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Sunday, July 22, 2007

BBC In Need? What about Wapo, AP, NYT?

I see a headline on Times Online that brings up a slew of other questions about our own news organizations.

Headlined, BBC in Need, but it isn't just BBC, as we pointed out just recently, with AP's latest foray into rumor reported as fact with the headless bodies that didn't exist and then they were forced to retract their stories, with much less fanfare than the original false story received.

Or even more recently with The New Republic's latest foray into rumor with the "anonymous" Scott Thomas, the supposed "soldier" that we told you about yesterday.

Ok, so I am putting the cart before the horse here, so let me show you what the BBC has done, then, with what I just said above, ask yourself if maybe, just possibly, our own news media outlets, shouldn't do the same damn thing.

The BBC executive board gathered for its regular meeting last Tuesday morning for coffee, biscuits and meltdown. The previous evening, at 5pm, the deadline had passed for producers to come forward confessing, in a spirit of openness and honesty, to programmes they had made that had misled the public in some way.

The invitation for them so to do had been extended by both Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of vision and an executive board member, and Jenny Abramsky, the BBC’s director of audio and music. They, and other BBC chiefs, were giving staff a chance to come clean after revelations that a trailer for a programme about the Queen had been less than truthful with viewers, and that the corporation had also been fined £50,000 for faking a Blue Peter competition.


(Continued after the advertisement)

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The result of this meeting isn't surprising, but the extent of said results may surprise a few of you.

Much to the apparent surprise of Bennett and Abramsky, two experienced and highly respected corporation bureaucrats, a procession of contrite and nervous producers came forward to ’fess up. The public, it seemed, had been deceived with unnerving consistency, particularly over programmes with phone-in polls and competitions. And on the corporation’s most noble flagship enterprises, too. Comic Relief and Children in Need, for example.

“We just sat there absolutely stunned,” one executive board member told me, “shocked beyond belief. Nobody had any idea that this was going on on such a scale.”


Nobody had any idea? Come on!!!!! We, as well as dozens of other bloggers have been talking about the media bias and outright lies viewers and readers have had shoved down their throats for quite a while now, but again, that is besides the point.

The point here is what would happen and how much scandal would be involved if Wapo, NYT, AP, Reuters and yes, TNR, would do the same thing... oh my, what would THOSE results look like?

Read the whole thing yourself.

I have whole pages with story after story showing media bias here in America, media lies from our MSM.

This isn't something that only BBC is guilty of, the American public acknowledges that the stories they get from our MSM is liberally biased, in poll after poll.

Their profits are falling and they blame everything except themselves. If they reported news instead of opinion, they might JUST not be dropping in readership, ratings, advertisers or profits.

Just recently, Diane Sawyer got her poor little feelings hurt when a courtroom erupted in laughter when she tried to say journalists tell the truth.

So when do WE insist that our MSM started cleaning up their own house and rid themselves of this bias and start reporting objectively again?


(NOTE: Cassy reminds us to go vote for the Wounded Warriors Project, once a day. They need the money.)


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