9 September 2020 — Media Lens
The use and misuse of George Orwell’s truth-telling is so widespread that we can easily miss his intended meaning. For example, with perfect (Orwellian) irony, the BBC has a statue of Orwell outside Broadcasting House, bearing the inscription:
‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
1 August 2020 — GMWatch
Below is a transcript of what the GMO promoter and member of the UK’s House of Lords, John Krebs, told the BBC in an interview about the government’s intention to deregulate gene editing so that it’s no longer defined and regulated as a genetic modification technique.
23 August 2020 — American Herald Tribune
Nine months after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in March 2018, the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ screened a documentary about it, Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack: the Inside Story. The show backed the Tory government’s conviction that Russian GRU officers attacked the former Russian double agent and his daughter. But British experts pointed to its factual errors, and some ordinary punters – including the BBC’s own correspondent in Salisbury – were dubious.
27 June 2020 — WSWS
In 2018, Britain published its National Security Capability Review, outlining a new “Fusion Doctrine.” This called for the “use of all our capabilities; from economic levers, through cutting-edge military resources to our wider diplomatic and cultural influence on the world’s stage” to “project our global influence.” The BBC, especially its World Service, was named as a key instrument of UK “soft power.”
17 June 2020 — Craig Murray
The BBC plumbed the depths of hypocrisy in dressing up the final episode of the Salisbury Poisonings as a homage to Dawn Sturgess while systematically lying about the facts of her death, yet again to cover up the implausibility of the official narrative.
16 June 2020 — Craig Murray
It turns out that the BBC really does believe that God is an Englishman. When the simple impossibility of the official story on the Skripals finally overwhelmed the dramatists, they resorted to Divine Intervention for an explanation – as propagandists have done for millennia.
15 June 2020 — Craig Murray
Shakespeare’s heirs at the BBC produced this deathless and entirely convincing line as the climax of the first episode of “The Salisbury Poisonings”, a three part piece of state propaganda on the Skripal saga, of which I watched Part 1 as it was broadcast last night. The other two parts are to be broadcast today and tomorrow, which unusual scheduling reflects the importance our masters place on this stirring tale of the resilience of the great British nation under attack by devilish foreigners. You can watch all three episodes now on BBC iPlayer, but personally I suffer from overactive antibodies to bullshit and need a break.
29 May 2020 — Jonathan Cook
The wrong conclusions are being drawn about Emily Maitlis’s comments on Dominic Cummings on the BBC flagship Newsnight show this week. Her remarks are not evidence of her courage, or that journalists are being gagged, or that the BBC is suddenly capitulating to the government.
28 May 2020 — True Publica
TruePublica Editor: Most of the mainstream media are reporting that Emily Maitlis was replaced as host of Wednesday night’s episode of Newsnight by another member of the programme’s team after BBC bosses reprimanded her over a monologue in which she attacked the government’s handling of Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Durham.
18 May 2020 — Media Lens
‘Right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around the our care homes. We set out our first advice in February – we’ve made sure care homes have the resources they need’ says Health Secretary Matt Hancock.’ – Sky News May 15, 2020
Any notion that the UK government actually considers that its primary responsibility is to protect the health and security of the country’s population ought to have been demolished in 2020. The appalling death toll that continues to mount during the coronavirus pandemic is largely rooted, not merely in government ‘incompetence’, but in criminal dereliction of its core duties in a supposedly democratic society.
24 April 2020 — In Defence of Marxism
Ben Gliniecki
Image: Socialist Appeal
This article was written before the coronavirus pandemic, but with the press spending weeks subjecting the Tories to nothing but uncritical “wartime” coverage, and now fawning over the establishment-friendly Labour leader Keir Starmer, the points it makes are more valid than ever.
28 January 2020 — Jonathan Cook
Senior BBC news reporter Orla Guerin has found herself in hot water of an increasingly familiar kind. During a report on preparations for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, she made a brief reference to Israel and an even briefer reference to the Palestinians. Her reporting coincided with Israel hosting world leaders last week at Yad Vashem, its Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem.
