UK

If You Ever Had Any Doubt the Media is Biased on Climate, This Should End Your Doubt
By Amy Ridenour | January 12, 2014 | 1:06 PM EST

The indefatigable David Rose of Britain's Daily Mail, working with British climate blogger Tony Newberry, has today exposed bias in news reporting of climate change of a scale heretofore unknown, even for that never-accurately-covered subject.

He reveals that, in a move orchestrated by the BBC itself and a left-wing lobby group, the British government under the Labor Party paid for BBC personnel to be taught the left-wing, pro-alarmist spin on climate issues for the specific purpose of using the "news" as propaganda.

U.K. Guardian Reporter Aboard Icebound Antarctic Ship Goes Stir Crazy
By P.J. Gladnick | December 31, 2013 | 10:38 AM EST

The helicopter rescue crew is coming to take me away, ha-haaa!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa!
To the funny farm. Where I can find banana peanut butter milkshakes sprinkled with delicious carbon credits.
We thought it was a joke and so we laughed, we laughed when I had said that proving global warming had trapped us in ice and that I'm going MAD!!!

And U.K. Guardian reporter Laurence Topham has proclaimed himself going mad (along with his craving for banana peanut butter milkshakes) in this rather morose video diary in which he discovers that that the adventure to the Antarctic to report on "climate change" has brutally backfired to the extent of causing him to go stir crazy. Watch the video below and note the strange similarity with the mood of the Jack Nicholson character in "The Shining."

U.S. News Outlets Ignore 'Appalling Patient Care, Bureaucratic Cover-ups' at UK's 'Too Powerful to Criticize' NHS
By Tom Blumer | December 26, 2013 | 1:01 PM EST

Their stated excuse is, "These could never happen here, so why should U.S. news consumers care?" Their real excuse is, "We don't want anyone thinking that Obamacare could lead to this, even though there are already plenty of signs that it will."

Two weeks ago, the UK Daily Mail reported on three just-released "damming reports" on Great Britain's government-run National Health Service. A separate December 20 UK Telegraph dispatch reports that the NHS is "on the brink of crisis" because it has been "treated as a 'national religion' while millions of patients receive a 'wholly unsatisfactory' service from GPs and hospitals." A scroll through supposedly U.S.-based news results from December 11-26 in a search on "national health service" (in quotes" at Google News returns precious little actual coverage here; the few exceptions are at conservative-leaning outlets like Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog. Excerpts from both UK items just noted follow the jump.

As AP Hypes Models Claiming Global Warming Involvement in Fiercer Storms, UK Media Points to Massive Arctic Ice Cap Growth
By Tom Blumer | September 8, 2013 | 6:19 PM EDT

As is all too often the case, in certain matters affecting things here in the United States, if we didn't have news from Britain, we wouldn't have any real news at all.

Take "climate change" aka "global warming." At the Associated Press, Seth Borenstein on Thursday hyped the idea that man-made global warming increased the likelihood of about half," or six of 12, of "2012's wildest weather events." His "evidence"? Computer simulations. But on Friday, the UK Telegraph and Daily Mail took note of the cold, hard fact of growing Arctic ice cover, as well as its possible implications.

Media Snookered by Activists Posing As Farmers Destroying Genetically Modified Crops, Setting Back Life-Saving Efforts
By Tom Blumer | August 28, 2013 | 10:02 PM EDT

At Slate, Mark Lynas tells the story of activist-orchestrated media deception — although one sometimes wonders whether the press even minds being deceived in these instances, and in certain cases whether some journalists are in on the scam.

The deception involves activists who are against any form of biotechnology advances laying waste to a field of genetically modified "golden rice" in the Philippines (bolds are mine; links are in original):

Banned From Britain: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer
By Tom Blumer | June 27, 2013 | 1:21 AM EDT

Pamela Geller announced at her Atlas Shrugs blog Wednesday morning that "the British government has banned us (herself and fellow Stop Islamization of America activist Robert Spencer) from entering the country ... In not allowing us into the country solely because of our true and accurate statements about Islam, the British government is behaving like a de facto Islamic state. The nation that gave the world the Magna Carta is dead." She has posted the letter (Page 1; Page 2) from the British Home Office Secretary (UK's equivalent of our Homeland Security) telling her that her presence would not be "conducive to the public good."

A later post at Geller's blog has a collection of press reports which readers should review for the predictable signs of bias. One which isn't there is from the Associated Press, written by James Brooks (bolds are mine):

NYT Defends Partial Walkback of Editorial's Original Blanket Condemnation of Obama; How Will They Handle Edward Snowden?
By Tom Blumer | June 10, 2013 | 12:42 AM EDT

Sometime late Thursday afternoon, an editorial at the New York Times bitterly criticizing President Obama for the expansion of surveillance efforts during his administration contained this sentence: "The administration has lost all credibility." Within a few hours, as seen here, that sentence was changed to "The administration has lost all credibility on this issue," and set off in a separate paragraph.

The Times is pretending that it didn't do what it obviously did:

British Journalist Melanie Phillips: Environmentalists ‘Wrench’ Evidence to Fit Climate Conclusions
By Liz Thatcher | May 7, 2013 | 2:08 PM EDT

On the May 5, 2013, edition of C-SPAN 2’s “In Depth,” British journalist Melanie Phillips spoke candidly of her new autobiography “Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain” and pointed out the flaws in liberal group think.

Phillips spent 20 years working at Britain’s left-wing The Guardian where she finally realized that many journalists were out of touch. She explained how journalists see the conclusion first, and then distort evidence and facts to prove their point. “There are quite a number of people who … start with the conclusion and say let’s make the facts fit the conclusion.”

Angry Leftists Bully Spice Girl Geri Halliwell to Remove Tweet Praising Margaret Thatcher
By Randy Hall | April 9, 2013 | 8:23 PM EDT

The tumult over the death of Margaret Thatcher on Monday has continued online, where Geri Halliwell, an original member of the Spice Girls singing group, apologized to the many people who were angered when “Ginger Spice” called the former British Prime Minister “the original Spice Girl.”

“I'm sorry if I offended u...x,” @GeriHalliwell posted regarding her earlier Twitter message that stated: “Thinking of our 1st lady of girl power ... a green grocer's daughter who taught me any thing is possible.”

AP and Reuters Whitewash Dijsselbloem Statement About Cypriot Account Seizure Regime as the 'Template' Going Forward
By Tom Blumer | March 29, 2013 | 11:04 PM EDT

So much for Cyprus being a "one-off."

On Wednesday, Bruno Waterfield at the UK Telegraph relayed that "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, told the FT and Reuters that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises across Europe." That's "would," not "could." The Associated Press hasn't had the nerve to correctly characterize what Dijsselbloem said, and now Reuters itself has gotten cold feet.

Shhh! Don't Tell Anyone Obama Spoke in the Shadow of a Huge Yasser Arafat Banner
By Tom Blumer | March 24, 2013 | 10:31 PM EDT

Searches at the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times done at 9:30 p.m. on "Obama Arafat" (not in quotes) returned nothing relevant to the matter I am about to note. A Google News search on the same term (sorted by date) returns only about a half-dozen relevant items (another very recent one is missing, and I'll get that one in a later post this evening).

On Thursday in Ramallah, as Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard blog noted, U.S. President Barack Obama "addressed the assembled journalists while standing under a Yasser Arafat banner." Arafat is rightly considered the “father of modern terrorism.” Since U.S. establishment press coverage is non-existent, I'll take readers to an outraged Nile Gardiner at the UK Telegraph to express how utterly offensive Obama's silently condoning Arafat's legitimacy really is:

Napolitano Statement on Air Travel Delays Directly Contradicted by Airport Officials
By Tom Blumer | March 4, 2013 | 10:37 PM EST

According to the first paragraph of Alicia's Caldwell's report today at the Associated Press, aka the Adminstration's Press, Homeland Security Secretary Janey Napolitano told attendees at a Politico breakfast this morning (Politico's coverage is here) that, in Caldwell's words, "U.S. airports, including Los Angeles International and O'Hare International in Chicago, are already experiencing delays as a result of automatic federal spending cuts." Additionally, again in Caldwell's words, "she expects a cascading effect during the week, with wait times expected to double in worst cases."

Well, either someone forgot to tell airport spokesperson and the travel industry to fall in line, or said officials are refusing, according to follow-up stories at the Politico and the UK Telegraph. Notably, the AP had no such follow-up story at its national site as of 10 p.m. ET tonight, but did have a story by Pauline Jelinek ("HOW BUDGET CUTS COULD AFFECT YOU") published at the about the same time as the two follow-ups just noted dutifully echoing Napolitano's talking points. Excerpts from both follow-up stories are after the jump.