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Bishop Hill Jun 14, 2009 BBC Politicians Sleaze It looks like a fraud against the British public from where I'm standing:
Kinnocks have six state pensions
Card fraud probe targets 300 detectives.
These chickens will come home to roost eventually.
Bishop Hill This is odd. The BBC has allowed someone to write an article that is not fully supportive of the catastrophic global warming thesis.
I wonder if they feel their bets need to be hedged, all of a sudden.
Bishop Hill Apr 15, 2009 BBC Full story at Harry's Place. If I remember correctly, Bowen was brought in precisely to deal with a perceived bias in the BBC's Middle East output.
This makes the Beeb look extraordinarily inept. Again.
Something to do with the unique way they are funded no doubt.
Bishop Hill Mar 29, 2009 BBC Civil liberties Justin Webb takes a lot of stick from the commenters at Biased BBC, who see him as the identikit BBC socialist propaganda-monger. I've never been entirely sure about this, particularly since he took up the post of America editor.
Listen to him being interviewed on Excess Baggage, where he was punting his new book about America under Obama. He makes a very eloquent defence of the undiscovered middle of America and repeats the observation that he made some time ago that America is a very gentle place, at least outside of a few city centres. 
He tells the story of Virgin, Utah where there is a city ordinance decreeing that everyone must own a gun, and states that he thinks that Virgin is likely to be a very ordered and decent place (or something to that effect - I forget his exact words). In fact, throughout the interview he repeats the observation of the gentleness of American society. When you think about it, this is a remarkable thing for a BBC journalist to say - it is surely the antithesis of BBC-think to make a connection between gun ownership and peaceful coexistence, no matter whether you think he's right or not.
I can't help but wonder if Webb has gone to America and turned into a second amendment advocate - if so, he surely can't say so - it would surely be the end of his career - but he seems to feel able to point to places like Virgin and quietly point out that it's not quite like we have been lead to believe.
It's an interesting observation and a useful contribution to the debate on the shambles that is British society. Credit where credit's due.
Bishop Hill Mar 18, 2009 BBC There is a derogation from the Freedom of Information Act created specifically for the BBC. When the new bill was wending its way through Parliament, the BBC and Channel 4 complained to the Home Office that they would not be able to do their job properly if covered by the Act. They argued that, if for example their journalistic sources were compromised, they would no longer be able to collect important news stories. They didn't mention Robert Peston acting as a receptacle every time a minister wanted to make a diversionary leak, but that kind of activity would also presumably have been threatened were the corporation to fall under the Act.
In the event, a compromise was reached and the derogation was written into the act, exempting the BBC from its terms but only regarding "journalistic and artistic" activities. At the time it was agreed that this would cover all of the day-to-day activities of the BBC. See here.
With depressing predictability, the BBC, those lovers of freedom of information, have now set about expanding the scope of the derogation as far as they possibly can. The meaning of "journalistic purposes" has been expanded to cover editorial policy, reviews of editorial and journalistic performance and a host of other activities that can't possibly have been the original intention of Parliament. The Information Commissioner (ICO) has sat back and accepted all this.
Even where an activity is known not to be covered by the derogation, the BBC routinely claims that it is. The ICO has managed to show his teeth on the subject of the BBC's finances, which he has ruled are not covered by the derogation. And does the BBC care? Take a look at some of the decisions of the Information Commissioner.
I could go on, but I think you get the drift by now. You have to remember that decisions of the Information Commissioner carry the full force of law: they are equivalent to the decision of a judge. So for the BBC to continually argue that financial information it holds is not covered by the Act can only be described as contempt of court. The powers that be at the BBC clearly feel that the law can safely be flouted, and continually so, without the slightest fear of any comeback.
And meanwhile the Information Commissioner doesn't even raise a squeak of complaint. And why not, we might wonder? It's speculation, but perhaps the BBC and the ICO are both happy with the arrangement since both sides can keep themselves comfortably employed, bloated pensions fed by the poor unsuspecting licence fee payer and the poor unsuspecting taxpayer that they both wilfully ignore.
Bishop Hill Mar 17, 2009 BBC When the BBC refused to get involved with the DEC appeal for Gaza, I noted the possibility that this could be an arse-covering exercise ahead of their being forced to publish the Balen report into biased reporting of the Palestine conflict.
There's more of the same reported in the Graun, which carries the news that the corporation has now refused to broadcast a controversial play about the history of the state of Israel.
In an email seen by the Guardian, Radio 4's drama commissioning editor Jeremy Howe said that he and Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer thought Churchill's play was a "brilliant piece".
But Howe wrote: "It is a no, I am afraid. Both Mark [Damazer, Radio 4 controller] and I think it is a brilliant piece, but after discussing it with editorial policy we have decided we cannot run with it on the grounds of impartiality – I think it would be nearly impossible to run a drama that counters Caryl Churchill's view. Having debated long and hard we have decided we can't do Seven Jewish Children."
Bishop Hill Feb 13, 2009 BBC The BBC has responded to the complaint made by Tony at Harmless Sky over their splicing of Obama's inauguration speech.
Risibly, they are claiming that the splice was obvious and that it didn't change the meaning, despite it already having been shown that the splices are inaudible and that it clearly did change the meaning.
The conclusions are quite clear. You cannot be sure that anything you read or hear on the BBC is a faithful representation of what happened. They don't care about their reputation, presumably because they don't have to - it's because of the unique way they are funded.
You still have to pay for them though.
Bishop Hill Feb 11, 2009 BBC The House of Lords decision on the Balen report is here.
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Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers: I am satisfied that the Tribunal had jurisdiction to make the decision that it did. I would allow this appeal.
Lord Hoffmann:I would dismiss the appeal.
Lord Hope of Craighead:I would base my agreement with their conclusion primarily on the way I think the Act should be read and, in particular, the effect of listing the BBC by name in the Schedule. In my opinion this is, in itself, a sufficient reason for allowing the appeal.
Baroness Hale of Richmond: I too would dismiss this appeal.
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury: I, too, would allow Mr Sugar’s appeal.
3:2 to allow the appeal. Ya beauty!
Bishop Hill Feb 8, 2009 BBC The BBC has been caught "spicing up" its news coverage again, this time editing one of the Lindsey oil refinery strikers' comments to make him appear racist. Coming so soon after the revelation that the corporation also edited Obama's inauguration speech to make it appear more supportive of the case for global warming, slice and dice journalism at the Beeb starts to look less like a bug and more like a feature.
Bishop Hill EU Referendum: Why would the Telegraph report a heatwave that killed 19 people in Australia, but not an ice storm that killed 42 in the USA?
The BBC and the WMO seem to have missed the ice storm too. Funny that.
There was also a snowstorm in the United Arab Emirates, which I haven't seen reported over here.
Bishop Hill Jan 27, 2009 BBC TonyN's sterling work on the BBC's egregious splicing of President Obama's inauguration speech continues to attract a great deal of attention, with the interest now crossing the Atlantic to large-readership sites like Junk Science. As well as attention from political bloggers and science bloggers, the furore has now attracted the attention of journalism writers.
One example is the Stinky Journalism site, which has been following the story up on a couple of fronts. Firstly they've gone direct to the BBC, asking if there was an intention to issue a correction.
Don't be silly boys, this is the BBC we're talking about.
They've also sent the evidence ("fauxdio" evidence as they amusingly put it) off to a number of specialists in journalistic ethics in the USA.
Suffice it to say they were not generally impressed. As one of them put it
By altering the context, the meaning itself was altered. A coherent claim about the environment cobbling together statements that were not designed to be approached in this way. Arguably, if Obama had wanted to highlight the environment he would have done so. He didn't. Both of your ethical objections are correct
The story now appears to be developing legs on the other side of the Atlantic, for example here, and as it spreads the BBC's credibility as a news-gathering organisation sinks lower and lower.
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The Guardian has now picked up on the story too. The more the merrier!
Bishop Hill Jan 27, 2009 BBC Keith Dovkants at This is London also picks up on the Balen Report angle to the BBC's decision on the Gaza appeal.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the BBC is a top secret document that could explain a great deal about the corporation's decision to boycott the aid appeal for Gaza. It is called the Balen Report and has been seen only by a small number of individuals at the very top of the BBC. They commissioned Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, to investigate allegations that the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was biased.
Bishop Hill Jan 26, 2009 BBC The Guardian has picked up on the connection I made to between the Balen report and the BBC's actions over the DEC Gaza appeal.
Sources within the BBC have questioned whether its internal Balen report into its Middle East coverage, which the corporation has refused to publish, has influenced its decision on the DEC appeal. An appeal to the House of Lords to force the BBC to publish the report is currently ongoing.
Bishop Hill Jan 24, 2009 BBC There's a lot of todo about the BBC's backing off from the idea of holding a fundraising appeal for Gaza. Liberal Conspiracy objects, as does Iain Dale. David Vance reckons it's all done for show anyway.The Beeb's big boss, Mark Thompson, spins the rather unconvincing line that it's because they can't be sure the aid can actually be delivered on the ground. Pull the other one Mark.
It looks to me as if people are missing a trick here. The BBC's BBC's decision has been complicated hugely by the imminent publishing of the judgement by the House of Lords' on the Balen Report into an alleged lack of even-handedness in the corporation's reporting of the conflict in the Middle East over the years. If, as is widely expected, the Lords rule that editorial documents are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act's exemption for data held for journalistic purposes, they will be forced to publish the Balen report in fairly short order. If, as is also expected, the Balen report documents the reality of a systematic BBC bias against Israel, then the implications for the Beeb will be explosive, and it is likely that heads would have to roll.
You can imagine how much worse it will be for the top brass if the BBC has just days before run a fundraising appeal for the people in Gaza.
It may even be that the BBC has had some inkling of the contents of the Lords' judgement and that their behaviour now is actually a case of creating some form of defence - "Look at all the criticism we took for not doing a Gaza appeal! Biased? Us?"
Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.
Bishop Hill Jan 21, 2009 BBC Harmless Sky notices the BBC splicing Obama's inauguration speech to interesting effect.
