The BBC Bias Dossier - It Can No Longer Be Trusted ✎

The Telegraph has just got a major scoop from a whistleblower about the rot at the BBC. 

It is a private internal dossier (made public) on the corporation’s blatant biases which then, even worse, after having made serious journalistic errors, BBC executives opted to hide them from the public rather than correct the record.

This is huge news. 

I’m going to comment on the three aspects in the reports.

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Dishonest editing of President Trump

Being biased is one thing - but deliberately distorting and lying is quite another. 

The internal memo on the BBC’s Panorama programme about Donald Trump is utterly damning. The BBC had artificially spliced together two v. different and unrelated sections of video to create an impression that President D. Trump had said something he did not actually say. The BBC wanted audiences to get an impression that the former President expressly incited the Jan-6 riots. Not true.

In America, the best example of an organisation crossing-the-line was CBS, last year. It surreptitiously & selectively edited their much-vaunted “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. She gave a ridiculously meandering “word salad” answer on the subject of Israel. And so, the network distorted and edited it to create an alternative version in which she looked “better”. It gave an impression that she rendered a more “succinct” answer (as opposed to a kindergartener fumbling to find words). I think Mr Trump was right that these were covert attempts - by the quondam “reputable” establishment - to sway the presidential election in their preferred way. 

Some people hate Donald Trump so much that they’re prepared to accept a major broadcaster breaking its own rules of impartiality merely to read negative news on Trump - I don’t accept this compromise at all.

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Trans ideological capture

The memo accuses the BBC of “effective censorship” of its coverage of the transgender debate.

This is completely true. 

The BBC has been completely and ideologically captured by the “progressives” in the trans debate.

E.g. JK Rowling recently attacked BBC gender identity “ideology” after the BBC used the word “she” to describe a male neo-Nazi who was jailed for incitement of hatred in Germany after switching genders through a simple declaration. The BBC’s use of language couldn’t be clearer. It’s a rolling back on the rights of actual women and spreading of misinformation about reality.

Then, there’s Dame Jenni Murray. Host of BBC Radio 4’s show “Woman’s Hour” (a joke, right!!). She says she was “banned” from discussing her TERF views for fear of a backlash at the organisation. Why can’t a decent & honourable lady, like her, express reasonable views in the organisation? Why.

Or, as Suzanne Moore has pointed out (“The BBC is spouting gender nonsense again with its new trans drama. When will it learn?”, Telegraph), a new BBC drama What It Feels Like for a Girl is based on a 15-year-old boy’s transgendered memoirs. Yes, an adult man is supposed to tell us all what it feels like to be a girl.

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Pro-Hamas bias

This is the worst part of the BBC.

I’ve been cataloguing the BBC’s failures for some time. It’s not just that they make mistakes - it is, as the memo reveals, they consistently take a pro-Hamas slant in their reportage (particularly the BBC Arabic service which is basically a toilet, at this point).

First, the BBC didn’t, and probably still doesn’t, wish to call Hamas “terrorists”, esp. after Oct-7. From the point of view of the BBC, they don’t think it’s their function to demarcate the bad guys from the good guys. I don’t have the words for this dereliction. It strikes me as total insanity. How can you equivocate on using the correct moral language to describe an event/phenomena? Then, as an example of bias, the rush to blame Israel for negative things even before the facts arrive (same blog: in the context of the Al-Ahli Hospital).

Then, there’s the tendency on the BBC (and especially Channel 4) to dispatch a reporter to discuss a bomb site in Gaza to report on the tragedies of that day, without ever correspondingly addressing what Israel had to respond to. The net effect is that viewers get only the half story. Israel made to appear to kill for the heck of it.

There are plenty of other things - like allowing the son of a Hamas official to narrate a documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone for the BBC. That’s basically terrorist propaganda on the waves of the UK’s major broadcaster! Hamas, and their civilian sympathisers, have been playing the media for decades. Channel 4 eventually bought the rights and broadcasted this garbage.

Well ... in breaking this news, Mr Gordon Rayner writes in “BBC’s bias ‘pushed Hamas lies around the world’” (Telegraph, Nov 2025):

The BBC’s Arabic news service chose to “minimise Israeli suffering” in the war in Gaza so it could “paint Israel as the aggressor”, according to an internal report by a whistleblower. Allegations made against Israel were “raced to air” without adequate checks, the memo says, suggesting either carelessness or “a desire always to believe the worst about Israel”.

BBC Arabic, which is funded partly by a grant from the Foreign Office, gave large amounts of space to statements from Hamas, making its editorial slant “considerably different” to the main BBC website even though it is supposed to reflect the same values, managers were warned.

The BBC also gave “unjustifiable weight” to Hamas claims about the death toll in Gaza, which are widely accepted to have been exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and incorrectly claimed the International Court of Justice had ruled that genocide was taking place.

An aspect which I found v. interesting in Mr Rayner’s report is the BBC’s prevarication over their dishonesty with regards to the much-repeated genocide claim against Israel:

The BBC repeatedly reported that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled in January 2024 that there was a “plausible case of genocide” in Gaza.

It was mentioned by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor, among others, and on Newsnight and various television and radio reports.

Joan Donoghue, the former ICJ president, told the BBC’s HardTalk programme that the media had widely misinterpreted its findings and it was not correct to say the ICJ had found a plausible case of genocide.

An internal BBC review into the matter found that the ICJ’s ruling “is very clear and explicitly states that the court is not making any determination on the merits” of claims of genocide, but only on whether what was being alleged was covered by the genocide convention.

Mr Prescott said in his letter: “The ICJ report runs to just 26 pages and is written in non-technical language. Had no BBC reporter troubled themselves to read it?”

It took months for the BBC to issue a clarification.

Mr Prescott wrote: “The BBC is prone to downplaying criticism by saying it receives similar numbers of complaints from both sides. Looking at the evidence set out above, it seems very hard for any pro-Palestinian observers to make a compelling case that the BBC has a pro-Israel bias.”

Here is a video of Mr Rayner on the pro-Hamas bias.

The Balfour Declaration is a Milestone of Moral Clarity ✎

The Balfour Declaration is celebrating its centenary. 

It’s a short letter from the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild, leader of the British Jewish community, dated November 2, 1917. 

The full key sentence says:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

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The Balfour Declaration represented, not just a diplomatic statement, but the moral recognition that the Jewish people - long persecuted, displaced and/or impoverished - had the right to safety in the restoration of their homeland. 

More than a mere political document, it carried deep symbolic weight. It affirmed that a people without a state could still claim a history, an identity, and a belonging. Since this recognition was granted from one of the world’s great powers, it endowed that promise with legitimacy and hope - suggesting that safety and justice was not beyond reach.

It is a testament to humanity’s nobler instincts in the age of our history often degraded by its cruelties.

At a time when antisemitism was open, casual and systemic - from the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the prejudices of Western capitals (e.g. mob violence, the Dreyfus affair etc.) - it was a rare spark of moral courage. In hindsight, it shines all the brighter against the tragedies that have ensued, as hatred and denial continue to target the Jewish story.

The standard rebuttal against the Declaration is that it disregarded the Palestinian aspirations of independence. But, it’s important to note that the Declaration expressly recognised the need for a homeland without detracting from the civil rights of Arabs already living there. The Peel Commission ended-up recommending that the Arabs receive 77% of what was said to have been the “Jewish homeland in Palestine” promised in the Balfour Declaration. If anything, the Jews got shafted. So, it’s completely untrue to argue that the Arabs were disregarded.

The Declaration is not a relic of a empire, but a declaration of principle - even in darkness, safety and justice can still have a voice.

The troubles that Israel has endured since are because of Arab rejectionism, and not at all due to the Balfour Declaration. I think that might be my next post.

The Haredi community and Israel’s defence ✎

This is a thorne for Israel, and I’m not sure I know what the answer is.

On the one hand, I can understand the moral resentment by the serving soldiers (and their families), especially those that have lost their loved ones in the war. The IDF is the backbone of Israel’s continuing survival. And while Israel should respect religious identity, so it should  respect defending the land that guarantees the study of the Torah. Zionism preserves Judaism.

On the other hand, I see young men that simply want to live a humble life studying the Talmud. Additionally, the Haredi community seem to live in a bubble, from what I can see in London. That’s how they developed in Eastern Europe centuries ago. The IDF is a secular institution, and the Haredi are the complete opposite. I don’t think they can cope. It’s not cowardice or disloyalty to Israel as much as their belief in their lifestyle.

It’s also not just Torah study per se. I understand that it’s the Torah lifestyle they wish to preserve which guarantees Jewish survival. Otherwise, generations down the line, Jewish continuity may be impaired by secularism.

What do you all think?

Jew-haters and the Conservative Movement ✎

Around Halloween, appropriately, the online algorithms furnished an interview between Tucker Carlson & Nick Fuentes.

I watched it.

It’s one of the most disturbing things I’d seen in a very long time.

I was shocked by Fuentes’ shameless effrontery: he doesn’t even pretend to camouflage his insane views, including on the subject of women.

It was frightening when Tucker didn’t push back against Fuentes’ assertion that organised Jewry in America is a challenge to America’s problems and that Jews can’t be assimilated. The inference is that Jews have no place in America! 

These online discussions may appear as the odd irritation but, as the recent National Review editorial (“A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism”) points out, it may be an attempt to reshape the discussions in the Republican party post-Trump.

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I think lot of conservatives tend to follow the “no enemies on the right” line. As strategically defensible as it may be, antisemitism is nature’s way of telling us that the holder of those views has an empty mind and a nasty heart.

Of all the brilliant minds Tucker could pick, he chooses some YouTuber/influencer whose sole contribution to conservatism is rehabilitating the worst despots of the 20th century and, all-the-while, blaming Jews for our problems.

I’m all for debate and discussion and I don’t believe in no-platforming people, but when you give such a clown softball-questions in an interview (while conducting such a nasty & argumentative interview with Ted Cruz earlier this year over Israel) - then your bias is fairly plain to see.

Almost seventy years ago, one of my heros, William F. Buckley Jr. expelled the Jew haters and the Birchers from the American conservative movement. 

Buckley was an intellectual and a deep thinker. And sorely needed today. 

Fuentes is a virus and Carlson is the carrier.

I also think JD Vance may be more sympathetic to Tucker than the National Review editors appreciate. As such, for me, I would prefer Marco Rubio getting the Trump endorsement in 2028.

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A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism
By The Editors
October 30, 2025 6:30 AM

Tucker Carlson, knee-deep already, has taken another step into the muck with a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes.

The issue isn’t merely that Carlson “platformed” a white-nationalist influencer.

This framing allows Carlson and his defenders to portray the interview and others like it as an effort at open debate, as a good-faith attempt at engagement with alternative views.

The deeper problem is that Carlson didn’t actually challenge any of Fuentes’s noxious views that he has spelled out quite clearly over the years. Fuentes has engaged in Holocaust denial, called Adolf Hitler “really f***ing cool,” and said that if his movement gained power, it would execute “perfidious Jews.”

Carlson didn’t even need to go back through old clips to find objectionable statements. In his appearance, Fuentes stated that the “big challenge” to unifying the country against tribal interests was “organized Jewry in America,” and he expressed admiration for Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin. He did not receive any pushback from Carlson.

It also can’t be said that Carlson’s interviewing style is simply to let his guests speak. In June, Carlson held a combative interview with Senator Ted Cruz that descended into an extended shouting match. Why would Carlson choose to take an oppositional tack to a senator who has been fighting for conservatism for decades, but not to a podcaster who praises Stalin? The obvious answer is that Fuentes is an avowed Jew-hater while Cruz is a staunch supporter of Israel.

Carlson stated during his interview that he thinks Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and other figures who are Christian and support Israel have been infected by a “brain virus.” About these “Christian Zionists,” he said: “I dislike them more than anybody. Because it’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian.”

It would be easy to dismiss Carlson, and his now-extensive history of promoting antisemitism, as the handiwork of another personality desperate for attention in the online economy. But Carlson is one of the nation’s most prominent and influential commentators. After the death of Charlie Kirk, Carlson has become a leading speaker for the organization that Kirk founded, Turning Point USA. When Vice President JD Vance subbed in as a host on Kirk’s podcast after the assassination, Carlson was his guest.

Carlson’s sway, though, is currently limited by the fact that President Trump — who happens to like Jews and who has been the strongest supporter of Israel of any U.S. president in history — is in charge of the Republican Party and ultimately defines MAGA.

In June, Trump ignored Carlson and joined Israel’s effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, which was successful in neutralizing a threat that had been looming over the Middle East for decades without any U.S. casualties. Carlson had predicted that it would trigger World War III and that it could kill thousands of Americans within a week. Trump dismissed him as “kooky Tucker Carlson.”

Trump won’t be around forever, though. Which is one reason that Carlson, Fuentes, Candace Owens, and other online influencers are pushing so hard to try and remake the Republican Party and the conservative movement into one that is hostile toward Israel and the Jewish people.

The idea that it should be seen as the America First position to oppose Israel and American Jewry is not only a moral abomination; it makes no sense. Israel is a technologically innovative, staunchly pro-American nation in the heart of a strategically important region. Over the past several years, with U.S. support, Israeli actions have weakened the anti-American terrorist group the Houthis; neutered Hezbollah (the terrorist group that slaughtered 241 U.S. servicemembers in the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing); and crippled the nuclear program of a nation that has for decades vowed “Death to America.” It isn’t pro-Israel protesters in the U.S. who are burning American flags and calling for the “total eradication of Western civilization” — it is the so-called pro-Palestine movement. It wasn’t Israelis who handed out candy to celebrate the September 11 attacks — that was Palestinians.

George Washington, in a famous letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., in 1790, wrote, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants.” American Jews have enjoyed more security and freedom here than at any place in world history and rewarded that welcome by making positive contributions to the nation in just about every field imaginable. A version of America that is no longer safe for Jews to live in securely, and that is overtaken by anti-Israel zealots, is not an America that any conservative should want to live in.

The Wheelbarrow, Orchard by Camille Pissarro (1881) ✎

I saw this painting in Paris.

I really love Pissarro’s rural landscapes - serene, evoking the simple pleasures of life.

Camille Pissarro was a socialist, so he often depicted the workers with a heroic and dignified bearing.

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The daubing with a vibrant palette to capture the shimmering sunlight, and the dappled patterns of light and shadow on the grass.