I disagree. Mispronouncing a word is different from mispronouncing someone’s name. (I don’t supppose Monty Python ever objected, though :)) Ask any salesman about the importance of someone’s name. A typical sales technique is to use someone’s name a lot.
I used to travel to the City of London and I also have an unusual name. The people I met with took the trouble to get my name right. In fact, I was always appreciative of the extremely good manners shown by the British.
Mispronouncing someone’s name once might be an innocent error. Consistent mispronounciation looks more like a form of mockery, especially for a nation with outstandingly good manners.
Media partisanship can be woven from many thin threads. Each one by itself may be minor, but a continuaing pattern of negative tilts adds up to a substantial impact.
Fwiw, I e-mailed Andrew Sullivan with a factual correction last week in relation to the “Intelligence source” furore, pointing to the interview transcript of the Today programme on 29th May and telling him he was plain wrong (as he was) and that it smacked of anti-BBC agit-prop.
He got back to me within 10 minutes, which was good. Unfortunately, he concluded with “the BBC was lying and they will be found out”. I’m still waiting . . . . I think the facts sometimes get in the way of the agenda.
On december’s OP here, the plan is as it always is. No matter that the particular argument is lost, the fact of it adds a little more doubt to the credibility of the BBC. Over time and little by little, you, in theory, begin undermine the organisation itself and perceptions of it by the public with the intention of forcing it to cower and become an obedient lapdog of the right, as is the case with the (relatively speaking) unquestioning US media.
People like december have had great success with this tactic. It’s a shame for them the BBC is influencial, not American and not commercial - they have to try less direct arm twisting.
Andrew Sullivan and december share the same agenda and the same tactics.
Andrew and I have engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the BBC and bend it to our evil will! His massive readership of a few thousand readers and my massive readership of a dozen or two are causing the BBC to shiver in its boots! They blanche at our awesome power!
Which makes one wonder, really, why you persist with these things?
It’s not as if there isn’t a teeny bit of truth in your overall argument - after all if all our news organisations ONLY ever gave the approved Govt view it would not be A Good Thing. Problem is, by focussing on ridiculous lines of argument like these, and persisting with them when they are seen to be flawed, you ruin any chance of credibility at all.
In all seriousness december, every Sunday morning when I read the Sunday Times over breakfast and coffee, I read the Andrew Sullivan column and think of you.
The impact on others is always going to be minimal but this is about you, what you personally get out of it
You and those thousands of other letter writing campaigners who need something to do in retirement and who perceive sharing their ingrained, last century bigotry as their (emotionally motivated) contribution.
I agree. If the BBC were just a propaganda arm of the British government, that would be bad.
However, I recently read an article by an ex-BBC person claiming that that BBC has its own POV. They are an inbred organization, he said, and their POV is too narrow.
Well yes, of course to an extent. However, I know you’ve commented before on the fact that the Director General is appointed by the Govt. You can’t be completely unbiased in any news report. I happen to think the BBC is more unbiased than most but, if anything, is more closely controlled by the Govt than any other media source (through license fee control and the direct hand in appointment).
The BBC is a huge corporation and it is a huge over-simplification to look at individual reports from individual reporters and try to determine anti-Blair policy as a result.
A little vigilance on bias, every now and then, is good thing, IMHO.
If it will reinforce the efforts of the BBC to be objective, so much for the better.
But that is hardly you goal, now is it december?
You want to find bias, you actively hunt for it. As L.C.
puts it, you are scraping the barrel.
Why?
So you can play the hurt little neo-con? ‘Oooh, they are out to get us, them evil libberruls!’
To show that there is bias everywhere? so you can say ‘Fox News is only a viewpoint, counterbalancing others.’?
In any case you do not have the best interest at hart. You are playing dirty little games.
The Committee took Gilligan to task for having wrongly implied that Alastair Campbell made up the claim about Iraq’s ability to attack with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. Gilligan didn’t deny that a reader would get that impression from his article. But, his testimony to the Committee was, “I have never said in respect of the insertion of the 45-minute claim that Mr Campbell inserted it.” He didn’t specifically say it, but he created a misleading and defamatory impression.
A pathetic excuse. No wonder the Committee was irate.
december’s greatest success in this thread has been in dragging you down to his level, and in some cases worse.
Here we have a minor charge of bias by one of the microscopic percentage of Americans who actually care how the British media treats Tony Blair. That the charge is substantially correct is obvious to anyone with a working knowledge of the English language, major ho-hum that it is and nowhere near any proof of a concerted BBC campaign to “get” Blair.
What’s really silly is the contortions various posters have felt it necessary to go through to prove that the BBC did absolutely nothing wrong. It (and other media, who have reason for disliking Blair from their varying perspectives around the political spectrum) made him appear lustful for power (which he probably is) by distorting a statement he made about his alleged appetite for work. That Blair didn’t immediately correct it during questioning may well have been an oversight in the heat of battle, while afterwards raising a fuss about it would have made him appear foolish.
“Power” and “work” have the same definition on both sides of the Atlantic.
All of this rivals the latest J. Lo/Ben Affleck piffle in my list of things to be concerned about for the week.
But in your zest to denounce december, some of you are far more guilty of semantic wrestling than he. And if the BBC totters and falls, it won’t be due to critics like december.
Oh, and save the Pot. Kettle. Black. bigotry charges for the Pit.
I think I’m happier paying 40% of what the equivilent commerical channel costs me at the supermarket checkout in increased prices to cover the teevee advertising revenue.
But I understand you prefer the US model: quality advertising, etc.
