Mascot Watch 25: BBC Badgering Edition

It's been a while since the last update on our esteemed mascot, but his contribution to yesterday's Culture Media and Sport Committee grilling of Tony Hall and Chris Patten deserves highlighting.

In early exchanges he broached the subject of the 'shelved' Panorama investigation into right-on charity Comic Relief (from 11:01:40 below) - not a great favourite of this blog - before moving on to questioning the presumed political impartiality of the BBC in general.

Watch (from 12:57:05) as he enquires why the Guardian, with its minor readership, is disproportionately referenced by a majority of the BBC; why right of centre think tanks come with a "health warning" but left of centre ones don't: and why the BBC news team routinely use Labour sound-bites in their political reporting.

Also, and of particular interest here I reckon, he asked why an EU press release on immigration was reproduced without question by Mark Easton despite it being unrepresentative of the report itself. Mark Easton, as you may remember, is the guy who desperately spun - a la Guardian - to deny that pubs were closing in their thousands because of the smoking ban.

We, of course, are very well aware of how the BBC reproduces propaganda without question. Just a few examples this year include Adam Brimelow repeating the 'heart attack miracle' lie without bothering to delve into the stats; unquestioning regurtitation of Ian Gilmore's support for minimum alcohol pricing based on fatally flawed 'evidence'; Nick Triggle celebrating NHS smoking cessation success ... from a 'study' blatantly produced by pharma shills and filleted even by tobacco controllers themselves; and 'exclusive' interviews - for no identifiable reason whatsoever - with two Aussie proponents of plain packs, without the remotest nod to providing balance by way of a differing opinion.

Perhaps, if our Phil stumbles across this 'ere article, he might be nudged into asking questions next time of the BBC's quite appallingly biased adherence to public health industry lies and spin. Including why they saw no reason whatsoever to double and treble check a Panorama episode - unlike in this week's Comic Relief case - which spouted nonsensical statistics they were later forced to apologise for and which led to the iPlayer re-run being pulled (but after millions had been led to believe it).

By contrast, our Phil is a model of impartiality. He doesn't solely target the BBC ... he is equally consistent in monstering Channel 4 too.