BBC Bias

Who’s Watching You?

BBC Bias, Civil liberties, Uncategorized
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The last two weeks we’ve been watching the BBC2 documentary series Who’s Watching You? about how Britain has become “one of the most watched places in the world”. For anybody paying attention to privacy issues there was little news, but what it did well was providing concrete examples of what for most of us is a fairly abstract fear.

The loss of our privacy through ubiquitous surveillance is one of the greatest hidden issues of the early twentyfirst century. It’s not just that new technology has made it easier to spy on us, but the way in which both government and business have embraced this technology, especially in the last decade or so, without too much public protest. For most of us this remains a theoretical issue unless it interferes with our daily lives. Which is why speed cameras are so much more loathed than CCTV cameras: one gets you fined, the other doesn’t. (And why there are so many fewer speeding cameras than CCTV cameras: one gets voters mad, the other doesn’t). What the programme did well was showing how this hidden surveillance could and did impinge on the lives of ordinary, middleclass people. What it did less well was taken a moral stand beyond “it’s complicated”.

One example I noticed in the second episode was that of the AA driver sacked for “making fraudelous use of company time”. The company’s timekeeping software reported that he had signed off too late after helping a customer, claiming a few minutes more than he needed, as well as arriving back from lunch three minutes late. That was enough for his managers to go over his record with a fine tooth comb, finding more “irregularities” and finally sacking him over it. He took his case to tribunal and won, as he had been smart enough to keep his own records. The narrator then went into his spiel about how this showed that surveillance can get you the cold facts, but not the context and that just relying on these facts can lead to the wrong conclusions. What he misses is a much more important point: that employees shouldn’t be subject to this sort of time management system in the first place.

The strictly impartial BBC, operating on behalf of the Israeli government

BBC Bias, Israel/Palestine, UK politics
Published on 2 Comments on The strictly impartial BBC, operating on behalf of the Israeli government

To update an old Young Ones joke. As Palau posted, the current BBC’s director general is quite cozy with the Israeli government, which of course did not influence the decision to remain impartial by not broadcasting an appeal for the IDF’s victims. Now Ellis Sharp reminds us that he has been impartial towards Israel from the start of his tenure when in 2004 the then Middle East correspondent was transferred to Africa:

Orla Guerin’s offence was to run stories not just about the grief of Israeli families who had lost family members to suicide bombers but also stories about the grief and suffering of ordinary Palestinian families. As one blogger put it at the time:


Guerin’s real sin, of course, is to show some sympathy for the victims of the Israeli bombing (that’s enough to brand her a “terrorist”).

Within days of Thompson meeting Sharon, Guerin was sacked as BBC TV Middle East correspondent and transferred to Africa.

As you’ll remember, Thompson became director general because his predecessor had to resign after the BBC got caught on a technicality and was keelhauled for it in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry. Thompson was brought in as very much a pair of safe hands who wouldn’t rock the boat, follow the establishment line ever more so than his predecessors and not embarass the government. Despite this, there have been several scandals during his tenure, from running unwinnable contests to sexing up a documentary about the royal family to of course the Ross/Brands clusterfuck. This seemed to have made the BBC gunshy, prone to overreact and moreover, seemed to have lost the corporation its political nous.

So while the BBC has always been careful to not upset Israel or its zionist cheerleaders in the UK, always had an internal bias towards Israel, it used to be much more subtle about this. Even five years ago, I don’t think it would’ve been so blatant as to refuse air time to a genuinely humanitarian appeal for the inhabitants of Gaza. But because the corporation has been so battered by the same politicians and tabloids that are such great friends of Israel as well, because it has been caught with its pants down so often lately, it has overreacted. And now even those people who are noramlly the first to accuse it of a pro-Palestinian bias are disgusted.

Poor Auntie Beeb. It just cannot win.

More Morbid Fear Of Melanie Phillips

BBC Bias, bigotry, Gaza, Manufacturing consent, Media, Video
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Here’s Tony Benn, (nee Viscount Stansgate), the last doughty remnant of the Christian socialists, giving a BBC newsdroid merry hell on the subject of moral cowardice and giving in to Israeli bullying:

He’s right, they’re scared – though I must admit if I had that shrieking Zionist harpy Phillips in my ear every five minutes I’d be scared too. I’d also change my phone number.

Facteiousness aside very little has been made – as yet – of the current BBC Director General, Mark Thompson relationship with the Israeli government or of his 2005 visit to Israel at governmental expense.

This cosying-up to a foreign leadership (and such a politically rabid one as that) is something a BBC DG has never done before, presumably on the grounds that it would compromise BBC impartiality and neutrality.

Of course the cosy tete a tetes he had with Ariel Sharon and sundry other Israeli political notables, those couldn’t possibly affect his impartiality or appear to impute an appearance of impropriety at all, no sir.

Maintaining Impartiality

BBC Bias, Manufacturing consent, Media, Merkins..., Uh? WTF?, UK politics, Wingnuts
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I know the BBC has shot itself in the foot a number of times this weekend what with Gaza and all, but this beats everything yet.

Jonah Goldberg has a gig on on Andrew Marr’s Radio 4 discussion programme, Start The Week. Yes, really.

He’s going to discuss his new book, apparently;

The Los Angeles Times columnist JONAH GOLDBERG calls for a re-evaluation of fascism. He argues that by using the word as a synonym for anything that is undesirable, we are blinded to the examples around us of real fascism from both Left and Right wing governments. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is published by Penguin.

New? WTF? Someone at the beeb was wilfully misinformed.

Either that or Justin Webb’s been given editorial control. He must’ve met the Pantload on the Koolaid aisle in Safeway.

More Facepalming

BBC Bias, Blogs, US politics, Wingnuts
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There is a woman on the radio talking about the Bush adminsitration, the GOP and the Iraq war – a discussion precipitated by former Bush spokesman Scott McLellan’s about-faced memoirs – and they are discussing the link between cognitive dissonance and wingnuts like its a new discovery. Arrrgh. Where have these BBC bods been for the past eight years?