BBC
-
The Scene and the Crime: The Salisbury Poisonings
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,… Continue reading
-
The Salisbury Poisonings: Skripal drama framed as anti-Russian propaganda
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… Continue reading
-
Novichok: Cynicism and Warmongering
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. Continue reading
-
The Miracle of Salisbury
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. Continue reading
-
“Putin’s Gonna Get Me”
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… Continue reading
-
Emily Maitlis is no media hero. She simply forgot what she and the BBC are there to do
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. Continue reading
-
Did Conservative HQ demand Emily Maitlis be publicly reprimanded?
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. Continue reading
-
An Illusion Of Protection: The Pandemic, The ‘Criminal’ Government And Public Distrust of The Media
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… Continue reading
-
Britain: the capitalist press – “a great keyboard on which the government can play”
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. Continue reading
-
The Holocaust, the BBC and antisemitism smears
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… Continue reading
-
BBC an instrument of government foreign policy
In January 2015, the BBC warned the government that its global news presence will end up marginalised by overseas rivals such as Russia Today and al-Jazeera unless multimillion-pound cuts were reversed. The global news division included the BBC World Service, which had suffered big cuts. It was a stark warning that Britain’s global ‘soft-power’ was declining.… Continue reading
-
The Arrogance Of BBC News
When we started Media Lens in 2001, we had a rather naïve expectation that journalists might: a) want to respond rationally to reasoned criticism; and b) have privileged access to unparalleled journalistic resources, experts and arguments that would enable journalists to respond with serious points to our challenges. In particular, we imagined that BBC journalists and editors… Continue reading
-
BBC Director-General Calls for Media Critics to Be Purged From Social Media
In the face of a mountain of condemnation over how it provided a key role in helping Boris Johnson win last week’s UK general elections, BBC Director-General Baron Hall of Birkenhead has called for the corporation’s critics to be purged from the internet. Continue reading
-
The Arrogance Of BBC News
When we started Media Lens in 2001, we had a rather naïve expectation that journalists might: a) want to respond rationally to reasoned criticism; and b) have privileged access to unparalleled journalistic resources, experts and arguments that would enable journalists to respond with serious points to our challenges. In particular, we imagined that BBC journalists and editors… Continue reading
-
The Largest Vote Swings in British General Election History Censored Out By the BBC and Mainstream Media
This election is seeing the largest vote swings in British political history. But that truth has been hidden by the largest media distortion in British political history. Continue reading
-
Journalist Exposes BBC Propaganda in Ukraine, Crimea and Beyond
Independent journalist Graham Phillips gives a brief masterclass here, showing a few examples of blatant propaganda being produced by the BBC. As he points out, their reports are intended to deceive viewers by delivering an overtly anti-Russian, false portrayal of events being reported, normally devoid of any real context outside of the official western government-approved… Continue reading
-
As Lula Emerges From Prison, US Media Ignore How Washington Helped Put Him There
The Brazilian Supreme Court reversed a 2018 ruling on November 7, upholding the principle of innocent until proven guilty in the 1988 Constitution and declaring it illegal to jail defendants before their appeals processes have been exhausted. Within 24 hours, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was released to an adoring crowd of hundreds… Continue reading
-
How the media, including the BBC is manipulated by government propaganda
By Simon Wren-Lewis: While Dominic Cummings is no genius, he does have a good understanding of how the UK media works, and therefore how to manipulate it. There are many ways to do this, but one of the most obvious is to use privileged access in return for uncritical coverage. This is how it works. Continue reading
-
Leading Israel lobby MP quits Labour By Asa Winstanley
Labour Friends of Israel’s chairperson Louise Ellman quit as a member of Labour on Wednesday evening, demanding a “different leadership” in the UK’s main opposition party. Continue reading
-
Heroes, Villains and Establishment Hypocrisy By Craig Murray
Trump and Johnson’s populism have shaken the old Establishment, and raised some very interesting questions about who is and who is not nowadays inside the Establishment and a beneficiary of the protection of the liberal elite. Yesterday two startling examples in the news coverage cast a very lurid light on this question, and I ask… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 