3 December 2007 @ 10:19AM >> BBC reporter Andrew Mynott exhibits the suicidal political correctness so common in the West. In describing the angry mobs that recently called for the execution of a teacher who committed the heinous crime of being present as her young students named a teddy bear Mohammed, Mynott characterizes the death mobs as “good natured.”

Yes, they were “good natured” as they marched for the execution of this teacher. (I’d hate to think of what a bad natured Jihadist mob would look like.)

Of course, according to the rules of Multicultural Hierarchy, using a negative term is a no-no when describing members of an Approved Group. So this reporter from the BBC is forced to tie himself into a logical pretzel to avoid violating the tenets of the Church of Multiculturalism.

I wonder how he would have described the mob if it had been his wife they wanted to kill.

18 June 2007 @ 8:07AM >> Last year, the British Broadcasting Corporation commissioned a report to investigate whether its coverage is biased. The report, which is now complete, has concluded that the BBC “failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff.”

London’s Telegraph reports:

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: “There is a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

On that last point, BBC executives are simply responding to (and perpetuating) the reality that has become clear in the last few years: the amount of respect shown to a given religion is directly proportional to the amount of violence members of that religion commit when they feel disrespected.

8 April 2007 @ 6:15PM >> London’s Telegraph reports on more bias at the BBC:

Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain’s forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out.

Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

I wonder if the BBC has ever cancelled a project because it might alienate people who support the war in Iraq.

Call me cynical, but for some reason, I doubt it.

23 October 2006 >> Britain’s Daily Mail reports that bigwigs at the BBC—which publicly claims to be objective—privately admit to being anything but:

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an ‘impartiality summit’ called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

[...]

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to ‘correct’, it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it ‘no moral weight’.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a ‘very senior news executive’, about the BBC’s pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: ‘The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.’

If I were British, I’d be demanding to know why my television tax was funding what BBC insiders now privately admit is essentially political propaganda.

19 October 2006 @ 8:22AM >> Reporters often spout noble-sounding platitudes when defending decisions to publish sensitive national security information, but at the BBC, “the public’s right to know” is apparently not absolute:

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

In Britain, anyone with a television must pay an involuntary tax—the “license fee”—in order to fund the BBC and other outlets. It’s too bad the BBC doesn’t think those taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.

25 April 2005 @ 11:00AM >> CBS News isn’t the only establishment media organization in the business of manufacturing news that fits its political agenda:

The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.

The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party’s head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC’s director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were “distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party”.

These included “Michael Howard is a liar”, “You can’t trust the Tories” and “You can only trust Tony Blair”.

[...]

Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a “completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling” and said that other parties’ meetings were being “observed”. However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair’s meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.

[...]

Last night a BBC spokesman said: “This is a completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling. The programme observes hecklers at other parties’ campaign meetings and not just the Conservatives. The hecklers were not under the direction of the BBC and their activities did not disrupt the meeting in any way. The incident at the Michael Howard meeting only plays a small part in the overall programme. However, we will be investigating the complaint very fully and will be replying in due course.”

Some people will undoubtedly argue that this is perfectly legitimate. If the program discusses political heckling, then why not do this? Let’s grant the BBC the benefit of the doubt and assume that, in the future, the network would have done something similar at a Tony Blair rally. Like an insurgent attack where cameras just happen to be in place to get the perfect shot, we have to ask whether the presence of the cameras create a different outcome merely by encouraging certain behavior. If that’s the case, then the BBC was complicit in generating news.

But the BBC went far beyond merely having cameras present. They apparently had cameras focused on the hecklers, and had the hecklers pre-wired with mics.

In some crowds, hecklers might lose their nerve. Maybe they shout a little less, or not at all, or clean up their language because they feel intimidated by those around them. Maybe potential hecklers sometimes recognize they have better things to do than engage in an infantile display of disapproval and decide not to show up in the first place. The BBC’s actions precluded all of those possibilities and virtually guaranteed that the hecklers would heckle, and would try to create the biggest spectacle possible while doing so. After all, the type of folks who make a hobby out of stifling the speech of others are probably starved for attention. The BBC came along gave each of them a chance to be a star.

Chalk it up as one more example of the establishment press creating news rather than reporting it. Like NBC’s bottle rockets under GM cars and CBS’s forged memos, I’m sure the BBC was convinced it was just reporting the truth. The trouble is, in each of those cases, the reporters thought the truth needed a little goose to get going. And that’s precisely when they stopped being reporters and started acting like Ashton Kutcher in some political version of Punk’d.

20 June 2004 @ 4:59PM >> First, his autobiography gets panned by The New York Times:

As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton’s much awaited new autobiography “My Life” more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words “In closing...”

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull—the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

Yikes. One would certainly expect a New York Times reviewer to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, especially one who finds much to praise about Clinton and his presidency—so maybe the book really is this bad. (Of course, that may depend on the precise meaning of “is.”)

It gets worse for poor Bubba. Apparently, he lost his cool during a yet-to-be-aired BBC interview:

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the [Monica Lewinsky] affair is genuine.

“As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant. It is something substantial and sustained,” said one BBC executive who viewed the interview footage. “It is memorable television which will give the public a different insight into the President’s character.”