10 September 2004 Blog Home : September 2004 : Permalink
As of 12:33 UK time on 10 September 2004 the BBC's US Election Coverage page has as its main story that new Bush military memos have been released and the nextmost top story is World 'wants Kerry as president'.
Readers who click on the Bush memo story see that it accepts completely unquestioningly the CBS memos which are being debunked by just about everyone (including me in my own small way).
CBS TV station reported on Wednesday night that it had obtained documents from Mr Bush's late Texas commander, saying Mr Bush discussed with him how to avoid drills during 1972.
In a memo, Lt Col Jerry Killian also said he was being pressured from his superior to give Mr Bush a positive evaluation.
This despite ABC and AP (see post below) casting doubt, as well as both the NY Times and the Washington Post having articles already available which question the memos. It is "rather" surprising to me that the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington failed to inform his editors that this is the case because it makes the story look so September 9th.
The BBC article also has this priceless line under a photo of Kerry: Kerry has said Bush must come clean on what he did which ignores the fact that, unlike Bush, Kerry has failed to release the majority of his military and medical records.
In fact although overshadowed by the Jakarta blast, when I listened to the World Service yesterday morning the World 'wants Kerry as president' story was in fact one of the main stories. In it the BBC is proud to inform the world that individuals questioned in a survey of 30 out of 35 nations were anti-Bush. Quite why this is important news is beyond me since only citizens of one country - the USA - get to vote in this election. When combined with the evidence above, it seems hard to escape the idea that the BBC is "Rather-biased".
Also of note is that the top Amaerican news item today apart from Hurricane Ivan is US assault weapons ban to lapse, an article full of anti-Republican innuendo. The innuendo is clearly justified because only stupid Republicans their NRA poodles would believe that the ban was a bad idea. Indeed the article utterly fails to mention that there could be good reason to oppose the ban, just noting approvingly that:
Several police chiefs have expressed concern about the move.
The Democratic Party's presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, says he will make it an issue in the November elections and hold the president accountable for betraying police officers.
Given that the BBC seems to be showing this bias against Bush is it any surprise that in the UK Kerry leads Bush 47%-16%? Could there possibly be the chance that the BBC is in fact umm, influencing the Great British Public? and that therefore we are seeing an example of cause and effect here?