Saturday, October 21, 2006

The BBC - Unmasked

It's no secret that the BBC, once the standard for unbiased broadcast journalism throughout the world has been guilty for some time of the most blatant and outrageous bias when it comes to its coverage of a good many issues..the Middle East, Israel, multiculturism, Islam, the War on Jihad, America in general and President Bush in particular to name just a smattering.

British citizens are assesed a fee for the privilege of being in the same country with this government owned and operated franchise whether they listen or not, which has had the effect of making the Beeb unaccountable.

In spite of being outed for some of the most unbelievably slanted coverage, particular when it comes to Israel, Islam and the Middle East, the BBC has always denied it has an agenda and maintained the fiction of being an unbiased news source.

Well, the mask has slipped, and more than a little.

In leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade the lead broadcast personalities of the BBC News admitted `we are biased' and that what they've been criticized over for years is largely true: the BBC is dominated by leftists who are biased against israel, the US, and Christianity and in favor of multiculturalism.

The leaked account reveals that the Beeb's executives would let the Bible be thrown into a trashcan on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if they got the chance. It also reveals that the BBC's 'diversity tsar'Mary Fitzpatrick is pushing for Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils while on the air and has said that the BBC should not use white reporters in non-white countries.

Political reporter Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.'

Actually, the BBC is working very hard to make sure things don't change.

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money in a court fight to keep a critical report secret which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage...and they are, as we speak, mounting a landmark High Court action to block the release of The Balen Report under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, a tool BBC reporters use all the time to gain access to information for their stories.

The report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words and to include evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming. Nothing new, to anyone who's heard or read the borderline anti-Semitic ranting of Orla Guerin or Barbara Plett and others of that ilk.

If the Beeb loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

The original action was filed by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the report originally compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser to the BBC in 2004.

For more information on the BBC's biased reporting go here, and here.

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