BBC unbiased reporting? I think not. | glynismillward189

Last Updated: September 7, 2015By

The appropriate phrase, it seems, is: “Oh, FFS!”

I was going to wait until the programme (Panorama BBC 8.30pm) had finished, but I can’t contain myself any longer.

It’s here if you want to watch it;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06bg6ty

This programme is nothing short of blatant propaganda ( Is John Ware the “investigative” reporter a tory I wonder?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/reporters/431061.stm

An attempt by the BBC to smear Corbyn and his politics; the same old drivel that the tory house papers have been churning out ad nauseum.

As for you John Ware, if the company you work for is having £145.50 of my hard earned cash when I have no choice in the matter, you had better bloody be impartial in your reporting.

Source: BBC unbiased reporting? I think not. | glynismillward189

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20 Comments

  1. Jeffery Davies September 8, 2015 at 5:46 am - Reply

    Did you think otherwise that the bbc would be impartial – it is just the tory mmouthpiece that should be ashamed of itself but then greedy people come to mind

  2. Rupert Mitchell (@rupert_rrl) September 8, 2015 at 7:21 am - Reply

    One wonders just how low such reporting can get; actually I dont

  3. HomerJS September 8, 2015 at 8:21 am - Reply

    Just watched it. John Ware came across as a cynical supporter of ‘the establishment’, but despite all his negativity I thought Jeremy Corbyn came over as a good guy who was a ray of sunshine in the murky world of modern politics.

  4. John Gainese September 8, 2015 at 9:08 am - Reply

    No real harm done, simply mischief making; we need to be aware that every stinking Tory and Cit Bankster com Corporate shill, who are living high on the Hob on our money ‘Welfare’ -after losing all of their Capital, wait for it – what a scream, doing what they obviously cannot do, Global Business; those wily Chinese, Afros, Pakistani/Indian etc. exactly as the Japanese did, are wiping the floor with the stupid swindling thieves.

    • Mike Sivier September 8, 2015 at 9:50 am - Reply

      I disagree. Every such report, using a platform that guarantees many people will pay attention and denying equal attention to the opposing view, is potentially devastating.

  5. John D Turner September 8, 2015 at 9:29 am - Reply

    I think the Corbynettes are going to have to get used to the fact that not everyone believes St Jeremy walks on water or else they will all be dead of apoplexy before Christmas.

    Sooner or later, someone is going to point out to the (mostly middle class) fans of Jeremy Corbyn that just because, some 50 years ago, a middle class, ex grammar school boy fancied playing the part of the working class rebel (with many fashionable causes) it does not make him, 50 years later, a tribune of the people. He is, and always will be, the standard bearer of Islington Man and Woman.

    One only has to look at the policies Corbyn has campaigned on in seeking votes from Labour Party’s mostly male, mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly public sector managerial employed selectorate to see how narrow his appeal will be outside of that bubble. For example, anyone concerned about the quality of public transport experienced by the many and not the few would be talking about bus not rail.

    And no one, concerned about equal opportunities for all post 18 would have launched his or her campaign by pledging to lift the burden of university fees off the offspring of mostly middle and upper parents. Only one third of young people go to university now, and no more would under a Corbyn led Government. Still, at least the Corbynettes would have the satisfaction of knowing they had campaigned for David Cameron’s son to go to Oxford University for free.

    I, for one, will not deliver any leaflets containing references to Corbyn’s free university tuition fees policy. The bright, shiny Corbynettes of the revivalist meetings are welcome to that privilege in the ward, one of the most deprived in England, in which I campaign. As it happens, me and mine come from that ward.

    In short, Corbyn is as much of a poseur in his way as Farage is in his. Alas, for the Corbynettes, the working class warm more to Farage, a graduate of Dulwich College, founded in 1617, than they do to Corbyn, who attended the private Castle House School and then Adams’ Grammar School, a selective boy’s school founded in 1656 by William Adams, a wealthy member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. No wonder Corbyn does not do personal.

    Incidentally, I went to a very good Comprehensive School and I do not care who knows it!

  6. Guy Ropes September 8, 2015 at 9:50 am - Reply

    How was Ware biased? He has to ask probing questions of a man who may be our Prime Minister. For someone interested in politics I thought it was a great programme.The other candidates have said or done little worth probing (or that would be interesting for an audience of BBC 1 at 8.30pm). The programme reported fairly on the size of the crowds which have flocked to be at his meetings. The sizes of the audiences were clearly shown. The man himself was given ample opportunity to explain decisions which he has made and it was refreshing that he didn’t try to avoid them. I think the programme came across as a very fair and convincing portrait of a man who would be King. What are you ashamed or worried about ? What makes you think that the slot was biased? The man has never made any secret of the fact that he is a traditional socialist – it’s the basis of his campaign. Good on him. Would that other so-called socialists were as truthful. I hope he wins and I hope he wins large. And I hope that the ‘Labour Party’ doesn’t choose to pack it’s toys, bugger off, and form another party more representative of ‘the people’. One thing which I did notice was the apparent lack of any ‘diversity’ at the Durham Gala. Maybe Labour aren’t trying hard enough in that neck of the woods.

    • Mike Sivier September 8, 2015 at 11:18 pm - Reply

      Who’s ashamed or worried? Why do you keep trying to attribute qualities to me that are not true?

    • John D Turner September 9, 2015 at 9:11 am - Reply

      Corbyn’s supporters are mostly white and middle class so you are spot on with regards to the matter of diversity. Corbyn himself is white, middle class and so identifies best with their obsessions, tics, dogma, concerns and the like. Or else why did he lead off with promising to make sure their offspring would not have to pay their university tuition fees.

      The vast majority of those who now go to university are from middle and higher income families. That will not change under a Corbyn led Government as he has not said that he would increase the overall number of university places and/or put serious effort into getting more working class youths to university admissions interviews. But then, we do not want to threaten the employment prospects of middle class youths nor suggest to the teaching profession that they are failing working class youths, do we? After all, Corbyn does have a leadership election to win.

      Corbyn’s flagship policy of free university tuition fees for all may best be summed up as “Vote Labour and send Cameron’s son to Oxford for free!” Somehow, I do not see that playing well in Labour’s Peoria.

      Labour is already unrepresentative of those for whom the party was founded, the working class, if anyone is unsure. Those of us within the party who are working class will not be leaving the party we love, but we will fight, fight and fight again to save it from the emotional spasms (with due apologies to Gaitskell and Bevan) displayed by many of the Corbynettes.

      One Corbynette turned up at a meeting I was at last week. He was eager to have his say, but deeply uninterested in campaigning on local issues. He was what Corbyn’s Labour Party may end up looking like, male, far left and obsessed with politics. Labour looks set to become even more irrelevant and out of touch to working class voters in 2020 than it was on May 7th 2015.

      Incidentally, what decisions has Corbyn made? He has spent 32 years as an MP doing and achieving nothing. A record which has been his strongest card in the leadership election, because one is at least able to consider the suitability of two of the three other candidates by, in part, looking at their respective records in government. Corbyn has carefully avoided being too closely associated with any Labour policies since 1983 and it shows, given the poor quality of many of his policy ideas.

      People’s Quantitive Easing will cause inflation, if only in the short term, and even Richard Murphy has now admitted that by saying a bit of inflation is not such a bad thing. It is, if you are on a fixed income, like say someone on social security and receiving a pension, state funded or otherwise. The quality of the BBC’s reporting on economic affairs has declined significantly since Peter Jay ceased to be Economics Editor of the BBC.

      Jay would have accepted that Murphy was putting PQE through the Fisher Equation and that the result of doing so would be support the argument that PQE runs a low risk of causing inflation. Jay then would have responded by asking about demand pull and cost push inflation which Keynsians take seriously and monetarists ignore. Murphy and, by extension, Corbyn have too cavalier an attitude towards demand pull and cost push inflation to be taken seriously when it comes to economic policy. And do not get me started on Corbyn, bizarrely lining up with IDS, when he contends that the issues needing addressing in the labour market are mostly supply side ones. May be I ought to pop my cv in the post to the BBC …

      • Mike Sivier September 9, 2015 at 9:22 am - Reply

        Maybe you should.

    • John D Turner September 9, 2015 at 10:18 am - Reply

      The percentage of the population of the North East of England, in which Durham is sited, deeming themselves to be white was 95.3%, according to the 2011 Census returns for that area.

      Moreover, the mining industry traditionally did not include many men of non white descent. A combination of strong unions and management practices may have made it difficult for non whites to obtain employment within the industry.

      One other area where I take issue with the Corbynettes is their rose tinted view of trades unions. After all, the TUC did side with the CBI to try to block Roy Jenkins’ Race Relations Bill which was, in part, drafted to tackle workplace racial discrimination. The first Act had excluded equal access to both housing and employment.

      Too many Corbynettes echo this line from a Corbyn campaign e-mail, “My commitment is to work every day to connect with all voters who should vote Labour but feel we have failed them.” Should vote Labour? And who says we have failed them? Corbyn is British management in a nutshell. Always preferring to do anything, but adopt an evidence based approach.

      With the trades unions neutered, the state of our economy and our society must be down to the people who manage it. Too often, they are white, male, middle class graduates who went straight from, say studying history into a graduate job i.e. one that pays them a lot of money, simply because they have a degree.

      There is, to be fair, a degree of diversity amongst that group. Diane Abbott, tutored by Simon Schama, graduated in history from Newnham College, Cambridge and then became an Administrative Trainee at the Home Office. What about her course fitted her for such a role, except that she went, like the bulk of her Civil Service contemporaries and forebears to Oxbridge?

      There is a decades old debate within the service about the need to have more professional managers rather than generalists from Oxbridge. A debate often echoed within the private and voluntary and community sectors as well as other parts of the public sector. Whilst the debate goes on, too much poor management persists within all three sectors to the detriment of most of those who work within them and who consume the goods and services they produce.

      Corbyn is too in thrall to the people who already make up the membership of the Labour Party (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/just-who-are-these-labour-party-members-who-will-be-choosing-the-new-leader-10409109.html) to be a real radical and challenge middle class vested interests. The Green Party is even more in thrall to its own middle class membership that one cannot take it seriously, despite the party having some interesting policies worthy of serious consideration and development.

      I would hazard a guess, Mike, that some of Corbyn’s Labour voting constituents are amongst the very people frustrating your efforts to get data out of DWP. 73.2% (44.3%) of those in work in Corbyn’s constituency, some 41,100 people, are employed in Soc 2010 major groups 1-3. 18.0% (10.3) of the total are managers, directors and senior officials; 35.8% (19.7%) work in professional occupations and 18.2% (14.1%) in associate professional and technical positions. The figures in brackets are for Great Britain as a whole. Cutting the data in other ways (and citing evidence of their complicity in social cleansing) just reinforces my point about the nature of Corbyn’s support.

      Corbyn has gone soft in the company of Islington Man and Woman. He did not take the Chiltern Hundreds to fight a by election on the issue of his opposition towards the Iraq War. I would have some respect for him, if he had.

      • Mike Sivier September 9, 2015 at 10:25 am - Reply

        Your concerns are interesting, although unlikely to affect the result of the leader election at this late stage.
        I wonder what you would have had him do differently.

        • John D Turner September 10, 2015 at 12:51 pm - Reply

          Not set out 50 years or so ago to be something he is not. The average voter will see Corbyn for what he is, a middle class poseur. He never was working class. And dressing and acting like a 1960s middle class youth’s idea of a working class rebel does not make him one. Someone ought to tell him that John Lennon was not one either.

          Corbyn’s speaking before he thinks approach to politics may endear him to some, but, given Labour was seen as not particularly patriotic in May then I think saying that he would give France a veto on when the British Government may or may not deploy its armed forces is hardly helpful.

          Whoever is declared leader on Saturday is going to have to step out of the bubble of the last three months or so, wherein the Labour Party has been speaking to itself, and spend a goodly amount of time studying which voters Labour lost, where the party lost them and the reasons why they were lost. The latest piece of research makes disturbing reading:

          http://www.conservativehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Lord-Ashcroft-Polls-PROJECT-RED-DAWN.pdf

          Corbyn’s hug a migrant approach is not a policy likely to find much favour, even amongst those who voted Labour in May.

          If Corbyn’s, I know next to nothing about Scottish politics, but this is why Labour lost in Scotland approach is replicated more widely then Labour may never recover. One lives in hope that his slick, well spun campaign (the best of the four?) to win the Labour Leadership election will give way to a lengthy period of asking, not telling the voters why they did not vote Labour. However, Corbyn’s track record to date would suggest otherwise.

          It is hard to imagine that Labour’s tolerated rebel, its licensed court jester will change the habits of a lifetime. He does seem very thin skinned when asked about the rightness of his actions over the last 40 years. His character has not really been tested during his revivalist meetings, but it will be, if he wins. And, if the Corbynettes are unhappy, some rabidly so, about a half hour Panorama programme then they are going to be seething by Christmas.

          And whilst writing blog posts about their feelings, commenting on Labour List and so on may give the Corbynettes a moment’s relief, if not pleasure at being amongst fellow CyberCorbyns, the only way they are going to help Corbyn, and he is going to need a lot of help, will be by stepping away from the Internet and going out campaigning, not on demos, but door to door, month in and month out, trying to persuade existing Labour voters, as much as lapsed Labour voters, as to why they should vote for New, New Labour.

          For myself, if Corbyn wins, I will no longer respond to requests by the party for donations. I may direct money to candidates with whom I agree and campaign for them, too. The Corbynettes think they know what is best for Labour. Fair enough, but they must now step up to the plate, dig deep and donate time and money to the party. For the Corbynettes, if Corbyn wins, the days of ‘principled’ sitting on the sidelines carping, offering criticism and advice will be over. Me? I look forward to swapping places with them.

          Incidentally, if anyone wants to buy a Breton Fisherman’s Hat, like that Corbyn wears, then I have one going spare. My brother wore it, when he was much younger and going through his John Lennon phase. These days, he works full time, four days on, four days off, in security. New Labour (and the EU’s Social Chapter) made a big difference to people in his position. I am still waiting to hear what, if anything, Corbyn thinks he will do for people like my brother.

          We are a Labour voting family, but the attitudes being displayed by too many of the Corbynettes and the CyberCorbyns, who seem to be taking pleasure out of aping the Cybernats, suggest that they not only think they know what motivates us to vote Labour, but that they are able to take our votes for granted. I am afraid that their circle the wagons response to last May indicates that they are deluded. And, therefore, self deceiving, if they think Corbyn is the answer to Labour’s efforts to win elections next May, let alone in 2020.

          I pray in aid of my analysis none other than George Orwell, a middle class, old Etonian who never shied away from saying that was what he was:

          “We have reached a stage when the very word ‘Socialism’ calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may win.”

          The quote is from The Road to Wigan Pier and many of the Corbynettes strikingly resemble Orwell’s list. Farage may well trump Corbyn, because, despite being, himself, very much a poseur he may well seem more genuine to the ukip voters that Labour needs to win back than Corbyn appears to be.

          Farage has the answer to Bevan’s question, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?” He cribbed if off his old party, “Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century” and now the 21st. Osborne gets it, Sturgeon gets it and Farage gets it. I am not sure if Corbyn and the Corbynettes even understand the question when Corbyn says, “My commitment is to work every day to connect with all voters who should vote Labour but feel we have failed them”. No one should assume that anyone should vote Labour nor automatically assume that, if they do not, then we have failed them. Bevan knew that, but then he was most definitely working class and a wily politician to boot …

  7. hayfords September 8, 2015 at 10:44 am - Reply

    I thought the program was pretty good and quite balanced. They interviewed plenty of Corbyn’s supporters and gave them reasonable air time. Personally, I would liked the programming to have been a lot tougher on Corbyn’s strange policies but that was not the point of the program. I am sure that there will be many programs on that topiç in the future. The programming was quite tame compared to what the reporting will be like following a Corbyn victory.

    • Mike Sivier September 8, 2015 at 11:17 pm - Reply

      See the responses of other commenters for answers to your assertions.

  8. John Vickers September 8, 2015 at 12:44 pm - Reply

    Once again the Tory servants (BBC) using our license fees to support their corrupt thieving masters. When reporters like John Ware come under threat who do they turn to for help… That would be the Trade Unions and people like JC…… when is he going to do an in depth report in to the Corrupt Tory Party and its links to Multi National Corporations who are pulling their strings……

  9. hilary772013 September 8, 2015 at 1:01 pm - Reply

    I am DISGUSTED that my money (TV licence) is going towards such utterly contemptible reporting.
    I watched it and ended up switching off.
    I don’t think it will have any effect on the people who have voted Corbyn and if he does win the leadership, he will prove the scum bbc wrong by leading with a conscience not his back pocket.
    What the hell has happened to the bbc who was world renown for its unbiased coverage?
    I know the bbc are puppets whose strings are being pulled by the Tories but what about the other channels are they Tory puppets as well?

  10. LilacWhispers September 8, 2015 at 3:49 pm - Reply

    I did try to complain about this to IPSO, but they said they couldn’t deal with it as it involved bias, and that I would have to complain directly to the BBC. I have, therefore, just sent the BBC the following complaint.

    “Most of this programme was biased against Jeremy Corbyn. John Ware kept dredging up news items from years ago and trying to put Jeremy in a bad light with them, even when he fully explained his involvement, or lack of it, in them. It was like listening to the Tory propaganda machine. There were 8 Blairite MPs speaking against him, and only 7 people speaking for him ie. 5 members of the public, a commediene, and Len McCluskey, Leader of Unite. This was continued this morning when the BBC News tried to again to undermine him with deliberately skewing his opinions on Iraq. The BBC used to be known for it’s accuracy, impartiality, honesty, and independence, and for providing reliable and unbiased information of relevance, range and depth, but alas, not any more. Now it just seems to be a mouthpiece for the Government and the far right.”

    They have responded saying my complaint has been submitted, and that they aim to reply to me within about 2 weeks, and that they will report my complaint to BBC staff by tomorrow so they are aware of the issue. They say their overnight report is one of the most widely read reports in the BBC and ensures my complaint reaches the right people quickly, including senior management.

    I realise that complaining to the BBC about the BBC is a bit like complaining about the police to the police, but there seem to be no other option.

    • LilacWhispers September 10, 2015 at 6:34 pm - Reply

      I have just received the following response from the BBC to my complaint. Wasn’t really much point writing to them in the first place, was there!

      “We have received a wide range of feedback about our coverage of this story. In order to use our TV licence fee resources efficiently, this response aims to answer the key concerns raised, but we apologise in advance if it doesn’t address your specific points in the manner you would prefer.

      In the midst of a hard-fought contest for the Labour leadership, Panorama set out to profile Jeremy Corbyn whose campaign has been the surprise package of the election so far.

      Mr Corbyn was the only one of the four leadership candidates who was interviewed at length for the programme. When criticisms were raised of his policies or his judgement he was given time to respond. The programme also carried extracts from speeches he has made and demonstrated quite clearly the extent of his support, and the enthusiasm of his many supporters. It is hard to think that any viewer could have come away from this programme without understanding the momentum and the passion that Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the leadership has generated.

      Naturally, the programme featured prominent Labour politicians who oppose Mr Corbyn’s candidacy: that seems a fair reflection of the way the leadership campaign has divided opinion within the party. And, when we looked for voices to speak in support of Mr Corbyn, we chose quite deliberately to interview people who are not mainstream politicians – people like the comedian Grainne Maguire – because, again, that seems a fair reflection of a campaign in which Jeremy Corbyn has drawn strength and support from outside the Labour ‘establishment’.

      By their nature, election campaigns for the leadership of political parties are moments of heightened sensitivity, so we knew that Panorama’s judgements about balance and fairness in making this film would be sharply scrutinised. We sought to be fair in the way we allocated time within the programme to reflect opinions supportive of Jeremy Corbyn and opposed to him; in allowing him to answer as fully as possible any criticisms that were raised; and in representing the extraordinary campaign that has developed around him.

      There is strong opposition within the Labour Party to the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as its potential leader. We were bound to represent that within our programme, alongside his strong support. In the round, we hope we got the balance right.

      Kind Regards

      BBC Complaints”

  11. mrmarcpc September 10, 2015 at 3:59 pm - Reply

    The BBC is government tv, despite all the tories rhetoric about it being too left wing, is nonsense and a smokescreen hiding the truth, they’ve always been right wing and that’s why the government will never get rid of it and so of course will not broadcast the truth about how many have suffered and died because of all the cuts, even though it’s supposed to be impartial and not shown to take sides but it has and should really come as no surprise, shame on them for reporting and telling the country lies when they should be reporting the full facts and telling us what is really going on, the current crisis that the BBC is going through is fully deserved so I guess that’s karma for you!

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