ME and Ophelia

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WHO SAYS BBC PROPAGANDA
Is working in the best interest of our nation?

Seems like the BBC have not learned much post Hutton. I cannot see how they are providing a public broadcasting service. Looks to me like they're still continuing on their own agenda. I'd vote for scrapping the compulsory household TV Licence asap. Here's why.

Firstly, under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949, if you live in the UK and your household (even if you live in a caravan or whatever) owns a colour receiving TV set - regardless of your age up to 75 or financial circumstances - whether or not you watch the TV set, or even the BBC - you must pay GBP 116 every 12 months to the BBC (50% off if you are blind). If you install or use any equipment to receive TV programme services - for example a TV set, video recorder, set-top box, PC with a broadcast card or any other TV receiving equipment - and don't pay up, they'll come to your home in unmarked vans with surveillance equipment. If they catch you not paying, they'll extort from you a huge fine. If you refuse to pay, you are sent to prison. It's as simple as that.

Secondly, it seems to me the BBC are against the British government that was elected into power by the people. Freedom of speech is one thing, but aiming to affect National Security and pull down a democratically elected government or its leader is something altogether different. The words traitors and treason spring to mind.

Thirdly, I did not vote the BBC into power. I feel they are undermining our government and democracy. Whose side are they on I ask myself. The BBC seems to be a law unto themselves. Their self elected power base needs to be dismantled. Let them fend for themselves financially and see who buys their sloppy cavalier reporting, manipulative words, twisted truths and downright propaganda.

Below extracts are from a BBC NEWS online report Who is winning the war? by BBC Panorama reporter, Jane Corbin. [Note Panorama: Terror - Are We Next? was broadcast on BBC One on Sunday, 21 March 2004 at 2215 GMT]

Note here how the reporter quoted one man's personal view - and chose to start it with the word "However":

"However, back in the spring of 2002 an American intelligence officer at Bagram airbase told BBC's Panorama that he feared the American military boot had not crushed al-Qaeda but merely scattered them to the far corners of the earth, where they would prove impossible to eradicate".

Note here how the reporter drove home her personal view, endorsed by the BBC (and repeated, as a highlight, in a side panel of the report):

"A very real terror threat has been created in Iraq where little existed before - and Europe will feel the effect of that".

The report also stated:

"Yet as the months have passed the war in Iraq has exposed the hollowness of US claims that al-Qaeda and Saddam were linked. It has also resulted in the creation of a new terror threat from one of al-Qaeda's franchises, and a virulent and deadly one that numbers hundreds of westerners among its victims.

Bin Laden has every reason to believe that he is so far winning the battle - not the "war on terror" waged by US helicopters and special forces on Afghan borders - but the war against innocent civilians and western democracies."

And finally - so there can be no mistaking the BBCs message - they drove it home with their selection of photos and this summary in captions:

Al-Qaeda's attack could have had political motive. (captioned with a photo of train carnage in Madrid)

In December, on Islamic websites that have carried al-Qaeda statements in the past, Islamist militants were discussing how attacks might bring about a socialist victory in Spain.

The Istanbul bomb came as Bush and Blair gathered at an anti-terrorism gala.

A very real terror threat has been created in Iraq where little existed before - and Europe will feel the effect of that.

The Iraq war could have led to more al-Qaeda recruits.
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Here's what American Tantor over at Conservative Propaganda had to say about the BBC in his post dated January 30, 2004:

BRITISH GOVERNMENT DECLARES BBC TO BE PACK OF LIARS
BBC's Lefty Leaders Jump Ship Like Rats
Link

A British government enquiry led by Lord Hutton into the BBC's wartime propaganda campaign against the war found that its editorial system is fundamentally flawed, which is another way of saying that it's radical lefty editors were not running a news service, but a lefty propaganda bureau with little regard for the truth. The bias was so bad that BBC came to be known as the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation, so bad that it was turned off on British warships. Reporter Andrew Gilligan was at the center of the vortex of lies, rivalling the Iraqi Minister of Information in preposterous assertions. Gilligan stood at a quiet corner of the Baghdad airport while it was being taken by American forces and claimed no Americans were there. He claimed that the US military was dishonest and inept, as it took Iraq in six weeks. He said that the liberation of Iraq from Saddam by America plunged the country into more fear than they had ever known. Finally and fatally, he sliced and diced the opinion of a British weapons inspector, David Kelly, and assembled them into a sensational and false charge that Tony Blair had lied to lead Britain to war.

What a tangled web the lefties weave, when first they practice to deceive. The leaders of the BBC are resigning and good riddance. Gilligan is doomed, though his lefty journalist friends defend him because after all, what does it matter if the stories aren't technically true as long as they promote the greater truth of the socialist cause?

Expect to hear wild accusations of a blacklist now that the lefty liars have been exposed and trashed.

# posted by Tantor : Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:22 AM EST (Washington, DC Time)
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Update: Wednesday 24 March 2004
Copy of my response to a comment on this post:

Daniel, Thanks for commenting. Nice to meet you. Followed your link to your sites and see you are a journalist, researcher, commentator and economist in London and Calcutta. Guess from your mosquito post you are in India right now. How interesting. Looking forward to catching up on your blog. Please forgive if this reply sounds disjointed. I've been doing too much reading and writing, I've just posted to my blog, am over tired and struggling this morning with concentration. It's 8.37 am right now on a cloudy and cool morning here by the seaside in England.

The point I was making in my post is that the BBC are not serving the public as an unbiased public broadcasting service. They are not just reporting news and facts. Sadly, they are creating their own news stories from the way they see things. Even more disturbingly, they are regularly slanting reports taken from a particular political viewpoint.

As a public broadcasting service they are paid to report the news and facts. So that every licence paying household in the UK - no matter what their political persuasion - can get timely world news and facts to make up their own minds on political and other issues. Where else can we get this if not from our PBS?

We have no real PBS because the BBC has taken it upon itself to serve as a left wing organisation. How can that be right. It's not a case of State dictating the news agenda. It's a matter of licence fee payers expecting that they are funding a public broadcasting service - to be free from commercial and political constraints and corruption - to report unbiased news and facts freely to the whole nation - not creating their own stories and putting their own politics and slant on deadly serious issues.

No doubt every single Brit would love and respect the BBC if it reported just the news and facts. But because the BBC wants to be biased and innovative in its style of reporting and create its own stories and news, digital channels, ventures etc., I would vote to let them do so. I am in no way suggesting the BBC is scrapped. I'd like to see the BBC freed from its PBS obligations to enable it to continue operating like any other commercially run news service.