BBC and system bias - RCE Wyndham.

[Derek]

Hi All,
Another bueaty forwarded to me by Hans Shreuder.
AND, a name some of us "know" here, Rupert Wyndham.....
He's a neighbour of Richard S Courtney.
Oh, how I'd like to listen in to their conversations whilst cutting the hedges.

Hans forwarded,

FYI.

pdf at http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Rupert16082010.pdf

-----

16 August 2010.

Mr. Bruce Vander
Secretary to the Editorial Standards Committee
BBC Trust
180 Great Portland Street
London W1W 5QZ

Dear Mr. Vander

"The hard hitting investigative programmes no longer exist. The BBC is an arm of the government." Frederick Forsyth, Sunday Telegraph 15 August 2010

Notwithstanding the receipt of a disreputable letter dated 6 July from your colleague, Francesca O'Brien, I have since been advised by Michael Fadda that my letter of 14 April 2008, in which I alleged systemic bias within the Corporation's news coverage of global warming/climate change will now be considered by the Committee at its meeting in September. Mind you, this is far from being the only topic in respect of which the BBC's prejudice is brazen. In any event, though, good! After all, by the time of the September meeting only two and a half years will have elapsed. Given the habitually nimble footed performance of a Committee dedicated to “Getting the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers”, it must be recognised, I suppose, that such levels of responsiveness have now to be regarded as normative. Of course, by contrast, it expects any who question it to respond within ten working days, which is probably not unreasonable given that they are not called upon to react against the constipated bureaucratic inertia which typifies everything connected with the BBC. On the other hand, they do have to pay for it, do they not? And how!

Still, back to business. There can be absolutely no question that the BBC is systemically biased in its reportage of climate change. Not only have I and others provided copious examples of completely one sided reporting, it is a simple fact, attested on almost a daily basis, that the perception of a wide swathe of its audience regard any claim to impartiality that it makes to be laughable and scandalous. As such, the Corporation is daily in breach of at least three of its own Editorial Standards, those relating to the preservation of impartiality, to careful cross checking in furtherance of maintaining accuracy and to the proscription on insinuating personal opinion into news dispatches. The fact that such malfeasance is the subject of frequent press comment as well as of public conviction provides, simply of itself, unassailable evidence of the truth of the allegation. In short, if enough people, who are divergent and unconnected and thus not simply self-selecting, see the BBC as biased, then biased it most surely is.

On 30 July I received an email from a climatologist of distinction and prodigious achievement. In that respect, of course, he stands in marked contrast to the succession of talking heads, who are routinely deployed by the BBC, and who are almost invariably described without inconvenient differentiation as "scientists”. Naturally, none of these, nor even my correspondent, can begin to compete with the penetrating scientific insights vouchsafed the Editor of the Today programme, the mellifluously monikered Ceri Thomas, by virtue of his epic BA in Creative Music Technology conferred (with acclamation, no doubt) by a university ranking No. 51 in the country.

Still, we mustn’t linger. However, given his personal involvement in massaging “science” reportage for the benefit of the media, it seemed pertinent in passing to touch upon his credentials for this task, not to mention that of editing the BBC’s flagship morning news round-up. Returning to the main point, I consider it appropriate to advise you of the email, because its contents speak to the issues addressed above, as well as to those in the formal complaint embraced in my letter to Stephanie Harris over two years ago. It contained the following link, which the ESC is invited to visit:

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/07/p...tunes.html

Until two weeks ago, this blog was wholly unknown to me, but it plainly lends weight to the assertions made in the foregoing paragraph. More than that, in fact; it is conclusive. If someone has taken the trouble to create a blog for the express purpose of tracking instances of bias on the BBC, with which many licence fee payers otherwise unknown to each other agree, then ipso facto there is a deep and systemic problem. It is, therefore, appropriate that it should be included as an addendum to my letter. Neither, as Biased BBC makes clear, is the perception of bias exclusively an external phenomenon. Household names within the Corporation itself recognise the validity of the charge. Thus, on 21 October 2006, we have Andrew Marr pronouncing:

"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."…..

For “cultural liberal bias” read “left wing”. Speaking personally, I don’t mind a left wing tendency provided that (a) it is acknowledged and (b) it does not interfere with legally mandated Editorial Standards, in particular those already itemised above. There is, though, always a problem with “left wing”, is there not? It is its invariable association with a pernicious corollary, namely the self-preening and delusional conceit that adherents are the inheritors of a uniquely sensitive ethical sensibility, which confers upon them the right, nay the duty, to dictate to their fellows. That manifestation of narcissism is one which I and many others reject. For journalists (so-called) of this stamp, Marble Arch is a more suitable location than the precincts of the BBC.

Then, famously, on 31 January 2007 we have Jeremy Paxman taking up the baton to develop the same theme:

"People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour.
I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago…………..."

He is quite right but then, unlike the BBC’s cadre of environmental/scientific journalists in particular but not exclusively, he is a man of integrity and talent. This makes him worth a second quote:

"But the bigger question is whether the BBC itself has a future. Working for it has always been a bit like
working in Stalin’s Russia, with one five year plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another.
One BBC, Making It Happen, Creative Futures, they all dissolve into one great vacuous blur.
I can’t even recall what the current one is…………..” The James McTaggart Memorial Lecture, 24 August 2007.

He could, of course, have framed his central question slightly differently. He could with equal justification have asked: “Does the BBC itself merit a future?” The answer would have been, and remains, a monosyllabic and unequivocal “No”.

Turning next to your own activities, by which is meant those of the ESC, Dr. John Gahan has kindly been keeping me abreast of exchanges he has been having with it. Both of us have independently noted the discrepancy between the time graciously allowed for communications addressed the ESC and its own dilatory responses. We and others have also noted the obvious explanation for this, namely the device of a stratagem specifically designed to discourage questioning/criticism, which I have sought to capture and summarise in my reply to his last email:

Ten days for complainants. Two years for the BBC, and even that's not guaranteed!
As Booker has written "an Augean stew of low grade intellectual and moral corruption.".

Lastly, in the latter part of June I notified you of a weather prediction for approximately one month ahead. This had been sent to me by WeatherAction and, amongst other things, informed by plausible physics, it forecast severe weather in the UK, including flooding. That prediction turned out to be usefully accurate. The Met Office, relying upon AGW inspired climate models, failed completely to anticipate this change in the weather until a mere two or three days before. Were this simply a “one off”, it would have no significance. It was not. On the contrary, it was part of a pattern in which Met Office predictions have been totally confounded by WeatherAction – the “BBQ summer”, a mild winter in 2009; I could go on. I sent you/the BBC the July WeatherAction forecast precisely to illustrate the point, namely the reliability of prediction unencumbered by bogus science. The fact that the BBC ignores such evidence right under its nose is further proof of its inherent prejudice and bias.

I have absolutely no confidence in the integrity or impartiality of the ESC nor, needless to say, of the BBC, of which the former is no more than a lap dog. In spite of this, I believe it is important that the record should be able to show that there have been forceful objections the modus operandi of both.

Yours sincerely,
R.C.E. Wyndham

Cc: As the spirit moves

[Richard111]

Excellent essay by Peter Sissons. He pulls no punches.

I would like to see the BBC closed down entirely or at the very least turned into a private self supporting company.

Left-wing bias? It's written through the BBC's very DNA, says Peter Sissons

Last updated at 12:12 PM on 22nd January 2011

Quote:Most of the managers I had over me had status and rank, on paper. In reality, they had little talent except the dark art of surviving at the BBC and alienating those who were answerable to them. I was always struck by how few senior people there were to look up to and to learn from.

[Sunsettommy]

In America it is National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).They both have a pronounced leftist slant.

[Questioning_Climate]

EU Referendum has an interesting posting too:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01...c-tit.html

[Richard111]

The wife had BBC Radio4 on in the kitchen yesterday. I wasn't paying much attention until I heard climate change being mentioned and shouted to the wife to turn the bloody radio off! She said "No. Listen! They are saying too much water vapour in the air because of global warming would interfere with radio broadcasts."

At that point I went ape... I spent most of my working life in the field of radio communication and navigation and can tell you chapter and verse of what effects radio propagation, water vapour ain't one that I ever encountered.

If you want to listen to the broadcast I think this is it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y92m6

the subject matter was Adapting UK infrastructure to climate change and the date 10/02/11.

What little I heard was outright pure bullshitting propaganda, no science, just "it's going to happen".

[Questioning_Climate]

All I can say is that is typical BBC agitprop. When will the BBC get back to reporting the truth and call a halt to the insane agenda?

But on a slightly different although linked theme, Bishop Hill has found this:

Quote:Practising what you preach:

Commenter Mike Post has enquired about whether the BBC buys carbon offsets when buying airline tickets for its journalists. Here is the response:

The BBC does not buy carbon offsets for its journalists' airline tickets because - "in considering such questions, the BBC must balance our environmental policies against our responsibility to our licence fee payers, and we do not believe buying offsets represents good use of licence fee income."

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2...reach.html

The lost embedded link is:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/61...e.pdf.html

Quite what should be made of this is open to interpretation.

[JohnWho]

(02-11-2011 10:50 AM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  Quite what should be made of this is open to interpretation.

Do what I say

not what I do.