BBC turns into a Python skit

Barbara Amiel has some good observations and ideas on what to do with the BBC. I have no idea how to fix them but I do have a take on what's happening.

Back in 1998 before my first trip to England I started reading the BBC news. I quite enjoyed reading about world events from a European/British view. The BBC always claimed to be unbiased but as an American that doesn't live in the Ivory Towers of elitism I know this cannot be true. None the less I was still interested in their angle on things, even if they where too deluded to think they had an angle. The BBC was such a part of my daily life that when 5 Live picked up a story on some hooha Ohio State University was pulling with the girls rugby team I managed to get on the show and give the story from ground zero. Those where the salad days.

My relationship with the BBC began to sour on Sept. 12th, 2001. From the very first while they reported on European sympathy with us their analysis had a hint of "Sure sure it's awful what happened but Bin Laden has legitimate grievances". At the time I simply dismissed this, "It's your fault" vibe I was picking up as me being hypersensitive to the subject. Then came the Taliban.

I was not pleased with the BBC's analysis of the fight in Afghanistan. On one side you have peace loving liberal democracies and on the other ruthless murdering religious zealots aiding a world wide terrorist network. I'll give you 3 guess as to who the BBC put on trail in their OP/ED work. Three guesses to figure out who the BBC made out to be a big brutal bully, calloused, uncaring and war mongering. So I simply stopped reading their analysis of the situation as their world view was simply off the deep end but I continued to go to the page for reporting. Then things got strange. If a US plane or chopper got shot down I swear the BBC had it up on the web site in seconds but great US advances like the fall of Mozul took hours and hours to find there way to the page and then only as another story not as "breaking news". I hung on hoping they would get better but by the middle of '02 I had stopped visiting.

I did start going back to the site in the lead up to Iraq this year. But not for news, for humor. Here you have the BBC thinking they are doing serious journalism but all they are doing is giving The Onion a run for their money. I just went for laughs. To see the BBC report every inane obvious lie form Baghdad Bob's mouth as anointed fact while distrusting everything the US said. I can sum up all BBC Iraqi reporting into one line: "Iraq's valiant army, by the will of Allah, is bogging the US forces down while at CENTCOM the Pentagon is claiming they are on the outskirts of Baghdad and moving about freely." There, you just got BBC's entire Iraqi War report.

Now we have the BBC trying to manufacture a scandal over WMD against Tony Blair just as the Dems here are trying with Bush. Only unlike the Dems the BBC is the media outlet. They have a source, one source, that makes an outrageous claim that Prime Minister Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell falsified evidence to lead England into war. they make this reports based on one - one - uncorroborated, anonymous intelligence source. Now this has Tony furious, as he is right to be (Europe needs a little more righteous indignation) and facts are starting to come out. Very damming facts... for the BBC.

So we have a blatantly leftist biased news source caught lying and making very poor journalism choices. Now does the BBC hold their heads up and take it like a man as the New York Times did? No, because leftists Anti-Americanism in Europe is a religion. Facts are meaningless to them as they are guided by their faith that America is the source of all evil. Here is Tony Blair supporting the demonic Americans so anything that makes it harder for Tony is good. We can lie and if caught lying simply say, "prove it!". We will continue to reports a story that we have zero evidence is true unless you can provide evidence that we are lying. Journalistic integrity is nothing, what is important is that Tony is bad for supporting the Americans and we will punish him for that support. This is a hard concept to get a grip on but the facts, I think, spell it out.

Any day now I am expecting the BBC to claim Tony Blair turned them into newts.