People often complain that those of us who believe, as I do, that the BBC is remarkably politically biased, have few specific examples to point to. As if Barbara Plett sobbing at Arafat's funeral weren't enough.
Anyway, I just caught the following gem on BBC News 24.
Jim Muir was reporting on Barack Obama's unannounced visit to Iraq. Good for Obama, quite right too. But he was then invited by the anchorman to compare Obama's reception with the reception received by President George W Bush in similar circumstances. Regular readers will recall Tim's posts on this site showing rapturous receptions from troops in the field for their then Commander-in-Chief - I certainly do. But instead, in a deliberate and cheap bit of right-bashing, Muir adopted a "we're all in this joke together" sneer and said
"Well of course, the last time President Bush came here, he got a shoe thrown at him, so the
contrast couldn't be clearer."
Of course, it wasn't the comparison he'd been invited to draw - a hostile press conference is a world away from a with-the-troops pep rally, the proper comparison, of which Bush had many - but why miss a cheap trick when it can be shoehorned into an otherwise respectable report?
