Do we care?

I see Archie Bland has reviewed Alain de Botton’s book in the Indy.  Unlike Craig and me, Archie’s actually read it, and even though I suspect he’s a bit of a lefty, he’s not keen. “Simplistic and ultimately flawed.” We, however are going merely by what we’ve heard on the BBC.

A few days ago, unbeknownst to me, Craig was writing about Alain de Botton at the same time as I was, and would you believe it, we came to similar conclusions. For example Craig outlined Alain’s theory:

“Too much information "starts to numb you", and makes you forget what you're interested in and what can be changed. "Rather than making us more political, an excess of information can erode any real sense of what the priorities really are." This, he suggested, is a sly way of maintaining the status quo.”

Craig observed:

“Well, yes, the news does give you too much news at times. But then it's the news. That's what the news is.” 

Hundreds of miles away I was tapping out:

“So Alain de Botton thinks we, the public, have been anaesthetised by news ‘overload’, and the sheer volume turns it all into meaningless white noise. 

As a result, we don’t care enough about things we should care about.  By deduction I gather Alain would prefer us to be guided by news gatherers or editors; people who are clever enough to sift through it and determine what is newsworthy and what is not, and by doing so show us what we should care about. (What they think we should care about.) Which is what more or less what already happens, don’t you know.”

(I always thought that making people care was the job of drama, art and literature. I thought that news reporting was primarily reporting News. ‘new things’.)

That’s why we’re here doing this and overloading the interweb with more stuff. We’re saying that this ‘manipulation’ is already being done, covertly, by the BBC, Channel 4 and much of the press. They may overload our consciousness with ‘too much’ news, but much of it is weighted by means of selective discussions and analyses, and of course omissions.

If indeed there’s no alternative to human-generated news, which is inherently partial and biased, (yes it is Craig) claims of impartiality are unrealistic, and somewhat dishonest. Especially because the bias isn’t ....(what’s that thing that everything ought to be?) ...transparent! 

The BBC’s (inherent) bias isn’t delivered in an overt fashion, because it’s not supposed to be there.  Much of the agenda isn’t made clear. If the BBC genuinely aspires to impartiality as per its charter, the biases and affiliations of politically motivated reporters, experts or talking heads should be made known to the audience, as per the BBC’s own guidelines. 

The  viewer should be credited with enough intelligence to put into context words uttered by polemicists or activists, provided they’re consistently introduced as such,. 

The problem seems to be that if the BBC’s worldview is homogeneously left-leaning, then the only bias they and their left-leaning listeners would recognise is the bias of the ‘other’.

Craig points out that we...

“can go online and click on the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Economist websites and read plenty of in-depth coverage about a vast number of stories, week in and week out. If you're interested in a story, we have a large and diverse media beyond the BBC that can fill in all the gaps and extend a story almost to infinity.”

 As for the theory that the BBC is propping up the status quo, I’m not at all sure how anyone came to that conclusion. It seems to me that the BBC often behaves like a rebellious teenager, cheekily defying some imaginary authority. The BBC is seemingly alone in being unaware that they themselves have become the new authority, wielding extraordinary influence in the irresponsible, willy-nilly manner of those who don’t know their own strength.

  

Then Craig tackles ‘Bias’, and isn’t wholly convinced by Alain’s (and my) contention that (sorry for the repetition) that human-generated news is inherently biased, but quite reasonably adds: 

“I still don't think though that the attempt to be objective and fair in your reporting of what you see is a bad thing.” 

Absolutely not. It’s no bad thing at all. That’s why there should be: a) awareness of their own lack of objectivity when it occurs: b) balance over time: c) transparency.

Determining the “best kinds” of bias is subjective, but these are some of the thoughts I scribbled before I read Craig’s post. 

“We have the BBC’s infamous charter which contains the unachievable obligation to be impartial. I have always contended that literal impartiality is unachievable so long as it emanates from animate objects (humankind) but that if, in the absence of universal newsbots, there is to be an inherent bias it should be under the auspices of some sort of moral compass. Here in Britain that roughly corresponds with what we call the Judeo-Christian ethos. Do as you would be done by, etc. etc.

Now though, the whole country’s moral compass seems to have gone awry. Complaints about bias often focus on the BBC’s hell-bent quest for a superficial kind of impartiality, which entails studiously avoiding the value judgement altogether, often with inhuman zeal. 

It eschews the once familiar moral compass, and strays into self-loathing and that new fangled, indiscriminate tolerance of the intolerant. 

Even if the news avalanche suddenly stuck to ‘facts’ without loading them with bias by omission, moral equivalence or inexplicable editorial decisions, flagship programmes with their endless analyses by BBC hacks still select ‘what is news’.  Without making an obvious value judgement, even when a value judgement couldn’t be more obvious if it came up and punched you in the face, the elite gaggle of agenda-driven ‘experts-on-speed-dial’ still guide you persuasively towards the appropriate conclusion.   

Surely this amounts to telling us what to care about, and one obvious example is the serial plugging of Alain de Botton’s book. They’ve made Craig and me care about it, apparently.

Four eyes, two impressions

That said...

Time for a case of 'different takes on the same thing':

John Anderson at Biased BBC (someone who first spurred me into blogging) has commented:

Credit where it is due – Jeremy Paxman takes apart the Oxfam goon over the Sodastream factory and the employment of Palestinians. So just shut up, Yoland Knell.

...before linking to last night's Newsnight. 

Watching that double interview on Newsnight, I too thought that Paxo skewered Ben Phillips of Oxfam and that SodaStreams's Daniel Bimbaum gave an excellent account of himself, his company and Scarlett, and, like John, I retired pleased from the interview.

The estimable Hadar at BBC Watch, however, sees things through very different eyes.

Whilst conceding that Jeremy Paxman didn't give 'the Oxfam goon' an easy time, she is highly critical of him for not asking Oxfam's highly politically-biased Ben Phillips all manner of salient points, and allowing 'the Oxfam goon' to make all manner of misleading comments without correcting him. She also accuses Jeremy Paxman of 'superficiality' (something Newsnight is known for these days). 

You'll have to watch the Newsnight interview for yourselves to judge who is correct. I'm still inclined to trust my original impressions though.

"I cannot stand George Alagiah"

A cat (with some singer or other)

No time to post anything of significance today, but - as this is a blog - Something Must Be Posted. So...

I learned today that a favourite Lou Reed track of mine, Satellite of Love (featuring David Bowie, bom-bom-bomming in the background), has been covered by Morrissey, pop's best-known present-day misanthrope. 

The original lyrics included the lines:

I watched it for a little while

I like to watch things on TV

Mozza's modified lyrics, however, read:

I watched it for a little while

I cannot stand the TV

And, for those of you wanting a BBC connection, Mozza added a little bonus bile too:

I watched it for a little while

I cannot stand George Alagiah 

...at which several thousand adoring BBC employees' hearts broke simultaneously!

Beyond Belief. Is beyond belief.

Thanks to all the time I've (wasted) spent listening to the BBC, I think I'm becoming quite well-versed in Islamic disputes, Islamic history, the politics of Muslim nations, the tenets of Islam, the aims of Islamism, etc.

I suspect I'm far from alone in that.

Today's Beyond Belief (BBC Radio 4, 4.30pm) introduced me to something new though: The Ahmedi Community - a 12 million-strong religious movement which regards itself as Muslim, but which mainstream Muslims regard as being completely outside the fold of Islam. 

The Ahmedis' main offence in the eyes of mainstream Muslims is that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, claimed to be a prophet - albeit a lesser prophet than Mohammed. 

Mainstream Muslims, of course [as we regular BBC listeners know], believe Mohammed was the final prophet, and are deeply offended by the Ahmedis' assertion that he wasn't the final prophet after all. 

Often violently offended.

You may not be entirely shocked, therefore, to hear that the Ahmedi are vigorously persecuted in many Muslim lands - including their original birthplace, Pakistan - and that murderous terrorist acts are carried out against them. Thus are the ways of the Religion of Peace, are they not? 

You will probably also not be surprised to learn that this hatred has followed them to Britain and that, as a result, the nasty religious squabbles of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have now become our squabbles too. (Fan-flipping-tastic!)

Today's Beyond Belief was noticeably sympathetic to the plight of the persecuted Ahmedi, with its likeable presente, Ernie Rea, giving every impression of being on their side. As were two of the guests - Imam Ataul Rashed from the Ahmedi London Mosque and Dr Simon Valentine, author of "Islam and the Ahmaddiya Jama'at." 

I ended up feeling quite sympathetic towards them myself.

Against them was set Dr Sahib Bleher, co-founder of the Islamic Party of Britain.

I have to say, I didn't warm to Dr Bleher at all. 

Dr Bleher does not like the Ahmedi, to put it mildly, and launched several diatribes against them as being tools of British imperialism, used by the Raj to undermine the Ottoman Caliphate. He deplores violence against them, but wasn't exactly moderate in his criticism of them either.

No, I didn't like him at all.

Dr Valentine described Dr Bleher's assertion that the Ahmedis were part of a British plot to defeat the Ottoman Caliphate as a "conspiracy theory" with absolutely no evidence to support it.

Sahib Bleher (PBUH)

Hmm, well all this made me crank up Google to look up this Dr Bleher, and Google informed me that he is no stranger to conspiracy theories. 

For starters, Dr Bleher is a 'truther' about 9/11. He says it's the US-Israeli axis wot did it. 

The absolutely vile interview you'll hear on the end of the link above [do yourself a favour and don't click it] hears Dr Bleher rehearsing the truther calumnies with a vicious U.S. antisemite called Daryl Bradford Smith. The latter describes the former as his friend and, strikingly, though both of them relentlessly slam the Main-Stream Media, Dr Bleher makes an exemption, and singles out the BBC for praise for being critical of the 'Establishment'.

Dr Bleher also claims the 7/7 bombings were a politically-motivated "set-up". 

This tie-in between Dr Bleher and the white far-Right becomes ever clearer the more you google his name. 

Dr Bleher has been closely linked, for several years, to the 'New Right' organisation - a group which involves Holocaust deniers like David Irving. The 'anti-fascist' organisation Searchlight says Dr Bleher "brought a Muslim antisemitic perspective to the New Right Club". 

Dr Bleher is fond of describing the Holocaust as the 'Holocult' and said that Ahmedinijad's Holocaust-denying conference in Iran "cut the Achilles heel of the current Anglo-Zionist world order". 

And yet...and yet...

...and yet...

Radio 4's Beyond Belief still sees fit to invite this man onto today's programme as if he were the respectable voice of mainstream Muslim opinion. 

(No wonder Maajid Nawaz gets so mad at the BBC.)

Sahib Bleher may well actually be the true voice of mainstream Muslim opinion, but respectable he most certainly is not. Obviously.

And it's not the first time Beyond Belief has invited him onto its programme. He's been on before, astonishingly. 

It really is a truly bizarre state of affairs that the BBC, which wouldn't even think of inviting Daryl Bradford Smith or David Irving onto its airwaves, is perfectly content to invite their friend Dr Bleher onto Radio 4, and then treat him with respect. (No wonder he approves of them).

Why do Muslims like Dr Bleher get a free pass while his white, far-Right-wing chums are considered completely beyond the pale? 

Or, as Mrs Merton might have put it, 'What is it, BBC, that you see in Muslim Sahib Bleher?'

Actually,  a better way of putting it is "WTF is wrong with the BBC?"


[Incidentally, for more on the horrific death threats against Maajid Nawaz, please have a read of my fellow fence-sitter Sarah AB at Harry's Place.]

The Kingfisher and Johann Hari

As a rather heavy post is up next (actually I wrote it first), here's a great poem to lift the spirits (hopefully) by Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. I felt the need to post it tonight. 

The Kingfisher

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

And, if the next-up post is still depressing you as much as it's depressing me, here's a joke from former star columnist at the Independent Johann Hari (or not) that tickled my funny bone this evening:

I've just invented a new word: "Plagiarism".

Last rites for the Anglican Church?

Analysis returned to Radio 4 this week, and as a lapsed-but-still-sympathetic Anglican I was interested in its subject - the apparent terminal decline of the Church of England. 

It was presented by the Guardian's veteran religious affairs writer Andrew Brown, who painted a very dark future for the Church, with younger people seemingly falling away from it at a staggering rate. 

It was an interesting report, growing more nuanced as it proceeded. 

Its opening stages dwelt at length on the 'values gap' between an overwhelmingly socially liberal Anglican flock (churchgoing or otherwise) and a more socially conservative hierarchy. The Church was out of touch, argued Andrew. He then dwelt at much less length (he is a Guardian man after all!) on the other 'values gap', that between the right-leaning tendencies of most Anglicans and the strongly left-leaning tendencies of the Church hierarchy on matters such as welfare spending. The Church is out of touch here too, argued Andrew.  

Later contributors questioned whether the 'values gap' explanation provided the whole answer, but Andrew Brown largely stuck with it. 

He seemed genuinely surprised - and dismayed - about how sanguine some of the leading Anglicans he spoke to seemed about the demise of their Church.

The tenor of the programme was markedly liberal, but not oppressively so.

Coda: As is my way, I like to look into such things and came across a recent YouGov poll on matters religious. As YouGov takes a political approach to such things, it breaks down its questions along party political lines. 

The broad point, I suppose, is that there's not a huge amount of difference between supporters of different parties on the central tenets of Christianity, but certain results stand out as intriguing nonetheless:

- As many Conservatives are out-and-out atheists as believe in a personal God. 

- Lib Dems are least likely to believe in a personal God but most likely to believe there's some sort of spirit or life force instead. (Typical Lib Dems!)

- More Labour supporters believe in the devil than Conservatives. 

- UKIP supporters are much more likely to believe in life after death than supporters of the other big parties.

- Conservative and UKIP supporters are more likely to believe that the theory of evolution by natural selection is the correct explanation for the origin of life on earth. Labour voters are least likely. 

"It's a bunch of toffs"

Oh, he really just can't help himself it seems. 

I used to chronicle in great detail Paddy O'Connell's apparent pro-Labour proclivities, but haven't really bothered for a few years - even though I've heard him snap at guests on BH and PM who've started criticising Labour in ways he never seems to do when they criticise Conservatives.  

This morning's Broadcasting House (which I used to sneer at as Gordcasting House in the days of Mr Brown) contained a classic though, which I've just got to record for posterity, as Paddy's political passion appeared to pour out all over the airwaves while Iain Dale was criticising the limited nature of Milibandism's message to the voters, of Labour's narrative.  

I mean Labour would counter, wouldn't they, that theyr'e going for the fairness agenda. It's a bunch of toffs. That's the narrative, isn't it? That it's a bunch of rich people running the country and they don't know what a gas bill is.

That may, indeed, be Labour's narrative, but Paddy put a good deal more passion into saying it than seemed strictly necessary. You've got to hear him say it to get the full effect. It's almost as if he meant it from the heart. 

Alain de Botton's take on the news

Slipping back to the subject of Newsnight, one of its most talked-about features this week was a piece by philosopher Alain de Botton. It tackled the subject of 'the news' itself, and was highly critical of modern newsgathering and reporting.

It was certainly interesting to have Alain de Botton on Newsnight giving an intellectual's two-fingered salute to media organisations like the BBC - and doing so on one of the BBC's own programmes. His short report was so packed with ideas - some initially persuasive, others less so - that it needed re-watching. 

A studio discussion followed, with Jeremy Paxman acting as ringmaster. In the ring with Alain was Newswatch's Samira Ahmed and the man who poisoned public life in the UK, Alistair Campbell (not that that was how Newsnight introduced him). Samira held her ground well against the collective criticisms of Messrs de Botton and Campbell and ended by accusing the Newsnight editor (the famous Ian Katz) of refusing to come on Newswatch. Sue rightly described her as being 'on fire'.

That's the background. Now for what Alain de Botton argued. 

He began by saying that the news doesn't come with instructions. Children are taught at school how to analyse books and pictures "but no one ever tells you how to make sense of that far more questionable art form, the news."

We're taught to analyse Shakespeare but not the celebrity section of the Daily Mail.

Well, up to a point Alain. He seems to have forgotten that much-maligned but still-surviving subject, available in many schools, Media Studies, plus the sheer wealth of higher education Media Studies courses being offered (and snapped up). 

Still, children (and adults) should be encouraged to look at the news through partly sceptical eyes. Too many people take what they read, see and hear at face value. That probably should be taught in schools (as part of English?)

He then noted that the news is far more powerful at "shaping how we view political and economic reality". 

Well, that's so obviously true as to be almost a truism. Part of the logic behind blogs like this and Biased BBC is based on that obvious fact.

He then gave his list of what he finds questionable about the news. 

Firstly, Excess. 

Too much information "starts to numb you", and makes you forget what you're interested in and what can be changed. "Rather than making us more political, an excess of information can erode any real sense of what the priorities really are." This, he suggested, is a sly way of maintaining the status quo.

Well, yes, the news does give you too much news at times. But then it's the news. That's what the news is. 

Still, I can see his point that the news as we get it, say, on the BBC News at Six or Today does bombard us with a mass of stories and then moves on to another story and another story. You generally get glimpses of a story at its dramatic beginnings then fail to be shown the aftermath. Some other big story takes its place. 

That, however, doesn't take account of the fact that I can go online and click on the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Economist websites and read plenty of in-depth coverage about a vast number of stories, week in and week out. If you're interested in a story, we have a large and diverse media beyond the BBC that can fill in all the gaps and extend a story almost to infinity. 

Plus Alain's point is clearly shading into Adam Curtis left-wing conspiracy theory/paranoia territory - or, to put it more neutrally, into that sector of opinion (found on Twitter and Media Lens) that the BBC and the mainstream UK media are all about propping up the status quo rather than encouraging radical change.

That is the claim that the BBC has an agenda. 

Many on the Right have their own mirror image version of that claim, that the BBC is all about undermining traditional British values and promoting progressive social and political change. 

Both can't be right, but it doesn't necessarily mean that one of them can't be right, of course.

His second point  concerns Bias - and here he's singing rather more from the same spreadsheet as Is's very own Sue, and rather against my own instincts on the subject:  

Thoughtful people often imagine that what makes news organisations serious and worthy is their ability to provide us with information that's unbiased, but this bias against bias is fundamentally mistaken. Facts only become meaningful to us when they slot into some picture of what matters. Neutrality is simply impossible vis a vis the biggest questions. Think of the big figures of history - Plato, the Buddha, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. All of these have been highly biased. Their judgements were anything but perfectly balanced. We don't need news stripped of bias. We need news presented to us with the best kinds of bias.

The more I've written this blog and the more Sue has debated this issue with me, the more I can see the truth of their shared point about the impossibility of neutrality. I still don't think though that the attempt to be objective and fair in your reporting of what you see is a bad thing. 

Plus we probably all, wherever we come from politically, really feel (in our heart of hearts) that news organisations should present news "with the best kinds of bias" - and I can also see that now. 

Unfortunately, I think this inevitably means "my kinds of bias" - even if we're never likely to admit this to ourselves. (Most people aren't, I think, as generous as they like to think they are to their opponents' way of thinking. And I include myself in that). 

. 

Plus I suspect that Alain de Botton's view of what constitutes "the best kinds of bias" is rather different to mine - and I don't want to pay for the privilege of having someone else's very different "best kinds of bias" imposed upon me, if my own "best kinds of bias" are marginalised as a result. 

(Actually that's rather how I feel at the moment about having to endure the BBC's biased version of neutrality.)

This then, surely, is an argument for doing away with the BBC's pretence of neutrality and having it (a) gather together the broadest possible range of opinionated people as its reporters and presenters and giving fair coverage to all their points of views or (b) becoming the UK equivalent of MSNBC in rival to, say, a newly-constituted Sky News acting as the UK equivalent of FOX News. 

Alain de B's third questionable aspect was styled Narrow Minded (above). Alain somewhat reverted to Pilger/Curtis territory again here, but I suspect many economic liberals who want to see a radically-reduced state might see his essential point and agree with it - and many others might agree with it on a whole range of other points too:

The news may tell us what's happening in the Economic Establishment but it fails to tell us what might or should happen. It sets an agenda but this agenda is woefully limited. The so-called debate about the economy doesn't stray beyond some tightly defined lines, restricting the audience's understanding of what's actually possible. Alternative views soon end up in the territory of what's dismissed as 'radical', 'ridiculous'.

'Outlying' positions on many social and political subjects can be interesting, and might even be valid. Some are simply incendiary. 

The restriction of debate to the usual narrow range of voices, plus the odd token 'not-too-far-out' 'radical voice', is common at the BBC. (This morning's Sunday was an absolutely classic example of that). So I can see some truth in Alain's argument here. 

Whether he'd want the same 'radical' and 'ridiculous' people as I want to see brought back in from the cold at the BBC I rather doubt - and vice versa. 

Next up was Anger. 

The news terrifies us every day about floods, fires, cancer, and at the same time it makes us furious, mainly at apparently incompetent people running the country, messing things up. News outlets badly need their audiences to be agitated, frightened and bothered a lot of the time.  And yet we have an even greater responsibility to try to remain resilient and to see that the news is at least, in part, winding us up for its own ends - to keep itself in a job.

Doesn't that rather contradict his earlier point about how those self-same media outlets are trying to numb us into submission to the status quo?

Obviously, there's some truth in A de B's point here though. You hear Radio 4 folk and Guardian-reading types saying that all the time about the Daily Mail of course - and not entirely without justification - though similar kinds of complaint can be turned back on Radio 4 and the Guardian with their own brands of 'anger'-inducing story (over cuts, Islamophobia, bankers' bonuses, Western foreign policy, Israel, etc). 

We're into a very old argument here about whether the media should concentrate on 'good news stories' as much as 'bad news stories', and whether the public would actually want to see lots and lots of 'good news stories'. Do we not like getting hot and bothered about stuff? The stuff that agitates us (like BBC bias!) also interests us, and we seem to gravitate towards reading it. 

Maybe more of a balance between 'good news' and 'bad news' is needed. That seems desirable to me. But push it too far and viewers might well become bored. 

Alain de Botton's next topic was Who cares? and returned us to a subject discussed on Newsnight a couple of week's ago (and discussed at Is too).

We hear about terrible catastrophes all the time - 300 gone here, a thousand starving there - and yet, in our hearts, we all know we don't much care. Is it because we're shallow and cold? No. It's just that the news doesn't help us to care because it parachutes us into places only when disaster strikes but we can't care about people in trouble when we didn't know them when things were OK. We need to know the steady state of a land before we can be motivated to care about its crises.  

I do think that's true. We do seem to care more if it's about people we know better or like better. Thus disasters in America seem to hit us emotionally much more than disasters in China, because we know America so well from TV and films and popular culture, and disasters in countries that aren't full of people who hate us (the Philippines, most recently) draw our sympathy more than those in countries that do hate us (like Pakistan). 

Finally, to end with, came the word Endless. 

The news ends up corrupting us with a sense of the overwhelming importance of our own era and concerns - our debt, our affairs, our parties, our rogue missiles - but a good life involves realising their are moments when the news no longer has anything important to teach us, when we have to leave it behind to focus more intently on some of our own anxieties and hopes in the brief time we're all allotted. 

Again, doesn't this rather contradict Alain's first point, about the danger of us becoming numb to the news and not feeling motivated to bring about change?

Still, though it's a rather sweeping point, it's probably one that will resonate with a lot of people (including bloggers).

It does unconsciously resonate with a lot of people already, as most people's interest in current affairs does seem very limited, often barely existent. Large swathes of British people must, therefore, already be enjoying the good life, as they have precious little interest in the news and are already content to focus more intently on their own anxieties and hopes, in between watching episodes of Eastenders and Coronation Street. 

Wonder if Alain has realised that, and what he thinks about it?

Well, so much for my ramblings on the subject. Time to go and focus on my anxieties over a nice cup of tea. 

Sunday's Immigration special

So how did this morning's Sunday special on 'Religion and Immigration' pan out? 

Was it the deluge of liberal, pro-immigration bias it looked like it was going to be from the programme's website blurb? Or was I pleasantly surprised after all by an unexpected display of unadvertised balance? Did it back up Damian Thompson's contention that Sunday is the most liberal-biased programme on Radio 4? Finally, can I foam at the mouth yet?

Well, this morning's Sunday very faithfully followed the menu laid on on its website - as outlined by me in the last-but-one post - and it was, indeed, a Noah's flood-style deluge of biased BBC broadcasting. I most certainly was not pleasantly surprised and, yes, I can now foam at the mouth. (I've got a napkin at hand just in case). So here goes.

First up was Ed Stourton's visit to Luton to meet Rev Martin Burrell, "chaplain to the Gypsies, Travellers and Roma people of St Albans, to find out how the Romanian Roma community and the Church of England have been working together." 

This was exactly how I expected it to be. Rev Martin thinks the Romanian Roma  are "a very special group of people, highly marginalised". He's taught himself Roma, conducts services in Roma and helps his Roma flock out, such as by helping them get busking licences. The Roma like him: "Martin, a nice English guy who loves Roma people", said one Roma. Rev Martin ended by saying that he doesn't think the Roma need to learn anything from the host community; it's the host community that needs to learn from the Roma!

Yep, that's really what happened. Typical Sunday.

Then we were introduced to the panel, who did indeed appear throughout the programme - Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Dame Julia Neuberger and Douglas Murray. 

A pro-immigration bias was guaranteed by that guest selection - a two-against-one panel in favour of immigration. Again, that's Sunday for you.

Things unfolded much as I feared throughout their discussions. Rev Rose praised the benefits of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Britain and stood up for immigration; Rabbi Julia said immigration gave us lots of good things (including great food), but there were dark sides - namely the hostility of the host community. Only Douglas expressed scepticism, and aired the dark side as seen from the other side, raising Muslim antisemitism for example. (That rang a clear alarm bell with Ed.)

As might have been guessed in advance, Douglas found himself being rounded on  by the other two panelists. It was very much Douglas Murray v the rest.

What of my prediction that Edward Stourton wouldn't do much to redress this clear imbalance? Well, that was more than borne out by events. Ed interrupted and challenged Douglas in a way he did with neither of his other guests. His line of questioning was similarly unconcerned to redress the imbalance. He just didn't try really.

The debate did still flow but it was still a deeply biased one, thanks to Sunday. 

What else was there?

Well, there was Kevin Bocquet at Manchester Airport talking to a Muslim and a C&E chaplain there about how they after children, the vulnerable, etc, arriving in Immigration. Kevin was full of sympathy in his use of language for those turned back and those held in the "grim" pending house, worrying about their emotional states. "That's a sad place. That's a place where people's dreams of new life die", he said at one stage. No anti-immigration voices were heard here.

Then Ed interviewed Lib Dem Sarah Teather, who is leaving parliament in protest at her party's stance on immigration. (She doesn't think they are resisting the Tories enough).

He introduced the package by saying that David Cameron had been embarrassed by some in his own party who felt the Immigration Bill doesn't go far enough, but was also under attack from those who come from the opposite perspective. Needless to say, it was someone from the latter camp - Sarah Teather - we got to hear from here. This being Sunday, it was highly unlikely someone from the other camp would have been chosen for a sympathetic one-on-one interview.

Sarah did her thing, and Ed let her. She attacked the "worse and worse" rhetoric over immigration and the treatment of immigrants held in pending situations (such as Kevin had just described). 

Ed interviewed her as gently as could be, discussing her religious beliefs, asking her to imagine waving a magic wand to transform her party's immigration policy, etc. 

He did at one point ask if she could see that there might be an ethical case for a tougher immigration policy, but didn't bother putting any such case to her, or challenging her pro-immigration points - and she made plenty of pro-immigration points. 

As unchallenging an interview as it could be possible to immigration then, tilting the pro-liberal, pro-immigration bias of the programme beyond Leaning Tower of Pisa levels of tilt, dangerously. It's a shame the programme didn't collapse as a result but, no, on it went.

Still, there is one aspect of the immigration story that everyone agrees is "troubling", said Ed: Child abuse among immigrant Africans where there's a strong belief in witchcraft. The African churches were in the frame. Yes, it is a troubling story and every 'talking head' was full of understanding for the victims. 

However, what of its relevance to the debate at hand? Well, at one point - near the close of Trevor Barnes's report on the issue - Trevor said, in passing, that some people blame multiculturalism and a culture of political correctness for allowing it to go on here, but a pastor immediately dismissed this concern and the report ended without exploring it any further. 

Now, if this isn't evidence of biased BBC broadcasting at its most blatant, then I'm not sure what is. And it was all completely predictable.

Mad, rabid lunatics. On Dateline. Again.

Today's Dateline London didn't pleasantly surprise me, though its opening discussion on the Scottish independence debate was less predictable than might have been expected.

The panel was typical, balancing two figures - Greg Katz of the Associated Press and Arab journalist Mina al-Oraibi - from a vaguely centrist, non-partisan position with two very partisan out-and-out left-wingers, French journalist Agnès Poirier (above) and Polly Toynbee of The Guardian (not above). No right-wingers were invited to the party, yet again.

The central discussion on the Cameron-Hollande meeting and the EU took an inevitable course therefore, with Greg and Mina making careful, non-partisan points (none on Cameron's side it has to be said) and Agnès and Polly siding with Hollande and launching invective-filled diatribes against Cameron and Eurosceptic right-wingers. 

Agnès talked of "mad Eurosceptics" and Tory "lunatics" while Polly talked of Cameron's "mad backbenchers" and "rabidly Eurosceptic lunatics". (Who sounds "rabid" here though?)

Dateline London, as so often, setting the gold standard for BBC bias - and left-wing ranting.

Tomorrow morning...

Damian Thompson, editor of the Daily Telegraph's blogs, once wrote that Radio 4's Sunday programme "offers perhaps the most undiluted liberal bias to be found anywhere on the BBC". 

After paying close attention to it for some time now, I'm far from inclined to disagree with him.

Thus, I'm expecting a Noah's flood-style deluge of liberal bias on tomorrow's special edition of the programme on the highly-charged subject of 'Religion and Immigration'. 

My heart sank when I heard this was coming up, and reading the programme's website in advance hasn't exactly allayed my fears. 

It looks as if it's going to be a blatantly biased, pro-immigration edition of the programme, and just the kind of programme BBC types - Mark Thompson, Helen Boaden, Nick Robinson - claim is a thing of the biased past.

Well, we'll see.

For starters, it appears that Edward Stourton's three main guests, presumably appearing throughout the course of the programme, will be Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Dame Julia Neuberger and Douglas Murray. 

If so, a pro-immigration tilt will be guaranteed. 

Rev Rose, chaplain to Mr Speaker Bercow and H.M. the Queen, is very keen on immigration, recently saying that immigration had made British people less emotionally cold and blaming "plain ignorance" for opposition to it. Dame Julia is also strongly pro-immigration, and wants us all to welcome migrants with open arms. Only Douglas Murray will provide a contrasting sceptical voice on immigration. 

That makes it a classic biased BBC two-against-one discussion in favour of immigration.

The idea that Edward Stourton might intervene to seriously redress this imbalance strikes me as deeply improbable.

What else is the programme's website promising for tomorrow?

Well, Edward is going to Luton to meet Rev Martin Burrell, "chaplain to the Gypsies, Travellers and Roma people of St Albans, to find out how the Romanian Roma community and the Church of England have been working together." 

So we can expect another strongly pro-immigration voice there, ready (no doubt) to dismiss people's concerns about immigration and the Roma. 

Then there's former coalition minister Sarah Teather who will talk to Edward "to discuss why a month long Jesuit retreat helped her reach the decision to step down at the next election and how religion can inject humanity into the debate on immigration" - i.e. another strongly pro-immigration voice guaranteed to lay into opponents of immigration with a vengeance. 

And next?: "Every year thousands of immigrants travel to the UK to start a new life. Kevin Bocquet meets the chaplains of Manchester airport who minister to people from all over the world" - so, I think we can safely expect yet more sympathetic, pro-immigration voices to add to the...ahem...mix. 

The only other feature mentioned is a piece on child abuse "within the African church community" (i.e. Christians) and concerns about witchcraft related child abuse. "Trevor Barnes investigates what happens when religion and immigration go wrong", the blurb says. A downside to immigration, eh?

From this it certainly looks, doesn't it, as if Damian Thompson will again be proved completely correct in saying that Sunday "offers perhaps the most undiluted liberal bias to be found anywhere on the BBC"?

I won't foam at the mouth about it until I actually hear it though. Perhaps hope will triumph over experience and Sunday will go against type and behave like an allegedly even-handed BBC programme really ought to behave. Maybe, just maybe, the programme's pre-broadcast blurb is giving a seriously distorted take on what's actually coming up. 

I do hope so. I really do. I would really like to be pleasantly surprised by tomorrow's Sunday. 

The blame game

OK, back to Newsnight...

First last night's edition, which began with the flooding in Somerset. 

'Who's to blame?', was the question. 

Both presenter Emily Maitlis and reporter Zoe Conway had a pointed dig at UKIP and that councillor who said the floods were God's punishment for British government policy on homosexuality. (Yes, not one dig at the obscure UKIP councillor, but two.) 

Still, not even Newsnight could blame UKIP for the flooding. Instead, Zoe listed the main culprits, first and foremost the government - and, by that, was implied the present government, with minister Owen Paterson placed in the frame. 

Oddly, you could have blinked and missed the reference in Zoe's report to the Environment Agency - the quango public body run by ex-Labour minister Chris Smith (ahem, Baroness Morgan!). She mentioned them in passing as part of the (present) government. 

Many of you will be aware that the Environment Agency has been having a torrid time of it in recent days, and have been taking the heat from many quarters over the flooding. Their policy, taken many years ago (before Lord Smith), of stopping dredging the rivers is held by some in the area as being the main factor in causing the flooding.

Why did Zoe elide over the Environment Agency in mere seconds, and link it (rather misleadingly) to the present government? 

The others in Zoe's list of potential culprits were the RSPB (for promoting the interests of bird life above all things), farmers and rich landowners, sheep (pace George Monbiot) and local residents (for living there). Climate change got a mention too, naturally.

Being Newsnight under the editorship of ex-Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz, the obvious guest to the public, NFU rep Stephen Watkins, whose farm is now under water, just had to be put up against flame-throwing Guardian environmentalist George Monbiot. 

A potentially sensible, adult discussion, therefore, turned into the usual BBC ideological, heat-over-light nonsense. 

Poor Mr Watkins was making some sensible point about drainage only to be interrupted and talked over by George Monbiot, ramming home some ideological point. And George kept on interrupting.

Depressing.

Placemen and placewomen

There's a story that's leading the BBC News website at the moment - No 10 'ousting non-Tories from posts' - concerning Labour's Baroness Morgan complaints about being removed as chair of Ofsted. She's blaming David Cameron and accusing Number 10 of trying to stuff public bodies with Conservatives. 

You may feel that's a bit rich coming from a former close aide to Tony Blair, whose government massively accelerated the trend towards stuffing quangos with as many of your own party's supporters as possible, but that's politics for you! 

Oddly, though the BBC thinks it's the top story in the world at the moment, the Sky News website doesn't even think it's worth reporting. That's a big difference of opinion, agenda-wise. 

The BBC News website article is heavily biased towards Baroness Morgan and her Labour colleague Tristram Hunt, with very scant reporting of the Conservatives' side of the argument, and a use of sub-headlines and side quotes which reinforce that sense of bias. 

ITV News is covering the story, but isn't placing it so high up its new agenda. Plus its presentation is much more balanced and free from the taint of an apparent agenda, simply describing the story and providing a range of quotes. 

Incidentally, Conservative-supporting commentator Fraser Nelson at the Spectator has an interesting graph which, I suspect, is unlikely to appear on the BBC News website in the coming hours.

...a breakdown of public appointments of individuals declaring political activity from the Commissioner for Public Appointment’s Annual Reports. It shows party, as a percentage of those appointed who declare some political allegiance. (Many ex-Labour staffer have since declared themselves to be neutral).

Did the BBC complain much about that massive imbalance after Labour took office? I can't say I remember it (though I could just be being forgetful).

If you are listening to BBC radio or watching BBC TV today, please check if you are hearing the story put in this context by BBC reporters - even if they only mention in passing that the Labour Party has been accused of doing just what Baroness Morgan says the Conservatives are doing now (which isn't too much to ask, is it?).

Given that the BBC News website article contains no such context, I'm not holding my breath.

Update: I tested this out for myself on tonight's PM on Radio 4 and, as expected, Labour's behaviour from 1997 to 2010 wasn't brought up by either the presenter or the BBC reporter. It's as if this sort of placemanship and this entire issue has sprung out of nowhere and is something new, something peculiar to this Tory-led coalition - which is far from being the truth.

Maybe I could re-write that discussion (a few posts ago) on More or Less to meet this context:

Tim: Let's say you're a spokeswoman for the Labour Party BBC reporter and you would like to make the quango appointments row look as serious as possible for the government. How would you do that?

Charlotte: Oh, that's not that hard. First, I'd avoid talking about what happened before 2010.

Further Update (2/2): Well, one day later, and everyone's leading with this following Lib Dem minister David Laws's attack on his own boss, Michael Gove, over the removal of Baroness Morgan. 

How you doin'?

Irony piled upon irony. 

The BBC bods at The Big Questions decided not to show a close-up of the 'Jesus and Mo' T-shirts, worn by members of their audience, for fear of offending Muslims.

Maajid Nawaz, one of the programme's other guests, then tweeted a picture of one of the T-shirts in protest at what he saw as the BBC's craven censorship - and received death threats for his trouble. 

Newsnight (like Channel 4 News) then discussed the controversy and decided not to show the cartoon image of Mo, thus compounding the original offence caused to supporters of free speech.

Next up, Newswatch tackled the subject, noting more complaints at the BBC's cowardly-seeming refusal to show the cartoon image of Mo. And yet Newswatch itself opted not to show the image of Mo either!! 

All this is surely the kind of thing that satire was made for.

Here's some lovely Islamic art to end with, all depicting a certain person - and it ain't Jesus. 

Update: Janice Turner has written an interesting piece for The Times (£):

It was hard to watch Wednesday’s Newsnight without concluding that Britain has become a very strange place. We saw an artist so frightened for his life that his face and even his voice were disguised. We saw his hand sketching the Christian prophet in a crown of thorns, but forbidden to draw the Muslim one. An 11-minute film debated a drawing at the heart of a national controversy but at no point could we see it.

From this article, we get Newsnight editor Ian Katz's defence of his decision not to show Mo's image:

When challenged, Newsnight’s editor, Ian Katz, said that there was “no clear journalistic case to use” the cartoon, and that “describing” it was sufficient. (TV news will get a whole lot cheaper if we needn’t send a camera crew to war-ravaged Damascus: let’s just have it described by Jeremy Bowen.) Any depiction of Muhammad, Katz argued, “causes great offence to many, not just extremists” and to run it would be “journalistic machismo”.

Janice Turner makes what to me seems the main charge against the BBC (and Channel 4) here:

Mr Nawaz’s frustration is understandable. In banning the image, the BBC cast him as the faux-Muslim, his opponents as the rational, majority voice that must be heeded.

How can moderate Muslims be expected to speak out, if they are cast as apostates by national TV? Those who have not yet made up their minds will see angry offence as the default position. They hear it proclaimed by the deceptively reasonable Mohammed Shafiq, the Lib Dem, whose Ramadhan Foundation hosts homophobic speakers, and that hot-air balloon Mo Ansar, who argues that gender-divided public meetings are just like BBQs where guys cluster around the grill while wives chat with the kids. No biggie.

The title of her article? Show us Jesus & Mo. It’s the price of freedom 

Spinning

Still sticking to Thursday night's Newsnight like a limpet covered in super glue,  there was another 'cost of living crisis' report from the BBC's Andy Verity, based on a report by the IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies). 

Labour seized on Thursday's IFS report, saying that it showed that the coalition government was responsible for a dramatic fall in living standards, and Andy Verity's report gave an interpretation of the IFS's findings that began by offering a little bit of comfort for the government and then, step by step, took away that comfort, resulting in a take on the IFS's findings that was barely different to Labour's. (Former TUC chief economist) Ian Brinkley of the Work Foundation was on hand (as a 'talking head') to say that things are going to feel any better for those at the bottom end of the incomes scale. 

The following day the ONS (Office for National Statistics) published its own findings on the same subject (specifically wages), also noting the dramatic fall in living standards but saying that the 'key driver' in that decline was the fallout from the financial crisis of 2008-09, when Labour were in power, and that wage growth has been slowing for decades. Labour were less keen to trumpet that, for understandable reasons, and Newsnight failed to return to the issue on Friday night's edition, which is a shame.

Thankfully, Radio 4's More or Less gave a less loaded overview than Newsnight, and would even have dealt with the 2008-09 period if the ONS's website hadn't been down while they were doing their research into those figures. 

I also enjoyed More or Less's handy guide to the way the wages issue has been spun by the main parties. Here's the exchange between Tim Harford and Charlotte McDonald:

Tim: The Labour Party says real wages are falling while the government says they're rising, and I have a sneaking suspicion that both of them are, in their own narrow way, right. Now, Charlotte McDonald's here and, Charlotte, let me give you a task. Let's say you're a spokeswoman for the Labour Party and you would like to make falling living standards look as serious as possible. How would you do that?

Charlotte: Oh, that's not that hard. First, I'd avoid talking about what happened before 2010 because there was a massive banking crisis and recession and it's probably best not mentioned. But within that constraint, I'd pick a nice long time period and add up all the trouble over many years.

Tim: And what about inflation? Because these claims are all about whether earnings have kept pace with inflation, or not.

Charlotte: Well, obviously, I'd pick the RPI measure, which is higher than the CPI measure that is now more commonly used and I'd use wages before tax is deducted because that would make the problem look bigger. 

Tim: Right, so all of that would make things look as bad as they possibly could, and what conclusion would you reach? 

Charlotte: Well, that people are £1,600 worse off than at the time of the general election. Which by an astonishing coincidence is indeed the Labour Party's position!

Tim: OK. Now imagine you're speaking on behalf of the government. How would you make things look as rosy as possible?

Charlotte: Well, I'd compare April 2012 with April 2013. That's because wages in April 2013 were unusually high...

Tim: Why's that?

Charlotte: Well, you were discussing it earlier in the programme. The top rate of tax fell in April 2013 and so people delayed receiving bonuses. So there was an artificial tax-related blip.

Tim: OK, so that would increase apparent wage growth. What else would you do to make things look cheery?

Charlotte: I'd compare wages with the CPI measure of inflation, which was half a percentage point lower than the RPI over the year in question and I'd look at wages after tax because personal allowances have risen and that's increased some people's take-home pay. 

Tim: Genius! And what conclusion would you reach?

Charlotte: That for 90% of earners - all but the richest 10% - wages rose by more than inflation, and of course I wouldn't mention cuts to benefits or the self-employed. Which is pretty much the way the government has presented things!

Tim: Excellent work. A career as a spin doctor awaits!

I think that career would be more suited to Andy Verity perhaps. 

More or Less also included a detailed, entertaining, fair and exemplary analysis of the stats behind Labour's 50p top tax rate proposal - far better than anything Newsnight has done on the subject. If you haven't heard it, please give it a go (and if you don't like Ed Balls you'll be delighted to hear him described as being "wrong" about a key claim he made).

It's a shame More or Less is an irregular feature of the Radio 4 landscape, with only 15 editions last year. Newnight is usually on five nights a week nearly every week and yet isn't half as informative. (By my calculations, Newsnight is only 23.2% as informative as More or Less!) 

The solution is simple then: Scrap Newsnight and permanently replace it with More or Less.

'People power'?

Still sticking with Thursday night's Newsnight (which majored on the conviction of Foxy Knoxy), it's fair to say that some BBC reporters certainly get about...

The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse was, I thought, their man in unhappy Central Africa - or, given that he turned up in South Africa for Nelson Mandela's funeral, simply their man in Africa. However, then he turned up in Israel, speaking in an authoritative voice, about the death of Ariel Sharon. Now here he is on Newsnight, speaking as if he's an expert, in Ukraine, talking Ukrainian politics.

As one of those rare BBC watchers who gives a flying f*** (fish) about foreign affairs, I pronounce myself duly baffled by Ukrainian politics. Gabriel sounded no less baffled than me.

Rod Liddle in the Spectator, however, wonders "if we are getting a true picture of the mood within Ukraine on our excitable daily news programmes". Yes, there's fury in Kiev and Western Ukraine but "the country’s four largest cities, after Kiev, have been very quiet", he says.

Incidentally, recent rolls have found that between 45% and more than 50% of Ukrainians support the pro-western protests (Euromaidan), while a proportion between 42% and 50% are opposed. Most of Euromaidan’s support is concentrated in Kiev and western Ukraine. So not quite as clear cut as it would appear. 

The tendency of the BBC to become "excitable" when it comes to protests is marked. They also seem to assume that large numbers of visible protesters on the streets is necessarily the expression of the majority view of people of those countries (see their coverage of 'The Arab Spring' or anti-cuts/anti-war protests here). 

A classic example of a BBC reporter getting over-excited and making this deeply dodgy (and biased) assumption was highlighted by this week's Newswatch. In came on Sunday's News at Ten where the BBC's Steve Rosenberg reported from Kiev, saying:

During the night protesters besieged an exhibition centre near Independence Square. They'd received information that 200 police officers were stationed inside. They used fireworks and rocks to break in. Police retreated. Later citizens streamed into the captured building. The only exhibition on today was a display of people power.

Newswatch viewer Steve Woolf made the obvious point in reaction to the closing words of Steve Rosenberg's report:

Steve Rosenberg describing the take-over of the exhibition as 'people power' is value-laden reporting, as would be the phrase 'mob rule'. Surely an experienced reporter should be able to find neutral terms or does the BBC have a hidden agenda of supporting anti-government action in Ukraine?

The suggestion there, presumably, is that the BBC might be (a) faithfully reflecting official British foreign policy objectives (being Establishment poodles) or (b) that the BBC is faithfully reflecting its own pro-EU agenda, given that the anti-government protests are also strongly pro-EU. Or it could just be the case that the BBC is just being its usual excitable self about 'people power', protests and 'revolutions' - displaying its teenage student 'Woolfie Smith' side perhaps.

Or Steve Rosenberg might just have got carried away by events that night.


Update (20:16): Given all this, I was curious to test out how tonight's PM on Radio 4 would deal with the story. Would it seem to be taking sides against the Ukrainian government? Well, first we heard from a BBC reporter - Lyse Doucet no less - who gave us the views of an opposition activist, the Russian foreign minister and the head of NATO, who tweeted his disapproval of a Ukrainian government statement. Then, we heard from EU 'high representative' Baroness Ashton's spokeswoman, attacking the Ukrainian government, who gave a full-length interview to presenter Bridget Kendall. I'd describe that as leaning markedly towards the protesters' side.