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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 31-Mar-05
Why is BBC so blantantly anti-American?

Web Log - March, 2005

Why is BBC so blantantly anti-American?

Did you know that there's a BBC News joke of the day?

Here's the joke from Tuesday:

A small aircraft is in trouble over North America.

On board are five people: the pilot, the actor Robert De Niro, President George W Bush, a schoolboy and a very old man.

Unfortunately, there are only four parachutes. The pilot selfishly grabs one and jumps out yelling that the plane is going to crash.

Robert De Niro grabs the second parachute and yells that he has to star in a new movie so he needs to be saved.

George Bush makes his move and leaps from the plane yelling that he has to run the country and save America from terrorists.

The small boy and the old man look at each other. "You take the last parachute, son," the old man says. "You're young. I have lived a long life. Go on, jump."

The schoolboy looks at him. "It's okay, pops," he says, "there's one parachute left for each of us. Looks like President Bush grabbed my schoolbag."

This joke appeared in the daily e-mail message from Gavin Esler on Newsnight.

Now, this is a very funny joke, and if I saw this joke on an internet blog, or if I heard it from late night comedians Jay Leno or David Letterman, I would laugh and not think much about it.

But this kind of Bush-bashing doesn't belong in an official BBC News publication. It's just as inappropriate as if it were a sexually explicit joke, or if the joke had racial overtones.

<i>Daily Mirror</i> front page, November 4, 2004

Daily Mirror front page, November 4, 2004

I read a lot of news sources, and I learn to tune out the screeds on the right and left. I expect some sources to be anti-Bush or anti-American, and I expect others to be pro-Bush and pro-American. When I read the adjoining front page published by the Daily Mirror after the November election, I just chuckled.

But the BBC is supposed to be a real news organization. It's funded by British taxpayers, and it's world-renowned as the greatest news organization in the world.

I listen to the BBC World Service a lot over the internet, and it amazes how anti-American they are. Yesterday, for example, their news bulletin identified Paul Wolfowitz as the "American right-wing nominee to the World Bank." Later in the same hour, they changed it to the "controversial nominee to the World Bank," which is a little better.

Ironically, it's hard to see how they're hurting Bush or America. Maybe Gavin Esler's joke was supposed to make Bush look dumb, but Bush is known to have a strategy of letting his opponents think he's dumb so they'll underestimate him.

In the end, all this stuff does is make the BBC look like a bunch of clowns. Instead of looking like the preeminent world news organization that it is, they look like squeaky, hysterical neophytes.

This petulance by BBC reporters is extremely stupid. You'd think they'd have the sense to be a tiny bit more circumspect about their biases, but they seem to want to parade them for all to see.

Just last year, in January, 2004, the BBC was reprimanded after a long investigation resulting in the Hutton Report. The investigation found that the BBC had purposely lied in news stories in order to make Tony Blair's administration look bad in pursuing the Iraq War. The investigation was instigated because the false BBC reports caused a weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, to commit suicide, rather than continue to be humiliated by the BBC news stories.

The Hutton findings were extremely detrimental to the BBC, causing large budget reductions. Just last week, the BBC announced thousands of job layoffs caused by the budget cutbacks. That's how stupid the BBC reporters are being in their display of blatant anti-American bias.

It's very similar to the "forged document" incident at CBS News, that led to the disgraced resignation of Dan Rather. When I wrote about this last September, I pointed out that anyone who's old enough to have used typewriters, especially IBM Selectric typewriters, in the 1970s would know without doubt that the documents had been forged. I said that the person who forged the documents has to be a 20-25 year old idiot.

That's why I'm so amazed that, after all these months, CBS News has still not simply said that the documents were forged. It's stupid, and it makes CBS News look like a bunch of biased clowns.

There is a generational lesson to be drawn from all this. In case you don't know it, the average viewer of the NBC, CBS and ABC network news shows is in his late 50s. In other words, the main viewers of network news shows are the people in the arrogant Baby Boomer generation.

It's obvious that the network news shows will soon lose their audiences entirely. I would hate to see the same thing happen to the BBC.

Incidentally, for those who are interested, I watch all the news networks, and I find that CNN leans to the left, and FOX News Channel leans to the right. MSNBC is closest to the center, though the quality of their news coverage suffered last year when Jerry Nachman died. As for the broadcast news network newscasts, they all lean to the left, and they're pretty hopelessly shallow. (31-Mar-05) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 31-Mar-05 Why is BBC so blantantly anti-American?

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 31-Mar-05
Why is BBC so blantantly anti-American?