Back in January of this year, The Observe/Guardian reported bad news on its' evil twin, The BBC. "Figures published tomorrow will show that the BBC's audience share has fallen to its lowest level for years. Industry body Barb (the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board), will report that the BBC's overall share of viewers dropped from 38.3 per cent in 2003 to 36.62 per cent in 2004, a fall of just under 4.5 per cent."
Now comes word that even Prince Harry is to give the BBC a mighty snub.
Prince Harry is to give a wide-ranging television interview to mark his 21st birthday next month to the Sky satellite channel in a move seen as a calculated snub to the BBC. [...]
"The decision to allow Sky in on the act marks a significant change of policy which will inevitably be attributed in some quarters to the Prince of Wales's increasingly obvious sense of frustration with the BBC," a courtier told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday.
We feel your pain.
The Telegraph also take the BBC to task over their reporting on Iraq.
To listen to the BBC's coverage of Iraq's tentative steps towards a constitution is to become deeply depressed. The BBC creates the impression that the talks about the constitution are bound to fail. The country is heading towards civil war between the Shias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds: three irredeemably opposed groups itching to kill each other.
The BBC are deliberately creating that false impression. Take this from an earlier post:
Some of the media, like Justin's BBC even lie in their reporting on Iraq.
Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent who is based at the coalition command centre in Qatar, complained that the corporation was conveying a untruthful picture of how the war was progressing. [...]
"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true," Adams said in the memo.
"Nor is it true to say - as the same intro stated - that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas'. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas," he stormed.
"Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected," Adams continued.
Even some Iraqis are offended by the BBC's bias.
The BBC, however, appears to have hardly noticed that achievement. Most of its coverage emphasises the divisions between Iraqis. "May I ask you to describe me as an Iraqi, not as a Sunni," Doon al Zubaydi asked James Naughtie on the BBC's Today programme after he had been introduced simply as "a Sunni" - as if that designation and loyalty took precedence over every other.
The Telegraph concludes:
The Iraqis have a long way to go before their blueprint for a democratic future becomes a reality. But they are on their way to that goal. Hatred of President Bush, and scepticism about justifications for the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, seems to be blinding too many observers in Britain to the possibility that the US-led "occupation" may yet turn out to be Iraq's salvation. It has made democracy possible in a situation where the only other options are the nightmares of tyranny and civil war. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are desperately eager to make democracy in their country real. We should applaud them for their zeal.
Instead the world's media, including the BBC, combined with the anti-war movement, in their blind hate of Bush and America, are doing all they can to deny the Iraqi's the freedoms they so dearly love.
The BBC shold pay a dear price for this by having the television tax and their charter revoked.
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