Unions Role in Creating BBC Bias

[cherenkov]

I'm a scientist by trade though I won't say what branch of science I ply my trade in, just that my screen name is NOT a hint. I've lived in England most of my life, and love the country and the people in the main, but I was born in Scotland. I am married and a step-father of one young man who has left home now and doing well for himself.

I was born just under a decade after World War Two and have seen a lot of changes, and the emergence of of the UK's self-destructive political cycle, i.e. Lab > Con > Lab > Con.... For me, the advent of coalition government in this country is possibly the only way we can put an end to a political oscillation that has so damaged our country over the decades since the war.

Also, as an Anglophilic Scot (yes we do exist, and in larger numbers than some might care to think) I have no liking for the SNP, and believe that the breaking up of the UK is not necessary to address any credible grievances the SNP claim against the union.

Perhaps because I'm a scientist, I am a realist politically, I deeply distrust and dislike the blinkered thinking of any kind of idealist, and look for rationality, objectivity and above all impartiality from the news service providers of this country.

After due consideration I am now of a view that the three main parties, in England, and those parties seriously in contention in the other UK countries should be government funded, with unions and other vested interest groups like banks and corporations banned from seeking influence through huge donations. That this is not the case, as in what follows, is why I'm joining this forum, having felt the BBC News is failing to be impartial, and I think I can see why.

National Union of Journalists supports ATL, NUT, PCS and UCU strike

There are over 4000 members of this union (The National Union of Journalists) paying their union dues to this biased, anti-government union, including some 200 members in Scotland. When you consider that over 90% of the funding for the Labour party comes from the unions, including the NUJ members, at the BBC and elsewhere, how can you expect anything other than a continuing anti-coalition bias to emerge, which I and many others, as confirmed by the BBC itself on it's own feedback programme, believe we are witness to day after day.

The BBC's response is that such allegations are an insult to the professionalism and integrity of it's staff, and it is actually us that are perceiving a bias because we are are ourselves biased in favour of the present government!

All I would say is that that rather insulting speculation would be easier to stomach were the NUJ and other unions not so well embedded in the BBC News, clearly militant, and clearly deeply idealogically opposed to anything to do with the coalition....

Strictly Come Dancing final could be hit by BBC strikes

[Teddy Bear]

Great post Cherenkov

I see from the first link you posted, another relevant page -
NUJ balloting members at the BBC
They urge their journalist members to 'Fight for Our BBC'.
This really shows the problem and the mindset in a nutshell. It is not THEIR BBC, it is ours. I can't wait for the day when they are cut loose and have to find a real company to work for.

[thehighlandrebel]

Hi Cherenkov. Welcome to the board.

I was an SNP supporter until a few years ago until I witnessed a march in Glasgow organised by the Trades Unions which you mention.

The march was in support of Palestinian terrorists and had the usual 'brothers' waving their 'death to Israel' and even 'death to Christianity' placards and there, at the forefront, was Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson of the SNP.

When I told a union leader that he was supporting terrorism and what was the unions views on the thousands of victims of Hamas, women and children, who are under constant rocket and missile attack I was given the standard response that I was an Islamophobe and the instigators of unprovoked terrorist attacks were victims to be pitied and the women and children they murdered were war criminals.

I tore up my union card that day.

[cherenkov]

I find it hard to believe that the TUC in Scotland could see any virtue in support for Palestinian terrorism unless they were antisemitic themselves. Although there was a tradition of anti-Semitism in the Labour movement. I have read in a history of the 20th century that Clement Attlee was anti-Semitic, though to be fair the bombing of the Hebron hotel and atrocities against British soldiers by Jewish terrorists who many believe inspired the PLO to use similar tactics would make anti-Israeli rhetoric attractive to any of the populist political rubber-band men and women of today.

What is more interesting is how the BBC would have reported such an event. I imagine that any controversy that would have shown the TUC in a bad light would have gone unreported by them as per their policy of anti-coalition, pro-Labour and the TUC information management, although for obvious reasons said policy wasn't so obvious to see before the last election campaign started.

Remember the Conservative conference before the last election?
11AM on the Sunday morning I put on BBC News 24 to hear a group of anarchists chanting 'Get Tory scum off our streets', over and over for about ten to fifteen minutes!

What they'd done was put one of their young female verbal diarrhoea generators right in front of them so that although it looked like she was making a live report all that really came over, and over, and over again, for the whole world to hear, was a small group of Hunts chanting 'Get Tory scum off our streets'.

I don't think they'd have put her there at a Labour conference if it was Labour 'scum' they were chanting about, do you?