Introduction
In the last 15 years of my working life I found myself reading books again, after a bookless half century. It was my work schedule that I have to thank for it.
I became a consultant in the geophysical industry travelling worldwide, to places very remote, living in caravans, portacabins, ships and tents. Long hours in the evening needed filling. Passing through Amsterdams Schiphol airport, sometimes 4 times a month, I discovered Books again, and on most trips I would load up with three or four to keep me entertained.
In 2012, “Why are we the Good Guys” by David Cromwell of Media Lens was just published, fresh on display at Schiphol bookshop. A quick look in the back and it was plain to see from the citations and references (597) that whoever wrote it had done their homework, so I bought it.
By the time I had reached the third chapter I found my very healthy 1960s/70s sceptic juices returning and my reading material gradually focused on reading non-fiction. Truth is indeed often stranger and more interesting than fiction after all.
During the last 10 years the British public have been subjected to some of the worst attacks from our politicians that I have ever seen.
In fact the public of the world have had the same treatment at the hands of their own media, and all too often News broadcasts on mainland Europe simply quote or rehash BBC outputs, which in turn are often just cited as ” From a source” without name or rank. But this is about the BBC, and they operate world wide too.
In this 2-part report we look at the 2009 Parliamantary Expenses scandal, 2014 Scottish Referendum, 2016, Brexit Referendum, 2oi7 & 2019 General Elections, and a swift peek at the 2019 ‘Novel” Covid Virus attack.
In Part 2 we will look deeply into the 40 year war on the NHS [by both Tory and Labour Governments], By the looks of it we will need a Part 3 as well to deal with the Ukraine, a war created to instill fear into the whole world by a bunch of psychopaths that urgently need their wings clipping.
Each and every one of these events, processes, has been crafted by human hand and used to bamboozle the public to maximum effect by the mainstream corporate media.
Conspiracy theories? No!
There is only one Conspiracy, its a Global one now, and its about ‘Them vs Us’, which it has been all along. They have played the game well….too well for their own good in fact.
Parliamentary Expenses scandal – 2009 – Ongoing?
One of the biggest political stories in the UK for decades and the BBC chose not to to visit it.
Why? Well to most BBC journalists at that time the idea of MP’s having “a light lunch for £150 on the jolly old expense account”….. well it just wasn’t worth mentioning surely.
One particular BBC editor announced, hand on heart, and probably not even smiling,
“It is our job to test our elected officials, to subject them to scrutiny and ask the questions the public want answering
and hopefully to be fearless in our pursuit of those questions.”
This is Page 1 Google on BBC/Parliamentary expenses
The first link has 2 stories about MP’s expenses from Feb and April 2020 with all manner of rhetoric about scandals that “rocked the elites” and what a massive effect it had on public opinion of politicians. Not a word on why this “massive story” didn’t break on the BBC until 11 years after the event.
The BBC’s Emily Maitlis wrote a piece on “The (2009) scandal that changed Britain”…… in March 2019….. 10 years after the event. Current Affairs? I rather think not!
Fourth link down takes us to a piece by Professor Matthew Flinders of University of Sheffield, which begins… Ten years ago, the MPs’ expenses scandal erupted and shook the British political system to its foundations.
And yet again the “quake” took a decade to reach the BBC foundations.
The two David’s Cromwell and Edwards, of Media Lens fame, in their excellent book, “Propaganda Blitz”, quote Sarah O’Connell, who worked for BBC News for many years. She explained how she tried to report the expenses scandal but was told by editors: “It isn’t a story; MP’s have to eat”.
She added: But it was a story. It was one of the biggest political stories of the decade. And the BBC missed it, because, to most of their journalists at that time, the idea of having lunch for £150 on expenses, wasn’t a story, was it? Not when it was exactly the kind of thing BBC news executives might be doing as well.
The BBC lack of response here is a very telling indicator of just how “Cosy” the BBC sits alongside the government and keeps the boat stable. One year earlier vast sums of public money had been appropriated from the public purse to bail out privately owned, and blatantly fraudulent banks. Immediately afterwards, the same Public purse was rifled again by elected politicians.
This time it was on the grounds of austerity measures that had to be introduced in the face of the current “Financial Crisis”. The BBC forgot to mention that the crisis was one brought about by that very Banking Fraud on a massive scale. They also forgot to point out to the public that large wads of the taxpayers cash used to bail out those bankers was being paid the the very executives who perpetrated the fraud in the first place…as a BONUS!!!
Maybe Public Interest is only important to the BBC when the licence fees come due.
Scottish Referendum 2014
The Media Circus “Go” button was pressed regarding the 2014 Scottish referendum debate after a YouGov poll showed the Leave UK side pulling a couple of points (51%/49%) ahead of the Remain side…. this was one week before the vote was due to be cast.
That got everyones attention. The business world and its political associates burst into a belated frenzy of scaremongering as soon as the Poll was announced.
“Doomed, we are all doomed I tell ye” ran the headlines, in the familiar Lockstep pattern we have been accustomed to by now.
“Don’t let me be the last queen of Scotland”cried her Madgeness (Daily Mirror)
Cameron, Clegg, and Miliband headed up North in double quick time ( heeding their party’s PR advice to ensure they were not all seen in the same place at the same time).
As former UK Ambassador Craig Murray took care to point out, this separation strategy was adopted to make sure the canny Scots were “blindsided”.
What was it they were not supposed to see? The fact that you could not get a fag-paper between the 9 major policies of said Right Hons: Cameron, Clegg, and Miliband.
All 3 leaders of all 3 parties were very much on the same page will ALL of the following :-
- 1 Austerity Budgets,
- 2 Benefit cuts,
- 3 Tuition fees.
- 4 Trident missiles,
- 5 NHS privatisation,
- 6 Bank Bailouts,
- 7 Detention without trial for ‘Terrorism Suspects’, and
- 8 Bombing Iraq.
- 9 Opposition to Rail Nationalisation
Nine huge and very important issues for ALL of the people in the UK and Scotland, and each with a major negative impact on the public as a whole. How democratic is it that? How representational?
Polling and in-depth studies performed over the years have shown that the public oppose all 9 of those positions, most with overwhelming majorities.
What about the BBC? Surely they could be relied on to inform impartially?
A study was conducted into the so called “impartial” coverage of the referendum campaign (during the period 17/09/2012 to 18/09/2014) by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland. A man with a deep understaniding of such matters
The study covered 730 hours of TV viewing from BBC1, ITV, STV, and Reporting Scotland ( Also a BBC1 Product) across 16 coded categories. (The hours excluded advertising breaks where applicable)
This table presents data which can be used to reveal the distribution, over 12 months, of different types of message within broadcasts,
it allows comparison of the relative presence of each category and enables comparison between channels for the same categories.
Note, Reporting Scotland was a BBC item that followed BBC regular news but only available to viewers in Scotland – adding to the BBC1 figures accordingly
From the combined column RepSc+BBC1, (5th Column) Anti-Independence statements exceeded Pro Independence statements at a ratio of 3:2, meaning 50% more coverage was given to the anti-independence side
Remember, this whole thing kicked off at the 11th hour because of a poll that showed Pro Scottish Independence 2 points ahead. Clearly any reporting biased toward Anti-independence did not represent the views of the Scottish majority.
How did the BBC react to this light being shone on their mythical impartiality? How did they react to all 3 leaders having identical policies?
Very badly, like a petulant child who cannot get their way. The BBC did not bother to make any public announcement or dissection of the report itself, preferring that it just ‘went away’. Instead they wrote a 6,000-word letter to Professor Robertson attacking his study and his credibility and COPIED IT TO THE HEAD OF HIS UNIVERSITY.
It would also seem they were hoping that Professor Robertson might lose his job or at least be sanctioned by his college in some way, and that I find unforgiveable.
Professor Robertson was subsequently asked to present his report findings in front of the Education and Culture Committee of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. He was to answer questions, after which 4 senior staff from the BBC would appear later that day to respond.
Robertson acquitted himself well, defending his report and at the same time condemning the BBC response, and the total silence from fellow academics and other media outlets.
The report stands on its own merit, which is more than can be said for the 4 senior BBC staff. If the public had been expecting a spirited and accurate defence of BBC policy they saw no such thing.
Retired BBC Journalist Derek Bateman, with many years working at the BBC under his belt, put it rather succinctly in his blog item, Journalists at Work, from March 2014, the last words of which run…
“You don’t need John Robertson’s report to know how bad things are in the newsroom – check out the departure lounge. People are choosing to walk, leaving a career and pension and benefits behind in order to breathe freely and start again….and the air is good.”
Which goes a long way to explain the number of oxygen bandits that are working in BBC news in 2022
Brexit Referendum 2016
In 2016 (Updated in 2018) we published a piece on Brexit that started life in 1997 with Liam Fox setting up Atlantic Bridge a US/UK Think tank with the aim of “Defending people of common interests from European Integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States”.
From there the story twists and turns through the corridors of power. In 2009, Mr Fox was asked to repay £20k that he had fraudulently claimed on expenses, but as we have already heard, the MPs expenses scandal was not considered news by the BBC. Mr Fox by the way, was record holder in the expenses table, with £20k being the highest by far.
In 2011 the Atlantic Bridge, registered as a charity, was itself investigated and found not to be a charity at all. Rather than simply stump up some tax money, they decided to shut it down…or at least shift it away from the public eye. (Not that the BBC did much to expose any of this, we got more information from Guardian Articles by George Monbiot than the BBC ever produced)
Only after this investigation into Atlantic Bridge was the source of the funding made clear. Goldman Sachs and Pfizer were two notable sources. The latter funded Gabby Bertin as a researcher for Atlantic Bridge, she may be remembered as David Cameron’s press secretary, who now sits in the House of Lords after Cameron gave her a Life Peerage in his resignation honours list.
A direct link thus between UK Political power, the Upper House and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. All a coincidence I am sure, but one that the BBC are probably still unaware of, while “holding power to account”.
General Elections 2017/19
I have lost count of the number of times I sat through overnight major election results coming in, more often than not on the BBC. [Was it Auntie who gave us the “Swingometer”? I cannot remember,] but if not, they must have had some gismo or widget that did much the same thing.
For half a century I genuinely believed I was watching democracy in action. I felt great to know that the hard fought ‘battles on the nations doorsteps’ were being democratically turned into tangible ‘Bums on Seats’ in the lower house.
While reading the Media Lens book mentioned above, I had discovered other authors and books in the process. One that sticks in my mind is by Alex Carey and its title is Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia. [The book is still available but a 10 page taster entitled “Managing Public Opinion”is available here.] Its an eye opener and should be available to every student of Politics, Media and History
So here I am looking at 2017/2019 General Elections and the way they were “Managed” in a whole different light, plus 2017 was the first one that Jeremy Corbyn was involved in as leader of the Labour Party… There seemed to be the sense of change in the air.
It was shortlived, and from the day the Election date was announced, the entire UK media circus went into a feeding frenzy.
Worth noting that by this time, the media of the western world had been rounded up and corralled into a dozen or so mega corporations.
In 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, with a lifetime of work dedicated to fighting racism in all its forms found himself turned into the ultimate racist, an antisemite in fact, by the entire UK media in general, and the BBC in particular.
I am going to restrict this section to a series of numbered points to help me grope through the red mist of rage I experience going through all this again. Remember:
BBC Mission statement
Our mission is “to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which Inform, educate and entertain”.
1 – Omission is always a strong propaganda strategy. Just don’t mention it, that war, that genocide, that funny little episode with the Postal Votes…all of them never happened. All my life the Labour party contended every single election and always got millions of votes. Just try counting the number of positive reports that the BBC broadcast about the Labour Party/Jeremy Corbyn in both 2017 and 2019 election campaigns. It shouldn’t take long, The BBC content was almost 100% negative.
2 – It was always Corbyn and it was always Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Theresa May. They all got mentions on a regular basis, as did Corbyn, but never in a positive light. I once saw it mentioned that dropping the first name Jeremy, was supposed to dehumanise him – a subliminal message – they said. Subliminal it is not.
3 – Boris (Not just Johnson) laid a wreath at the cenotaph incorrectly, some say he was a little tipsy, we will never know. Was this shown on that days news? No! It was 3 year old footage that was shown. BBC said the insertion of 3 year old footage was an accident.
4 – In a live debate on BBC Question Time, Boris (Not just Johnson), was asked about honesty in politics. The audience laughter was “quite clearly audible”. That got edited out too.
5 – BBC’s Senior Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg got wind of a New Labour MP who wanted to resign from the party. She approached the MP and suggested he do the dirty deed on TV. He seems to have been more than happy to do so. This “Sun” type publicity stunt, live on TV ignored completely any party protocol like informing the party/leader, in an election year. The BBC glossed over that bit while angrily defending their rights “to broadcast news”. I am sure nobody has a problem with them reporting the news but I, for one, have a very big problem with them manufacturing it live on TV.
6 – The Corbyn hat? I cannot be bothered to go there again.
7 – Owen Jones-Guardian columnist and author, asked in Oct. 2019, “In the last 24 hours, the BBC has regurgitated a false Tory pledge on the NHS and claimed allegations of sexual harassment against Boris Johnson are about his “private life”, is the BBC now No. 10’s press office”.
8 – Henry Mance, the Chief Feature Writer for the Financial Times (after Johnson’s first PMQs), Sept. 2019, “Funny old world – nearly everyone who watched PMQs live thought Boris Johnson was disastrous, but watching the BBC’s 10 o’clock news, you would think he’d won it.
9 – Labour Party (after Panorama on anti-Semitism), July 2019, “The Panorama programme was not a fair or balanced investigation. It was a seriously inaccurate, politically one-sided polemic, which breached basic journalistic standards, invented quotes and edited emails to change their meaning. It was an overtly biased intervention by the BBC in party political controversy.”
10 – Gina Miller-Investment manager; founder of endthechaos.co.uk, May 2019. “In general, I think people in government and positions of political power get challenged less, while experts are being devalued. That’s really hampering the debate and the quality of what’s being produced by the corporation.”
11 – The Independent (after publication of a report by Media Reform Coalition), July 2016, “BBC journalists used language deemed by the researchers to “emphasise hostility, intransigence, and extreme positions” more frequently in these programmes, such as the words “hostile” and “hard core” …In addition, almost twice as much unchallenged airtime was given to people criticising Mr Corbyn than his allies on the BBC, the report found.”
12 – Sir Michael Lyons-Former Chairman of the BBC Trust, May 2016 “I don’t think I’m alone in feeling the BBC has sought to hedge its bets of late…there have been some quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour Party. I mean quite extraordinary – I can understand why people are worried about some of the most senior editorial voices having lost their impartiality on this…The BBC may have bowed to political pressure to show bias against Labour and Jeremy Corbyn”
13 – BBC, (Response to Laura Kuenssberg’s report in the aftermath of Paris attacks), Nov. 2015, “The BBC Trust said the BBC “was wrong in this case to present an answer Mr Corbyn had given to a question about ‘shoot to kill’ as though it were his answer to a question he had not in fact been asked”…The Trust said the Paris attacks, and how Britain might respond in a similar situation, were “major matters of considerable importance”…It also said: “The breach of due accuracy on such a highly contentious political issue meant that the output had not achieved due impartiality.” But by then of course the damage had been done in the public mind, and Kuenssberg knew that all along
14 – The Observer: “BBC news broken? And if so, how do we fix it?”
We fix it by enforcing their compliance with their own Mission statement don’t we?
Much of the above was culled from a DG article I wrote on the elections…can I plagiarise myself? If so I plead guilty?
Covid 19 2019(now the Monkey pox) – End date yet to be determined
It really doesn’t matter what stance you take with the Covid 19 debacle; the facts are coming out in a steady stream as the Pfizer papers are released. Its easy to see now why Pfizer wanted them locking away for 75 years. Before long there will be a very much clearer picture than there is now, but in the meantime we must question the media on their part in propagating fear and false information on a world-wide scale.
Every hour we were told that millions were to die, people who tested positive for Covid had little or no treatment and were sent home to isolate themselves. People were scared stiff.
It is neither the job of Government or the media, in the face of a “murderous pandemic” to scare and intimidate the public. We do not pay our media, or our TV licence fees to have Talking Heads tell us we are all doomed. We do not elect our politicians to do so either. Calm and rational thought is what the population needs, and assurances that the right people are on the case and we are all going to be looked after.
None of that happened. Elderly hospital patients who tested positive were sent to the nursing homes, brim-full of elderly and already vulnerable people, where they could supposedly spread the disease even wider, and drive up the mortality figures even higher.
Conflicting figures and conflicting evidence were widespread, surely enough meat on that bone for any journalist or TV investigator to dig down for the truth. 2 years on, barely a single media entity, and certainly not the BBC, have produced any in depth reporting on the salient points of this media driven pandemic.
Not a single question was asked about why the entire planet now seemed to be under the thrall of one man, Anthony Fauci. Nobody on earth seemed to be aware of the term “captive Agencies”, least of all our media watchdogs. Along with Fauci we have the FDA, the CDC and the WHO, all of whom are financed to the tune of $Billions by private indicviduials, trusts, foundations or corporations. Nothing to see here, move along please.
All of these agencies are seriously compromised by having their upper levels of management and administration occupied by former Big Pharma operatives busy wheeling and dealing with Pathogen Patents, Vaccine Patents, and even the diagnosis and test apparatus patents for the “Novel Covid 19 virus”
It is called “The Revolving Door” and millions of words have been written and spoken on that subject, only not often, or at length, and certainly not by the BBC
Nobody from the BBC delved into the background or history. Nobody asked “Was this really from Bats?, Was it really made in a Lab?, Why was the Lab in the US from whence it came receiving funding for Gain of Function research”
Who did do some digging? Vanity Fair a “Lifestyle” Magazine with some serious journalism about the lab leak theories. With all of the news gathering resources of the BBC, little old Vanity Fair comes up with a serious report while the BBC just regurgitates Reuters/AP and the Rubbish du Jour emitted by the government of the day.
Take this piece from December 2020 from the BBC about a really angry doctor who was tired of “watching whole families getting wiped out here, and it’s got to stop.”
This is pretty scary stuff, I get that the Doctor was angry, but he is yelling at the people he is scaring and the BBC is amplifying it. Why are they not yelling at the government of the day, who had failed the NHS completely, by asset stripping it to the bone to enable its privatisation?
Remember the Nightingale hospitals? Thousands of extra beds in huge buildings? 7 of them in the UK costing a total of £530 million
Angry Professor Montgomery, from the piece above, might have had a hell of a lot of his stress and problems removed with a fully functioning Nightingale nearby.
Instead of which, after millions were spent, the Nightingales didn’t sing.
The patient take up didn’t happen,
This is what did
In risk management one of the tools for evaluating a bad situation is RCA or Root Cause Analysis, and one method is the “5 Whys”. The Kings Fund use it too, in this article. In this case they only needed 2 Whys, I make it 4. Were the Nightingales a waste of money?
Why? Because they treated no patients.
Why? Because they didn’t have enough staff to man the units.
Why? Because the government has been trying to privatise the entire NHS system for years.
Why? Because when your Health Service is run privately, everyone working in the ‘Business’ has to do as they are told or get out. No questions are allowed, no vocational medicine either. Employment Tyranny 101
Crisis Management? Boris Johnson couldn’t manage his way out of a wet paper bag, but he gave plenty of Tory mates and funders some very lucrative contracts to make PPE, Ventilators, Track and Trace systems. £Billions of public money in fact.
The BBC response? Bugger all of substance.
They did nothing to help the population stay ‘calm and informed’ that is for sure, nor was it eager to hold the government of the day accountable for needlessly spending £billions on mostly useless projects.
I will let the Daily Telegraph have the last word on the BBC and note the last line in which the BBC seems to have retracted/apologised/revised the original Radio Broadcast complaint with a “Tweet”, not on the same Radio Channel/programme.
I have my doubts that the Radio5Live listeners and Twitterati are on the same wavelength, but maybe I am becoming cynical in my old age.
Part 2 follows shortly
Another great site by the Dangerous Globe
