BBC Complaints: The link you need!

Saturday 6 March 2010

TIM WHEWELL TELLS A FIB

*
When you become conscious of a particular angle that the BBC is taking on a world issue, you soon begin to notice just how much they push that angle, sometimes beyond the point of honesty.
*
I've been tracing over the past few months (and have posted on it here at regular intervals) the negative way that the BBC has been reporting the austerity packages put in place to tackle the economic crises in certain European countries - first Ireland, now Greece. The emphasis has been put on the hostility of the public sector - and their unions - to spending cuts. We had all those reports from Ireland featuring the leader of the Irish TUC but ignoring all supportive voices for the Irish government's measures. Now we are getting Beeboid after Beeboid telling us about the strikes and violent demonstrations that are 'ravaging' Greece over public spending cuts, and implying that the austerity measures there are very unpopular.
*
Time and time again experts from outside the BBC, especially from Greece, have been invited onto, say, PM or The World Tonight, and dropped in the fact that public opinion polls in Greece now show something like 70% support for the Greek government's austerity measures. They have never yet been asked about that by the BBC interviewer, they've always volunteered it. This shows that the demonstrators in Greece (violent and non-violent) are shouting for a minority of Greek public opinion.
*
That being the case, why did Tim Whewell on last night's Newsnight say, "Tackling the country's massive public debt is so unpopular that some politicians want to deflect the blame"?
*
Why did Whewell say such an untrue thing? Why are so many BBC reporters trying to say that the austerity measures in Greece (and before that in Ireland) are "unpopular" with the public?
*
It couldn't be because they want to scare people here in the UK about 'swingeing cuts' could it?
*
Whewell, incidentally, was behind one of the worst pieces of anti-Tory propaganda of last year: http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2009/11/kaminski-again.html
*#
*
As a coda to all this, last night's The World Tonight reported from Iceland on the coming referendum and another of the BBC's biased reporters, Stephen Evans, said "The anger of the Icelandic people has global ramifications, particularly as Greece and Ireland contemplate swingeing cuts in public spending." 'Swingeing cuts' eh? There's that phrase again!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.