Apologies for being slightly cynical of our media organisations considering the BBC is the Tory Government's mouth piece and Murdoch stands to gain considerably from the conflict...
One point of view some people aren't considering is the fact that when IS take over areas, they are basically forcing civilians to either join them or die. If people are joining them out of fear of them and at risk of their families being slaughtered, it isn't really their fault when they are faced with that ultimatum. Whichever way you look at it, sending in airstrikes is not going to solve the problem and will likely lead to exacerbating an already horrific situation.
It's horrific anyway you look at it, I've heard that Russia are using some chemical weapons in Syria, that the Assad government have committed extensive war crimes against the civilian population including using 'barrel bombs' against them, then you have ISIS doing truly despicable things to the civilians while trying to turn Western countries against Muslims, and the Turks are shelling the Kurds, who are one of the main groups on the ground fighting ISIS, while we are bombing everything in ISIS territory in Northern Iraq, killing lots of civilians and then you have Iraqi government backed militants killing, kidnapping, torturing civilians in Iraq, and of course, millions of refugees living in under provisioned refugee camps across the region, from Turkey to Jordan. It's awful isn't it...
Fair enough, it seems the strikes so far have been away from population centres but cameron has said hed be attacking isis where they are hiding, and where some of them are is in population areas
BBC is 'horribly biased towards the left'? A left-wing Students' Union President had an interview on BBC Radio Five Live just over a week ago and, in the studio, it included the presenter Emma Barnett, a privately-educated, middle-class journalist who is a regular columnist for The Telegraph; Tim Stanley, another blogger and journalist for The Telegraph and Katie Hopkins, a Daily Mail columnist. The President was referred to as a "leader of an Islamist movement" and endorsing "those who say gays should be thrown off a mountain" by one of the aforementioned people (who I'm sure you can guess that said this), live on air, without any intervention or challenge from the others in the studio. Both of those accusations were completely untrue, by the way. You can accuse the BBC of many things. Being biased toward the left is most definitely not one of them.
Totally agree on this. The BBC isn't biased to the left whatsoever, in fact you could argue they've been moving steadily to the right, to appease the government and shower us with propaganda. I still can't forget them giving minimum coverage for the march for Palestine a few years back and with then describing it as a few thousand. Like hell it was, more like 100s of thousands marched through the streets, I know that because I was bloody there! As I said, they suffer from the same putrid propaganda that the rest of the media outlets do. It makes it all the worst that I have to pay for the garbage they throw at me.
Not only the BBC, but most media outlets are selective in not only how they present stories, but also news they choose to omit. This is a political decision in itself. Since the financial crisis caused by the banks, Iceland faced with austerity like everybody else, instead rejected its govt and refused to pay the bankers debt. Instead they sent the PM for indictment for negligence, prosecuted bankers and re-wrote their constitution. Did we hear about any of this in the mainstream media ?
Here are some short bios on the BBC's left wing employees :- Nick Robinson,ex political editor and now presenter of Today on Radio 4. Nick is an ex chairman of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Jeremy Paxman,ex presenter of Newsnight. Jeremy is a self confessed conservative who the tories asked to stand as their candidate for London mayor Andrew Neill,presenter of the Daily Politics & This Week Ex newspaper editor whose newspapers were very pro Thatcherite.
You know the same can be done with a load of random left wing BBC employees right? Which kind of makes your point...pointless. A few examples: Ex-Labour Cabinet Minister James Purnell appointed BBC Director of Strategy and Digital. Former Guardian reporter Ian Katz as Editor of Newsnight. The Economics correspondent for Newsnight worked as an advisor to Harriet Harman. There's plenty of examples of left wing BBC employees.
I use the BBC website as my first point of news to get the overall stories before researching the ones I'm interested in. And I read all about Iceland on the BBC website at the time. Whether that's because I take a particular interest in economics or whether it's because the news was on the front page I couldn't tell you, but they most definitely covered the Iceland story as it unraveled.
The only source that says it was 100s of thousands is the website of the organisers of the march who claim 150,000 people attended. All other news outlets, left or right leaning seem to have reported it as tens of thousands. Upon a little bit more digging I found a quote in the guardian giving the figure as 20,000 people, the figure was given to the media by the police and this is why it was reported as tens of thousands, it actually seems to have been an attempt to make it seem like there were more people than the media had been told. As tens of thousands, sounds more than 20k. (Edit: I've found 2 less mainstream sources giving a police figure of 45,000 for the biggest March, but it comes with no quote or backup of where the figure comes from, either way both figures are in the tens of thousands) I'd imagine it is very difficult to judge the number of people in a crowd when your part of it so can understand why people who were there feel like it was more, but the media seem to have gone off a figure given by the police rather than purposely gone for a low figure.
My point was that there are plenty of people with either political persuasion working for the BBC and that randomly picking a few of them for one side while ignoring the other doesn't in any way prove a bias in that direction.
I've been on quite a few protests where the MSM have used dismissive language about the protest, using words like 'anarchist' or 'thugs' while downplaying the number of supporters, while independent sources usually bring the figure to somewhere closer to the organisers figures (though usually lower as the organisers usually inflate the figures as the MSM downplay them). The BBC have toed the line increasingly since the Dr Kelly scandal and the Iraq war coverage criticising the government for going to war. Since the Tories have gotten into power (with the Lib Dems firstly) the government have been placing right leaning people in key positions throughout the organisation, while reducing it's power, funding and influence. The government has already privatised a significant portion of the BBC (these plans will be announced sometime in the future), and many shows are being sold off to Sky/ITV (I believe the Daily Mail or is it the Express owner owns shares in ITV). To say that the BBC doesn't have a right-wing editorial slant in the last 5 years is laughable, you only have to look at the coverage of the last party conferences to see that. The Labour conference attracted record numbers of supporters - the biggest number ever, the biggest support for a leader in decades, dwarfing even Tony Blairs support - significantly higher than Cameron's, and all the coverage ignored the parties policies, and instead focused on interviewing dissenting voices, using people with disagreements with Corbyn as talking heads (except for the odd 'student activists' or backbencher) - there was even footage of one backbencher getting really angry with the BBC reporter for consistently trying to twist his words into saying he disagreed with Corbyn. The Conservative conference, where there was huge protests, to such an extent that they needed to erect a ring of steel fences between themselves and the people they serve. Had long, direct quotes from Cameron's speech with the key positive points put on screen throughout the coverage. Had right wing talking heads supporting his speech, I saw no one question why people were protesting, or questioning his failure to meet any of his targets in the last 5 years, or the number of protests to take place since May (in 5 months it was staggering how many tens/hundreds of thousands protested). That is just one snap shot. Not that I blame the BBC, it's a Hobson's Choice of being the government's mouth piece or ceasing to exist...
The first three people I mentioned are or were employed by the BBC in positions were they could influence people's political thinking.Employing a journalist who once worked for a newspaper who's editorials are left leaning is a completely different matter.
I mentioned three random left leaning examples, one of which was an ex labour cabinet minister employed as a director of strategy and digital. That's a pretty good example of someone left leaning in a position of influence within the BBC? I'm sure there's plenty more if I looked for them, that wasn't the point I was making, I was saying that you mentioning three random right leaning BBC employees didn't prove there is a right wing bias as I could just as easily list three random left leaning employees. I haven't suggested the BBC is one way or the other, was just pointing out a perceived flaw in your logic
