State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”
Formerly Skeptical BBC Editor Changes Tune (The Blaze):
BBC Editor Mark Mardell on Friday admitted that he had all but dismissed allegations of a Benghazi cover-up before ABC’s bombshell report on the Benghazi talking points, which were deliberately edited to remove references to terror.
“This is now very serious, and I suspect heads will roll,” Mardell writes. “The White House will be on the defensive for a while.”
The BBC editor said ABC’s report on the talking points provide the “first hard evidence that the State Department did ask for changes to the CIA’s original assessment.” He predicted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will inevitably have to explain why her department made the significant edits.
“In the interests of full disclosure I have to say I have not in the past been persuaded that allegations of a cover-up were a big deal. It seemed to me a partisan attack based on very little,” Mardell admitted, later adding that the “evidence is there in black and white.”
He goes on: “Mr Obama’s critics are often not very clear what is behind their allegations. I presume they think that the White House wanted to avoid claims the murders were the result of terrorism because this would undermine his claim that al-Qaeda was seriously ‘degraded.’ There’s also a vague sense he’s ‘soft on terror.’”…
Breitbart has this great story on the BBC lying, cheating, and stealing emotions:
A BBC reporter helped spread a photo of a child supposedly injured by an Israeli attack on Gaza. In reality, the photo is three weeks old and was taken in Syria.
The photo of a wounded Syrian child was posted here on October 28th. Early Monday morning, a Palestinian journalist named Hazem Balousha tweeted the photo with the misleading description “Pain in #Gaza.” It was retweeted more than 90 times, including by BBC Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison. Donnison added the word “Heartbreaking” and sent it to his 8,000 followers.
After the error was pointed out, Donnison apologized, saying, “A photo I retweeted from another journo yesterday showing children injured was NOT in Gaza as I said but apparently from Syria. Apologies.” The original tweet by Mr. Balousha appears to have been deleted.
BBC has already been caught once in the past week running fake footage of supposedly injured Gazans. In an incident noted last Thursday, a man is shown being carried by a group of men. He appears to be wounded. But moments later, the same man can be seen walking around — apparently nothing wrong with him.
CNN and the AP also ran an image of a 4-year-old killed in the conflict, strongly implying he died in an Israeli airstrike. However, Israel carried out no strikes the day the child died. According to the those who examined the site, the blast that killed the little boy was the result of a “Palestinian rocket,” not an Israeli bomb.
Today, BBC News tweeted that Tel Aviv was the capital of Israel. Jerusalem, of course, is the capital of Israel. But, mirroring the Obama administration’s hesitance to declare Israel’s capital Jerusalem, the BBC instead tweeted:
Breitbart continues:
The BBC, which is massively anti-Israel in its coverage, has repeatedly refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. During the Olympics, the BBC refused to list Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, drawing a caustic response from the Israeli government.
Notice the local ultra-liberal media spin, implying the Mayor is a bigot. He simply commented that if you come to our country you should assimilate to the local culture rather than wanting indigenous residents to change for yours.
The bigots outright racists are the Somalis, who spit on America and our American culture.
A new, 18-minute mini-documentary follows the journey of Irina, a 23-year-old liberal, Jewish New Yorker who voted for Obama in 2008. Yet as her connection to Israel has grown, and she has learned more about the President’s policies across the Middle East and towards Israel in particular, Irina has come to realize that “when the chips are down,” the President may not “have Israel’s back” as he says.
The short film features:
Exclusive interviews with leading journalists and politicians in Israel
Clips from longtime Democratic supporters including: Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)
(This is posted due to a conversation started on my LiveLeak account.) I have talked about the bias embedded in NPR previously, but few are aware of the embedded bias at the BBC. And so, I wanted to get a critique of their biases into the anals of PapaG. I often talk to people who see to think they are in am elite class of people when they mention they listen to the BBC. Don’t get me wrong, they bring stories about world events other news orgs miss. However, many people are not trained to get the bias behind their headlines. The Daily Mail, a UK newsdaily, has an interesting article from a while ago:
It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.
A leaked account of an ‘impartiality summit’ called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.
It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.
One veteran BBC executive said: ‘There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.
‘Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC’s culture, that it is very hard to change it.’
While the BBC admitted their bias and have tried to correct it, they still do not know what impartiality is — not to mention political correctness and multi-culturalism. Someone who worked at the BBC for some time (Peter Sissons, a 20 year veteran of BBC News) wrote in his memoirs about some of this culture of progressiveness at the BBC, to wit NewsBusters wrote on:
While liberal media bias is often easy to spot, it’s rare to see veteran journalists come clean on the biases of their own news outlets. But when one does, it’s hard to dispute the first hand account of the newsroom’s consistently leftist politics.
In his new memoirs, veteran BBC news anchor Peter Sissons details the startling depths of leftist politics that pervade coverage at Britain’s state-owned broadcaster. Leftism is “in its very DNA,” Sissions claims of the BBC.
In excerpts from the memoirs, titled “When One Door Closes”, published in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, Sissons details the groupthink mentality at the BBC:
At any given time there is a BBC line on everything of importance, a line usually adopted in the light of which way its senior echelons believe the political wind is blowing. This line is rarely spelled out explicitly, but percolates subtly throughout the organisation.
Whatever the United Nations is associated with is good — it is heresy to question any of its activities. The EU is also a good thing, but not quite as good as the UN. Soaking the rich is good, despite well-founded economic arguments that the more you tax, the less you get. And Government spending is a good thing, although most BBC people prefer to call it investment, in line with New Labour’s terminology.
All green and environmental groups are very good things. Al Gore is a saint. George Bush was a bad thing, and thick into the bargain. Obama was not just the Democratic Party’s candidate for the White House, he was the BBC’s. Blair was good, Brown bad, but the BBC has now lost interest in both.
Trade unions are mostly good things, especially when they are fighting BBC managers. Quangos are also mostly good, and the reports they produce are usually handled uncritically. The Royal Family is a bore. Islam must not be offended at any price, although Christians are fair game because they do nothing about it if they are offended.
In short, pick the default leftist position on any issue, and odds are it is the position held and espoused on air by the BBC.
And while leftist politics color the news at the channel, they also dictate its corporate structure and inner workings, according to Sissons. One’s politics, he writes, can dictate one’s success or failure in climbing the Company’s corporate ladder.
If Human Resources — or Personnel, as it used to be known — advise that it’s time a woman or someone from an ethnic minority (or a combination of the two) was appointed to the job for which you, a white male, have applied, then that’s who gets it.
But whatever your talent, sex or ethnicity, there’s one sure-fire way at a BBC promotions board to ensure you don’t get the job, indeed to bring your career to a grinding halt. And that’s if, when asked which post-war politician you most admire, you reply: ‘Margaret Thatcher’.
In fact, there are whole blogs that deal with the bias at the BBC. Biased BBC for instance. In one forum this was posted in relation to the memoirs of Peter Sissons being released:
Very interesting complete article, I encourage you to read it:
“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias”
Originally Posted by BBC Drama Commissioning Controller
“We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”
Ben Stephenson. BBC Drama Commissioning Controller
Guardian, July 16th 2009
Originally Posted by BBC Internal Report
“An internal report from 2007 said it had to make greater efforts to avoid liberal bias. That report criticised the BBC for coming late to several important stories including euroscepticism and immigration, which it described as ‘off limits in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone’.”
“BBC programmes are being undermined by the liberal culture of its staff”
Which is funny, as the BBC spends 86% of its recruitment budget on advertising in one unashamedly left-wing newspaper – The Guardian.
BBC spent a colossal:
1. Guardian £231,944
2. The Telegraph £32,535
3. The Times £6,159
The Guardian on itself: “…a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition.” The Guardian is also has a miniscule readership, Telegraph is read by more than twice as many people, and the Times more.
A round table. Take note that the point Carol makes is one I make about NPR:
For instance, NPR: 18,321 words in pro-Arab only segments, 4,934 words in pro-Israel segments. Bias in number of Arab-only vs Israeli-only segments: 63-percent Palestinian/pro-Arab only segments, 37-percent Israel/pro-Israel segments. (SOURCE)
