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Sadly, Honest Reporting has lowered its expectations enough to claim Christiane Amanpour’s ‘apology’ as a victory.  SUCCESS: Following our campaign for a public apology, @CNN ’s @amanpour says live on air: “I have written to Rabbi Leo Dee to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him.” See the full story here: https://t.co/ppmGQL5927 pic.twitter.com/PxWeyB0id0 — HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 22, 2023 “I misspoke and said that they were killed in a shootout instead of “a shooting” Sorry, but apologising for accidentally uttering the word “Shoot out ” rather than “Shoot ing ” isn’t fooling anyone. It doesn’t ring true at all. Would any standard English speaking person, let alone a seasoned TV presenter, really say  “killed in a shooting” ?   They’d say “were shot”, surely. Or “shot and killed.”     In any case, the girls’ mother died of her injuries so wasn’t literally killed...

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now! Mr Browning isn't wrong. Hello to you all and thank you for continuing to comment.

Hello. Time for a new open thread. Thanks for your continuing comments.

  My attention span seems to have a slow puncture. The more it shrivels the narrower my interests become, so my observations on Prince Harry’s psychological melt-down are no doubt superficial and ‘knee-jerk’. The upshot is that the author of “Spare” whose name I can’t quite recall has had to squeeze a few drops of juice out of a somewhat barren lemon. The conclusion has to be that Prince Harry is just an ordinary man; a bit dim, but so are most of us. The problem is that he has very likely burst the Royalty Delusion; the myth in which we must all collude in order to preserve the monarchy. Many of us believe the monarchy needs to be preserved, so to find the country in a King’s New Clothes situation is a bummer. The Royal Family is in the altogether , but let’s just keep the little boy who noticed quiet for the time being. Apologies to Danny Kaye and Co.  

Happy 2023! 

As November winds blow into Morecambe and I fear for my roof, here's a new open thread. Hello to all of you and thank you for commenting. 

 If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I hardly ever watch the BBC these days. I keep mentioning that to account for my prolonged silences interspersed with off-topic observations..   However I have to comment on the reappearance of Abdel Bari Atwan, whose services I thought had been quietly   dispensed with by the BBC.   I was wrong. He was on Dateline again on 19th August, following the attack on Salman Rushdie. Melanie Phillips has written about this topic  as has the Jewish Chronicle   both citing the most outrageous of his remarks.   The BBC, of course, has no intention of reprimanding or silencing Atwan as they think he represents legitimate views, and letting him air them is an expression of the BBC’s even-handedness.   The problem is, however, that along with the rest of the left the BBC genuinely thinks it is indeed upholding balance, fairness and objectivity. It believes that it represents the political centre ground....

  The ancient animal, which was thought to be humans' earliest-known ancestor, may have lost the anus during evolution. New Open Thread (and if you don't like it, well, we have others.) 

Emily Maitlis’s truth. Following in the footsteps of Dorothy Byrne (formerly of Channel Four ,)   Emily Maitlis (formerly of the BBC) delivered the MacTaggart memorial lecture at the Edinburgh International TV festival.  Emily Maitlis wants a  Remainer BBC by Tom Slater   "What’s striking about Maitlis’s critique, which has been curdling among elite Remainer media for a while, is that it essentially posits attempts at impartiality as bias. Maitlis certainly struck a chord. “The BBC is biased!” screeched everybody under the sun. Fact! However, trawling through the wide spectrum of tittle-tattle online, it seems that half the commenters agreed with Emily that the BBC is biased to the right, and the other half agreed with   - well- us - that the BBC is biased to the left. (‘Half-and-half’ may not be strictly mathematical) I’ll just throw in the following quote for the hell of it because it tickled me. "Channel 4 boss Ian Katz has...

The closing section of this week's Feedback   on Radio 4 was a question-and-answer session to its sacked presenter Roger Bolton, marking his last appearance.  As he couldn't interview himself, the programme got a faithful listener - who turned out, bless her, to be the living embodiment of a stereotypical elderly Radio 4 listener, with views to match - to put the questions.  Everyone loved Roger and she loved the BBC, and at the end of this love-in they agreed on the corporation's necessity. Roger wasn't keen on the present BBC bosses though, and repeatedly slammed them for being reluctant to come on his show . He has subsequently gone on to tell The Observer that Emily Maitlis was right, especially over her criticisms of the BBC's Brexit coverage for not being anti-Brexit enough.  I see in our archives a huge pile of pieces slamming Roger Bolton for being biased on that issue, and several others.  He's not been shy about it either, openly statin...

  "The BBC lives or dies by its impartiality" Some hilarious comments under this!

  It's a sign of something deeply rotten in the state of our country that once rare events, which not so long ago would have dominated the news for weeks, now just come and go. A nine-year-old girl was stabbed in Boston, Lincolnshire last month and overnight we learn that another nine-year-old girl has been shot dead in Liverpool. Quite rightly, both the Sky News, ITV News and GB News websites have been leading with this horrific killing. The BBC wasn't, but is now. The media needs to get back to making such crimes not normal by not moving on so quickly. 

Away from the BBC, we read today in the South Wales Argus that a fire in March at a mosque initially treated as a hate crime by police was started by a desperate drug user cooking up heroin. Wales Online adds that the hapless dope 'likely had no idea the lean-to type kitchen belonged to the mosque'. Can you guess how the BBC reported this back in March  though? Note the irresponsible lack of quotation marks around 'deliberate' in that headline.

The lead story on the BBC News website this evening is: Yes, the BBC is going after the UK Government again over their 'deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda' plan. You can tell that BBC activism is in full flow because of the BBC's use of the word 'regime' rather than 'government' as regards Rwanda.  The last decade or so of the Assad government in Syria always got the 'regime' treatment from the BBC after they switched to disapproving of it.

Further to Sue's post above ⏫, here's Konstantin Kisin entering the lion's den - BBC Scotland's The Nine - and twice putting very BBC presenter Martin Geissler back in his box over the Jerry Sadowitz business. It's quite a skelping !

Exhibitionism is a recognised mental disorder, but whipping your penis out during your performance at the Edinburgh festival doesn’t properly fall into that category as defined here. I mean on this occasion at least, the intention wasn’t a prelude to sexual activity as far as we know.  Although this definition isn’t quite so clear-cut.  Exhibitionistic Disorder is a mental disorder that causes a person to expose his sexual organs—or genitals–to other people, usually people they’ve never met and are not expecting it, according to the American Psychiatric Association. The exhibitionist gets sexual enjoyment from the behavior . We’re talking Jerry Sadowitz, obviously. In the context of showbiz, I imagine he does it for comedic edginess rather than sexual enjoyment. But he is quite weird, so one can’t be sure. Anyway, whose business is it to measure the extent of a performer’s sexual enjoyment? Is there a quota? It seems he is an absolute master of sleight-of-hand magi...

Do you remember the early days of this blog? In our naivety we posted long-form pieces covering acres of space, sometimes utilising the ‘read more’ button, and we got away with it!   Scroll down and down and not be back in time for lunch. (When I was a lad) everyone had a massive  attention-span. What happened? I wanted to say something about GB News, but the jury still needs more time to consider.   Meanwhile, I’ll just describe the weirdest interview ever. Dawn Neesom was standing in for the excellent Nana Akua and the topic was the stabbing of Salman Rushdie.   Alongside Dawn’s overbearing presence even Scottish comedian Leo Kearse seemed subdued.  For some inexplicable reason, the opinion of Imam Ajmal Masroor was sought. One may remember this excitable contributor to The Big Questions   from back in the day.  Ever passionate on matters appertaining to the ROP and nigh impossible to shut-up mid-flow, the interview was conducted over t...