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Post by fascinating on Jun 28, 2018 8:47:48 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Jun 29, 2018 6:00:25 GMT 1
Ah, very good article! It's hard not to like Liddle. I don’t care much if the BBC are trying to place more female presenters on their roster, it seems a laudable enough endeavour. As long as they’re good broadcasters, of course – many of them are. Sue Lawley, the Kirsty clan, Emily Maitlis...Louise Botting used to be so brilliant...The awesome Sheila Dillon is surely wasted on the Food programme...Fi Glover is superb. The Today and PM lot are fairly faultless as far as I'm concerned. But I’d get rid of most of the WH presenters, and most of the unbearably irritating female R2 DJs, all those Sara Cox, Winkleman, Laverne types, the over-excited giggling airhead mould, or mold, who took Janice Long as their role model instead of - I suppose the more demanding - Annie Nightingale. Woman's Hour - the worst of the moaning Minnie phenomenon, and they do women no favours whatsoever (a large part of why such a surprising large majority don’t identify as feminists, I’d guess – that, and the radical lesbian contingent.) What is objectionable, and far more of a serious issue, is the issue Liddle highlights of the BBC’s political bias. Now on several occasions in the past you’ve insisted that there is no such bias, and never has been, despite the clear and unequivocal evidence for it, because it just happens to accord with your own liberal-left views. Are you, with this post, now intimating that you’ve changed your mind about this? Well, if so, hats off to Gunga Din.
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Post by fascinating on Jun 29, 2018 7:53:18 GMT 1
What seems to be happening in BBC radio is "positive discrimination" ie discrimination, at a level never seen before for any other group. I am not sure of the exact details of the policy, but it seems that Today is not the only program where there is a marked favouritism to women, that is making sure that at least 50% of the voices are women's. I heard Farming Today recently and you might get the impression, from that episode, that there were almost no males involved in the farming industry (I think there was one "token" male present).
No, there is no clear evidence of BBC political bias, still less "unequivocal" evidence.
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Post by mrsonde on Jun 29, 2018 8:04:44 GMT 1
No, there is no clear evidence of BBC political bias, still less "unequivocal" evidence. You've just linked to an article that lists (at least some of) it! Are you contending that Liddle has made these figures up, out of thin air?
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Post by fascinating on Jun 29, 2018 8:09:12 GMT 1
What are the political biases that Liddle has listed?
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Post by mrsonde on Jun 30, 2018 6:12:29 GMT 1
What are the political biases that Liddle has listed? You link to an article that you haven't read yourself? Odd...I'll quote it in full for you: That last sentence has to be the understatement of the century. Last night the deeply repugnant Frankie Boyle - apparently forgiven by the BBC for his hideous political propagandising and allowed back onto their primetime schedule once again - called for the assassination of Trump. There was no scintilla of comedic content in this as far as I could discern, though admittedly that's very often an elusive animal where Boyle is concerned. Can you imagine the outcry if a "comedian" had ever called for Obama's or Hillary's assassination? People who were, quite literally, genuine "fascists", and warmongering, and murderous. Of course, I understand that it's de rigeur for comedians to be leftwing, atheistic, cultural relativist, and yet, paradoxically, elistist and sneering of anyone inferior enough to dare not follow the liberal-left enlightened line, but this selective bias applies to any and all news commentary programmes too. Somehow Portillo has managed to hold on to his privileged seat, and Janet Daly still appears occasionally, but you have to wonder if they would have done if they too weren't enthusiastic Trump-haters?
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Post by fascinating on Jun 30, 2018 7:09:49 GMT 1
I take Liddle's list there to be about pointing out the silliness of having quotas which accurately reflect the population of the country, and in that I agree with him. It's the kind of silliness where, let's say, black population in the region is, say, 12% THEREFORE the police force needs to be 12% black. Liddle isn't saying that the BBC should, for example, make sure 52% of staff should, as with the population in general, oppose the adoption of children by 'gay' people, he is showing how ridiculous such a policy would be.
After that list, Liddle points to the one supposed predjudice, allegedly showing that, of 4275 guests on Today, only 3.2% supported Brexit. I am dubious about that, was Lord Pearson actually able to speak to every single one of those guests and ask them how they voted in the referendum?
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Post by mrsonde on Jun 30, 2018 7:34:19 GMT 1
I take Liddle's list there to be about pointing out the silliness of having quotas which accurately reflect the population of the country, and in that I agree with him. No, he's pointing out that the BBC has an agenda not to reflect the majority view of its audience, or even to fairly represent the mix of differing views, but to promote a fairly narrow "set of values" it considers acceptable and "progressive". I see no justification for distorting what he actually wrote to read that at all. He wasn't talking about staff, but what is broadcast. You will not hear anyone oppose the adoption of children by gay people on the BBC not because of any calculation of how widespread such an opinion might be, but because it supports that practice itself. The same goes for support for the EU, or for Obama and Hillary, and disapproval of Trump. Are you misrepresenting his actual words deliberately, or can you genuinely not follow a text? Read the article, for gawd's sake. He's not talking about random guests, who might be tallking about what they wore to Harry and Muggin's wedding!
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Post by fascinating on Jun 30, 2018 8:31:55 GMT 1
The majority view about the adoption of children by gay people is NOT proportionately represented by the BBC, in fact I never hear such a view presented at all. There again, I don't see that issue represented in any of the newspapers either. I don't know of anything in the BBC charter which shows that they should actively put forward the views of the British public, as gathered by opinion polls.
I think the BBC generally accepts the status quo. About 50 years ago, homosexuality wasn't even mentioned, basically because it was illegal. After legalisation, more references to it were made, especially when the AIDS crisis arose. With gay adoption, the law, and the entire policy of the social services apparatus, is geared to facilitating, or at least not opposing this practice. The BBC adopts much the same stance, it accepts the situation as it is. If there is a campaign against gay adoption, maybe it will report it.
An example of that is the EU. The referendum was only called in May 2015, in the 10 years before then the BBC simply regarded the EU as an immutable fact. If they wanted to know about the EU they would ask the views of people who workded there, and by implication supported it (not the case for Farage obviously).
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Post by mrsonde on Jun 30, 2018 11:21:40 GMT 1
The majority view about the adoption of children by gay people is NOT proportionately represented by the BBC That's what Liddle said. That's not his point. Yet again, you're arguing against something neither he nor anyone else has said. It's hard not to believe the obvious explanation of this peculiar habit that you're intentionally erecting these straw men because you can't successfully dispute the actual argument presented. That would indeed be a reflection of current opinion: exactly what Liddle is pointing out that it doesn't do. So you would contend that the BBC so disproportionately over-represents a pro-EU anti-Brexit stance because we happen to be in the EU? Has until very recently been so against giving any air time to any argument against mass immigration because mass immigration was going on? That it spends so much time and resource covering and positively promoting the NHS, and none at all any counter proposal, because the NHS exists? And the same for the State education system? And the welfare system in all its guises. And it so eagerly pushes the case for social housing, and never mentions any counter-argument, because people still live in council houses. For just a few of the more obvious examples. They did, though there was nothing "simply" about it - it was a policy to not represent those political views and movements that worked against it, or to the extent it ever did it did so in a critically denigrating way. It has the same policy about climate change scepticism now. It has the same policy about Trump now - they started off describing him as "mad", then they moved onto "divisive" as it looked possible he could be President, and since his election every programme they've ever made has been highly critical, and partisan - everything Trump does is wrong, or will lead to disaster, breaking the " liberal world order based on rules", etc etc. On the other hand, Obama could do no wrong - I never saw or heard a single word in any way critical of Obama on the BBC in his whole eight year term, even though on any objective measurement of achievement he must be if not the actual worst US President in history, at the very least in the top three of the worst. Farage couldn't get the BBC to cover him at all - certainly not in a fair and impartial way. C4 did though, many times - my partner made three of those programs, long before 2005. Even when the referendum was announced, and the campaign began in earnest, you can't seriously contend that the BBC was fair and impartial, surely? Any more than it is now.
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Post by fascinating on Jun 30, 2018 18:57:56 GMT 1
If you say that the BBC was not impartial about the referendum then feel free to give the reasons why.
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Post by mrsonde on Jul 1, 2018 23:14:20 GMT 1
If you say that the BBC was not impartial about the referendum then feel free to give the reasons why. I've got ears. That work. Look - who was it on any questions the other day who made this point? The UKIP guy, but that doesn't make it any the less true. "I'm the one person on this panel, as ever, who's making the case for Brexit." Everyone else was against leaving in the first place. It's always been that way, even in the cabinet. Yet the Brexiteers represent the majority of opinion: and they have, by far, the better case, which is why they win every debate, including the Referendum.
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Post by aquacultured on Jul 1, 2018 23:45:03 GMT 1
But everyone knows that Farage was given inordinate media coverage for years, and was good at stoking it, even when UKIP had no MPs.
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Post by mrsonde on Jul 2, 2018 0:20:48 GMT 1
But everyone knows that Farage was given inordinate media coverage for years, and was good at stoking it, even when UKIP had no MPs. Not true. He was given, as a leader of a Uk political party, no coverage at all. He started to be covered when Kilroy-Silk made his abortive challenge - that was when the BBC first started to cover him. In a disparaging way. C4, under the extraordinary genius Jeremy Isaacs, covered his criticism of the EU. As the only party then doing so, since Enoch in the early 70s, this was entirely legitimate, and indeed demanded, from any responsible national broadcater, tasked with covering the news. My partner made that series - and utterly jaw-dropping it is too. The sheer corruption of the institution is astonishing. Farage pointed all this out - the only person to do so, incidentally.
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Post by mrsonde on Jul 2, 2018 0:44:36 GMT 1
Has he gone again? The Phantom Raspberry-Blower? I have visions of poor Aqua's wife. Stadning behind him, rolling pin in hand. A great big fat bruiser, she is. "You can make one post, and make it fuckin quick, then you can get back in your hutch." Just a vision. Might be worng. She might be sweet, and long-suffering. "Pleease don't rise to that awful sonde character, dearest, he's the lowest of the low, and he stirs the servants up so. Do come back to bed."
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