Showing posts with label BBC News website. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC News website. Show all posts

Saturday, July 16, 2016

newspapers and "Fake"newspapers



I've seen several comments on various sites complaining that the BBC hasn't reported that the killer in Nice shouted "Allahu akbar!" during the massacre. 


The article by Rozina Sini of the BBC's UGC and Social News team, ends by saying:
The Nice attack provides another example that some people take advantage of tragedy to spread false rumours online. It is an increasing problem for those affected by such events and those searching for the truth.

Friday, July 15, 2016

newspapers and Lorriesnewspapers



Mark Mardell began today's The World at One by saying that "a lorry deliberately drove into a crowd". 

Meanwhile, the changing headline on the main BBC News website report of the latest atrocity in France didn't shy away from pointing the finger of blame firmly where it belongs either (with lorries).

Here's how that headline evolved over the course of last night and this morning and early afternoon (in chronological order):

Panic in Nice as 'lorry hits crowd'
'Many dead' as lorry hits crowd in Nice
Many dead as lorry hits crowd in Nice
Nice attack: Many dead as lorry hits crowd
Attack in Nice: Many dead as lorry hits crowd
Nice attack: Dozens killed during Bastille Day celebrations
Nice attack: At least 84 killed during Bastille Day celebrations
Nice attack: At least 84 killed by lorry at Bastille Day celebrations

Every day I travel to and from work and I find myself sharing the roads with lorries. They drive past my place of work all the time. I never knew lorries were capable of such unspeakable evil.

I will never look at lorries in the same way again.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

newspapers and #marchforsorelosersnewspapers


At least the BBC has chosen not to lead its News website with the anti-Brexit march in London. Sky, on the other hand, is leading with it:


The obvious thing to say about this march has already been said by General Boles on Twitter (from a couple of hours ago): 

Unless there are 18 million people on #marchforeurope they'd have been better off staying in bed.

newspapers and "Daring"newspapers


There's a discussion going on in the comments at Biased BBC over a BBC News website article's use of the word "daring" to describe the Islamist terrorist attack on a cafe in Bangladesh. 


Should that word have been used? I very much think not.

The BBC calls the attacked district "a high-security area...considered among the safest places in the capital", so maybe that's why the BBC journalist (Anbarasan Ethirajan, the BBC's South Asia analyst) felt it was appropriate to use it. 

But "daring" is a word that carries strong positive connotations, inevitably bringing along with it the idea of 'courage'. 

And there's nothing 'courageous' about walking, as part of a fully-armed gang, into a cafe where ordinary, unarmed people are relaxing, eating and drinking with the intent of slaughtering them. 

And, as was said over at Biased BBCsuch BBC reporters don't seem to quite realise how poorly such terminology plays with the public.

Tellingly, the BBC's own Style Guide agrees. It says the following:

Daring
Do not use in the context of a crime or military action, as it suggests admiration. 

Thursday, June 30, 2016

newspapers and Mark Mardell on Brexitnewspapers


Mark Mardell's latest website article in the wake of the Brexit vote focuses on "society's sharp divides". 

It's classic MM, in that it doubtless believes itself to be impartial and to be acting as the 'BBC voice of reason' throughout whilst being riddled with bias from start to finish. 

Allow me to explain (with apologies, at some length)...


It begins by saying that the referendum has been a bad thing, socially-speaking. It's done harm in itself and made even worse the problems that were there before:
The referendum has carved our country into two camps, sharpened existing divisions, and created some new ones. 
And "a silence, a vacuum, an absence" has followed immediately, politically-speaking. And "chaos", "the great divide", "betrayal" are facing us in coming months. 

His first link takes us to passionate pro-European Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post. He then links the Tea Party to Trump, and then both of them to the "I want my country back" tendency here in the UK. 

The words "I want my country back" are "a code", he tells us. They could mean this or it could mean that, but in the US "for some, it is a yearning for a time there was a white man in the White House, and official signs weren't in Spanish" - i.e it's simply racism.

And immediately after whistling at any passing dogs with that 'racism' hint he writes:
We heard the same slogan in the referendum too. 
Work out the British meaning yourself.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Ah but...the irony is that it's now "another lot who feels they have lost their country" (linking to the New Statesman). "To describe these people as "bad losers" is to miss the point", write Mark (linking, in a contradictory spirit, to Richard Littlejohn, boo!, in the Daily Mail, double boo!)

It's then on the "heartless" grief and agony of the losing Remain side - an agony "sharpened by the apparent increase in assaults on people assumed to be foreign or immigrants", which "many who voted Remain...may suspect" is a result of Brexit. 

All the ways to stop Brexit are then mentioned. And Mark says that Leave supporters would have reacted just as furiously and tried just as hard to overturn the referendum result if they'd lost. 

Or so he admits he "assumes". (I'm not so sure that Leave supporters would have behaved like that. Some would, but I suspect not anywhere near so many). 

"Everyone" might soon be really "betrayed" and "left behind" Mark continues, just as cheerfully.

Mr. BBC Impartiality then looks at the issues through Labour's problems before sketching out the two 'outlooks' in doubtless unconsciously loaded language, eg:
Leavers tend to believe in a strong unitary state, based at Westminster, ruling over the whole of the UK. 
They dislike devolution and the EU in equal measure, and believe not so much in the old British Empire, but in what some have called the English Empire. 
Those in the "Remain" camp tend to be more relaxed about more diffused sovereignty and identity, and with power either devolved down to the nations that make up our country, or up to supra-national organisations such as the EU.
And then ol' Cheery Chops ends by returning to the 'badness' of the referendum 'and that which it hath wrought':
Referendums tend to be a device to keep divided parties together. 
This one has not only torn the parties asunder but divided the people. 
It is hard to see how the political process over the next few months and years will serve to heal it.
Woe, woe and quadruple woe!


Incidentally, his previous BBC website piece Brexit: The story on an island apart, written a day after the result, is cut from similar cloth - though doing a James Naughtie and clothing the bias in 'historical' and 'literary' perspective. 

Its framing device is to cite John of Gaunt's famous paean to England from Richard II (his 'this sceptred isle' speech). It begins positive, but ends negative:
We see ourselves as separate, and so we shall soon be cut out of councils and commission that are still shaping a continent. Some in Brussels may reflect smugly on how John of Gaunt's speech in Richard II concludes: "That England that was wont to conquer others/Hath made a shameful conquest of itself."
In between, while trying (briefly) to be 'fair' about Eurosceptics, he argues that - for everyone but the UK - the EU has been "a bulwark against history, against horror". "For all its bureaucracy", the EU "is a deeply romantic project", Mark says.

Then he lists all the reasons why we Brits are considered wrong-headed. They cried when they heard that we wanted to leave them. (We wouldn't do that, Mark said). They speak English. We've won over the EU's economic agenda. They've treated us with kid gloves. Etc....

....and Mark Mardell, as so often, steps out from merely 'reporting' into 'editorialising'. After citing Neil Kinnock joking that "the EU changed forever when the Swedes arrived and started saying "good morning" in the lift", Mark writes:.
One might think that is trivial. But maybe it highlights something we rarely realise in our desire for hard power - the extent of our soft power.
(The "perhaps" in that paragraph is unlikely to fool anyone, I suspect!)

And on MM goes, listing yet more of our 'successes' regarding the EU's direction. And, having made that point (at length) he then writes:
Now we want to be outside the whole shebang. Don't be surprised if the instinct of some is to make sure that we feel some discomfort on our way out.
(Aren't we ungrateful! And haven't we got it coming!)


The piece goes on, but you've doubtless heard enough about it already. Please read both pieces for yourselves though and form your own judgements.

newspapers and Marking a murdernewspapers


Just for the record, neither BBC One's News at Six nor Radio 4's Six O'Clock News reported the brutal murder of a sleeping 13 year old Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, by a Palestinian man - news which has caused deep shock to the people of Israel.  

The BBC News website has included it among the featured headlines on its home page though.

I note, however, that the BBC's online report hasn't used a photo of Hallel:


Nor has it include any quotes from her grieving mother, Rena - unlike, say, the Daily Telegraph.  

Saturday, June 18, 2016

newspapers and Erdoganheadnewspapers


While I'm feeling seriously out of focus, the BBC News website now has this as its sixth most important news story in the world:


UK rock band Radiohead have condemned an attack on people listening to their new album at a record store in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

Some 20 suspected Islamists beat up customers and staff for drinking alcohol and listening to music during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan... 
Radiohead described the assault on the Velvet Indieground store as an act of "violent intolerance".
In support of Radiohead and their Turkish fans in the face of the latest advance by Erdogan's children, here's my favourite Radiohead song: