Quiz

Nothing BBC bias-related here, but one for those who like British politics and love a good quiz....

Here's a wedding photo from 1964. Can you name the bridegroom, his best man (the chap with the glasses) and any of the other men in the photo [which can be clicked to enlarge, as usual]. 

Clue: Five are well-known (four still being alive), two nowhere near so well-known. 5/7 would be an excellent score. 

The answers can be found in the comments section below.

Which "ministers"?

Further to my earlier post on the BBC's extraordinary failure to feature the story about the forthcoming report of those 13,000 'needless' deaths in the NHS - a story which the Telegraph and Mail led with and which both ITV News and Sky News considered a major story -, well the story is getting ever more politically dramatic....

....and it's not just being reporting by the right-wing newspapers.

The Independent's headline tonight reads:

Andy Burnham defends Labour's record as healthcare report shines light on 'failings' under previous government

The article beneath says:

Andy Burnham, the shadow Health Secretary, was under pressure on Sunday night over a shocking catalogue of fatal blunders at hospitals across England.

The health service’s Medical Director, Sir Bruce Keogh, will detail serious failings in 14 NHS trusts tomorrow, suggesting that as many as 13,000 patients could have died needlessly since 2005.

The findings will raise doubts over the last Labour government’s claim that the scandal at Stafford Hospital was an isolated incident and did not reflect wider faults in the NHS.

According to the Huffington Post

The Department of Health refused to comment on the report's findings ahead of its publication.

But it has already put Labour's shadow health secretary Andy Burnham - who was in charge of the department under the previous government - under pressure.

According to the Guardian:

Andy Burnham rejects Tory criticism over past NHS failings

Shadow health secretary 'fed up' with suggestions he was partly responsible for excess death rates at 14 trusts before 2010

It's a big political story - and it's a big health story - and yet the BBC News website (the country's most-read news website) still isn't reporting the story....

Breaking news....and yet as I type this what pops up, discreetly, at seventh place on the BBC homepage? This curious headline:

NHS failings 'being suppressed' NEW

Clicking on it brings up a report, posted at precisely 20.48 BST. 

Yes, the BBC has finally reported it! 

The report begins: 

An independent expert on mortality rates has suggested that ministers have suppressed details of NHS failings to avoid losing votes.

Prof Sir Brian Jarman said a "basic problem" with the NHS was that the government both provided health services and monitored them.

Unlike every other report, do you spot a missing word here? Yes, it's "Labour". 

The use of  the word "ministers" in that opening sentence is highly likely to suggest current ministers - ie Coalition ministers - in the mind of BBC website readers. It's an unhelpful way of putting it at best, misleading at worst.

The present tense in the headline itself - "being suppressed" - might also mislead readers into thinking the story is about the present government rather than the last Labour one.

Ah, but continue to paragraph 3 and you get a clue about who's really in the frame here:

In a report out on Tuesday, he says 14 NHS trusts totalled 13,000 more deaths than the national average in 2005-10.

Yep, it's those dates - dates showing that the problem occurred on the Labour Party's watch. Not that the BBC is exactly spelling that out for you here though.

And what of the man in the firing line tonight? Well, paragraphs 4 and 5 get round to naming him, but they don't give much of an impression of a man who's under pressure tonight. No, they go straight to his version of events:

Former Health Secretary Andy Burnham said he tried to flush out problems.

Mr Burnham, now shadow health secretary, was in charge of the NHS between June 2009 and May 2010 and said he left warnings in place at five of the 14 trusts and took particular action at Basildon and Thameside.

We hear more from Mr Burnham later, but no direct criticism of him - or of Labour. 

The BBC surely knows how everyone else is reporting this - as a headache for Andy Burnham and the Labour Party - but is choosing to report it in its own way. That way seems much more helpful to the Labour Party than any other account I've read (even in the Guardian).

What's going on here? The BBC comes very late to the story and then gives every impression of spinning it in a direction favourable to Labour. 

It's this sort of thing that makes BBC-bias-obsessed bloggers (like me) think that the BBC is biased. 

Watch the report change over the coming day and see if things get better. (News Sniffer will hopefully track every change that's made).


Update: The headline of the article itself (once you've clicked from the home page) reads NHS failings 'suppressed for electoral reasons'. So someone at the BBC website made a very quick change to the article (I spotted them doing it, as there was an error 404 message for a minute!), though they haven't changed the original headline on the homepage.


This will presumably be the lead story on Today tomorrow. I can't wait to hear Jim, John or Justin tear a strip off Andy Burnham! (If it isn't, and if they don't....it's BBC bias again!!)

Record high contrast in how the BBC and the Telegraph report today's employment news!

The front page of the online Daily Telegraph is emblazoned with the good news:

UK employment at record high as more pensioners stay in work

More good news for UK economy as figures show the number of Britons claiming jobless benefits fell by 8,600 to the lowest level in two years in May, its seventh consecutive drop.

Click into the article and you'll find that the good news keeps on coming, with good statistic after good statistic being reported. 

As well as  UK employment reaching a record high between February and April (the highest since records began over 40 years ago), unemployment has fallen by 5,000 and the number of people seeking jobless benefits has fallen to its lowest level in two years (its seventh consecutive drop). Manufacturing firms are hiring again too. A word of caution is sounded, however, towards the end of the article with regards to the rise in average weekly earnings - especially the 3.3% spurt in earnings in April, due to high bonus payments that month:

Excluding bonuses, pay growth was 0.9pc in the three months to April and 1.3pc percent in the month of April alone.

Still, 'Good news, good news!' - according to the Telegraph. 

Though the BBC cannot be accused of ignoring the good news completely - it's leading its website with the story after all! - its home page presentation is far more muted in tone and manages to include a negative point about the 'recent upward trend' in unemployment straight away:

UK unemployment falls by 5,000

UK unemployment falls by 5,000 in the three months to April, partly reversing a recent upward trend, the Office for National Statistics says.

That hedged, slightly negative tone, so different to the Telegraph's cheer-leading, continues and grows throughout the BBC article (once you've click into it), with plenty of negative statistics being included along the way. Unlike the positive statistics, however, some of the negative ones are accompanied by similarly negative 'editorialising' comments from the BBC journalist(s) behind the article. ("That means that the real purchasing power of wage earners continued to be eroded," for example).

In the BBC article you can hardly fail to notice the use of a highly negative and strongly subjective term in relation to the underlying April pay growth mentioned above:

Excluding the effect of bonuses, earnings rose an even more paltry 0.9% from a year earlier.

According to the Free Dictionary:

paltry 

adj.

1. Lacking in importance or worth. See Synonyms at trivial.

2. Wretched or contemptible.

(Will that word get 'stealth-edited' out of existence as the day proceeds?). 

Yes, the contrast between the takes of the two media organisations (the Daily Telegraph and the BBC) is really striking. 

The words 'good news' are not to be found in the BBC's version and, as of this moment in time (shortly after the news has 'broken'), the BBC article includes a video of someone from the Office of National Statistics, with this negative choice of quote from the interview as its caption beneath:

Nick Palmer from the ONS: "The underlying picture really is fairly flat for unemployment as a whole"

The only quotes within the BBC article (so far) are from Dave Prentis of the Unison union saying "the overall picture is still gloomy". 

The record-breaking high employment figures are, in contrast to the Telegraph (which leads with that angle), mentioned very briefly, as if in passing, in the BBC article's 13th paragraph (in just twelve words).

The fall in the number of people claiming jobless benefits is described by the BBC is described as a "surprise". It doesn't mention, as the Telegraph does, that this is the seventh consecutive drop in a row.

Reading the largely downbeat BBC article, you would be hard-pressed to think there's much good economics news around at all - though it does end with that rise in manufacturing output highlighted by the Telegraph.  

Now, the Daily Telegraph tends towards the Right politically and towards the present government. The BBC is, of course, strictly impartial (!), though it gives a pretty good impression of tending towards the Left politically and against the present government here. Make what you will of that.

Lobby fodder

The latest parliamentary 'scandal', now embracing a Conservative MP, two Labour lords and an Ulster Unionist peer (all suspended/resigned from their parties now), has been exercising the media today. Stings by the BBC, the Telegraph and the Sunday Times have put parliament back under the glare of adverse publicity again. 

Given the way things were going this morning, I was intrigued to hear how Paddy O'Connell's Broadcasting House would handle the issue. The Tory MP and the the UUP peer had already resigned from their parties by that stage, whilst the two Labour lords were still in place - though both were to be suspended by their party later in the day.

In my unreformed days (when Labour were last in power) I would regularly accuse Paddy (who I suspected of pro-Labour sympathies) of underplaying Labour Party scandals whilst accentuating Tory ones. 

I'm not inclined to be as sure of myself as I used to be though, so this morning provided a good chance to test things out again. Would Paddy overplay the BBC/Telegraph story involving the Conservative MP and UUP peer whilst underplaying the Sunday Times story involving the two Labour lords and the UUP peer? That's the question I set myself before listening to today's Broadcasting House. 

Here's how things panned out (as I see it).

The initial discussion between Paddy and BBC reporter Alan Soady aired all four cases, with Paddy's introduction listing all four parliamentarians, though only quoting the defence being made by one of them  - Labour's Lord Cunningham. Were I hunting bias, I'd chalk that down as one mark on the 'pro-Labour bias' side of the blackboard. 

Alan Soady began with the case of the UUP peer. An undercover recording was used. No clip of his defence was used. Then came the case of the Conservative MP. Again, an undercover recording was used and no clip of his defence was used. Finally came the cases of the two Labour lords. This time no undercover recordings were used, but a clip of one of the two Labour lords defences was used. A clear contrast there then between how the story of the Conservative/UUP parliamentarians was reported and how the story of the two Labour lords was reported. Were I hunting bias, I'd chalk that down as a second mark on the 'pro-Labour bias' side of the blackboard. 

How long was spent on each parliamentarian's story? The more time each story was dwelt on the worse it would be for the parliamentarian concerned. Well, the UUP peer's case was discussed over 2 minutes and 18 seconds, the Conservative MP's case over 1 minute and 40 seconds, the first Labour lord's case over just 30 seconds and the second Labour lord's case over just 40 seconds. Were I hunting bias, I'd chalk that down as a third mark on the 'pro-Labour bias' side of the blackboard. 

Did Paddy editorialise at any point during this interview with Alan Soady and, if so, to make a point unhelpful to which side? Answer: Yes he did, and it was a point unhelpful to the Conservative MP, but helpful especially to the two Labour lords:

Hmm, and actually I think that's a primary colour here of difference that we'll discuss in a moment with the former watchdog, which is that in the case of Mr Mercer there WERE actions, even though he says they weren't motivated by the undercover team...there were actions...but in the case of the Sunday Times that we're doing, we don't yet see that there's been any actions taken in parliament. That seems to me to be a big difference.

Were I hunting bias, I'd chalk that down as a fourth mark on the 'pro-Labour bias' side of the blackboard - which would now be looking entirely one-sided with 4 marks indicating 'pro-Labour bias', and non  indicating 'pro-Tory bias'.

Paddy then interviewed Sir Alistair Graham, the former parliamentary standards commissioner and immediately pursued the same line as he was making in that point to Alan Soady - the point that helps the Labour peers in particular and harms the Conservative MP most:

So I'm interesting in asking you, 'Should we differentiate between these two broad undercover teams?'

His next question, after Sir Alistair has laid out his position on the Conservative MP, kept plugging away at the Conservative MP's position:

Hmm, and the key difference for all of us as voters is that he says correctly that you can take paid consultancy outside parliament and he will contest that there's a link between money and questions.

Then came the question where Paddy laid out the case he'd be pursuing throughout with crystal clarity - that distinction between the serious case of the Tory MP and the less serious cases of the Labour lords- by repeating the same question (in various forms) for the fourth time:

Let me ask you to this Sunday Times investigation, there's been no questions laid down in parl...in the Lords on this, so I'm wondering if you will agree with me that what's happening...what's reported in the Sunday Times is in a different category?

I'll mark all those questions down as one big final chalk mark on the 'pro-Labour bias' side of the blackboard.

By lunchtime, however, both of these 'relatively harmless' Labour peers had been suspended by their party. Labour clearly didn't share Paddy's generosity of spirit towards their position. 

Please take a listen for yourself and see what you think. Is Paddy O'Connell biased against politicians of the Right, or am I biased against Paddy O'Connell?

Work in Progress

Here's a comment that appeared a couple of days ago on the Biased BBC website, quoting a comment on Guido's Order Order site.:

..this from Guido comment

Hang The B**tards says:

November 25, 2012 at 1:53 pm

ANDREW MARR this morning on reviewing the papers said

“The foster couple in Rotherham had extreemist political views”

You may ask yourself WTF is this adulterous man talking about ?

Answer: He’s connected to the Common Purpose Gestaop so obviously springs to the defence of F***wit-Thacker !

(Did you like the way I oh-so-delicately mod*rated it?)

That's a serious charge about Andrew Marr, accusing him of abandoning BBC impartiality to accuse the shamefully ill-treated UKIP-supporting foster parents of holding extremist political views. 

Have a watch of the programme and you find that what Andrew Marr actually said was:

"Some things change, however. I mean, one of the other big stories, Sarah, has been the treatment of this UKIP-supporting family who were told they couldn't foster or adopt some children because of their extreme political views." 

...which to any reasonable-minded viewer quite obviously mean't:

"Some things change, however. I mean, one of the other big stories, Sarah, has been the treatment of this UKIP-supporting family who were told they couldn't foster or adopt some children because of their "extreme political views"." 

This is a typical example of the problem on many a comments field where people expound on the issue of BBC bias - people mishearing, misquoting and misunderstanding or, maybe even, deliberately trying to mislead others for malicious reasons.

Then, of course, comes the ad hom, the conspiracy theory and the breaking of Godwin's Law. Bingo. 

That botched 'Newsnight' - a case of bias?

As you may have noticed, the BBC is in turmoil today - partly thanks to Newsnight again. 

Following the debacle over the pulling of their report on Jimmy Savile last December, the programme's joint investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) into abuse in North Wales, broadcast last Friday (2/11/2012), wrongly accused 'a senior Conservative figure from the Thatcher era' of child abuse. The programme itself didn't name him at the time, despite an ill-judged tweet from TBIJ leading viewers to expect that it would. Despite that, the damage to the lord's reputation was done. The identity of the wrongly-accused 'senior Conservative figure from the Thatcher era' began to 'go viral' across the Twitterverse, becoming widely-known as a result. The programme itself had left enough clues to lead people in that direction, so go in that direction people went. The gossip turned out to be all wrong. It was a case of mistaken identity. The accuser realised his mistake and 'fessed up (and says it was the police who are guilty of getting him to identify the wrong man).  Newsnight has unreservedly apologised, the 'senior Conservative figure from the Thatcher era' is now taking legal action on several fronts and the BBC has been sent reeling.

There do seem to be a lot of questions that need answering. Some are for the top management of the BBC, and the Director General has been touring BBC studios today, being pounded left, right and centre by his own presenters. 

What though of the questions for Newsnight? Steve Hewlett of the Guardian and BBC Radio 4's Media Show, the BBC's go-to man for media issues, has been sharply critical of the programme, claiming the BBC had looked into the accuser and his accusations on at least two separate occasions "and found them wanting". Another question for Newsnight - and TBIJ - arises from the fact that, by all accounts, the accuser was only shown a photograph of the wrongly-accused man yesterday - one week after the report was broadcast - and only then realised his mistake. Why on earth wasn't he shown that photograph earlier? It also emerged yesterday that the BBC had chosen not to contact the wrongly-accused man for a right of reply on the Friday of last week. Why? Because, it says, it didn't actually name him in the Newsnight film. Unfortunately, that answer is begging even more questions. (The Reynolds Defence comes into play here, apparently). 

So how did it happen? There's much speculation going on (ironically, given what happened last week), but these seem to be the most popular contenders for an explanation:

- REDEMPTION. Did it arise because Newsnight wanted to make amends for its failure to broadcast the report into Savile's child abuse last year, doing something that showed that it cared about the issue and that it could still do proper investigative journalism?

- DIVERSION. Did it arise as some sort of diversionary tactic, designed to take the public's eye off child abuse focused specifically on the BBC and shift it instead onto child abuse more generally?

- BIAS. Did Newsnight seize at the chance to shift an abuse story onto a Top Tory for a specific reason, or was that just a co-incidence? If it did try to shift it onto the Tories deliberately, why? To put the Tory-led government on the back foot over the ongoing scandal at the BBC (quiet them up?), or to have a partisan jab at the Tories, and smear Mrs Thatcher for good measure?