Best Of

After the Beeb have politely told him to Arkell v Pressdram, they should tell him to Arkell v Pressdram some more.

It’s not clear where President Trump is planning to take any legal action against the BBC, but here in the U.K. he is out of time. The limit for libel in the U.K. is 12 months from first publication or broadcast and that was October 28, 2024.
https://x.com/DBanksy/status/1987903834862108766

And as for all the PBers saying it wasn't relevant that no one complained at the time... 😂

Let me only add that the idea of a mendacious shit like Trump, who has built his entire political career on lies and manipulation, seeking to grift money off the UK license payer for a piece of poor journalism which likely misled nobody in the end, is utterly repulsive.

And credit to the occasionally ineffective Ed Davey for being the only party leader to stand up for the BBC on this.

This 'BBC is seriously biased to the Left' is an obvious load of wank, isn't it. What we have here is a concerted attempt at political interference from bad actors on the Right. People who want to cow and control the BBC or failing that kill it off. A potentially successful attempt too, judging by how things are going. But it's not over yet. The BBC and all those who value it (for all its faults the most trusted source of news and info in the world) need to recognize the threat and fight fight fight against it. Fight like hell or we won't have a quality, non-partisan public broadcaster anymore.

Personally, I've always felt the BBC has had two biases:

Although it does give both views as a rule, there has always been a clear right wing bias (perhaps - I mean conservative) in selection and framing overall. Recently the migration debate has illustrated this well. The current fixation with Farage and Reform is an unusually obvious example of this. (By comparison, how often are people like Corbyn and Sultana on the Today programme, for example?)

Secondly, it tends to be deferential to government. This was obvious during Covid, when it rarely challenged the government line.

Taken together, it means that its right wing bias is usually less obvious when there is a Labour government and the two biases largely cancel each other out. The BBC's weird fixation with Reform (and also very soft pedalling on Trump) is unusual with an incumbent Labour government.

However, I wonder whether the timing of this eruption is more down to Israel/Gaza than anything? The BBC is unquestionably biased to Palestine in its coverage and they definitely have big problems with their Arabic service. I note that the Today programme avoided it completely this morning. This isn't really a left/right issue, just a choice between different nationalisms (FWIW I support neither).

If Your Party ends up with the 6 Independent Alliance MPs and polling 30% I expect you will see it more often on the BBC. Reform appears to be the most popular party in the country at the moment

The majority of Farage's appearance on eg QT were before Reform existed.
Still, I'm sure there's no causation there.

I find this pre-occupation with the number of times Farage jhas appeared on QT to be rather amusing.

Farage is 6th on the all time list of the number of times he has apeared as a guest on the programme. And 4th in terms of number of times per year.

You would think from all the clamour that he appears every other week, or even every other month. In fact he has appeared on the programme 38 times in 24 years at an average of 1.5 times per year. This is the same number of appearences and the same average per year as Michael Heseltine.

Kenneth Clarke made the most appearences - 59 times in 37 years at an average of 1.6 times a year.

Shirley Williams has the second highest number of appearences but the highest number per year - 58 times in 35 years at an average of 1.7

Then Ming Campbell (47), Harriet Harmen (45) and Charles Kennedy (44).

If you want to make any claim based on that list then it would be that overwhelmingly their was a massive imbalance in favour of pro-EU guests.

Of course the real reason is that they were articulate, passionate and entertaining, whether you agreed with them or not.

Good grief, that's pretty much the entirety of WATO spent on the BBC's Trump speech edit. Is there no other news today? While I'm broadly a fan of the BBC, the corporation's inflated sense of its own importance does irk me.

The BBC loves nothing more than looking at its own navel.

The Trump issue is mostly a distraction from the more serious impartiality issues around Gaza, transgenderism, climate, where there’s a clear capture of the organisation from lobby groups and young staff.

I am not clear from anywhere what 'impartial' coverage of Gaza/Israel and allied issues could possibly look like. Example. There is widespread disagreement as to a vast range of facts in both recent and older history. (Eg should Israel be treated as a nation state in the same way that, say, France is treated, or should it be treated as occupied territory properly belonging to other groups with other names.)

Does 'impartial' coverage allow 'moral facts'? Whether there are moral facts has been bitterly contested at least since the 18th century.

A related point. In an age of infinite media sources, the BBC is caught between two stools. Other outlets are more interesting because they allow themselves to be more sharply polemical (eg Simon Marks, LBC's USA man, though in his case IMO just as true if not truer). The BBC tries to do comment, but has to be balanced and we know in advance it won't come to sharp decisive conclusion. Many of its problems stem from its understandable departure from old fashioned news, as once there was in newspapers, where there was an absolutely decisive line between news/facts and editorial comment. The BBC does comment all the time. Even in actual news bulletins. Our appetite for it is insatiable.

There is also the problem that facts are expensive and opinions are free. See the internet passim for the daily outpouring of this truth.

About 20 years ago there was a study done om media bias. The researchers tried to pull together a news item on Israel/Palestine and to do it in as bare bones a manner possible. Literally, just the agreed facts from both Israeli and Palestinian press.

They showed the video to 50 or so students in Israel and Palestine.

Without exception, every single one of the students thought it biased. Why? Because they felt that it was unfair to present their side's actions without the appropriate justifications. It wasn't unbiased, they thought, unless it explained why the Israeli government / Palestinian protestors acted as they did [Delete as Appropriate].

I think about that study a lot, because it shows both how incredibly hard impartial news is to generate, and that we humans don't really want impartial news.

BREAKING: Donald Trump has sent a letter to the BBC threatening legal action, according to BBC News.

This follows the allegations of BBC bias over a Panorama edit of a Donald Trump speech.

Call his bluff.

The BBC needs to sue him first in the US, where the high “Actual Malice” standard of defamation applies. Even with that high bar, it’s difficult to defend what they actually broadcast.

A London libel court would throw the book at the BBC.

Looks like the licence fee payers will be contributing to that new ballroom in Washington.

Irrespective of the legal issues, you would need to get a Jury in London to decide in favour of Trump.

Even if that is passed, the Judge would need to decide on the value of the damage to Trump's reputation. And -as far as I can tell- there has never been a libel case against an indicidual in the UK where damages have topped 1m.

So, my instinct, if I were the BBC would be to apologose for the selective editing, but offer no damages, and if Trump wants to sue for libel (and run up millions of pounds of legal fees he will almost certainly not recover), then he is welcome to do so.

WRT BBC bias and all that (I am a BBC radio life long enthusiast).

This morning I listened to a couple of hours of turgid R4 Today introspection on the current row. I haven't read the famous leaked memo/report. One thing stood out a mile: Charles Moore (whose bias and dislike of the BBC is of course obvious) started to mention, as if from the memo/report suggestions about the BBC Arabic service which, if true, are egregiously and outstandingly startling and a total dereliction of news values duties. No idea if it's true. This was more or less immediately stifled and diverted and the rest of the two hours focusses on other stuff including the now notorious Panorama splicing of clips from a well known American fascist called Donald Trump.

This indicated to me that a selection bias is going on, under the appearance of fair neutral news coverage. But I can't be sure.