Britain

Bozell & Graham Column: When Child Sex Abuse Isn't News
By Brent Bozell | and By Tim Graham | September 6, 2014 | 8:22 AM EDT

Five years ago, Pope Benedict arrived in London to erupting controversy. Around 10,000 people took to the capital's streets for a rally against the Holy Father's “intolerance,” and as the Guardian reported, against “the child abuse scandal for which so many hold the pontiff personally responsible, for both accelerating it and then covering it up.”

The abuse in question centered for the most part on incidents that were 40 years old or more. So where are the media on the child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham, England?

AP Posts Long Correction on Ireland Children's-Mass-Grave Horror Story
By Tim Graham | June 21, 2014 | 11:32 PM EDT

On June 3, Shawn Pogatchnik of the Associated Press picked up on a horror story from western Ireland: “a researcher found records for 796 young children believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers” in County Galway. That sounds like a terrible story, if true.

AP and Pogatchnik somehow skipped over Britain's Channel 4 reporting in March on a modern-day horror from Britain's Channel 4, which discovered the beyond abhorrent practice of 10 National Health Service hospitals incinerating over 15,000 bodies of unborn babies from miscarriages and abortions. Now, the old Ireland story came up riddled with errors. AP posted a long correction on Friday, largely focused on how they mischaracterized the Catholic practices and teaching:

BBC America Sci-Fi Mystery ‘Orphan Black’ Gratuitously Slams Thatcher as Enemy of the Poor
By Brent Baker | April 19, 2014 | 4:00 PM EDT

The sci-fi “dramatic conspiracy thriller,” Orphan Black, in which actress Tatiana Maslany (IMDB page) plays the parts of five clones (so far), has its second season debut tonight on BBC America in the United States and on Space in Canada (both at 9 PM EDT Saturday night).

In an episode during its first season, “Sarah Manning” visits the mother in Toronto who adopted her to learn of her childhood in Brixton, England, during the 1980s. The mother tells her: “England was burning. Maggie Thatcher firing on all barrels – at Ireland, the Falklands. She sacked social security, went after the immigrants, the poor, unions.”

Foreign Media, Fox News Cover British Prenatal Incineration Scandal; Other Media Out to Lunch
By Matthew Balan | March 26, 2014 | 1:03 PM EDT

On Monday, The UK's Daily Telegraph spotlighted the scoop of another British media outlet, Channel 4, which discovered the beyond abhorrent practice of 10 NHS hospitals incinerating over 15,000 bodies of unborn babies from miscarriages and abortions. The investigation by the Channel 4 program Dispatches found that some of the infants' remains were even used to heat the medical facilities.

This scandal, which got picked up by newspapers across much of the Anglosphere – including The Vancouver Sun and The Ottawa Citizen in Canada – has yet to receive wide coverage in the United States. So far, the only TV outlet to devote air time to the story was Monday's The Five on Fox News Channel. Host Greg Gutfeld led the segment with a warning about the repugnant nature of the subject, and likened to abuse of the bodies to a well-known sci-fi movie from the 1970s: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

Column: Socialized Medicine Is Dogma in Britain, But It's a False Salvation That Damns Patients to Corruption, Incompetence
By Cal Thomas | January 17, 2014 | 6:32 PM EST

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While the Obama administration offers life support to its Affordable Care Act, in the UK a growing number of people are asking whether it's time to pull the plug on the National Health Service (NHS), which is in critical condition.

For many years the UK media have carried stories that not only bode ill for the future of government-run health care, but also continue to serve as a "code blue" warning to the U.S. as to what might be in our future if we decide to go down that road.

John McCain: Great Britain ‘No Longer a World Power’
By Noel Sheppard | August 31, 2013 | 8:48 AM EDT

Senator John McCain had harsh words for Great Britain Friday following that country’s decision to not participate in a coordinated attack on Syria.

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show, McCain said, “I feel badly about the British. They're our dear friends, but they're no longer a world power. It's just a fact of life.”

NYT's Sanger Pathetically Compares Cameron's UK War Support Failure to Reagan-Thatcher Falklands Disagreement
By Tom Blumer | August 30, 2013 | 4:30 PM EDT

Well, if you can't say anything good about how your guy's foreign policy is going, you can at least try to trash one of his predecessors so your guy doesn't look so bad.

That would appear to be the idea behind David E. Sanger's attempt at the New York Times today to falsely inform readers that the two towering leaders of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, angrily disagreed over the UK's choice to retake the Falkland Islands after Argentina had seized them. Sanger linked back to a previous Times story which clearly pointed to the real disagreement, but never described anything resembling anger. Additionally, a cable from Secretary of State Alexander Haig during that era directly refutes Sanger's contention.

Krauthammer: Britain Voting Against Syrian Military Action ‘Complete Humiliation for Obama’
By Noel Sheppard | August 29, 2013 | 7:08 PM EDT

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer had some harsh words for the White House Thursday.

Commenting on Fox News’s Special Report about the British government’s decision to not take part in a military action against Syria, Krauthammer said, “It is a complete humiliation for the Obama administration.”

Busy on Royal Baby Watch, Nets Ignore Jihad Against Mid-East Christians
By Matt Philbin | July 25, 2013 | 9:21 AM EDT

Everyone’s happy about the arrival of the future king of Britain – that is, everyone at leisure to take note. Presumably, Middle Eastern Christians have been too busy trying to survive to worry over whether the Duchess of Cambridge was in false labor.

And while the hard-nosed journalists at ABC, CBS and NBC have been knitting booties and speculating on names, Middle Eastern Christians have been attacked by Islamists, prevented from worshipping, driven from homes and villages, beaten and executed.

AP Mocks the French for Their Violent, 'Deeply Conservative Streak'
By Tim Graham | July 18, 2013 | 10:55 AM EDT

It wasn’t labeled “news analysis” or “commentary,” but AP reporters Gregory Katz and Angela Charlton began a story on England approving gay marriage by mocking the French.

“The French like to make fun of the British, joking about their repressed ways in matters of the heart,” wrote the AP duo. “But when it came time to debate same-sex marriage, it was France that betrayed a deeply conservative streak in sometimes violent protests — while the British showed themselves to be modern and tolerant.”

MSNBC's Hayes: 'We Should Respond to Terrorism' By 'Calmly' Saying 'You Will Lose'
By Brad Wilmouth | May 28, 2013 | 4:45 PM EDT

After initially ignoring reports that two Muslim extremists in London savagely murdered a British soldier in broad daylight, MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Friday finally included the story on his All In show as he began the segment with the news of retaliatory anti-Muslim attacks on London mosques.

As he reached the end of the segment, in which he seemed to fret that terrorist attacks make societies "more conservative" and provoke "overreaction," he recounted a British woman, Ingrid Loyau-Kennet, who calmly spoke with one of the terrorists before police arrived, with the MSNBC host concluding:

NYTimes Puts Brutal Islamist Beheading Story on A7, Omits 'Swear by the Almighty Allah' Line Uttered by Attacker
By Ken Shepherd | May 23, 2013 | 1:36 PM EDT

While the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal this morning gave front-page coverage to yesterday's grisly beheading of a British serviceman on a London street in broad daylight, the New York Times placed their 20-paragraph story by London correspondent John F. Burns on page A7. Editors slapped on the headline, "'Barbaric' Attack in London Renews Fears of Terror Threat," with "barbaric" in scare quotes.

While the Post, Journal, and Times all ran quotes from one of the attackers as transcribed from a cell phone video filmed by a bystander, the Times curiously left out a portion of the rant where the attacker boasted, "We swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone."