BBC trashed!

photo: Martin Pope

by New Worker correspondent

Palestine Action activists smashed windows and splattered the BBC headquarters in Portland Place, London, with red paint last week in protest against the Beeb’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of Palestinians through its entrenched pro-Israel bias. The BBC was covered in blood-red paint to symbolise the Corporation’s responsibility for the blood spilled in Gaza and the state broadcaster’s role in whitewashing Israeli atrocities through its partial and biased coverage. For years, the BBC has consistently minimised Israel’s violence against Palestinians while amplifying the narratives of the Zionist oppressors.
“The BBC’s biased reporting isn’t a simple case of poor journalism – it’s a matter of life and death. By downplaying Israeli war crimes, the BBC is complicit in the genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said a spokesperson for Palestine Action. “This isn’t just about the news – it’s about the role of the media in shaping global complicity. The BBC has blood on its hands, and today’s action is part of a wider campaign to hold them accountable. We will not stand by as the BBC sanitises genocide“.

Defend People's Korea!

 by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined protesters outside the BBC HQ in London on Tuesday calling for an end to the demonising of the DPR Korea by the state-owned broadcasting service. A letter of protest from the Korean Friendship Association to the Director-General and Management board of the BBC was handed to a member of the BBC staff.
Dermot Hudson, the Chair of KFA, said “we are here today to protest against the BBC’s persistent demonisation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or People’s Korea. No country -apart from maybe Russia and the former Soviet Union – has been lied about more by the BBC than the DPRK. Recently, the BBC or British Brainwashing Corporation has tried to blame the DPRK over the conflict in Ukraine making false allegations and quoted unconfirmed rumours and misleading reports.
“The BBC is an official state broadcaster. It is not independent but run by the British government. It is closely linked to British imperialism and US imperialism…
“The BBC promotes the ideology of market totalitarianism and liberal fascism. The BBC is a tool of the ruling elite and the big monopoly corporations. What is disgusting is that not only does the BBC lie about People’s Korea but it expects us to pay for its lies in the form of the BBC licence fee which is £169 per year”.

Blood on their hands!

 By New Worker correspondent

Palestinian solidarity activists sprayed Broadcasting House in central London with red paint last week in protest at the BBC’s consistent and long-term bias towards Israel.
    Palestine Action sprayed the BBC’s Headquarters with blood red paint, in response to its recent coverage of Palestine, which has been complicit in manufacturing consent for the occupation’s genocide of Palestinians. The action occurred before a protest for Palestine was due to begin at the BBC HQ.

     Since 7^th October the BBC has given biased and inaccurate reporting on the Israeli massacre of the Palestinian people. It has only ever invited Palestinians to comment when Israelis are killed, with little regard for Palestinians killed by Israel, such as in the case of Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot who was expected to condemn Israeli deaths immediately after informing the BBC he had lost 6 family members.
    The BBC has not reported on the racist lies spouted by international media, including claims of mass rape and decapitated babies, all of which have either gone unconfirmed or been retracted once the damage has been done. Its “guides” to the “conflict” do not mention the 75 year long occupation    and oppression of Palestine by the Zionist entity.
    These guides make Al Nakba (which translates as ‘The Catastrophe’ in English) sound like an unfortunate tribal conflict during the first Arab-Israeli war (1948 to 1949) which accidentally resulted in Palestinians fleeing, and not the deliberate and carefully planned campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias.
    Words upon words are dedicated to the Zionist settler colony’s declarations of genocide, the support given by imperialists and the feelings of Zionists whilst large scale loss of Palestinian life is treated almost like a footnote. These actions come at a time when Palestine Action has expanded its reach, starting what it calls Palestine Action Underground, which targets any and all partners of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms suppliers.
    Providing a guide and a map of over 50 Elbit sites, Palestine Action asks those who want to do something about the Israeli arms trade to form autonomous groups able to independently strike at the facilitators of Israel’s systemic and military violence. This action follows that principle, holding the media accountable for facilitating Israeli terror. A Palestine Action spokesperson: ‘We at Palestine Action cannot stand by and let Western media justify and manufacture consent for genocide through racist, callous coverage. The media has long been an insidious weapon of Western imperialism against Palestine and other Arab countries, with the use of colonial myths and orientalist tropes laying the ground for millions of people to be murdered. As the Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd said, “This is the Iraq war all over again. The media has the bloodiest hands in all of this”.

Down with the BBC!

By New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other Korean solidarity campaigners outside BBC headquarters in London last weekend to protest at the ongoing bias of the state-owned broadcaster.
    The protest picket outside Broadcasting House called by the Korean Friendship Association highlighted “the continual ideological attack by the media representatives of world imperialism of which the BBC is part of. This tax-payer funded entity has lied and distorted the truth for decades. It lied about the Iraq war, it lied about imperialism’s attack on Yugoslavia, it lied about Syria’s war against imperialist backed terrorists, it is lying about the situation in Ukraine. They cannot be trusted…simple as that”.
    KFA Chair Dermot Hudson Chairman of KFA said: “The BBC, which is known to progressive people as the British Brainwashing Corporation has consistently lied about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Its coverage of the DPRK is one sided and exaggerated to say the least. On several occasions BBC reporters have used tricks and subterfuges to enter the DPRK .
    “The BBC has taken upon itself the role of a shock brigade in the propaganda war against People’s Korea.

    The BBC is a state broadcaster closely linked to British imperialism and US imperialism... what is disgusting is that not only does the BBC lie about People’s Korea but it expects us to pay for its lies in the form of the BBC licence fee” and concluded “We, the Korean Friendship Association of the UK,believe in defending People’s Korea with no ifs or buts”.

Radio Times

by New Worker correspondent

On Monday the Tory Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced that the TV licence was to be frozen at £159 and finally abolished in 2027.
    This met with applause from right wingers who have long sought its abolition. The news did not do down well with trade unions representing those that work for the BBC, which, is of course the only beneficiary of the £159 tax on couch potatoes.
    National Union of Journalists General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet added deplored the fact that the announcement was made before negotiations between the BBC and the government had concluded. She added that the move was only a distraction from the Prime Minister’s recent woes: “The BBC’s finest script writers would have a job making this stuff up, it’s beyond parody. When the evidence of partying, hypocrisy, lies and dissembling is mounting, what does this government do in response? It blames the journalists and the news outlets holding them to scrutiny, and plots acts of revenge”. She seems to have forgotten that many of the revelations have come from Tory insiders and published in those revolutionary organs such as the Mail, Telegraph and Times.
    She concluded her panegyric by saying that “Those Reithian principles of informing, educating and entertaining are as important today as they have ever been. To undermine that would be an act of cultural vandalism and we hope that the public sees these attacks for what they are and rallies to support the BBC and its unarguable value to our society.”
    That give the game away. While John Reith would never tolerate fourth rate rubbish like game shows and cookery programmes the BBC spews out, Reith was always politically reactionary. In the 1926 General Strike, when the recently founded BBC had a virtual monopoly of news, it was a loyal voice of the Government, ignoring the views of trade union leaders and persistently lying about events across the country. That continues to this day. Anyone who has ever been involved in a strike large enough to be reported in the media knows that knows that the BBC is just as bad as any openly Tory newspaper at distorting the workers’ struggle. Many readers will have been on massive marches which have been covered by TV channels from across the world, but not a peep reported on the BBC.
    Philippa Childs, Head of broadcasting union BECTU also claimed that: “The BBC is a revered institution that is both respected and envied worldwide, and an essential part of our national story”. This is of course nonsense on stilts, but it highlights the point that the BBC’s bias is particularly dangerous precisely because it is served up as balance neutrality.
    Protests from broadcasting unions are to be expected. Trade unions are there to look after the interest of their members, but the TUC further disgraced its self by saying that: “We must fiercely protect the public service ethos of the BBC”, a sick joke when we regularly see that institution spewing out rabid anti-trade union propaganda and in the guise of news. In the same message the TUC also praised the BBC for having a “global reach which is nearing half a billion people” which is simply another term for cheering on its imperialist propaganda.
    However those on the left can and must do better than just automatically jump to the defence of the BBC simply because some right wingers raise some mild objections to it now and then. There are plenty of alternative broadcasting outlets available for news and all the best BBC programmes have long since became available on the Freeview nostalgia channels.

Down with the BBC lie-machine

by New Worker correspondent

Theo Russell joined other Korean solidarity campaigners outside Broadcasting House on Saturday to condemn the BBC’s blatant bias against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The NCP London Organiser was taking part in a picket outside the BBC’s London HQ, called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), to highlight the BBC’s ongoing demonisation of Democratic Korea in its home and overseas broadcasts.

In 2017 the state broadcaster began a special Korean language service in a renewed imperialist propaganda campaign that targets the people’s government in north Korea.

Although the BBC poses as ‘impartial’ it uncritically repeats the anti-communist hysteria of the most reactionary elements of south Korean society, and the lies and smears of American Cold War warriors.

Posted by london communists at 12:10

Down with the bourgeois lie-machine!

 
by New Worker correspondent

Italian communists joined demonstrators outside the BBC HQ to protest against the fake news in support of US imperialism’s attempted coup in Venezuela churned out by the bourgeois media. Members of the   Pietro Secchia branch of the Communist Party of Italy joined other comrades at the picket in central London last weekend in support of the legitimate president Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan people and the Bolivarian revolution and its mobilisation to fend off the threat from US imperialism and its regional lackeys.

Down with the lying BBC!

by New Worker
correspondent

outside BBC headquarters in London

 

Comrades were out last Saturday picketing Broadcasting House to condemn the ongoing demonisation of the DPR Korea in BBC reports. The picket, called by the Korean Friendship Association with the support of the NCP, called on the BBC to “stop lying about the DPRK and instead produce fair, accurate and objective material about People’s Korea”.

KFA Chair Dermot Hudson said the BBC has consistently lied about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). On several occasions BBC reporters have used tricks and subterfuges to enter the DPRK to produce one-sided, biased reports that bear no resemblance to reality.

            Alejandro Cao De Benos, the president of the international KFA, sent a solidarity message to the protesters in which he said: “US imperialism, by utilising its money resources and puppet mass media like the BBC, is regularly organising campaigns of defamation and creating horror stories with the aim of creating fear and rejection of Korea among the general public. But the times of the US and British media empires’ monopoly for mind control are coming to an end. The rise of popular and alternative low cost media…is making more and more people question every sensationalist news coming from the mainstream press.

“As more and more fake news is being exposed, there is a new generation that will no longer swallow all this nonsense”. They are looking for genuine sources of information on Korea, he said. “That source is the KFA, and your work will become more important everyday”.

Anger at BBC bias

by New Worker correspondent

Labour activists picketed Broadcasting House in London on Tuesday to protest at the BBC’s biased reporting and its failure to report fairly and impartially about the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. The picket outside the BBC’s HQ was supported by a number of rank-and-file movements including Brent Momentum,  Labour Against the Witch-hunt and Jewish Voice for Labour.