heads saying "Eh! Eh! Alright! Alright! Calm down! Calm down!", and instead began ranting at poor Ed. Ed then sort-of said "sorry". 

Oh, so many inner biases emerge here, potentially: I'm not keen on Ed Miliband. I'm not keen on BBC bias either. On Hillsborough though, like most non-Scouse Northerners [and, yes, I've discussed this quite widely], I'm absolutely sick to death of hearing about. It's as if little else exists up here and it's the only tragedy that has ever happened. Our local BBC news programme North West Tonight is absolutely obsessed with it (and if it isn't Hillsborough, it's opposition to fracking on that programme). That bias trumps everything else for me.

I know what to make of all this then and, interesting, everything I think about it is echoed and laid out pithily in the top-ranked comments on the brief-lived 'Have Your Say' thread on the BBC News website [and, yes, I was able to get beyond the fact that many of them can't ever spell Ed Miliband's name correctly]:

9. The BBC rustles my jimmies 8 HOURS AGO: We live in a 'take offence' culture. Anyone who says 'I am offended' is automatically assumed to be in the right, apologies must be issued and every avenue must be explored to make sure the 'offended' is treated like royalty. The only disgrace here is the complete nonsense that drives media like the BBC to report on such non-stories. +228

53. Comment Withdrawn 8 HOURS AGO: Is this story real? Am I dreaming this? We have war in Iraq again, a new cold war, the breakup of the UK, the European Union in tatters and our politicians and media choose "Milliband has the Sun" as something to report. Grow up the lot of you and do the jobs the rest of us are paying you to do. +166

55. onthebeach 8 HOURS AGO: Firstly, I don't see why any of the party leaders should be promoting a newspaper. Secondly, I don't see why the people of Liverpool think that politicians should take any notice of a vendetta they have against a particular newspaper. +146

70. Haggis Hunter 8 HOURS AGO: Dear BBC, once again I'll ask the question you never seem to allow...why on earth are you opening tripe like this up for comments and leaving the REAL stories closed, you know, the ones that are questionable at best?? +127

90. politicsofenvy 8 HOURS AGO: There are no shortage of BSkyB dishes on houses in Liverpool and why do all the big retailers in the centre of Liverpool still stock the Sun if everyone there is boycotting it? +119

131. therealist 8 HOURS AGO: I don't like Milliband but he has my sympathy with this one. Scousers seem to be over sensitive on this. Yes the Sun is a useless rag which made a terrible mistake - 25 years ago. It's apologised. If everyone held such an grudge forever everytime someone offends them we'll end up hating each other forever. +101

Comments are now closed on that thread. After just eight hours. The BBC moderators should, er, calm down.