The Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[HanoiVillan]

'Alexa, what's the most BBC headline that has ever been?'

 

[peterms]

 

[bickster]

This was acceptable because someone disagreed with it, that's what balance means these days...

RIght wIng nutjob calling for people to riot. OOOOH Kaaaay!

Quote

The BBC will not take forward almost 600 complaints about Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill’s comment on Politics Live about Brexit riots.

O’Neill was a guest on the BBC Two political panel show on 27 September when he spoke about what “ordinary” Leave voters must be thinking about discussions on how to extend the Brexit deadline further.

“I am amazed that there haven’t been riots yet, that’s the most amazing thing to me,” he said.

Asked by guest host Adam Fleming whether he thought there will be riots, O’Neill (pictured) responded: “I think there should be.”

Fleming, the BBC’s Brussels correspondent, replied: “Should be? You’re urging people onto the streets to smash up Vodafone and McDonalds?”

Observer chief leader writer Sonia Sodha, also appearing on the show, asked O’Neill if he was “urging violence”

Clarifying his statement, O’Neill said: “When I look at the ‘Gilets Jaunes’, who have taken to the streets because Macron messed them around in relation to the eco tax and various other things, what I continually think is why have the British people been so patient?”

After further interjections from Fleming and Sodha, with the host pointing out “we all live in a world where you can’t go and smash up shops”, O’Neill went on: “I’m not talking about smashing up shops.

“There is a fine tradition in this country of radical protest… when people’s voices have been ignored. I think we have reached that level now.”

The BBC confirmed last week that 585 people complained that O’Neill’s comments were offensive or inappropriate.

A number of people took to social media to express their outrage over O’Neill’s comments after the show’s lunchtime broadcast.

Former chief crown prosecutor Nazir Afzal tweeted that O’Neill’s comments were “indefensible” and that he had “crossed the line”.

Labour MP David Lammy, who represents the constituency of Tottenham which was hit by riots in 2011, called O’Neill’s comments “the height of irresponsibility”.

In a response to the complaints, published on Friday, the BBC has now explained why Brexitcast co-host Fleming’s response was sufficient.

Press Gazette

[Chindie]

Meanwhile a literal handful of complaints leads to the censure of a presenter for stating the bleeding obvious.

Thars something rotten in that there Beeb.

[Dr_Pangloss]

Question Time is utterly unwatchable these days. It's been on a downward slope for a long time but Fiona Bruce has tipped it over the edge, she's absolutely ghastly and the audience has never been so full of degenerates.

[HanoiVillan]

 

[KentVillan]

On 14/10/2019 at 19:04, Dr_Pangloss said:

Question Time is utterly unwatchable these days. It's been on a downward slope for a long time but Fiona Bruce has tipped it over the edge, she's absolutely ghastly and the audience has never been so full of degenerates.

It's always been terrible, hasn't it? I can't remember a time when it was good. It's more rabid and extreme now, but it's never been a forum for intelligent discussion about anything.

[KentVillan]

Anyway, I came on this thread to say I've finally come round to the view that Laura Kuennsberg is a terrible, awful person.

I still don't buy into the idea that she's a secret Tory / Brexiteer / whatever.

I think she's just obsessed with getting scoops and pumping them out on to the airwaves as quickly as possible with her face all over the telly, and she's drifted into being the story, and editorialising everything, and not fact checking her sources. It's just hubris.

[choffer]

21 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Anyway, I came on this thread to say I've finally come round to the view that Laura Kuennsberg is a terrible, awful person.

I still don't buy into the idea that she's a secret Tory / Brexiteer / whatever.

I think she's just obsessed with getting scoops and pumping them out on to the airwaves as quickly as possible with her face all over the telly, and she's drifted into being the story, and editorialising everything, and not fact checking her sources. It's just hubris.

I still would. 

[Chindie]

Kuennsberg is undoubtedly a shitty journalist, but I'd wager my last penny she was a Tory as well.

[snowychap]

13 minutes ago, choffer said:

I still would.

[choffer]

Just now, snowychap said:

Believe me, I'm aware. I have a recurring dream that involves her and Jess Phillips but I'll save you the details.

Maybe I should be posting this in the mental health thread?

[snowychap]

3 minutes ago, choffer said:

Believe me, I'm aware. I have a recurring dream that involves her and Jess Phillips but I'll save you the details.

And I was just about to have lunch...

3 minutes ago, choffer said:

Maybe I should be posting this in the mental health thread?

Nah, people go in there looking for help and advice. There's no helping in this situation.

Edited October 18, 2019 by snowychap

[KentVillan]

Just now, choffer said:

Maybe I should be posting this in the mental health thread?

This could be hugely damaging to vulnerable minds, and I urge you to reconsider.

[HanoiVillan]

It seems that Kuenssberg isn't the only person in the BBC who doesn't understand the deal:

You have to feel for Simon from Waddington, who presumably asked a good-faith question to the national broadcaster expecting them to be able to explain something utterly basic about the deal accurately. The level of analysis is genuinely frequently higher on this football forum, and I don't think that's because we're all geniuses. 

[KentVillan]

18 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

You have to feel for Simon from Waddington, who presumably asked a good-faith question to the national broadcaster expecting them to be able to explain something utterly basic about the deal accurately. The level of analysis is genuinely frequently higher on this football forum, and I don't think that's because we're all geniuses. 

It's this kind of stuff that makes me think Kuenssberg is just sloppy with her fact checking and analysis rather than deliberately biased. There was little political benefit to making this claim - it's just a stupid thing to say.

[chrisp65]

26 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

It's this kind of stuff that makes me think Kuenssberg is just sloppy with her fact checking and analysis rather than deliberately biased. There was little political benefit to making this claim - it's just a stupid thing to say.

Wouldn’t a sloppy Kuenssberg sometimes have stories that benefitted the other parties that are available?

I could accept she just wasn’t very good at her job if sometimes she had a lazy story that either benefitted Labour or put the tories down where they shouldn’t have been. I’m not aware of that happening on a broadly 50/50 basis with tory puff pieces?
 

[snowychap]

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

a sloppy Kuenssberg

There's one for @choffer.

[KentVillan]

34 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Wouldn’t a sloppy Kuenssberg sometimes have stories that benefitted the other parties that are available?

I could accept she just wasn’t very good at her job if sometimes she had a lazy story that either benefitted Labour or put the tories down where they shouldn’t have been. I’m not aware of that happening on a broadly 50/50 basis with tory puff pieces?
 

She clearly has better connections with all the various Tory factions than with Corbyn's team. That isn't entirely her fault - Corbyn, Milne, Murray, etc. have been consciously distancing themselves from the "mainstream media" for a while. I think the situation would be different with a centrist Labour leader, or even with the McDonnell faction running the show. This kind of unrepresentative network is obviously not a great thing, but it's hardly unique to Kuenssberg. All lobby journos have their best sources.

Her flaw is that in a role where she is meant to present balanced coverage of political affairs, she chases the Kuenssberg Exclusive, and downplays anything that she can't take credit for, rather than just reporting the news. Since she gets a lot more of this info from the govt side (and indeed anti-Corbyn figures in the Labour party), it has the effect of doing what you describe. I don't think she's some kind of secret Tory operative.

Where there may be some real Tory bias / conspiracy is above her, where somebody is allowing this to continue unchallenged. All it would take is balancing her team and the coverage out with some better connected journos on the Corbyn / Labour side. I really don't think she is working hand-in-glove with Boris Johnson and co to subvert this country's politics, which is kind of what is being implied by a lot of people.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Anyway, I came on this thread to say I've finally come round to the view that Laura Kuennsberg is a terrible, awful person.

I still don't buy into the idea that she's a secret Tory / Brexiteer / whatever.

I think she's just obsessed with getting scoops and pumping them out on to the airwaves as quickly as possible with her face all over the telly, and she's drifted into being the story, and editorialising everything, and not fact checking her sources. It's just hubris.

Have you read all of what she wrote? Johnson still facing an almighty gamble

Quote

Boris Johnson and his team, who beat the odds in 2016, have overturned the conventional wisdom again.

The EU said they would not budge; their former Tory colleagues and the opposition colleagues said it was all a sham.

But after a breakneck set of negotiations, a deal's been struck and the rest of the continent gave way on the controversial backstop, the feature of the former agreement that did for Theresa May.

However, Mr Johnson had to cede some ground too, accepting that Northern Ireland will be treated differently to the rest of the UK and follow some EU rules and regulations, perhaps for good. 

You can read all about the differences between this deal and the last one here.

There's no question that, for some Brexit purists and unionists too, it's a breach of some of the promises he made to them.

Mrs May's deal wasn't dead after all, but there to be altered. Northern Ireland and the rest of the country will be still united theoretically, but more different in some practices.

Sticking to those vows was ultimately much less important to Number 10 than just getting a deal.

But it's made the next stage an almighty gamble, because there is resistance from the prime minister's allies as well as the opposition, who will deplore this deal.

Mr Johnson has put his name on the dotted line in Brussels with absolutely no guarantee that it will pass through Parliament.

Downing Street is well aware of that. But they concluded that it was better to strike the agreement, better to try, better to risk it, than do nothing. 

This prime minister might have made a career of taking risks, but this might be his most serious bet of all. 

Because to me that's kind of what you'd expect someone to do writing to a deadline - the Government says [this], the flip side is [that].

The tweet is misleading in that it selectively picks only one part of what she wrote.

I share the view that she's not always analytical enough, that she is probably unconsciously "establishment" biased by nature, but beyond that I don't get the rage around what she reports.