BBC Reality Check team to expose social media ‘fake news’ stories

Believe it or not the BBC is going into the Ministry of Truth business. Perhaps it’s well-intentioned now but there’s always a risk of mission creep. The inference that the BBC’s own news is never misleading is interesting.
H/T Lord Beaverbrook

The BBC is to create a dedicated team which will identify and expose “fake news” stories being shared on Facebook and other social media, reports INews. The BBC said it was not seeking to “police the internet”.

But its Reality Check team will identify and correct the most egregious examples of fabricated stories and outright “lies” circulated by fake news sites.

James Harding, BBC Director of News and Current Affairs, told staff: “The BBC can’t edit the internet, but we won’t stand aside either. We will fact check the most popular outliers on Facebook, Instagram and other social media.”

BBC in transparency row over refusal of a third of all FOI requests

‘Auntie’ knows best – or likes to pretend it does.

The BBC has been plunged into a transparency row after data revealed it refuses to answer more than a third of the Freedom of Information requests it receives by relying on a specialised excuse, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The public service broadcaster, which charges households a £145.50 licence fee every year, has been criticised after data showed it failed to fully respond to 3,110 requests out of a possible 9,076 between September 2011 and March this year.

Westminster debate: The BBC’s Relationship with the Met Office (Divorce)

From the parliament.uk website,  background on the Westminster hall debate to be held next Tuesday on the BBC-MetO relationship. What I’d like to know, is how does the MetO get a debate with a petition of less than 300 signatures, when other urgent causes with tens of thousands of names on e-petitions are ignored?

Image credit: Cartoons by Josh

Published Friday, October 23, 2015

A Westminster Hall debate on the BBC’s relationship with the Met Office has been scheduled for Tuesday 27 October 2015 at 1430hrs. The Member in charge of the debate is Mr Ben Bradshaw.

The following information has been compiled in preparation for the debate on the BBC’s relationship with the Met Office. It provides a brief history of the relationship between the BBC and the Met Office and a summary of the recent announcement that the Met Office had lost the contract to provide the BBC with data for its weather forecasts. Also included are links to relevant media articles and a selection of recent Parliamentary Questions on this topic as an attached document.

BBC journos to attend mandatory course to stop EU bias

No reporting bias please, we’re British [image credit: BBC]

BBC journalists are to be sent on a compulsory training course about the European Union (EU) in an attempt to ensure impartiality ahead of Britain’s referendum, reports Breitbart London.

BBC News director James Harding told parliament’s European scrutiny committee that all BBC reporters, including newsreaders, will be sent on the mandatory retraining course, and admitted the state broadcaster’s impartiality would be “tested” by the referendum.

The BBC has frequently faced accusations of pro-EU bias. Just last month, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin used BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to accuse the corporation of “cultural bias” in favour of the European Union, something strongly denied by presenter James Naughtie who called Jenkin’s complaint “tedious”.

Frosty forecast for BBC-MET Office relations

Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract.
[Josh has waved magic –Tim (replacement image Original image)]

The UK’s weather service has provided the data used for BBC forecasts since the corporation’s first radio weather bulletin on 14 November 1922.

The BBC said it was legally required to secure the best value for money for licence fee payers and would tender the contract to outside competition.

The Met Office said it was disappointed by the decision. A replacement is expected to take over next year.

More, Grossly Deceptive Reporting From The BBC

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It’s obvious that whatever controls are supposed to be in place to ensure the BBC is ‘impartial’ – admittedly difficult to define, but you know when you’re not seeing it – are not working.

Lancashire CC has been warned it is likely to lose a legal challenge on appeal and will incur costs as a result.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-33211020

The BBC have been up to their tricks again.

A US environmental group has written to Lancashire County Council urging it to refuse permission to allow test drilling for fracking.

The letter, signed by 850 elected officials in New York State, comes days before the council decides whether to approve test drilling at two locations….

Elected Officials to Protect New York – made up of current and former politicians – has written to Lancashire’s councillors asking them to note the findings of a two-year study by New York State Department of Public Health.

In fact, the letter was not signed by “850 elected officials”, but just 10, not all of whom are elected either.

http://www.nyelectedofficials.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EOPNY-Letter-to-Lancashire.pdf

Many are no more than what we would call parish councillors. For instance, Cooperstown boasts an impressive population of just 1852, yet offers us two trustees to sign.

They have…

View original post 438 more words

BBC bias gets imperialistic: recolonises Australia

This is the second half of an article on the UK website Conservative Woman. Check out the link to Jo Nova’s article too.

Back in October, behind the masquerade of what the BBC’s army of 180 publicists claim is the world’s ‘most trusted media brand’, the Corporation launched with a glossy release a multi-pronged initiative to broadcast to Australia material about the G20 summit.

Chris Davies, Director of Sales and Marketing, for BBC Global News Limited, one of the BBC’s subsidiaries that is the engine of the growth, said: “Australia is a priority market for us and with this local market investment together with our large network of international journalists, we are uniquely placed to offer readers stories they don’t normally hear from local media, giving them the full picture on news that affects them.”

Excuse me? That sounds very like the BBC believes ‘local media’ are not doing their job. How very patronising.  Those colonialist oiks have not had the benefit of the BBC’s version of ‘impartiality’.

Ben Pile: Letter to the Climate Shrinks on the BBC

Letter to the Climate Shrinks
Posted by Ben Pile on January 25, 2013

BBC Radio 4 show, Thinking Allowed had a feature on the psychoanalysts perspective on climate change this week. Bishop Hill picked up the story. Thinking Allowed is one of my favourite programmes, so I was a tad disappointed to hear that thinking isn’t allowed if it’s thinking that contradicts climate orthodoxy. Here’s my letter to the programme.

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Dear Laurie,

I refer to your section on climate change and psychoanalysis in your most recent programme.

Your feature frames the problem as a failure to recognise what one of your guests called ‘the reality of climate change’, which moved on to a discussion about ‘types of denial’. However, if psychoanalysis has anything to say in the climate debate, it must speak to climate sceptics as much as their counterparts.

Sally Weintrobe lets the cat out of the bag when she claims that we are ‘increasingly aware’ of ‘weird weather’, citing hurricane Sandy and the UK’s recent wet weather. Yet there was nothing remarkable about the weather last year. The IPCC’s recent special report on extreme weather found that there is no evidence of increased frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, or losses caused by them attributable to anthropogenic climate change.

So psychoanalysis must have something to say about Sally Weintrobe’s misconception of the ‘reality’ of climate change represented by the IPCC. Her views on climate seem to be as far out of kilter with the scientific consensus as any “denier’s”.

Seminars and Interview: A busy week behind the scenes

It has been an interesting week. On Tuesday I met with Jerry Ravetz, who came up to the History and Philosophy of Science dept. at Leeds on Tuesday to deliver two seminars. The first was on Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’. At the start of the seminar, he passed around a copies of page 5 of the introduction.