Friday, May 18, 2007

Bias, BBC & Bolton

The BBC, that incredibly left wing and virulently anti-American organization that is paid for by all Brits, interviewed John Bolton on BBC-4 radio yesterday. Every sterotype and bias of the BBC is evident in the questioning, and Bolton is utterly brutal and forthright in his answers. It gets to the point by the end that the poor Beeb interviewer is left mumbling as he attempts to defend the assumptions underlying his questions - i.e., the United States is lacking in moral authority, it had no business whatsoever invading Iraq, and the U.S. of today is a "busted flush."

If you listen to naught else this day, do listen to this here. It will brighten your day.

(H/T EU Referendum)

3 comments:

billm99uk said...

Bolton's usually good on British TV - I've seen him on BBC's Newsnight a few times and it's a lot of fun watching someone actually answering questions rather than just avoiding them, like most politicans. Mind you he tends to get interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on there, who's more of an all purpose cynic than a leftist so he hasn't lost his temper yet.

The idea than 'Today' is an unbiased show is pretty funny though - it's one of the most left wing out there. And this is coming from someone who DOESN'T believe the BBC is far left - more like Guardian-reading soft left. You've got to remember we've still got a few proper Marxists over here still ;)

scott said...

heh. Thank's for the comment, Bill. I do not know if I would agree with soft-Guardian. I read the Guardian and the BBC everyday. When the Beeb shows its bias - which admittedly is only about 1 in 20 times on its website at least - it makes the Guardian's factual reporting look almost conservative. Maybe its because the Guardian is quite open about its far left bent, while the BBC tries both to claim that it has no bias and that it is reporting only fact, not opinion. Thus you get the type of questions that are really assertions of fact with a question mark at the end of the type asked to Bolton.

Oh well, in any event, the Bolton interview was entertaining. Glad you liked it.

billm99uk said...

You read the Guardian every day, Scott? You must be a real glutton for punishment - I must have stopped doing that 20 years ago.

I'd agree the BBC has left-wing bias, but it's more within the selection of stories and particularly those those they lead off the news shows with, rather than the actual reporting itself. When you see the main news starting off with "Another grim milestone in British casualities in the Iraq war is passed" for the 976th time, you start to believe that this is something the company actually believes, rather than is just neutrally reporting on.

That said, I must admit I feel the way kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnstone has been invariably described as "A friend of the Palestinian people" over the past fews weeks has made me more than a little queasy. If he's such a friend of the Palestinians, how can we reasonably trust him to report neutrally on them?

 

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