From The Telegraph:
Nick Robinson: BBC made a 'terrible mistake' over immigration debate
The BBC's political editor admits the corporation didn't have a proper debate on immigration in the late 1990s and early 2000s
By Alice Philipson 11:48AM GMT 05 Jan 2014 835 Comments
Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, has criticised the corporation for making a "terrible mistake" over its coverage of immigration, admitting it censored concerns amid fear they could trigger racism.
Robinson said BBC figures in charge during the late 1990s and early 2000s believed a "warts-and-all" debate over immigration would "unleash some terrible side of the British public".
He told The Sunday Times (£): "They feared having a conversation about immigration, they feared the consequence."
One-sided reports meant viewer's concerns about immigration lowering wages and threatening jobs were not addressed by the broadcaster.
Robinson, whose new documentary The Truth About Immigration is due to air on Tuesday, said the BBC's audience felt it had "decided these are not acceptable views. And that was a terrible mistake."
It comes months after an official review found the BBC did not accurately reflect the public's growing concern about immigration because of a "deep liberal bias".
In July a report, commissioned by the BBC Trust, found the broadcaster had been "slow" to catch up with public opinion on immigration and leaving the European Union.
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63 comments:
"In July a report, commissioned by the BBC Trust, found the broadcaster had been "slow" to catch up with public opinion on immigration and leaving the European Union."
It's funny. In other areas (and indeed in this one) they see themselves as leading public opinion.
(Nick Robinson - fine old English name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Robinson
Everyone here must know, or should know that the BBC is the British state propaganda organ. Basically it's Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
Saying all that, even if the BBC, in all its self-important pomposity, did hold a 'live television debate' about immigration which was genuinely no-holds barred, perhaps having Nick Griffin debating Jasmin Alibhai Brown in front of an audience of the usual numpties, despite all the sound and fury generated and smugness for the beeb, it would have been as relevant to the tragedy as termites emitting methane in Arizona.
Basically the New Labour government had a secret, hidden agenda, which it took great pains to hide and conceal from the British electorate. The plan was to foist*, by stealth a true open-borders third world free for all, uncontrolled, unlimited mass immigration policy on Britain, without telling anyone.
If you don't believe me read Andrew Neather.
Do you really think that people as tough, ruthless, sneaky and determined as that will be dissuaded by some silly little TV debates fronted by David Dimbleby?
- You're dealing with political equivalent of the Kray Twins here, people, politically speaking, who dump bodies under motorway fly-overs for breakfast. The big boys club, Hardened, ruthless political gangsters. Do you really think they could give a damn about what Mrs Duffy from Rochdale says? - That's the trouble, people thought that New Labour were 'people like themselves' but they were and are not. They combine the morality of the Krays with the hatred and ruthlessness of Joseph Stalin.
*Foist. A word meaning to 'slip something through unnoticed and unubtrusively. Etymologically derived fro a word meaning to "pass wind silently". How very apt in this case.
Now you know why I call commercial media owned by the super-rich globalists, and the so-called "public" media run by the globalists' wholly-owned political puppets...Enemedia-Pravda.
Anonymous 1:39 AM has it exactly right. What has occurred in Britain is nothing short of massive treason, supported fully by the BBC with taxpayers' money.
In any decent society, there would be full retribution, starting with the 'government' of the day.
What is horrifying about Britain is that the establishment and the people let it happen, intimidated by the likes of Blair and Brown.
Truly disgusting.
Anon.
That's crap. A proper debate about immigration would have given courage to the many Britons who disliked or hated immigration to come forward and be strident. It's only now that the debate can't be constrained any more by the Marxists at the BBC and other MSM venues, that people are now gaining courage to do just that.
These acts of treason are probably why Blair abolished the death penalty for treason in 1998, a year after becoming PM in 1997. If he could see what people think of him now, he may have thought twice about railroading through open-slather immigration policy. But at the time people like him thought they could just shaft the public ad infinitum and they would eventually just throw up their hands and admit defeat.
Despite first impressions, this is probably reassuring news for the whores Reid, Rand, Cruz, Boehner, Pelosi, et al., and their pimp paymasters Soros, Zuckerman, Gates, et al. The situation has gone far enough in the UK that the Labor elite can begin to reveal how they've destroyed the country: There's no turning back for the Brits now, at least short of something resembling a real racial/civil war. And we Nort Americanos are not all that far behind. If I were a Canadian I'd begin to get a little nervous thinking what it's going to be like having a political giant south of my borders that is nearly as dysfunctional asd Mexico.
It's not accurate to say that the BBC is the state propaganda organ. The relationship is much more complex and more at arms length.
In fact, a lot of the time the power flows the other way. The state is the BBC's government organ. The Beeb has much greater prestige and status as a cherished pillar of the Establishment, a view which I'm admittedly sympathetic. They do produce great television, and when they inevitably fall foul of the rules, the public handwringing and tsunami apologies is a public entertainment spectacle. See for instance, their coverage of the Jimmy Saville scandal.
No kidding.
Did any of you watch the McNeil Lehrer segment on the "War on Poverty" last night? They select three people to discuss it. None of them took exception to the inept interrogator's framing of the issues. The only one with any competence to discuss economic questions was a business professor named Glenn Hubbard (who also has a berth at AEI); his perspective was mainline Republican, ca. 1978. The other two were a history professor and a lapsed attorney who runs an advocacy group called PolicyLink. There was so much slack from beginning to end in the preparation and execution of the segment that you have to figure that if it's not contrived, the staff of the Newshour must be incompetent.
Then they follow up with a segment in which Judy Woodruff interviews an antique pair of pols who represent a group flogging more public works spending. We've all been hearing about a crisis in public works for over thirty years (recall John Anderson intoning about "the leaky water mains"). You might figure elderly reporters like Woodruff would get the idea that the American Society of Civil Engineers has engaged in serial episodes of attempting to drum up business (with the assistance of pols who want publicity and swag). She actually does ask them why state governments cannot repair their own roads and bridges (btw, few of which cross state lines) without federal assistance. The old Republican goat gives her a bland nonsense answer and she lets it slide.
Would it matter if we had a state controlled media.
The fuckers still don't understand. "… the broadcaster had been "slow" to catch up with public opinion …": aaaargh! Their bloody duty is to broadcast a range of news and political opinion irrespective of whatever opinion the public is deemed to hold.
Media have border check points; media are not a freeway.
Media call for open orders but closed debates & controlled information. Some views are illegal and must be locked up or exiled.
Import third world masses and deport first world preservation.
The plan was to foist*, by stealth a true open-borders third world free for all, uncontrolled, unlimited mass immigration policy on Britain, without telling anyone.
*Foist. A word meaning to 'slip something through unnoticed and unubtrusively. Etymologically derived from a word meaning to "pass wind silently". How very apt in this case.
LOL, this is why I keep coming to the comments on iSteve. Comments like these are both humourous and educational. Immigration was truly the silent-but-deadly acid fart of the late 20th century.
Michael Palin said it would be very dangerous for Monty Python to make "The Life Of Mohammad" in 2014. The Pythons would be murdered by their fellow "BRITS".
Did you know that Michael Palin was-is involved with resettling Sudanese Muslim immigrants in the UK....
From the old Frost Report..almost verbatim:David Frost..."Mrs X"...a mother of 13" an English name..."from"...some English Town.."says she can't find time to get anyhting done"...silence..audience laughs...move on to the next joke. Presumably the Mother who was the but of the Footlights savage wit was a Native English..this is the context back in 1964 that made the joke work. You can find this on You Tube from part one of the new Monty Python documentary.
Isn't this an example of the Revolting..in both senses of the word...that the late historian Christopher Lasch wrote about?
These days it looks like the muslim mothers with 13 kids living near Oxbridge and Cambridge will have the last laugh on the Pythons..all of whom wrote for The Frost Report.
Bill BLizzard and his Men
The biggest problem is that the arrogant pricks think that there is nothing wrong with the news reporter to "decide [that] these are not acceptable views."
BBC is no different from Pravda. It cannot be said frequently and loudly enough.
That is just a tip of the iceberg that is a true conspiracy to destroy traditional English society. Yep, yet another conspiracy theory that is actually true. The only problem is that the guilty conspirators will not be held accountable.
I seem to recall from Manchester's books that the BBC was soft on the Nazis, too. Mustn't needlessly excite Mr. Hitler, and all that. Same with the London Times and the NYT.
Happened to be reading the June 3, 2013 New Yorker and in The Talk of the Town section there's a bit about comedian Colin Quinn and how he's been trying for years to produce a TV show about immigration with a title like "Huddled Masses." He was told by a cable exec: "It's timely. Is it TOO timely?" Quinn: "I'm still mad about it. Ultimately in their little pea brains they want to do something that's never been done--but you know what's never been done? A fucking show whose issues are on the front page of the paper every day!... I don't understand why there's not ten shows about immigration!"
Quin: "If the immigration show hits--and I still believe it will--I'm going to buy a cool-ass house in Jackson Heights, where they speak about a hundred and twenty languages. Then I'll hole up like Colonel Kurtz and just watch all the action. "
Any broadcasting media, dependent on the state for licensing or funding, will never take a contrary position to state policy.
For state owned media, such as the BBC, it's worse since the governing parties always put their bagmen in charge, to ensure compliance to policy. Like a commissar of correct behavior, so common under communist regimes.
My guess is that this sort of decision is common in big media organizations. The set of people who make decisions in big media are pretty homogenous, and it's pretty easy for a consensus to arise among them that there are many issues it would be irresponsible to air before the stupid, bigoted, unenlightened public.
Despite all the left wingers who love the BBC and claim its an objective news broadcaster, BBC staff in senior positions have openly admitted that they are left leaning. Even without this admission, the fact that it is so loved by the left and not as so much from the right, should be enough evidence where the BBC leans.
Just try watching shows like Doctor Who for example, the endless number of black characters they depict for a demographic (geek) that has hardly any black fans. Its a blatant propaganda organ for the left, unlike private broadcasters however, it forces the people it so detests to pay for it.
And yet he said none of that in the actual programme and instead laid the blame for the lack of discussion pretty much solely on Enoch Powell, claiming he had singlehandedly made immigration unmentionable for the next forty five years.
Steve --
OT, but here is a suggestion for your commenting system.
I read a comic called Jesus and Mo which is intensely anti-religious, and very disrespectful towards Mohammad. You would think the comments section would need to be carefully monitored, but in fact I can post a comment using a fake email address and it shows up immediately. All you need to do is check a checkbox stating "I am not a spammer."
I'm not sure why the cartoonist can get away with this, but somehow the comments are not filled with vituperation and spam. So maybe you could set up something similar that would be easier to navigate than the CAPTCHAs you are using now. (If you wanted to make it harder to get by, you could have more than one checkbox, for example with notes to check this one but not check that one).
First Kim Philby, and now this. Tsk. Is there anything left to save?
It's easier to get forgiveness than permission, as the saying goes."May I punch you in the nose?" never gets a positive response. "I'm sorry I broke your nose. Please forgive me" is more successful. Sneaky aggressors have always known this.. The mea culpas in Britain ring hollow so long after the crime.
Are guys like this coming out now because, a) it's too late and the hoi polloi can't do anything about it, or b) they realize immigration and the multicult are disastrous and they want they to weasel their way out of taking the blame?
The ubiquitous state media apparatus represented by the BBC seems creepy, but then again our own private media organs aren't much better.
The problem, of course, is less that the British media is controlled by the state than that it is controlled by the ruling class, which spans the public and private sectors. In that sense, we're in the same boat.
What's conspicuous about the state of the National Question in Britain is not the failure of the media but the failure of the monarchy. The whole point of having a monarchy is to preserve a source of moral and political authority that is inter-generational in its mandate and independent from the nexus of power in business, media, academia, finance, etc.
I mean, really, if your job description is "king/queen of the Britons and defender of the faith" then surely the blatant replacement of both should elicit some response from you, no?
"The BBC is a semi-autonomous public service broadcaster[7] that operates under a Royal Charter[8] and a Licence and Agreement from the Home Secretary."
That's all I need to read. Perhaps for your American readers you can discuss PBS or NPR or PRI or the Illuminati or whatever it is across the pond.
BTW the 1990s are like 20 years ago, a long time to shut down all debate. Talk about regime change.
http://youtu.be/Lq_VWA-S8OA?t=1m55s
If blacks misbehave more and are punished more as a result BUT STILL continue to act rowdy and bad, how does it help to lower the standards of their behavior? Won't they be emboldened to act even worse?
If one kid acts bad and another kids acts good, and if you lower the standard for the bad kid while raising the standard for the good kid, won't the good kid be pressured to act even gooder while the bad kid is encouraged to act badder?
It's like pressuring the industrious to act more industrious while letting the lazy to act even lazier. How does that help the lazy?
For the BBC and the Blairites, there is one way in which this mea culpa justly plays out.
Beeb & Blair: We regret our terrible mistake.
Clergyman: All is forgiven child.
Hangman: Right then. Up the steps we go.
To Anonymous at 1:39 AM:
You are absolutely right. The New Labour under Tony Blair was nothing less then full blown treason against Great Britain and its peoples. I am amazed at how Labour has always been able to portray itself as "the party of the ordinary working man and woman" of Britain. Nothing could be less true. The third world immigrant covert agenda was also followed by the liberals here in Canada.
Anon at 1:39 AM is absolutely right. How Tony Blair's New Labour's 13 years of misrule led to the greatest changes to Britain's demography in its hsitory, happened, reads like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
Robinson said BBC figures in charge during the late 1990s and early 2000s believed a "warts-and-all" debate over immigration would "unleash some terrible side of the British public".
That's racist.
And of course, this was all done "out of fear of white racism." As far as I can tell, that's the primary purpose of the racism taboo: silencing dissent from whites about the destruction of their societies.
If one kid acts bad and another kids acts good, and if you lower the standard for the bad kid while raising the standard for the good kid, won't the good kid be pressured to act even gooder while the bad kid is encouraged to act badder?
Anarcho-tyranny.
"BBC editor: BBC blackballed"
Is that a pun given what BBC has come to stand for as a slang?
"Did any of you watch the McNeil Lehrer segment on the "War on Poverty" last night?"
The war that turned lots of Americans into underclass dependent on welfare? The war that created an artificial middle class of government workers who suck up tax payer dollars?
"BBC is no different from Pravda. It cannot be said frequently and loudly enough."
But it has produced lots of excellent programming over the years.
"Are guys like this coming out now because, a) it's too late and the hoi polloi can't do anything about it, or b) they realize immigration and the multicult are disastrous and they want they to weasel their way out of taking the blame?"
Mostly a, but a bit of b in that they realise how fed up people are. But they don't think immigration and the multicult are disastrous - why should they ? The elite have never been richer, and diversity both means "divide and rule" and "those evil white English will never have power again".
The extreme New Left bias of the media in the UK comes as no surprise. It's just as biased in the USA and in, say, France.
Switzerland is the only western of european country that I know of where intelligent right wing voices can often be heard as part of public discourse. We hear of the right in Canada too but not that much.
There is a right wing voice that gets heard in the USA but it's not very intelligent one.
new left = minorities, lgbt, no borders, rights but no duties, middle classes and above, working class only if minority
old left =
working classes, unions, common men and women, duties as well as rights, living wages, etc
Why would New Labour want to destroy their own country?
Why woould they hate their country enough to destroy it?
Or was there some kind of financial payoff for them?
This blaming the BBC is a red herring.
After all, BBC is NOT the only media outlet in the UK. And conservatives could have raised alarm bells. Why didn't they?
It's because they were all afraid of being labeled 'racist', and this fear is the product of PC takeover at all levels of society.
BBC is the symptom, not the cause of the disease.
Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, has criticised the corporation for making a "terrible mistake" over its coverage of immigration, admitting it censored concerns amid fear they could trigger racism.
As an American I think I can safely assume the US media does the same. Most of us believe they already do so in regards to reporting crime where "youths" has become the number one substitute adjective. So I have little doubt they jealously guard what is reported concerning immigration.
However, they apparently had no such fear when it came to the Abu Ghraib photos. Remember the photos of the Iraqi prisoners in sexually compromising positions? The NY Times seemed to run a new photo each day when a verbal description would have sufficed. They had little concern for triggering any retaliatory attacks against US troops or Americans in general.
And let's not forget the Zimmerman case where they took a visible minority, labeled him as 'white', and ran a non-stop attack against white America which resulted in dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent whites being targeted nationwide by the aforementioned 'youths.'
If the media is going to censure itself over concerns of triggering hate, then by all means be consistent.
The shocking thing here is he admitted it in public.
Why are they admitting it now?
Where is the pea?
"I mean really if your job description is king/queen of the Britons and defender of the faith then surely the blatant replacement of them both should elicit some response from you, no."
Good point. 'Google Elizabeth the Useless: sixty years a rubber stamp' for the answer.
Sam said..
"Why should the Labour party want to destroy their own country?"
See 'The Labour party war against white Britain' by Kevin MacDonald.
"..that's the primary purpose of the racism taboo. Silencing whites from speaking out about the destruction of their own societies."
BINGO. Make "Racism" the taboo homosexuality was in Victorian times and whites will shut up. A muzzled people are a defenseless one.
"Why would New labour want to destroy their own country".
To get and maintain political power. They import a group of people who will vote for them. If black and brown immigrants voted for the Conservatives, do you think for one second the Labour party would champion and engineer their immigration to the U.K.?
"Why would they hate their country enough to destroy it?"
The class system in Britain. Anathema to socialists. Also many of the Labourites are actually Scots. They didn't see England, the target of the immigration, as their country at all. This was even more true of Labour's Jewish members.
"Or was there some kind of financial payoff for them."
Getting hold of the public purse.
"Are guys like this coming out now because, a) it's too late and the hoi polloi can't do anything about it, or b) they realize immigration and the multicult are disastrous and they want they to weasel their way out of taking the blame?"
Answer: c) Because they plan to screw us over again and again and again, only they realize they need to fool us by pretending they won't. Bottom line: if you vote for Red Ed, you can pretty much count on him him quadrupling immigration after he's pretended to apologize.
"That is just a tip of the iceberg that is a true conspiracy to destroy traditional English society. Yep, yet another conspiracy theory that is actually true. The only problem is that the guilty conspirators will not be held accountable"
Because the victims don't care enough to to hold them accountable.
They have internalized the idea that they deserve their fate. Or, more accurately, they no longer consider themselves as part of a nation worth defending. To do so would be racist. This is all happening to 'them'. And it will all be over soon.
ogunsiron said...
Switzerland is the only western of european country that I know of where intelligent right wing voices can often be heard as part of public discourse.
-----
Switizerland is still a fairly traditional society where women only got the right to vote in 1971. Give them about 50 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Ur8uc7iZU
Ultimate "guilty pleasure"
Spader is cool
They import a group of people who will vote for them. If black and brown immigrants voted for the Conservatives, do you think for one second the Labour party would champion and engineer their immigration to the U.K.?
I'm sure that's a large part of it, but why, it makes you wonder, are rightist parties like the Conservatives or the Republicans (or every single other mainstream center-right party in Europe) just as eager to pack ever more immigrants into their countries? If, as evidence rather clearly indicates, they stand to be the big losers from the immigration disaster why the hell are they foursquare in favor of ever more of it?
If the answer is simple as sheer stupidity that's both troubling and a cause for hope. It's troubling because nobody wants to be ruled by leaders so inept they can't tell when they're shooting themselves in the foot. And it's a cause for hope because the problem is at root very simple, and so is the solution to it.
@Steve
The BBC is the focus of evil purpose in the UK.
That is the assumption the British need to take on board. After the Jimmy Savile affair and its further revelations, this conclusion is hard to avoid.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=savile
But the British are also addicted to the Mass Media, more than most, and the addiction has been ramped up a thousandfold in the past generation since the internet, mobile phones and social messaging.
And, since the BBC is for the UK what the NYT is for the US, the Savile Affair has changed nothing.
But in a rational world it would be the major topic of debate, and already in the history books, as one of the defining events in postwar British history.
"The BBC is the focus of evil purpose in the UK."
The heart of darkness.
The Scottish/non-English aspect of New Labour cannot be emphasized enough. The party was dominated by Scots who were deeply hostile to England and relentlessly undermind and attacked it in every way they could. At the same time, they were busy devolving power to Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland, and strengthening those countries' institutions. Labour literally removed England from the map, treating it in all contexts and at all times as nine sub-national 'regions' rather than the single nation it has been for >1,000 years.
Part of this was (is - nothing's changed) political strategy - England was less of an electoral banker for Labour than Scotland or Wales, so atomising it and flooding it with presumed future Labour-voting immigrants was a sensible tactic. But raw anti-English hatred accounts for a great deal of it IMO. One of my bugbears is the singular lack of understanding of the difference between Britain and England, whixh allows England to be destroyed while 'Britain' superficially endures and even prospers. I can forgive this lack of understanding in foreigners, but it is sadly prevalent among the English themselves.
It's easy to argue that 'Britain' is multi-everything, 'diverse', etc. But not so England. England and Englishness remain stubbornly homogeneous and ethnic in character. So if there is any hope it must lie in abandoning the concepts of Britain and the UK, and going full steam ahead with English nationalism. Scotland could aid England's survival as a recognisable entity by becoming independent and forcing English people to refocus their national identity. The referendum is in September.
Why would New Labour want to destroy their own country?
Liberals want to destroy whatever is objectively good. Britain and British culture, while perhaps having their ugly moments, have historically been good things. They must be wiped out so that liberals can create Utopia.
"The Scottish/non-English aspect of New Labour cannot be emphasized enough."
The three people in the New Labour government most intimately involved in opening the border weren't Scottish.
The people at the BBC who covered up what was happening weren't Scottish.
They were all descended from people who came to England from the 1880s onwards many of them as refugees.
The X-Files' normal title card slogan was "The Truth Is Out There", but every so often they mixed it up. In a story arc about the government carrying out medical experiments on people and years/decades later issuing insincere apologies, it was "Apology Is Policy". This is what we are increasingly seeing here. Ex-government ministers expressing mealy-mouthed, half-hearted, quietly triumphant "regret" that they inflicted disastrous policies on us.
"We're sooooo sorry we destroyed your country, but there's no going back now! Ha ha ha!" is more or less the tone.
I won't hold my breath waiting for a similar admission by the US press.
I won't hold my breath waiting for a similar admission by the US press.
Can anyone help me recall a similar admission by an executive in the US press within the last five years about a politically correct issue--it may have even been immigration? The guy said something to the effect of "we didn't think the country was ready to have that discussion."
The people at the BBC who covered up what was happening weren't Scottish.
Robinson is Scots Irish.
Orwell worked for the Beeb and wrote a book about his experiences: 1984.
As its senior levels almost all of the personnel at New Labour who engineered the swamping of England with black and brown foreigners were either Scots or Jews. Virtually none of them were ethnically English. In this respect England was not so much 'betrayed' as asassinated. There will be a referendum on Scottish independence this year. There should be a dual referendum as they had in Czechoslovakia. Rather then Scotland separating, England should give them the boot as the Czechs dumped the economically lacklustre Slovaks.
As for the BBC, it is simply a mouthpiece for the British government. In this respect it is no different then Pravda was.
If anyone is interested, check out "Mass immigration was the Left's revenge for Thatcher" by Mark Krikorian.
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