newspapers and "And the financial markets collapse"newspapers

For those, like me (and David Keighley at News-watch), who have shown (at the very least) that some flagship BBC programmes and some BBC reporters/presenters did show a pronounced anti-Brexit bias during the EU referendum campaign, it was startling and sobering to keep hearing from so many people who we like and admire and who usually agree with us about BBC bias (including prominent pro-Leave types) that they thought that the BBC had in fact behaved in an unexpectedly fair way and covered itself in impartial glory. 

One of those people was Peter Hitchens. He wrote again a couple of days ago about "the creditable efforts of the BBC to be impartial, which I absolutely did not expect", having previously written, "I underestimated the BBC, which has, perhaps thanks to years of justified and correct criticism from people such as me, taken its duty of impartiality seriously". Interestingly, he now thinks that the BBC has reverted to type - since the referendum result came through:

Parliament is pro-EU. The Civil Service is pro-EU, the judiciary is pro-EU, the BBC is pro-EU and is now returning to its old bad habits after an admittedly creditable attempt at balance. Its 6am radio news bulletin on Friday said, falsely and dangerously, that the pound had �collapsed� following the result and there will be a lot more of this foolish panic-mongering in days to come.

Saturday's excellent Dateline London gave proof for his closing point. Presenter Maxine Mawhinney began by saying, in doom-mongering fashion: 

Britain leaves the European Union. The Prime Minister stands down. And the financial markets collapse. Plenty to talk about.

Alex Deane, who was on superb form throughout, didn't let that pass without comment: 

No, hang on a minute. Let me answer the question who asked everyone else. The market didn't crash. The FTSE finished higher on Friday than it was last Friday. And it's extraordinary to hear someone from Bloomberg reinforce your false premise that there was a big crash or the pound slumped. The pound is where it was in February.  

The 'someone from Bloomberg' he was talking about was Stephanie Baker. Along with French regular Agnes Poirier, she took the anti-Brexit line. 

The final guest, German regular Thomas Kielinger, took up a position closer to Alex's. He may be a Europhile but he's always been a passionate Anglophile and thinks we'll prosper outside the EU. I found his contribution rather moving. 

All credit to the makers of Dateline London for assembling such an interesting and varied panel. Less credit to Maxine for framing the debate in such a loaded, doom-mongering fashion.

******

Alex Deane's appearances on Dateline and a highly sparky Sky News paper review last night have - inevitably - drawn some very ugly comments at places like Digital Spy and on Twitter. Thankfully, Twitter has also deluged him in praise too - quite a few from Labour supporters saying how suprised and pleased they are to agree with him. Alex's response to the ugly comments on Twitter is usually to re-tweet them and add a good-natured joke.

Here's another of Alex's jokes today. It made me smile:

newspapers and Let me finish my point!newspapers

I was toying with the idea of switching over to ITV after Andrew Marr and before Andrew Neil  to see what Peston�s show was like (I hear David Cameron was a guest) but when I saw who was on the front row of TBQs I stuck around to see what Adam Deen, Douglas Murray, Peter Hitchens and Kate Smurthwaite would have to say. 

The question was to do with the �Prevent� strategy. �Is countering extremism compatible with freedom of religion?�. (No-one even agrees about the exact definition of extremism, so the  programme was doomed to go nowhere)

Today�s representatives of Islam were Dr. Rizwaan Sabir (Lecturer Liverpool John Moores University) and Mohammed Khaliel. True to form, they were pugnacious and reluctant to let anyone else speak, but that�s probably why the producers invited them on. Half the precious air time was wasted by people asking if they might be allowed to finish their point.

Dr. Sabir said there was �no empirical evidence that an extreme form of Islamic Ideology is in fact the cause of terrorism.�

Peter Hitchens made a strangely ill thought-through argument, which seemed to be that freedoms of �thought� should never be impinged upon - including the thoughts and words of proponents of radical Islam - until actual violence is involved. 

He said that acts of terrorism have always been undertaken by petty criminals, drinkers and drug addicts, not theologians or scholars of Islam. You don�t see many imams carrying out their own dirty business, that�s true. They�re too fond of their privileged position in this life to splat prematurely on to the next.

The rather large flaw in his argument is that those freethinking theologians and scholars are in the business of manipulating the petty criminals into doing their bidding, lured by the promise of martyrdom and all those seductive virgins. 

I assume Peter Hitchens can only think this because he fears that his own Christian views might be criminalised, were the Prevent strategy to be applied too rigorously.  He might incur an ASBO.

The thing that never fails to amaze me is the set. Who in their right mind could have deliberately picked the theme of orange, blue, bronze(quilted), blue, yellow, purple, ochre, blue, veridian(quilted), blue, tangerine and yellow vertical stripes as a backcloth to this programme. Even before anyone has said a word it�s highly depressive. 

It�s even worse than Andrew Marr�s new set, with the orange upholstery and the vermillion cushions. 

Good grief.

newspapers and Pro-suicide biasnewspapers

Talking of the BBC's deeply ingrained social liberalism, here's Peter Hitchens in today's Mail on Sunday:

There's no heroism in suicide

Why do BBC bosses love suicide so much? Every hard case of a sick or injured man or woman wanting to end it all gets sympathetic top billing on BBC bulletins. And now the propaganda soap, EastEnders, has treated the fictional suicide of the fictional Peggy Mitchell (played by Dame Barbara Windsor) as a moment of heroism and dignity. 

How can I break it to them that this is only one opinion on a contentious subject, and that they are yet again breaching their obligation to be impartial? 

Suicide leaves many hard wounds behind, and many people still believe it to be wrong. Much can be done to prevent the dying from suffering, the hospice movement needs all the help it can get, and the BBC could do a lot to promote it.

Though I'm a social liberal on such things myself, I can see PH's point about BBC bias here - if he's describing the programme (which I didn't watch) correctly.

If he is describing it correctly, then it's a case of bias (whether we personally care about the bias or not), isn't it?

Whether it's a simple failure to even consider that there could be another perspective on the issue or, perhaps even more worryingly, an unwillingness after recognising that there is such a perspective to duly provide 'balance', Peter seems to have a point here, doesn't he?