BBC bias. Boris 51.5%: "tight margin". Hollande 51.7%: "clear victory"

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The left-wing propoganda spouted by the BBC really is relentless.

I am disappointed that they got off with a cash freeze in the licence fee. A 75% cut would have been far more appropriate.

Well claig you keep that tin foil hat on ok and never look up incase their taking a satellite photo of you okay. You obviously don't like being presented with facts.

also it steals a lot of stuff from other papers - it's always lifting interviews & articles from the Guardian, for instance (but never credits them)

I thought London was close because there was only 3% between Boris and Ken. No idea about French result but don't think it was as little as 3% difference.

Well, Novack you keep that dunce's hat pulled firmly over youe eyes and never look up in case you see the wood for the trees. You obviously think you know all the facts.

'The Daily Mail has become the leading online newspaper in the world, according to figures by the tracking service comScore.

The British middle-market tabloid has eclipsed the previous, and long-time, holder of the top spot, the New York Times.

The figures show that Mail Online reached 45.3m people last December compared to the NY Times's 44.8m. Trailing behind them are USA Today, the US-based Tribune newspapers and the Guardian.'

That is from Roy Greenslade, in the Guardian. He is a very experienced journalist, and I think former editor of a paper, and has spent many, many years in the newspaper industry.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2012

First round - Hollande 28.63, Sarkozy 27.18
Second round - Holland 51.63 Sarkozy 48.37

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_mayoral_election,_2012
First preference - Boris 44.01, Ken 40.30
Final round - Boris 51.53 Ken 48.47

So pretty much identical

How is it possible for a broadcaster/newspaper not to be biased?

The problem is not that the BBC is biased, it's that there is someone pulling the strings, the same as in the papers. If each newscaster or reporter were allowed to report something as s/he sees it without having to toe the political line, we would get a better spread of information.

What we need is good Media education, to help us build up an immunity to spin, and value honesty and openness. What's wrong with a reporter saying 'That's what it looks like to me but here is some more information that you might be interested in'?

claig, did you actually read that Mark Thompson piece beyond the headline?

Yes I did along time ago. Why?

Have any of you read Peter Sissons book, some of which was serialised in the Mail?

'What we need is good Media education, to help us build up an immunity to spin, and value honesty and openness. What's wrong with a reporter saying 'That's what it looks like to me but here is some more information that you might be interested in'?'

You are right, Solo. It is up to us to develop critical thinking and spot when we are being spun - whether it is by New Labour spin meisters, Mail journalists, Fox programmes or BBC programmes. Everything is spin and contains spin because it is too important to be left to the individual. That is why those who own the means of communication (similar to the means of production) influence great power. That is why Murdoch is being curtailed, but other media outlets also exercise power by influencing minds.

Your only source is the Mail for how the Mail is better than the BBC.!!

Well the BBC is probably in the best in the world for not being biased as it has no string pulling editor with an agenda. Daily Fail's editor has a well known agenda using involving him smearing anyone or thing that he disagres with.

Claig, since you've read beyond the headline, you'll see he is talking about his memories of 1979. Not today. He doesn't claim the BBC is biased.

edam, he is not going to say that now, is he? Or someone will ask him why he didn't sort it out?
OK. I will have to read it agin.

'Left-wing bias in the past
But he claimed there was now 'much less overt tribalism' among the current crop of young journalists, and said in recent times the corporation was a 'broader church'.
He claimed there was now an 'honourable tradition of journalists from the right' working for the corporation.
The BBC has long been accused of being institutionally biased towards the Left, and an internal report from 2007 said it had to make greater efforts to avoid liberal bias

That report criticised the BBC for coming late to several important stories including euroscepticism and immigration, which it described as 'off limits in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone'.

So we have past and now, no specific time lines, just general.
recent time broader church
now an 'honourable' tradition, so what was it before, dishonourable?
greater effort to avoid liberal bias
off-limits to liberal-minded comfort zone according to study in 2007

Mark Thompson didn't work at the BBC all the time from 30 years ago, he worked for Channel 4 for a numbeer of years as well.

I'm surprised that the Biased BBC website has not been linked yet.

A few themes they have are:

blatant bias against the Republicans and in favour of the Democrats/Obama (very blatant and obvious, because it's not the UK so they can get away with it more)

bias against Israel

ignoring the nationality of foreign criminals, Islamic terrorists, etc., e.g.,

biased-bbc.com/2012/05/08/the-missing-words/

They point out that the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17989463 manage to make NO mention of either 'Pakistani' or 'Muslim' in the grooming rape story.

biased-bbc.com/2012/05/01/khat-got-your-tongue/

basically unnamed people were supporting terrorism by smuggling khat. The essential missing information was that this was Islamic terrorism, and that the people involved were Somalis, so the article was completely devoide of context. (by contrast the BBC will ALWAYS point out the background of BNP/EDL types)

biased-bbc.com/2007/07/02/1687/

"Hence we see the Algerian illegal immigrant transformed into a man from ?Shepherds Bush?, the Moroccan drug dealer (obsessed with beheadings and al-Quaeda videos) who becomes a man ?from Lisson Grove, north-west London? (with no notable habits), the Somali ?of Small Heath, Birmingham?, the Nigerian nationals and illegal immigrants who become ?South Londoners? "

"There?s one notable exception to this rule ? if the foreign national is American the BBC goes to town on the story. Even if he?s a naturalised British citizen he?ll always be American to BBC news."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-17537857

Manages not to mention 'Muslim' in a story on FGM.

Thing is Claig, you are working from a Mail story, which you will have notice quotes single words or chunks of two or three words and then fills in all the context around them. You can't deduce anything from it except that the Mail doesn't like the Beeb - quel surprise - and has seized on a quote about Mark Thomas's reminiscences of 33 years ago when he was starting out in journalism. They are trying to turn a speck of dust into a great big forest of oak trees.

So this is what you thing we'd get, Poulay, if the BBC wasn't biased?

Good job it is then. Otherwise there would be rioting in the streets. More of it.

Poulay, the story does indeed include the words Pakistani and Asian, several times over.

I'm not sure what you mean Solopower.

Plenty of other media sources mention people's background. It's not like the BBC has a monopoly on news coverage.

'Your only source is the Mail for how the Mail is better than the BBC.!!

Well the BBC is probably in the best in the world for not being biased as it has no string pulling editor with an agenda. Daily Fail's editor has a well known agenda using involving him smearing anyone or thing that he disagres with.'

Novack, my source was teh Guardian and Roy Greenslade, a very respected journalist.

The Daily Mail has an agenda, but so does the BBC. It would be naive to believe anything else, just because the BBC might say it has no agenda. We are dealing with politics, of course there is spin.

edam, you're right, they merely omit the word 'Muslim'. I should have copied the biased-bbc story more carefully.

Do you honestly think the BBC should say ' A man, 46, of joint Australian and Ghanaian extraction, has just won the lottery.' Or 'Mrs X, white, with green eyes, has been prosecuted for drug smuggling'?

The BBC doesn't have a proprietor who demands a certain take on the news, nor one overall editor who is a bit of an, um, character like Dacre (did you see him at Leveson?). It strives to be impartial. Unlike the Mail which strives very keenly to present a certain view of the world, and which will kill stories if it can't twist them into supporting that view.

Or have I misunderstood you? Hope so.

edam, I agree that the Mail spins its stories. But it mentions his quotes and they are about "recent times" etc. "broader church", "honourable tradition" and it mentions teh BBC's internal study in 2007.

This is not the only story about BBC bias in teh Mail or Telegraph or in lots of other places on teh internet, as Poulay has shown.

Have you read Peter Sissons' book? Of course, we need to treat some of it with a pinch of salt because he may be a disgruntled ex-employee. But it only says what many other people also say.

Even the Director General admitted there was left wing bias. Why did he do that?