Journalist turned whistleblower calls for Ofcom probe

John Sweeney, the journalist behind the Newsnight programmes that attacked LeFT wing Labour MPs such as Ian Lavery and the former Labour MP and activist Chris Williamson, has admitted the BBC programmes are FAKE NEWS.

John Sweeney, is now a whistleblower who said the BBC broadcaster had become so “risk-averse” that its impartiality was being undermined and investigative journalism “endangered” has sent a batch of scripts to regulator Ofcom to back up his claims.

Sweeney’s admittance now leaves the millions of BBC viewers guessing which programmes have been manipulated and edited. Questions are being asked over the BBC supposed impartiality Peter Oborne is right to call out Conservative bias in the BBC’s election coverage (In this election, the BBC has let down those who believe in it, Journal, 3 December) and likely to be right too in his assessment that the reasons for the bias are institutional, beyond the prejudices of a few well-known reporters. Put simply, the BBC tends to be more sympathetic to the status quo and the government of the day than political change.

John Sweeney, who worked for the corporation for 17 years, listed ‘Newsnight, Panorama’ and BBC News investigations which he said were either not broadcast or were weakened by management.

He told Ofcom he wanted it to investigate BBC News and Current Affairs over films relating a number of issues from the far-right, Russia and Brexit which were not aired, others which were, but were “improperly compromised”, and senior journalists who had “been allowed to compromise BBC editorial values by taking financial inducements or benefits in kind”.

For many on the LeFt this just confirmed what we already know, the BBC is bias, it goes beyond not screening current events and footage that can give a balanced view. The BBC actually manipulates footage to give a better perspective of the Tory Party and the Tory Leader, this manipulation can only be termed state propaganda.

Two recent examples BBC media manipulation of both include Boris Johnson.

The BBC has admitted to making a “mistake” when it edited footage of Boris Johnson to remove the sound of an audience laughing at him.

During the Question Time special in which each of the main party leaders were questioned by the public, some of those watching in the studio could be heard laughing after the PM was asked whether he thought the “truth matters”.

But in later video of the same event shown on BBC News, the laughter was removed. The edit gave rise to suggestions the video had been changed to make it less embarrassing to the Conservative leader.

The BBC said there was “absolutely no intention to mislead”. But the question must stand if not to mislead then to do what?

Statement on the BBC’s use of an edited clip from the Question Time Leaders’ special: pic.twitter.com/OiBcidy3ZH — BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) November 25, 2019

The upside down poppy wreath as the nation watched

On Remembrance day at the cenotaph the BBC edited out and exchanged the actual footage for an old clip of Boris Johnson at cenotaph laying a wreath when he was Lord Mayor of London instead of video of the real event with his wreath gaffe showing the Tory leader actually placed a poppy wreath upside down as the nation watched.

The broadcaster said: “This morning on the programme we incorrectly used footage from a Remembrance Day service that was not filmed yesterday.

“This was a production mistake and we apologise for the error”.

The PM was accused of being disrespectful for placing a wreath upside down.

But this error wasn’t shown on the BBC this morning – with 2016 cenotaph footage being aired instead.

After the old footage was broadcast on the BBC this morning, many Twitter users accused the broadcaster of ‘deliberate manipulation’.

One person wrote: “You spliced the footage using clips from two different years.”Not something you can do by ‘mistake’. It was Conservative propaganda, pure and simple.”

Another also said it couldn’t have been a mistake, adding: “It’s a process.

The State propaganda machine

George Orwell said, useful lies were preferred to harmful truths. He went further, declaring that history stopped in 1936; after that there was only propaganda.

This was a characteristic exaggeration but it points to the universality of state deception. The very term Depression aimed to mislead

Anyone could choose to ignore these editorial changes however the fact is we know for certain someone is there within the editing booths of the BBC ready to manipulate and change footage to suit an agenda.

John Sweeney is another BBC journalist that as been seen to express bias views and screening of Labour MP’s and activist. In September 2018 Sweeney and his BBC Newsnight team made a programme entitled ‘How united is the Labour Party?’ the main focus of the programme was featured around the then Labour MP Chris Williamson’s and an event being held in Chesterfield ‘Chris Williamson’s Democracy Roadshow’ as a Chesterfield CLP Labour Party member and a friend of Chris Williamson I attended the event.

The event was filmed by John Sweeney and his team for the BBC Newsnight show, many people that attended the event looked forward to the TV broadcast however when the broadcast was show it presented the entire Democracy Roadshow as a hostile event and promoted disunity within the Labour Party. Party members and other socialist that attended the event only recognised they were at the actual event that was broadcast when the camera would edit back to the audience the Newsnight broadcast had been edited so much it did not reflect the reality or the event. Now John Sweeney as admitted his BBC shows were in fact manipulated it brings all his shows and those of the BBC into question.

Attacks on the LeFT and the the so-called ‘Ian Lavery scandal’ John Sweeney the BBC and Newsnight deliberately misrepresented Ian Lavery

Typical of the now admitted Newsnight modus operandi the interview and entire story on Ian Lavery was chopped and change to give a negative effect.

March the Sunday Times and BBC2’s Newsnight have ran an “investigation” into Ian Lavery MP, the chair of the Labour Party.

The Murdoch press-led gang says Lavery got “a lot of dosh” (Newsnight) from his former job as a National Union of Mineworkers leader, and this is a “scandal.”

The “scandal” involves adding up all that Lavery received from the NUM over the years, including housing and redundancy money, and saying it’s “a bob or two in anyone’s money” again a quote from (Newsnight).

The Newsnight-Sunday Times stories prompted two official investigations by the parliamentary standards commissioner and the certification officer, the latter of whom regulates trade unions.

As Newsnight admitted: “The parliamentary watchdog cleared him” while the certification officer decided that “no further action” was necessary. That should have been the end of the story, except some sections of the media are obsessed with the salaries of miners’ leaders, just as they were with Arthur Scargill.

The Newsnight-Sunday Times story deliberately misses the very basic way all unions work. They all take money from their members, and use that cash to pay salaries to officials. Nobody can fork for nothing as the saying goes.

Ian Lavery did his job and that’s what the right wing don’t like. Unions and union leaders

British union officials are typically paid more than their members, and if union members wanted to debate that, well OK. But that is not what is happening here.

The press are really just repeating the message anti-union consultants always suggest as the first point to stop people joining unions: “They’ll just spend your union contributions on salaries for the leaders.” This argument only works if you deliberately ignore what unions actually do.

The NUM, for historic reasons, has a federal structure. Lavery was secretary of the Northumberland NUM from 1992-2010. From 2002 to 2010 he was also president of the national union.

These were difficult years for the pits, as the post-strike closure programme took away jobs. The last Northumberland pit, Ellington, closed in 2005.

Before that closure, the Northumberland NUM, under Lavery, was involved in tough but defensive fights over safety and keeping the pits open.

But it’s what the NUM did for ex-miners that deserves attention. The NUM won millions in compensation for ex-miners, which brought money into very hard-pressed homes and communities that would otherwise be in even tougher times.

In 2008 an NUM case won £2 million to share between the last 300 miners who worked at Ellington pit because, under Lavery, the union found their employer had broken the law on redundancy when they shut the mine.

This sum alone is more than any amount the Newsnight-Sunday Times team complains about going to all Northumberland NUM staff.

There were also much bigger sums. Thanks to a historic 1991 case brought by the NUM, ex-miners were able to win personal injury compensation for the emphysema and bronchitis they got from pit work.

In a 1997 test case, the NUM won the chance to get compensation for “industrial white finger” — that’s a mix of numbness and pain, a “dead man’s finger” you get from too much working with drills and other vibrating machinery. Read more here.

Sweeney claims to be A “RELUCTANT” BBC whistleblower but what he is, is part of the whole propaganda machine

Sweeney, who left the BBC in October, said he passionately believed in the BBC’s mission and many of his colleagues who did “great work for the public good”.

He added: “It is exactly because of that belief that I feel compelled to share what I know from the inside of BBC News and Current Affairs.

“BBC management, led by director-general Tony Hall, has become so risk-averse in the face of threats from the far-right and the Russian state and its proxies that due impartiality is being undermined and investigative journalism is being endangered. Films have been not broadcast or enfeebled. Senior journalists have taken money or benefits in kind from big tobacco, a dodgy passport-selling company, and proxies for the Russian state.”

Sweeney also claimed that among his concerns were a Panorama programme on far-right activist Tommy Robinson, which was to be aired in February or March. He said it contained fresh information on Robinson’s links with German far-right sources and had the potential to explore how he was being indirectly funded by Kremlin money. He said: “Robinson set out to intimidate the BBC. Not broadcast.

investigation into Lord Mandelson stopped

“Our Newsnight investigation into Lord Mandelson which caused him to change his House of Lords’ register recording money he got from a Russian company connected to the mafiya.

“After a direction intervention by Mandelson’s friend, then BBC head of news, James Harding, the investigation stopped. Not broadcast.”

Another concern was over a Newsnight investigation into Henley and Partners, which he said was a “dodgy passport-selling firm” which had tried to silence Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia before she was assassinated.

Sweeney told The National: “I do not want to overstate the significance of my complaints. Ofcom have been in touch and say they will get back to me in the new year.”

The BBC has been approached for comment, but Ofcom would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

Analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports, contending that sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.

Here is some more info on the BBC provided by Russ Jackson see more here.

LINK

For all those denying any #BBCBias on @BBCNews @BBCPolitics shows, here’s some of the formal ‘corrections & clarifications’ to “mistakes” made by the @BBC in 2019, which all *completely coincidentally* helped the Tories by damaging @UKLabour ‘s reputation.

The audience laughing at Boris Johnson during the @bbcquestiontime Leaders Debate about his response to a question about ‘trust’ was *accidentally* edited out.

When Boris Johnson completely messed up Remembrance day by setting off to early then laying a wreath upside-down, the @BBC *accidentally* showed footage from the previous year. Also, Fiona Bruce on @bbcquestiontime saying Vote Leave did NOT break the law – when they DID.

The @BBC *accidentally* massively inflating allegations of antisemitism within @UKLabour

The @BBC *accidentally* amplifying a tweet from a fake Tom Watson @twitter account, *accidentally* misrepresenting @UKLabour MP’s views on Brexit and *accidentally* misquoting criticism of Labour’s New Green Deal proposals.

The @BBC *accidentally* failing to correct a guest’s assertion that a @UKLabour MP was facing deselection when she wasn’t.

The @BBC *accidentally* claiming a union official was being readmitted to @UKLabour when she’d never left.

When @HackneyAbbott said @UKLabour were level pegging in the polls on @bbcquestiontime , Fiona Bruce *accidentally* said Labour were definitely behind – when Labour were level pegging.