Another BBC week; cowardice, amateurism, bullying, bias

    The BBC Radio 4 Today programme reported on Saturday morning on a “candid” and “honest” interview Prime Minister Gordon Brown had given the Guardian newspaper.

Bias, amateurism

Forgive me being so sensitive about these things, but nobody who has ever heard of standards in journalism could possibly fall into such a schoolboy trap, could they? Probably the Guardian, and definitely 10, Downing Street would love to have the interview described in such terms, but surely the BBC would stop short of making this basic dive into making a value judgment? No chance.

Those of us who have followed Gordon Brown’s career know that he hasn’t got a “candid” or “honest” bone in his body. Brown has shown in his career that he is an arrogant, charmless, bully, whose incompetence was masked by bluster, which most journalists were unable to penetrate.

How things have changed. Now all this is common knowledge. The Prime Minister’s handlers sought to use the Guardian to try and pretend to the voters Brown has a more human side. By describing the interview as “candid”, the BBC was doing 10, Downing Street’s public relations work for it. To make matters worse, Today presenter and lefty fool Ed Stourton interviewed the BBC reporter who used “candid” and “honest” about his story, and simply accepted the terms. How could an old hand like Stourton make such a crass error? Probably because he doesn’t know any better.

I telephoned the BBC at about 7.15, but as far as I could tell, later in the day the BBC’s news bulletins were still doing Brown’s PR work for him, describing the interview as “candid” etc.

Cowardly bullying

Earlier in the week, the BBC treated us to its cowardly bully side, with its slanted reporting of the so-called racist episode in Belfast. “Racist” is a term which once used immediately condemns the accused as guilty, so it should be used with much caution. I sent this email to Radio5 Live, headed “You don’t know what racism is”. (Five Live had a phone-in on racism, spurred by the ill-treatment of Romanians in Belfast.)

“I’m listening to your phone in on the Northern Ireland aggravation. If you are going to discuss racism, firstly you should demonstrate that you know what racism is. The participants in Northern Ireland, the locals and the Romanians, are clearly Caucasian, so whatever the problem is, it can’t be racism. Both sides are the same race. It must be cultural. So let us hear the arguments. Don’t use harsh words like racism, which automatically put one side on the defensive. By not defining your terms you are not serving the public’s right to understand what all the fuss is about.”

More wasted time for sure, but it is outrageous is it not, when the BBC uses over-the-top terms like racism to stop all discussion of an issue. The rights and wrongs of the dispute in Belfast were squeezed out by shouts of “racism”, inevitably echoed by a brown-nosing Labour Party MP during Prime Minister’s Questions, and our great Prime Minister. Doesn’t the intervention of IRA leader Martin McGuiness on the side of the Romanians’ human rights suggest that perhaps we weren’t being told the whole truth?

Craven bias

Then there was the report on climate change, purporting to be able to predict the weather in 70 years time. The changes in the weather all sounded as though things would actually be better, but the BBC stuck to its house line about global warming. We are all going to die, and it’s all our fault. The sooner we abandon our cars and stop flying anywhere the better.

No contrary opinions shall be heard, unless first traduced as charlatans and “climate change deniers”. No matter that if you examine the science, no link has been established between emissions of the live-giving gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate change. No matter that the world has been cooling since 1998, and ice in the Arctic and Antarctica is on the increase, not decrease. No matter that the “solutions” to climate change will ruin our economy, and have no impact on the weather. And that the predictions of a warming climate come from computer models, which are loaded with evidence designed to produce the answer the climate maniacs want to hear. These powerful computer models also failed to predict the cooling since 1998. (If you doubt my word, look at “The Week That Was” – www.sepp.org).

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