On BBC’s Credibility Seppuku

894226Nasty, that’s the tone of western media these days, and BBC is the nastiest of all. Type into Google or Yandex the term Vladimir Putin, and you’ll quickly be able to discern this. If the Russian president is not vilified over mythical invasions, or an invisible coup d’etat at the Kremlin, then he’s damned over opening a wine bottle. You read that correctly, Putin’s latest damnable act is sharing a bottle of wine. It’s clear something at BBC has gone utterly and finally wrong. Here’s further evidence the dastardly bias toward Russia and others is a form of self mutilation.

In the last two years BBC has been utterly transformed. The once trusted news source has been flipped on its ear in order to become a state brainwashing machine now. Evidence of this first appeared when the Sochi Olympics took place in 2014. This was just before Ukraine exploded, by the way. BBC, along with nearly every other western media entity, relentlessly hammer Putin, Sochi, and Russians over mostly a pack of lies. Gay torture, stray dogs that bite, the Russian mafia, a corrupt Olympic games, and the possibility of Islamic militant attack, it was a shameful display of British propaganda spit out to the waiting world. And it has never stopped!

The “news flash” that spurred my story here galvanizes the fact of BBC bias. “Putin and Berlusconi in Crimea wine row,” is a “row” created by the people who run the BBC and other western media. The former PM of Italy, a good friend of Putin, he cannot even get a drink of vintage wine without the Kiev junta loosing their minds over it. The Kiev government that has killed as many as 50,000 of its own countrymen, it wants to sue the head of Crimea’s renowned Massandra winery over Silvio Berlusconi tasting a bottle of vintage wine from the region. I’ll let this sink in for a moment…..

Posted early in the morning on September 19th, the wine disaster BBC chose to inform all Britain of shares the Europe front page with Greece’s Tsipras getting bashed some more, Bald ibis chicks sent to Spain, the USSR’s worry about women in space, and naturally a ton of refugee news. What’s the overriding message form BBC? Agenda, that’s what. BBC, to the Washington Post, mainstream media wants to beat Europe over the head to adopt asylum seekers, while beating Russia and China over the head for lesser crimes and misdemeanors. But at the bottom of the corporate media pond, the investment scum certifies the real betting game – CNBC reports: “Grim day in Europe; Dax falls 3% near bear territory.” So unless there is big money involved, or an opportunity to Putin or Russia bash, BBC just lays off normal news from places like the Donbass, Gaza, Libya, or even Yemen where somebody dies from shrapnel wounds about ever 30 seconds.

Reverting for a moment, I recall March of 2014, BBC reported on Putin’s rebuilding of Soviet Russia, but failed to cover artillery falling on the heads of children in the Donbass of Ukraine. Then MH17 went down, and the Freudian slip headline; “Will MH17 air crash damage Russia’s Putin?” The people on board MH17 were not cold yet, when BBC’s editors chose to follow the US State Department line, “blame Russia”, and at all costs. Then the propaganda got worse still. The “noose around Putin tightened”, 15 years of power went to Putin’s head, Obama says Putin is not smart, and on, and on. But it has been BBC’s coverage of the carnage in eastern Ukraine, that is the most damnable.

Russian troops crossed the Ukraine border for the 93rd time in November of 2014. NATO said so. Then in an effort to tell the true horror of the Donbass war, BBC ran a story of 100 words about a Donetsk girl being narrowly missed by a falling building façade. That was in the Sports section, where Brits seemed more interested in stadium damage than babies blown to bits elsewhere. In March of 2015, BBC reported mostly about “rebels” breaking rules, and of poor, poor Petro Poroshenko’s bruising retreat. This was after BBC stories of Kiev Junta victories proved ridiculous. In January BBC labeled the UAF fighters as “Cyborg” superhumans, then when my colleague Graham Phillips proved them all liars later on, BBC closed its mis-information muttering mouth, for a few days at least. Alexander Mercouris reported on the six days it took for western media to admit the separatists had won the airport. We need not get into a lie timeline for BBC here, most of this is common knowledge now.

By now most people reading this will already be wise to BBC’s propaganda value. None of this is really new news. What the reader may not know, are the countless stories BBC and others failed to report on. A “for instance” from my own diary is the so-called “Peacekeeper Kill List” revelations me and my colleagues uncovered. BBC was lacking in telling Brits all about a Ukraine kill list established on a NATO server. Maybe the British Embassy in Kiev playing a role there made BBC’s boss Tony Hall, Baron of Birkenhead, nervous? After all, there’s far less danger in reporting Putin trolls in St. Petersburg, than in shining a spotlight on British government duplicity in war crimes and such. But what burns me the most is refusing to report anything good coming out of Russia. Even the pit of hell serves to warm inner Earth, after all. Take this recent report on Putin visiting the Sirius educational centre he founded to help exceptionally talented kids this week. Why not cover this or other events in Russia? Must all news of Russia be so bombastic and negative? Surely there is a logic that screams “NO” here?

Type “Russia” into Google, then hit “News” – it’s nearly impossible to find anything nice. How is this even allowed, that’s my question. Not even the sports section is immune. Hell, the New York Post even found a fugitive who choked his wife in the US, fleeing back to Mother Russia! Then two search pages deep, an obscure Los Angeles Times story on Kamchatka surfer dudes, it offers a glimmer of hope! Still, 25,000 headlines of “Russian jets spotted in Syria”, they cement in the western reader and viewership’s mind, the concept of RUSSIA ATTACKS! As if Putin had missile bases just off the Florida coast. Unfair, foul, indecent, these are terms that come to mind when BBC is uttered in my house now. The racing wheelchairs event on the Sochi Formula 1 track upcoming, it’s not uplifting enough. Twelve year old Vika Ivanova in Irkutsk receiving a heart transplant from and Indian donor is not of human interest to BBC. The upcoming charity event to help orphans, “Day of Football” featuring stars of the field and the arts, it is not big news when BBC reports from Europe or Asia. I know you feel my pain, my anger, my disbelief here. Just what is good enough for the BBC agenda? Here’s the rundown for east of Warsaw:

  • China: Sperm banks entice donors with iPhone cash
  • Japan tourist at Taj Mahal ‘dies after fall’
  • Russian troops ‘fear secret Syria mission’
  • And of course, how brave souls fly dog farm victims to safety from Korea
  • Finally there’s “Japan to allow military role overseas in historic move”

Finally, a look at BBC’s domestic reports reveals another problem I never considered. Judging by the UK regional headlines, Britain’s problem may be widespread depression. Perhaps all the Putin hate has materialized over an overall sense of damnation on the British Isles. People hit by busses, Fagan like landlords taxing tenants, trains plowing down citizens, acid attacks, even attacks on horses tell us, something may be wrong with the United Kingdom overall, and not simply slanted news media. In fairness here, maybe sperm bank coercion and rampant worldwide militarism are positives for a society crumbling under the weight of really bad local news? Not even the health section of BBC news offers a glimmer of hope. The “Super-gonorrhoea’ outbreak in Leeds” cements this.

The reason BBC hates Putin is – Russia is not doomed to manic depression and eventual mass suicide!

This is the only logical explanation for Britain’s iconic news source’s credibility suicide.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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