BBC Complaints: The link you need!

Monday 19 April 2010

CAUGHT RED (AND YELLOW) HANDED

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Please make sure you click on the comments from my previous post & have a read of Ryan's wonderful research.
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He has discovered that Sarah Bell, the BBC journalist who went to the constituency of her friend Susan Kramer, the sitting Lib Dem MP, and wrote that article for the BBC website (the one that so outraged Jonathan Isaby) saying that everyone she talked to there would be voting for her friend Susan Kramer - though she didn't mention in the article that she is a friend of Susan Kramer - is a friend of Susan Kramer.
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He has also discovered - and this is a killer! - that Chris Summers, the guy in the BBC Complaints department who dealt with his complaint about the Live Election blog - and possibly your complaint too -, is also a Labour candidate in Ealing who regards the BBC's guidelines on impartiality - the point at issue for Ryan, and for me - with nothing but contempt.
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Guido has now taken this up:
http://order-order.com/2010/04/19/labour-candidate-is-bbc-bias-complaints-judge
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Well done Ryan! As our American friends say, 'You're the man!!'
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P.S. I do like this comment on Guido's blog:
27Anonymous says:
April 19, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Its biased, but not that biased. MSNBC is Fox News for lefties. The BBC is institutionally biased to the EU-friendly, Anthropomorphic Climate Change concerned left. But it is populated by quite a number of right wing commentators. Andrew Neil, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Robinson to name a few. Its comedy output is so left wing its silly though. It’s not as bad as its made out to be though all things considered.
To name a few!!! Now I could name more than a few left-wing commentators, and there will be more than three of them: Carolyn Quinn, James Naughtie, Kirsty Wark, Gavin Esler, Paddy O'Connell, Paul Mason, Michael Crick, Mark Easton, Jo Coburn, Anita Anand, Andrew Marr, John Humphrys, Jon Manel, Jonty Bloom...I could go on and on and on...

13 comments:

  1. Harrabin and Black surely deserve a mention in your roll of 'honour'! [And Nick Roinson has surely gone native many moons ago.]

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  2. Jeremy Clarkson doesn't present political programmes, Neil does, and has a known political background, but I'm not aware of many complaints against him for biased, he's widely respected for his even-handedness.

    Whereas that list you reeled off are all screamingly bent BBC politics journalists who lie through their back teeth that they're impartial.

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  3. Toenails right wing? I don't think so. As for Clarkson, he's tolerated by the BBC as he's the biggest earner of money for them.

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  4. I called Guido today to tip him off. Not a good look having a Labour party candidate sitting in judgment is it!

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  5. Jeremy Clarkson's their cash-cow. They leave it to their endless supply of left-wing comedians to keep up a stream of insults against him. That way, they can have it both ways.

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  6. Just one point of clarification -- I do not know if Mr Summers is the sole person responsible for election complaints or that he was responsible for the reply to my complaint.

    He has closed his Facebook access, however please see these screenshots which I took earlier today -- http://twitpic.com/1gtmrl and http://twitpic.com/1gtajb -- when it was publicly accessible.

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  7. Ryan, good man! And good on Guido for helping you to sock it to 'em!

    As the BBC's investigative clout falls, up (in inverse proportion) goes the blogosphere!

    Blogosphere 1 - BBC 0

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  8. Actually, in your case:

    Blogosphere 2 - BBC 0

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  9. Ah Ryan, there's doubtless a few of them. (There must be, as there are surely thousands and thousands of complaints).

    I wonder if Chris's colleagues have anything they want to share with us.

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  10. There doubtless are a few of them. A Liam Boyle replied to a complaint I sent saying that Sanchia Berg did not say Richard Nixon "coined a new phrase 'the silent majority'" when the BBC carried audio of her saying it. She was champing at the bit to link Cameron with Nixon for Cameron's phrase the 'the great ignored' and LB was evidently trying to cover her tracks. 'The silent majority' was coined by De Gaulle's Prime Minister Pompediou when his party went on to win the first absolute parliamentary majority in the history of the French republic. No, the BBC would rather pretend Nixon came up with it to link Cameron with one of the most reviled politicians of the 20th Century. Not for any biased reason I'm sure.

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  11. Surely you are also missing Stephanie Flanders (best mates with Ed Balls), Robert Peston who's daddy is the left wing peer (and economist) and to suggest Robinson is right leaning is absurd - he went BBC native a long time ago

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  12. And I can't believe I missed out Norman Smith!

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  13. Clarkson right wing ?
    Did no one read what he wrote in March's Readers Digest "if I ruled the world" section ?
    He said he would like Britain to be swallowed up by Europe & have it ruled directly from Brussels & would abolish national ,county & all local government !
    His pro EUssr stance is why the bbc "tolerate" him .

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