Skip to main content

BBC Bias and Charter Violation in the past month

The Charter charges the BBC with having a higher standard of journalism than its competitors and performing in depth analyses. 

This, albeit weak, directive means that the BBC must not use anecdote to attack real data and it must not undermine one side of the debate by omitting it from coverage.  As will be seen below, the BBC is routinely violating the Charter and the best solution is to trim down BBC News broadcasting so that it deals in mature, fact based reporting.

The most outrageous example of Charter breaking occurred after the publication of the "Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: The Report" where the data from the Report was suppressed and countered with anecdotal reports from activists.  The BBC behaved like a political organisation which, when faced with a carefully researched truth, responds with anecdotes and personal attacks.  It cannot be the role of the BBC to campaign on any issue.  It has even failed to use the current name of the "Black Lives Matter" movement which has been switched back to the original meaning of "BLM": the Black Liberation Movement (a Maoist group).

The BBC has been abusing its position as a National Broadcaster by openly campaigning.  In both the BLM and Reclaim the Streets protests the BBC failed to present the real data for the UK with any prominence.  If, like me, you ask people how many black people die in UK police custody every year they generally give an answer between 10 and 50.  The correct answer is 3 in the 2019/2020 period (out of 18 deaths in c. 900,000 arrests).

Source: Deaths following police conduct

This was a high figure, most years 1 or 0 black people die in police custody and not as a result of police violence.

Click on image to view.

In the case of the Reclaim the Streets protests only about 14 women had been murdered by a stranger on the streets on Britain in 2019 out of 671 homicides in the year:


Source ONS
Yet the BBC acted as a campaigning organisation throwing petrol on the fires of protest.

The BBC also reported the balance of trade between the UK and the EU for the first time since 2016.  The poor figures released for January were taken to be a disaster for the UK.  The BBC pointedly suppressed any reference to historical data.

Or any note that what is a bad trade imbalance in 2021 must have been a bad trade imbalance in 2016.  We see the normal BBC method of putting anecdotal evidence (one month's figures) as the news whilst suppressing the context.

The BBC reporting of the WHO study of the origins of COVID19 suppressed important information such as their principle scientific advisor, Dr Daszak, being deeply involved in the finance and running of experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the fact that most of the earlier SARS outbreaks had come from Chinese labs and that the WHO had warned that China had a problem with poor biosafety:

“The possibility that a SARS outbreak could occur following a laboratory accident is a risk of considerable importance, given the relatively large number of laboratories currently conducting research using the SARS-CoV or retaining specimens from SARS patients. These laboratories currently represent the greatest threat for renewed SARS-CoV transmission through accidental exposure associated with breaches in laboratory biosafety." WHO 2003

Yet the BBC happily passed on the message from the WHO in China that a lab escape was a remote possibility.  Again suppressing the context and prioritising an anecdotal version of the news.  This was very much against the public interest given that before the COVID19 outbreak the risk of lab escapes of genetically modified viruses from virological laboratories was a major issue. (See Lipsitch (2014)).

Something must be done about the BBC.  It should employ quality, impartial researchers to provide a balanced background to stories and must not campaign.  The BBC has settled into a pattern of attempting to generate a moral panic every week or two when the role of a National Broadcaster must be to consider the news in a mature and calm fashion.

The solution to the rogue BBC is to trim its news output so that it is limited to mature, well researched, factual news broadcasting, four or five times a day. The 24hr News Channel should be terminated, BBC Global output should be handed to a branch of the Foreign Office and the BBC trimmed back to two channels.

1/4/2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

"The Falklands have always been Argentine" is taught to every Argentine child as a matter of faith.  What was Argentina during the time when it "always" possessed Las Malvinas?  In this article I will trace the history of Argentina in the context of its physical and political relationship with "Las Malvinas", the Falkland Islands.  The Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands dates from a brief episode in 1831-32 so it is like Canada claiming the USA despite two centuries of separate development. This might sound like ancient history but Argentina has gone to war for this ancient claim so the following article is well worth reading. For a summary of the legal case see: Las Malvinas: The Legal Case Argentina traces its origins to Spanish South America when it was part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio del Plata.  The Falklands lay off the Viceroyalty of Peru, controlled by the Captain General of Chile.  In 1810 the Falklands were far from the geographical b
35 comments
Read more

Practical Idealism by Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi

Coudenhove-Kalergi was a pioneer of European integration. He was the founder and President for 49 years of the Paneuropean Union. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer, and huge landowner family in Tokyo. His "Pan-Europa" was published in 1923 and contained a membership form for the Pan-Europa movement. Coudenhove-Kalergi's movement held its first Congress in Vienna in 1926. In 1927 the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand was elected honorary president.  Personalities attending included: Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud. Figures who later became central to founding the EU, such as Konrad Adenauer became members . His basic idea was that democracy was a transitional stage that leads to rule by a new aristocracy that is largely taken from the Jewish "master race" (Kalergi's terminology). His movement was reviled by Hitler and H
1 comment
Read more

Membership of the EU: pros and cons

5th December 2013, update May 2016 Nigel Lawson, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer,  recently criticised the UK membership of the EU , the media has covered his mainstream view as if he is a bad boy starting a fight in the school playground, but is he right about the EU? What has changed that makes EU membership a burning issue?  What has changed is that the 19 countries of the Eurozone are now seeking political union to escape their financial problems.   Seven further EU countries have signed up to join the Euro but the British and Danish have opted out.  The EU is rapidly becoming two blocks - the 26 and Britain and Denmark.   Lawson's fear was that if Britain stays in the EU it will be isolated and dominated by a Eurozone bloc that uses "unified representation of the euro area" , so acting like a single country which controls 90% of the vote in the EU with no vetoes available to the UK in most decisions.  The full plans for Eurozone political union ( EMU Stage
15 comments
Read more