UNTOLD STORIES
>> Monday, September 21, 2009
Earlier this month the BBC's Director of Global News Richard Sambrook admitted that the BBC should have given more coverage to the story about Obama's wacky green jobs czar Van Jones.
Since then, another scandal embarrassing to the president - this time concerning the Obama-supporting community activist group ACORN - has registered little more than a tiny blip on the BBC news radar.
Today revelations have emerged about the National Endowment for the Arts, a publicly funded agency which is supposed to be politically independent. Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood has evidence that arts groups funded by the NEA have been co-opted into promoting Obama's political agenda. As with Van Jones and ACORN, if something similar had happened under Bush BBC journalists would have wet themselves with excitement. I don't expect headline coverage for these stories, just recognition that they are important in the context of American politics and that they help explain more fully the increasing disaffection with Obama's administration. The BBC's simplistic approach to the US political scene (old, nasty, befuddled, racist whites standing in the way of enlightened progress) reflects the prejudices of correspondents and promotes those prejudices to the world. I for one do not recognise the picture of the American right portrayed by the BBC and would like to see more balanced analysis.
6 comments:
DB: You ask how can the BBC miss obvious news stories?
Christopher Hitchens tells a story of a rookie news reporter who is sent to cover a wedding. When asked for his copy, he replies that the bride was killed in a car crash and the husband committed suicide. As a result so there was no wedding and hence no story.
Most reporters see what they are told to expect. It's at the editor level that stories are written, because editors commission them. I have seen with my own eyes editors disbelieve their reporters because its not what the Sunday Times said happened.
The editor of the old BBC current affairs TV show "24 Hours" Anthony Smith was once heard instructing a reporter, "Go and cover the South American earthquke and if its over by the time you get there, file a story about how the relief operations are not working".
This is the most charitable explanation for why the MSM ignored the 9/12 march on Washington. No-one told them 1m people would be there so they didn't see them. The comment "they were all wearing Brooks Brothers suits" as another example of this. After all, protesters must be dirty, musn't they? And protesters who are complimented by the police for leaving Washington cleaner than when they got there - rather than smashing in all the windows? Well, they don't understand that. It doesn't fit the template.
The same blindness is true of the Acorn story which I suspect the BBC editors have judged to be too archane for a British audience to understand. Besides, after the <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables /> <w:SnapToGridInCell /> <w:WrapTextWithPunct /> <w:UseAsianBreakRules /> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> <!--[if gte mso 10]>
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<![endif]-->deification of the Obama, no-one would believe an "Obama scandal" story That's because they get all their news from...the BBC. Poor sods.
This system sucks.
The Acorn story should get more coverage than Van Jones due to the links between Obama and Acorn and the vile Greg Palast.
So BBC Newsnight have employed the services of Obama's personal pollster. Why? What was wrong with either using the guy they used to use? Perhaps not left wing enough?
Anyone want to take a bet as to which party will come out on top over the next couple of weeks?
So now we get racist Spike Lee on Newsnight telling us that whitey boy is the racist for opposing Obama and his crap healthcare reforms.
DB,
Keep up the good work with these posts.
By the way, the attempt to turn the NEA into a political activist organization is illegal. And the Administration is now denying they even invited people in this manner:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024559.php
Some audio clips from the call:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/09/21/explosive-new-audio-reveals-white-house-using-nea-to-push-partisan-agenda/
<ul>
<li>“I’ve been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA … we had the idea that I would help bring together the artist community…”</li>
<li>“…the Hope poster obviously is a great example, but it’s clear as an independent art community as artists and thinkers and tastemakers and marketers and visionaries that are on this call, the role that we played during the campaign for the president…”</li>
<li>“…the President has a clear arts agenda and has been very supportive of using art and supporting art in creative ways to talk about some issues that we face here in our country, but also to engage people. And I think all of us who are on this phone call, you know, were selected for a reason.”</li>
<li>“And so I’m hoping that through this group, and the goal of all this, and the goal of this phone call, is through this group we can create a stronger community amongst ourselves to get involved in things we’re passionate about as we did during the campaign. But to continue to get involved in those things, to support some of the President’s initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the President and push his administration…“</li>
</ul>
One of the leaders of this conversation is from United We Server, an ACORN affiliate.
If Bush did this, the Beeboids and every other Leftoid would be screaming bloody murder from the rooftops. But instead, they approve and will not inform you of the illegality, or the ominous implications. And I'm sure our resident defenders of the indefensible think nothing wrong of the government gathering artists and journalists to promote Administration policies. It's for our own good, right?
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