Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Agony Auntie: A fair reason to bash the BBC

The nice thing about not having an irrational hatred of the BBC is that you're allowed to praise it when it's good and slag it off when it's bad. Jennie has done sterling work delving into the rather unpleasant world of 'Slink', a Beeb-managed website which, while ostensibly claiming to offer advice and information for teenagers, actually says some pretty pathetic things.

Now as any journo knows, those people writing in with the serious problems may well have been made up. But the advice should be genuine, in case readers have genuine issues and are looking for answers. If this is just shallow entertainment, then fine, but what are our tax pounds doing funding a site that takes the piss out of kids' problems?

Look Auntie, perhaps you could take some good advice from people who don't hate you. This site's shit; do something about it. Your enemies - and yes, the Mail will get hold of this story and rip you to shit about it - won't be so forgiving.

Bending over backwards to try and appease people who will always hate you

...sums up for me the BBC's pathetic stance towards the angry types who will always, constantly, unwaveringly accuse it of left-wing bias even if it painted itself blue, broadcast David Cameron's face on a 24-hour loop and changed its name to the British Conservative Party Broadcasting We Love Tories Corporation.

Sunny over at Liberal Conspiracy voices a concern that those of the left have had for a while - that the Beeb is abandoning true journalistic principles in order to placate its more strident and vocal critics, often people who hold the corporation and everything it stands for in contempt in the first place. The Beeb's stridently snotty director-general and sometime Jerusalem visitor Mark Thompson, a man who has evidently mistaken strength for stubbornness, says it's all about balance and 'impartiality'. But is he right? Let's assume for a moment the Beeb did screen the appeal - would the roars of disapproval from the usual suspects really have been intolerably bad? Would impartiality really have been compromised? Not for a minute.

There's still time to put that appeal up, you know.

Can you imagine…

...the uproar if the director-general of the BBC visited Palestine for secret talks on the corporation's coverage?

Well then imagine the lack of uproar when he went to Israel instead.

I imagine that was showing due impartiality. The not going to Palestine bit or talking to Palestinians. You know, that bit. That was where he was at his most impartial. I mean, it's such a long way away from Israel, so why bother?

Thank goodness he's here today to tell us all, like the patronising overpaid cunt he is, about things that 'could be interpreted as taking a political stance'! Thank goodness he has never done any such thing. Phew!

All of a sudden, I have quite a lot of empathy with those on the right who begrudge paying their licence fees. Can I grumble about mine, but for entirely different reasons?

The BBC still washes its hands like a bunch of cowards

From Lenin:

Mark Thompson, editor-in-chief of BBC News, has written a pathetic self-justificatory piece on the BBC's editors' blog. He repeats his argument that one of the criteria for rejecting the appeal was a concern that the aid would not be efficiently delivered. Now, I ask you: what the fuck does an overpaid BBC editor know about the delivery of aid? What do they know that 13 humanitarian organisations don't? He also repeats his claim that it would be 'contentious' to highlight the humanitarian situation there, because there is an ongoing debate about who bears responsibility. But that is nonsense. There is no contention about whether there is a humanitarian crisis: the only sense in which broadcasting such an appeal would be 'contentious' is that it would potentially offend the hardcore supporters of Israel.

And maybe it would, but maybe some people should be offended every now and then if it's worth doing so to bring attention to what is a genuine humanitarian crisis.

Details of the appeal over at Liberal Conspiracy.