The Political Thread

[Funt Solo]

Looks just like Charlie Chaplin!

[Proudhuff]

bit more worrying than that!

[Proudhuff]

Johnson made a minor gaffe at the Remembrance Day ceremony by laying a wreath upside down and the BBC accidentally removed the few seconds of footage in which the gaffe occurred, accidentally deleted it, then accidentally ordered the retrieval of footage of the 2016 Remembrance Day ceremony from their library, then accidentally trimmed out several seconds featuring Johnson laying a wreath properly, accidentally spliced that into yesterday's footage, then accidentally didn't tell anyone until they were called out on it by several viewers on social media.  Well anyway purdah is going well.

I am always amused during general election season - which now happens often enough that I can make this observation - to see that Rupert Murdoch's SKY News is more reliable than the BBC when it comes to observing purdah rules, but I imagine that has more to do with the BBC being untouchable and knowing it while the working stiffs at SKY know a bad OFCOM ruling can end their careers.

anyone got a link about this?

[Dandontdare]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50374630

[Professor Bear]

They recycle the "didn't bow enough" line.  Literally cannot help themselves.

[Dandontdare]

The story is not the wreath it's the ridiculous twitter storm and partisan newspaper comments - which is what the BBC reported.

[Professor Bear]

So to sum up: the BBC are saying that the BBC did nothing wrong and that this was everyone else's fault?  That's quite an unusual ruling to get from them.

[Frank]

I like you very much, Pro Bear - you're funny and clever, which are rare commodities anywhere on the internet. But this is some of the dumbest shit I've ever read.

For a start, this theory requires BBC bosses to have reluctantly allowed that evening's 6(ish) and 10 o'clock bulletins - the highest rated news bulletins in the UK - and the News Channel and the BBC website to continue broadcasting the correct footage - of a dishevelled fat man carelessly discarding flowers he bought 5 minutes earlier from a petrol station forecourt (watch it at 45 min, HERE) - but then, after witnessing the merciless barrage of criticism unleashed upon their boy Boris from UK Twitter between the hours of 11pm and 6am on Monday morning, phoning the producer of BBC Breakfast and ordering the incriminating footage to be replaced (and maybe for Naga Munchetti to show a little cleavage) to keep the much smaller number of viewers who feel the need to watch telly in their pyjamas - the real powerbrokers and opinion makers in the land - oblivious to the awful truth of the evil that sits at the seat of power on this cursed isle.

This toss is the kind of petty, juvenile points-scoring that you, me and our fellow lefties here castigate The Mail and social media's horde of You Can't Say Anything These Days for when they get up to the same tricks.

When I read The Sun's fake story about Jezza dancing his way to the Cenotaph, I thought exploiting the occasion for partisan political purposes was shameful shit. I'm sure you agree on that score ...




https://tompride.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/anger-after-the-sun-photoshops-out-ww2-veteran-from-remembrance-sunday-service/

[Funt Solo]

Well, we all make mistakes.

[Professor Bear]

I like you very much, Pro Bear - you're funny and clever, which are rare commodities anywhere on the internet. But this is some of the dumbest shit I've ever read.

I'm sure the rest of your post is very insightful, but I still remember the last very lengthy lecture you gave when I took a swipe at the BBC in which you explained how a senior political editor editing an interviewee's responses was actually the fault of The Canary or something, so I think I'll leave it there, thanx.

[Frank]

You never see anyone, left or right^*, berating Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4 News, or Channel 5 News, despite all UK broadcasters being bound by the same regulations ensuring impartiality as the public service broadcaster.

That's probably just a coincidence. I can't see how it serves any kind of agenda.


* The papers, social media politics accounts, or even your mates. My racist friends sometimes take a pop at Channel Four News in a very general way, but I'm pretty sure they've only ever seen that clip of the lovely Cathy Newman being DESTROYED!!! by Jordan Peterson on Youtube

[Professor Bear]

Sky News are always under fire - admittedly because they're seen as a Rupert Murdoch operation - and their "Brexit Election" branding has even prompted official complaints to OFCOM by the Labour Party, while Channel 4 News get it in the neck all the time.  If you're not seeing examples of other broadcasters than the BBC facing criticism then you aren't looking hard enough.

Or you aren't on Twitter.  Lucky bastard.

[Funt Solo]

Wouldn't it be more worrying if The Sun was a trusted news source? A sign of the end times, that.

---

During the last US presidential election, the BBC news front page had something ridiculous like 10 images of Trump - all smiling victoriously (this is prior to the voting taking place) and about 2 of Clinton looking grumpy and aggrieved.

I doubt that the BBC was directly manipulating the message - but I think their algorithm was just scooping up lots of Trump stories and hardly any Clinton ones. I'm not sure if a human selects the images: but it's always an image that reflects the story content - so unhappy if something bad has happened to them, jolly if it's more upbeat.

The end result was that the front page looked terribly skewed in favour of the Orange Scunthorpe.

[Frank]

Wouldn't stand up in court or to peer review, and for all I know you'll see a completely different set of results than I do:

BBC bias

ITV bias

Channel 4 bias

Sky bias

[Frank]

Apologies for the DP^*. Like his valet, no man is a hero to his search engine:











Hilariously, Interneters are so determined to find evidence of BBC bias that a search for Sky or ITV bias return hits for BBC bias (2 hits, in the case of ITV, including the TOP hit)^**


* Fnar

** The Internet also seems convinced Channel 4 is biased but sees ITV as the least biased news broadcaster. Channel 4 News and ITV News are, of course, both made by the same company (ITN)