Before I start this piece I’d like to apologise for not being around as much as I would normally be. I haven’t been abducted by aliens/arrested/conscripted or been exploring the bottom of the River Severn in a home made submarine created from old 45 gallon oil drums. But the Memsahib has had extra household tasks for me to do at Fahrenheit Towers last week which meant less free time to write.
In trying to play current affairs catch up I came across this video (embedded below) of the commentator Count Dankula talking about the misinformation put out by the BBC’s misinformation correspondent Marianna Spring. In this video Count Dankula speaks of a recent programme put out by the BBC by Ms Spring that took a massive dig at Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akaad,
Ms Spring claimed that Mr Benjamin had, among other things made ‘rape threats’, had appeared at electoral events when standing for UKIP with Milo Yiannopoulos, was a white supremacist and had radicalised the town of Totnes on a return visit to the town that did not happen. None of these claims made by Ms Spring were true, but the BBC dishonestly claimed that they were.
Here’s the Dankula video where he busts open and destroys the BBC’s claims that Carl Benjamin is some sort of rabid extremist.
Now I’m not a lawyer but some of what the BBC has claimed that Carl Benjamin has said and done is so god-awfully inaccurate that there might be grounds to sue the BBC for libel. I would certainly encourage Mr Benjamin to seek legal advice about this matter and I’m certain that if he did proceed with such claim against the BBC that there would be a lot of people who would contribute to a crowdfunder for his legal costs.
The BBC used to be a byword for accuracy and impartiality and I treated the BBC as such during the Cold War but that is not the case now. The BBC has its own political lines that it follows and promotes and sometimes lies by omission such as by leaving out facts in stories that might damage their own narrative or which challenges the BBC’s own political view, something we saw a lot of in BBC output during the aftermath of the Brexit vote in 2016.
The BBC only gets away with what it does get away with because of the BBC’s once proud reputation for reporting news accurately and honestly. This reputation keeps enough viewers and listeners believing the BBC and coughing up for the Licence Fee even when what the BBC is putting out is either less impartial than it should be or where stories are so full of BBC spin that the stories bear no relation to the actuality of the stories.
The attack on Carl Benjamin, a person who I don’t agree with on everything, by the BBC is an attack on truth. As Count Dankula said we are going to see BBC using the tactic of calling inconvenient truths ‘misinformation’ much more often as the BBC and its employees protect their favoured narratives from challenge.
Exploring the bottom of the River Severn in a home-made submarine, eh? I’m afraid that topical jest fell a bit flat – as indeed did the occupants of the Titan!
“I was distraught…” Hmm…let’s see: Jess Phillips was distraught because Carl Benjamin categorically refuses to rape her? I’m sure Carl is only one on a very long list – where do I sign?
As someone who followed the story of Ms Phillips and Sargon I can confirm that Sargon did not threaten to rape Ms Phillips, he said that he would refuse to do so.
If Miss Spring is such a book enthusiast – may I suggest that an excellent starting point would be “Silent Spring” ?
If only this employee of the Ministry of Truth could indeed be silent then the world of speech would be better and more free.
I haven’t got into the Dankula issue yet but a quick look at Marianna Spring’s Twitter account only going back a fortnight for now reveals something disturbing.
I.e. All the content is admiring and supportive, there’s absolutely no criticism or dissent.
Could she have a team with her who are deleting and blocking all opposition and potential discussion? Not a good look, people usually argue a bit on Twitter.
That’s very interesting and something not exactly unexpected. Ms Spring is getting pretty well slaughtered online for her Ministry of Truth activities at the BBC. Those who are having a dig at her are not all tin foilers but mostly it seems those who are ask the correct awkward questions about the narratives that the BBC push.
I would not be at all surprised if Ms Spring has a team curating her Twitter feed in order to remove those,like Sargon, who have good grounds for challenging her. I strongly agree with you that this is not a good look for the BBC.
My distrust of the BBC is made quite a bit more intense by following the stories about climate change on Paul Homewood’s ‘Not A Lot Of People Know That’ website. He catches them outright lying on numerous occasions and provides irrefutable proof. He often sends in a complaint and this gives us a window into the way that their complaint system operates*. A while ago I accidentally tuned into a BBC report on the earthquake in Turkey and my first instinct was to check other sources to see if it was actually true or that the BBC had just made the whole thing up.
*
1. Ignore it and hope that the complainant just forgets about it.
2. After being reminded, apologise for the delay in responding.
3. Send a reply that contains much verbiage but fails to address any of the points raised.
4. After the problem with 3 is pointed out, send a really weaselly worded response that basically admits that the story was false but was actually sort of true really.
There are good reasons why the slogan ‘Is that true or did you hear it on the BBC?’ has become a bit of a truism, like ‘if you not want your pork to mar kill not your pig without the ‘R” One of those reasons is that the BBC does lie by omission and does impart its own internal political spin on things. This might not have been so bad or such a major problem when the BBC was roughly walking the same cultural and social paths as the rest of the nation were and being both cautious but innovative at the same time. Now we have the situation where the BBC’s internal culture is a world away from that of the average and suffering Briton, this spin and playing fast and loose with the truth has become a big problem indeed.
I call the BBC the Blatantly Biased Corporation. I am so pissed off I have to pay the licence fee for a channel I do not watch. I am not working as I am a pensioner.
Any ideas ?