We have a very clear and recent example of selective quotation by the BBC in its commentary surrounding the use of parliamentary privilege to name Sir Philip Green as the anonymous person who secured a court injunction preventing The Daily Telegraph publishing allegations of sexual and racial harassment.

While other commentators quite rightly concentrate on the use and abuse of parliamentary privilege, I draw attention to another feature that will receive no attention from the main stream media.

Media bias

There have been many complaints about bias in the main stream media (MSM), with American President Donald Trump leading the charge.  It is common for people and political parties to complain about BBC bias.  The BBC defends itself by claiming that as the complaints come from opposite sides of a debate, the BBC must be quite balanced.  A better defence would be to point out that all programmes follow a line that is inherently biased, but as long as different views are allowed to be expressed in alternative programmes then the BBC performs its function as a public broadcasting corporation.

Selective quotation

However, selective quotation is another matter.  This is very easy to do, is commonly done, and can be damaging.  It manifests that the desire to win an argument is greater than the regard for truth.  An old example that comes to mind because of its frequent recurrence is the selective curtailing of George Galloway’s meeting with Saddam Hussein, and the most recent one is the clipping from BBC’s This Week showing Alan Johnson last night questioning Peter Hain’s use of Parliamentary privilege as ‘undermining the law’ or judiciary.  News items have repeatedly shown it and Politics Live does the same today.  Each time the video clip stops very abruptly.  Why?  Because it goes on immediately to show the BBC’s Andrew Neil saying this view was very interesting and Michael Portillo agreed with this and said, “Well said, Alan.”   Why did the BBC in its reporting of this opinion confine this sentiment to Alan Johnson and not include Michael Portillo who was of a similar view?  The answer is not very important, but it demonstrates the readiness of the BBC to cut clippings short and prevent viewers seeing the reaction to the point being made in context.

Context

I remind people that there is a context to every story and if people were more experienced in exegeting the Bible and more familiar with the centuries of debate over biblical doctrine, as former generations were, they would be more alert to the use of quotations out of context.

The historian Dr David Starkey put parliamentary privilege in context, beginning in Henry VIII’s reign, that it was to prevent the judiciary interfering with parliament.  He also compared Henry VIII’s breach with the pope in Rome to “a hard Brexit 16th-century style”, each Brexit requiring the approval of parliament, and the BBC subtitled this section of the debate ‘Court of Tudor Vs. Court of May’.

Alan Johnson said that parliamentary privilege should be used very carefully, recalling that Erskine May, the parliamentary manual of practice, explained that parliamentary privilege should be used as part of one’s legislative duties.  I find it difficult to see how Lord Haines’ exposure of Philip Green is part of a legislative duty and it appears to me that he has taken the law into his own hands.  This will lead to serious debate on the use and abuse of parliamentary privilege.

The Politics Live presenter Emma Barnett preceded the This Week clipping with: “someone who is very clear in their view that they didn’t think it was the right thing to do is Alan Johnson”, and after the clip she said: “he is very clear there.”  The problem is that he was not “very clear” and he was more nuanced in his opinion.  He questioned it and correctly raised the topic for debate.  Similarly, I am raising the topic of accurate, contextual quotation, but this will not be debated by those who are practised in the nefarious art of misrepresenting other people.

Meanwhile, this blogpost allows me to add examples of selective quotation by MSM as they come across my path.

Links:

BBC watch monitors the BBC’s reporting of events in Israel.

Update:

4 Dec 2018: following the market turmoil on this politically significant day for Brexit, the BBC news at 6 p.m. reported the gloomy predictions of the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the BBC report finished with “the pound is at its lowest against the dollar for eighteen months”.  Was this meant to suggest that Brexit was the cause?  Why did the BBC not compare the pound to the euro instead of the dollar?  After all, this was the topic.

1. Only last month the euro was also at its lowest against the dollar for eighteen months.  2. the pound against the euro is not at its lowest in the past eighteen months, and only last month it was at its highest against the euro for eighteen months.  Where does the BBC  fact-checking fit into this?

So what was the BBC conveying to its audience?

Two hours later, the BBC reported that Wall Street fell 2% today, with shares in financial companies suffering the biggest declines.  Presumably, even the BBC could not blame this on Brexit.

Sensibly, former Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King has compared Theresa May’s Brexit to pre-World War II appeasement policy of the Nazis.  In his article in Bloomberg he has pointed out that Brexit preparations were inadequate and “incompetence on a monumental scale”.

He was saddened that the Bank of England had been drawn into Project Fear.

11 Mar 2020: bold and deliberate truncating of Boris Johnston’s statement on coronavirus, demonstrating the shameless activity of those who bear false witness.

16 Nov 2020: the BBC reported on the ‘second’ vaccine against COVID-19 on its 1 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 pm. news.  It was referring to the good news that Moderna has developed a vaccine that is nearly 95% effective and can be stored at a better temperature than the Pfizer vaccine announced on 9th November seven days ago.

The broadcast news went on to report about forthcoming vaccines, so it appears that the BBC cannot bring itself to refer to the Russian vaccine that was the ‘second’ vaccine to be developed.  The online report does not repeat the mistake that Moderna’s is the ‘second’ vaccine and it does mention the Russian vaccine, but why does the broadcast media repeatedly insist on ignoring the Russian vaccine?  Is the BBC afraid of telling the truth?  BBC Newsnight still repeated the ‘second’ claim tonight, possibly on the back of the Deputy Chief Medical Officer’s refence to “the second penalty [shot] now, that’s also gone into the back of the net.”  I am sure they can count, so why this sidelining of the Russian vaccine?

The Hadassah Medical Centre, Jerusalem, has ordered over 1.5 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine, whose Director suggested that it will be the first vaccine to market and expects 50% of the world to use it.  However, the BBC cannot mention it, nor the two vaccines being tested in Cuba.  Could politics possibly be behind the BBC ‘news’?

11 Dec 2020: Europe’s Astra-Zeneca lab is cooperating with Russian Sputnik V lab to trial a mixture of the vaccines to improve immunity. This should be rather embarrassing for the BBC who ignored the Russian vaccine in its reports, see above, but so few will call out the BBC that it can afford to carry on regardless.