Tag Archives: BBC

A new scandal for BBC political reporting: C***gate!

Fiction: the BBC reporting of the Rochdale by-election seems to have been tinged with the biases of the reporters, who referred to members of the public in the most derogatory ways possible.

The latest wheeze in politics seems to be ‘projection’ – claiming that somebody else is behaving inappropriately while behaving in exactly that inappropriate way oneself.

So the media at the Rochdale by-election count seem to have been keen to attack members of the public for rudeness while actually barging them out of the way and insulting them.

That is what the following video, featuring Newsnight editor Nicholas Watt, seems to be telling us:

Here’s The Canary‘s analysis of it:

We should take a dim view of this behaviour. The media exist to report the news, not to slant it towards their own political views while abusing the rest of us. For example, This Writer would never have described a member of the public in the terms used by the cameraman in the clip.

I look forward to hearing an explanation – possibly accompanied by resignations – and I hope we don’t have to wait long.

Chris Williamson schools timid BBC interviewer on the meaning of genocide

Talking straight: Chris Williamson.

Congratulations to former Labour MP Chris Williamson for putting a BBC interviewer straight about what’s going on in Gaza in no uncertain terms.

Speaking after fellow Workers’ Party politician George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election, Chris – who is a personal friend of This Site – expressed his horror that the Labour Party was “facilitating” and “supporting genocide” by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza.

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The interviewer – possibly at the behest of some unseen producer’s voice in his earpiece – moved to silence this shocking revelation of the facts, and… it did not go well for him:

Good for you Chris. You are absolutely right.

Nobody who supports genocide deserves any consideration from right-minded, decent people. And that includes the leaders and MPs of the Labour Party.


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BBC (and others?) distort reasons for Andy McDonald’s suspension. Why trust them?

Andy McDonald: according to the Labour Party, as quoted by the BBC, his call for peace between Israel and Palestine was “deeply offensive”. In what reversed reality?

The BBC has apologised publicly for distorting the reasons Keir Starmer had Andy McDonald’s Labour Party membership suspended.

He seems satisfied with this:

Others have been less accepting of the apology – if apology it was.

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What did Mr McDonald actually do, again? Here’s a report of it:

In his speech at a demonstration … Mr McDonald, a former shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn, said: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

The claim is that the words “From the River to the Sea” are anti-Semitic. This is nonsense. A Dutch court ruled that they are protected speech:

This Site reported on it, here, as follows:

The ruling was that the pro-Palestinian slogans … “are subject to various interpretations” and “relate to the state of Israel and possibly to people with Israeli citizenship, but do not relate to Jews because of their race or religion”.

Novara Media article I quoted also stated: “As to the claim that the slogan expresses a desire for Israel’s ‘destruction’, the historian of Palestine Maha Nassar has suggested that this eliminationist interpretation may derive from a post-six-day-war Israeli propaganda campaign that asserted that Palestinians wished to ‘throw Jews into the sea’.”

So the claim that the chant from which the words are taken is anti-Semitic may be Israeli propaganda.

But in any case, while Mr McDonald’s use of those particular words may have been a reference to that chant, it was not the chant itself.

He was in fact – and very clearly – making a call for peace between Israel and Palestine.

If a call for peace is described by Labour – or anyone – as “deeply offensive”, then we are all in dangerous territory indeed.


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Are these really the BBC’s new impartiality rules?

Is this for real?

And if it is, do you think these new rules are good ideas?

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#ICJ4Israel: the evidence is all in. Why did the BBC broadcast only Israel’s side? [STRONG LANGUAGE]

The International Court of Justice.

Western media organisations appear to have shown unacceptable bias in favour of Israel by choosing to broadcast only that country’s submissions to the International Court of Justice in response to being charged with genocide, and not those of South Africa.

Commentators on ‘X’ quickly had their say:

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If you want to know what Israel had to say, here it is. Apologies for the profanity in the comment but it’s indicative:

TL;DR? Try this:

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been trying to sway opinions by buying advertising space on Google to put forward lies about South Africa’s case:

South Africa could not have advanced a blood libel because nothing in its case suggested that Israel is using Christian (it has to be Christian) children’s blood to bake Passover bread – which is the only way a blood libel can be defined.

South Africa’s case, being unbroadcast by the western news networks, was a bit harder to locate – but here are a few reports on it:

The Israeli government tried to undermine the evidence with another false claim:

And, of course, while all this was going on, Israel’s slaughter of Gazans continued:

The International Court of Justice has now heard all the evidence and will make a decision on whether to institute provisional measures for Israel to stop military operations, allow in humanitarian aid, punish anyone in the military who has broken international laws of warfare, allow in international observers and to keep the court updated on how that’s going.

Let’s hope the decision comes before all of Gaza has been levelled.


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BBC actively contributes to Gaza genocide with dehumanising reports

Owen Jones has – unusually – minimised the BBC’s complicity in the victimisation of Palestinians involved in Israel’s current massacre in Gaza.

His latest social media video refers to a study of 600 BBC reports, showing how the language used adds depth to the stories of (for example) “murdered” Israeli “grandfathers”, while minimising our ability to empathise with Palestinians who were killed or even, simply, “lost their lives”.

There’s a list of the way the BBC used particular words at around the nine minute mark on this clip:

But it’s actually worse!

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has a web page devoted to “The 10 stages of genocide”. Visit it here.

Stage four is “dehumanisation”. The website refers to dehumanising language that is used to discourage people from identifying with or supporting a targeted group. Although its examples show that Tutsis were called “cockroaches” and Jews were called “vermin”, the use of language to increase sympathy with Israelis while denying it to Palestinians achieves the same effect.

I would also suggest that the BBC is currently instrumental in stage 10: “denial”. According to the website, “The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.” We have seen Israeli politicians denying that genocide is being committed in Gaza many times – having been provided with a platform to do so by the BBC, among others.

That’s complicity, in This Writer’s book.

People are saying they won’t vote for Labour or the Conservatives in this year’s general election because both parties have supported the genocide.

Should we be boycotting the BBC – until whoever insisted on this discrimination against Palestinians, and in favour of Israel’s government, is not only removed but charged with aiding and abetting genocide?

Dis-influencers are trying to say pro-Israel BBC is anti-Semitic. Really?

How sad for the BBC. Once again, it can’t do anything right.

Usually, Auntie is caught in the crossfire between Tories and left-wingers (we can’t count Labour among those any more), each of whom say the BBC is biased towards the other.

This time, the Beeb is quite clearly biased in favour of Israel – but mouthpieces for that country are determined that it is, in fact, not only opposed to that country but actually anti-Semitic.

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Here’s some evidence of pro-Israel bias – a news report that deliberately (it seems) mistranslates what a former Palestinian prisoner said in order to make Israel seems less brutal:

But look at what Israel’s apologists have to say about the BBC:

Someone’s not telling the truth here.

Who could the liars be?

Oh, that’s right… All of them.


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Israel and Gaza: a tale of two ‘frames’

Debate on the Israel/Gaza conflict seems to have polarised into two sides:

  • People who want you to think the October 7 attack on Israel happened for no reason and Hamas are entirely responsible for the slaughter of the innocents happening in Gaza as a result; and
  • People who want you to think it was an avoidable result of decades of occupation and oppression, by Israel, of Palestinian lands and people. Gaza itself was not occupied, but Israel was able to exert huge pressure on its people by walling it off and controlling its supplies of food, water and power – as we have seen from the results of those necessities being cut off.

Those sides are more aptly described as “frames”; your understanding of the nature of the conflict will vary, depending on which frame you use.

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This was evident in a debate on the conflict between unaffiliated UK peer Claire Fox and i columnist Andrew Fisher on the BBC’s Politics Live, which I have saved for posterity. Here it is:

Which frame do you think is right?


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BBC apologises for misleading on pro-Palestine demonstrations

Misleading report: these people were not voicing their support for Hamas, BBC.

I was going to do a piece about this but the BBC has – for once – got its correction out first!

In a report on October 16, a BBC newsreader read out the following words:

I would have pointed out that the demonstrations were not about backing Hamas in any way; thousands upon thousands of people across the UK had taken to the streets to show support for the two million innocent Palestinian people whose lives are threatened by Israeli war crimes – collective punishment (cutting off their food, water and power, and bombing innocent civilians in retribution for the attack by Hamas), and forcible transfer (ordering a million of them to move from northern Gaza to the south of the region).

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But I didn’t get the chance before the BBC broadcast a correction:

Methinks Auntie must have received quite a lot of complaints about that one!


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Jamie Driscoll: Independent candidate to be North East Mayor speaks on Radio 4

Jamie Driscoll is turning out to be a bit of a breakthrough spokesperson for alternatives to the ‘Establishment’ policies of the Tory/fascists and Keir Starmer’s party, that used to be Labour.

Last week he was invited to speak on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions – and made a lot of sense.

Here’s part of what he had to say:

The rest will be here.

Does it inspire you to look up other independents in your own constituency, to whom you might be encouraged to give your vote – rather than to the so-called Big Two or the Liberal Democrats, whose only policy seems to be to go into coalition with one of the others if they get a few seats in Parliament?


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