Global Warming: Arctic Summers Will Be Ice Free by 2013

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

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BBC: Anti-Christian Double Standard on Religiously Offensive Posts

From the Daily Mail:

The BBC has been forced to remove statements from its website referring to Jesus as a “bastard.”

It is the latest in a string of offensive comments that BBC editors have allowed members of the public to post.

The remarks have been allowed to remain for weeks, despite complaints from religious groups.

It has led to claims that the BBC is allowing its output to be hijacked by extremists while censoring anti-Muslim sentiment.

The remarks about Jesus were left as part of a discussion of the death of the Archbishop of Paris.

The debate had descended into an argument about the merits of Christians, Jews and Muslims when a writer, known as “colonelartist,” posted: “Are you a christian? You do know that jesus had to hide all his short life he lived in those promised land because his tribesmen used to call him fatherless, ridiculed him for being a B-A-S-T-A-R-D. . . .”

He added: “Jesus . . . was also persecuted because the jews would never accept as their Messiah a person whose father was missing . . . .”

The comments were allowed to remain for a week despite complaints. But after The Mail on Sunday contacted senior BBC officials, they were deleted.

Colonelartist is a regular contributor to the BBC site.

He has also written: “The jews in much remembered concentration camps had even better qualitity [sic] of freedom that these palestinians have . . .”

One website user wanted to see if BBC editors were allowing these offensive remarks to remain while blocking others. He wrote: “No one can surpass the Muslims for denial of their role in Terrorism and Suicide bombing.” The remarks were almost immediately deleted.

The BBC has also been criticised for allowing allegedly anti-Semitic posts from a contributor called “Iron Naz.”

In a message left on the site for more than a month, Iron Naz says: “Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud . . . which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews.”

The remarks brought complaints from the Board of Deputies, the organisation that represents Britain’s Jews and its Community Security Trust. They say the post draws on a discredited 19th Century text, the Talmud Unmasked, which is still distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers.

However, the BBC said the remarks did not merit removal.

A spokesman said posts were taken down if they were considered likely to “disrupt, provoke attack or offend others or are considered racist, homophobic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable.”

The Board of Deputies intends to pursue its complaints. Mark Gardiner, of the Community Security Trust, said: “The BBC obviously no longer recognises anti-Semitism. The BBC is a public body, funded by the British taxpayer. It has legal obligations.”

A spokesman said: “Discussion - including robustly critical discussion - of any faith’s doctrines and practices is an important feature of civilised discourse.

“But deliberately or recklessly offensive denigration of those doctrines and practices is unacceptable.”

This, of course, is what always happens when somebody sets out to censor “offensive” speech.

Certain politically correct groups get protection. Other politically incorrect groups inhabit a free-fire zone.

In the world of the politically correct left, gays and Muslims are to be protected from slurs. But Christians -- and now apparently Jews -- have to tolerate attacks.

Of course, free speech allows private individuals to set up any kind of discussion board they want, including one where attacks on Christianity are rife.

But the BBC is owned by the British government, and supported by a tax on all broadcast consumers. So Christians and Jews are being forced to subsidize hate speech directed at them.

BBC Admits Its Own Leftist Bias

From the London Times.

THE BBC is institutionally biased, an official report will conclude this week. The year-long investigation, commissioned by the BBC, has found the corporation particularly partial in its treatment of single-issue politics such as climate change, poverty, race and religion.

It concludes that the bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes.

Singled out is the coverage of Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concert and the Make Poverty History campaign. The report says there was no rounded debate of the issues.

The report also raises serious concerns about accompanying programmes, including a drama by the writer Richard Curtis and the finale of his Vicar of Dibley where Dawn French shows a minute-long clip of the Make Poverty History video.

The report points to the danger of BBC programmes being undermined by the liberal culture of its staff, who need to challenge their own assumptions more. “There is a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone,” says the report.

It goes on to highlight a “Roneo mentality” where staff ape each other’s common liberal values.

The report has been approved by a steering group led by Richard Tait, a BBC trustee and former editor-in-chief at ITN. Its members also include Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director-general, Helen Boaden, head of BBC News, and Alan Yentob, the creative director.

Although its coverage of conventional politics is judged to be fair and impartial, the inquiry says the BBC allowed itself to be hijacked by Geldof, the U2 singer Bono, and Curtis, who urged Tony Blair to pressure world leaders to alleviate poverty in developing countries.

Even before the BBC cleared its schedules to cover the Live 8 concert from Hyde Park – which coincided with the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005 – the report points out that it broadcast a related drama by Curtis called The Girl in the Cafe. It featured Bill Nighy as a shy civil servant who falls in love with an antipoverty campaigner and takes her to a summit in Iceland where she makes an impassioned plea to world leaders.

Gordon Brown, the chancellor, saw the film before it was shown on BBC1.

After the BBC broadcast a week of programmes to highlight poverty in Africa and a day celebrating the National Health Service, Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, told a House of Lords select committee the BBC’s coverage came dangerously close to peddling government propaganda.

The programmes came at a time when the BBC was negotiating a new royal charter with ministers.

The document, jointly commissioned by BBC managers and the board of governors, now replaced by the BBC Trust, includes details of a staff impartiality seminar at which senior figures criticised the corporation for being antiAmerican and pandering to Islam.

Criticisms highlighted from the seminar include: A senior BBC reporter attacking the corporation for giving “no moral weight” to America. Executives admitting they would broadcast images of a Bible being thrown away – but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims. The BBC deliberately championing multiculturalism and ethnic minorities, while betraying an anticountryside bias.

Mary Fitzpatrick, the BBC’s “diversity czar”, told the seminar Muslim women newsreaders should be allowed to wear the hijab, or headscarf, on screen. Fitzpatrick spoke out after criticism over Fiona Bruce’s decision to wear a necklace with a cross while reading the news.

The report’s findings come in the wake of a separate independent review of the BBC’s business coverage which two weeks ago accused the broadcaster of lapses in impartiality because of its desire to popularise corporate stories.

It singled out an interview with Bill Gates on the 10 O’Clock News as “sycophantic”.

None of this will come as a surprise of U.S. readers.

The mentality of the Mainstream Media -- which is the mentality of mainstream journalism -- is about the same here as in Europe.