Faces at dear old, sad old Auntie BBC are redder than Comrade Corbyn’s politics following two fabulous fubars in the last week or so. Do try to remember, it’s wicked to mock the afflicted, so try not laugh, well, not too much.
First, in a report on the tragic death of Kobe Bryant they played a short video clip of LeBron James. Flustered BBC News apparatchiks apologised for the mistake.
Second, only days later, they mislabelled footage of Labour MP Marsha de Cordova speaking in Parliament as her fellow Labour MP Dawn Butler. The ladies in question have not been backwards in coming forwards over their displeasure.
Despite the fact that the BBC does genuinely strive for (if not achieve) balance in actual political reporting there is no doubt that the corporation is an utterly leftist trendy institution culturally. Painfully progressive they only advertise jobs in the Guardian, house paper of the bien pensant metropolitan elite. Their non-news output pushes progressive values like drug dealers push crack, witness what they’ve done to Dr Who. BBC output is so deliberately diverse at times it makes a Benetton add look like a KKK barbeque. Just imagine how the BBC would have reported this if, shall we say, Donald Trump’s staff had mixed up Bryant and James.
Coming at the same time as the news of plans to increase the iniquitous “TV license” (actually a tax on having a TV) which funds the BBC, this has not been a good week for the Beeb.
Watching the exquisite, excruciating embarrassment of the white middle class leftie guilt junkies that run the Beeb has been like drinking good dry hoppy Bitter while watching a wonderful sunset. Lovely.
2 replies on “Blundering, Blushing BBC”
While I would criticize them for mis-labeling their own politicians, I can see how they’d mix up one star player in “that American non-soccer game” with another. Its not like they’d know who either guy was/is, though you’d hope that something more than “search for footage of NBA star” would give them the right video. You’ve got the name, and its written on the back of the jersey so there really isn’t much of an excuse. Of course, expecting foreign news non-sports people to know who’s who … well Americans make that mistake too.
You’d be surprised how much we do absorb US culture over here. I’ve never seen a basketball match in my life, but I knew the names Kobe Bryant and LeBron James before Kobe’s death.