I refer to this story here where Murdoch (rich Australian who became American so fast it would make your head spin when he realised that News International couldn’t make headway in the US with foreign ownership, and head of an massive international company so adept at shuffling its profits through offshore accounts that some years it hasn’t paid UK tax at all) makes up a story about Blair saying that the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina has been ‘hate filled’.
We Europeans, says Murdoch, have been “gloating about our troubles”. “Our”, mark you. Like Murdoch has been out there suffering with the rest of his fellow Americans. :smack: It’s enough to make a cat laugh.
Two facts to be made clear here; the report that so upset patriot Murdoch was critical of Dubya, like a million others, and former US President Bill Clinton has said the report had “nothing factually inaccurate about it”. Well, you might think, he would say that if it was having a pop at the Shrub. But so what? If the problem you have is because it was nasty too poor old George, then say that. Don’t give us this bollocks about hate and gloating.
It also needs to be pointed out that the Murdoch owned media excels at petty xenophobia and moronic flag waving. If there’s money to be made, News International is right in there giving foreigners the boot and wrapping itself in the flag. So it’s rich beyond belief to hear him getting all huffy about perceived anti-Americanism. And everyone knows that Murdoch hates the BBC because it’s the main opposition to his pap-filled juggernaut rolling over TV broadcasting in the UK.
So, no, I don’t believe a word of this supposed conversation. And even if it was true, it would just prove what a toadying slime Blair can be. So piss off Murdoch, we’ll start to even consider listen to what you have to say when you start paying your taxes like everyone else and have stopped distorting news on your networks to suit your own agenda.
But of course Murdoch is right. After all, aren’t the “Sun” and the “News of the World” the very height of quality responsible journalism? :rolleyes:
I wonder if he’d consider buying a yacht like Robert Maxwell.
To be fair, and I say this as a some-time BBC employee who can’t stand Murdoch, I have found myself raising an eyebrow at some of the tone of the BBC coverage of Katrina’s aftermath. Usually commendably slow to rush to judgement, many of the BBC’s reports have been pretty scathing, which I find quite odd for an organisation that strives to avoid an editorial cast to its news shows.
None of this changes the fact that Murdoch is a horrible self-serving arse who owns a stable of godawful rags, but there was a definite slant to the Katrina coverage, over and above simply reporting the dissatisfaction in the US.
By “slant,” do you mean “critical of the Bush administration”? Or was there some other type of slant? I’m asking because, although i have the BBC in my RSS feeds, i haven’t looked at any of its Katrina coverage.
And if the criticism in the BBC pieces was justified, if the allegations about incompetence etc. were true, does that make it “slant,” or reporting?
Oddly enough, here in the US i’ve actually seen more BBC coverage of Katrina than Fox coverage (well no, it isn’t odd: I actively avoid Fox.) But the coverage I have seen, while factually accurate, does seem to be taken from a viewpoint predisposed to make W look bad. While not a bad thing, it’s not a plus for journalistic integrity either. One could of course say the same thing on the opposite side, but moreso, for Murdoch.
And another thing from someone who speaks American: the title of the OP was tantalizingly misleading. Without a comma after the second word, I thought it was a list of ideas to anger Rupert
I mean quite stridently critical of the Bush administration in such a way that, while it might eventually turn out to be valid, was not supported by all the facts available at the time, and was in any case considerably more heavy-handed than the BBC’s typical tone in its domestic coverage. I was genuinely surprised to hear some of the statements made, and as a big fan of the BBC’s usual impartiality, not all that pleased. For that matter, I also found their overtly editorial coverage somewhat irksome too, such as this by Harold Evans.
I used to (and still occasionally do) work in a bit of the Beeb that handles a large proportion of the feedback to the organisation, and as such I’ve been better placed than most to see that people see bias from any direction, particularly in a broadcaster that does make a genuine and ongoing effort to be impartial. In going out of its way to canvas views from all sides of a story, the BBC guarantees that it will publish views that will always annoy someone. I don’t have much time for claims that the BBC has a persistent and systematic bias in favour of, well, much at all. I do, however, think that the Katrina coverage can be deservedly criticised for stepping over the line of factual reporting and into outright editorialising. Whether one agrees with the editorialising or not is immaterial - it should not be taking place in a factual news report.
I honestly can’t remember specific instances (these were just rolling newscasts), and I haven’t used (nor would I use) the words “hateful” or “gloating”, either. They just focused in very heavily on George Bush’s alleged failings over and above just reporting the American reaction, in a way that made me, a card-carrying Detester Of G.W. Bush, do a genuine double take. By the typical standards of American partisan coverage, it wouldn’t even get noticed. By the standards I usually enjoy of the BBC, it was quite apparent.
I’m not going to hunt down transcripts and parse out factual errors; I have neither the time nor the inclination (and I suspect the transcripts are not publically available). I’m just offering my impression as one who has a fair bit of experience dealing with consumer feedback about the BBC, and who would generally take the BBC’s side in an argument about bias. Take it as you will.
As I said, it doesn’t matter whether one agrees with the editorial content or not; a significant amount of what was undeniably editorialising was present in what are supposed to be objective factual reports. There were fairly prominent swipes being taken in a context where you really wouldn’t have expected them. The BBC generally does very well at separating its factual reporting from its editorialising; even the latter is typically not editorialising as such, but rather a presentation of as many sides of a debate as the BBC can muster, with external advocates for each view. All I can say is that in the week after Katrina, this separation was in my view noticeably lacking.
Nothing. I listened extensively to the World Service coverage and it just called a spade a spade. Reporters standing up to their ankles in shit in refugee centres days after the event asking WTF is the aid and rightly asking what it says about a government that let such a situation persist and also commenting on the obvious. It was the poor and the black who were bearing the brunt and this showed the underbelly of the American Dream we don’t often see.
