waider: (Default)
I prefer the old and inferior BBC RSS feed, wherein the headline conveyed the essence of the story. What am I supposed to make of the following?
  • 00:30BBC News | World | UK Edition / Prison 'picnic'
  • 00:30BBC News | World | UK Edition / Syrian mystery
  • 00:30BBC News | World | UK Edition / Cattle battle
They're not all quite that oblique, but things have definitely taken a turn for the worse in the last couple of weeks.
waider: (Default)
Why, asks the BBC, is Los Angeles so obsessed with troubled singer Britney Spears? Let's have a look at some data from BBC's RSS feed to see if we can find out who's obsessed, exactly: (RSS data collected every half-hour. "feedid = 2" refers to my archive of the BBC's RSS feed. Multiple near-identical headlines reflect updates in either the article text or its subject.)
mysql> select subject,ts from items where feedid = 2 and ( lower(subject) like '%britney%' or lower(subject) like '%spears%' ) order by ts;
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+
| subject | ts |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+
| Police called to Britney's house | 2008-01-04 10:30:05 |
| Britney stretchered out of home | 2008-01-04 16:00:09 |
| Spears barred from child visits | 2008-01-05 03:30:08 |
| Spears barred from child contact | 2008-01-05 09:30:06 |
| Spears is barred from seeing sons | 2008-01-05 10:00:06 |
| Spears barred from seeing sons | 2008-01-06 11:00:06 |
| Britney Spears 'leaves hospital' | 2008-01-07 10:30:06 |
| Spears' father takes over estate | 2008-02-02 16:30:06 |
| Spears' father takes over estate | 2008-02-03 12:00:08 |
| Court restrains Spears' manager | 2008-02-06 11:00:06 |
| Court restrains Britney's manager | 2008-02-06 11:30:06 |
| Britney's manager 'drugged star' | 2008-02-06 12:00:06 |
| Britney's manager 'drugged star' | 2008-02-07 01:00:06 |
| Spears 'released from hospital' | 2008-02-07 06:00:06 |
| Spears' life at risk, say parents | 2008-02-07 06:30:09 |
| Spears's life at risk say parents | 2008-02-07 08:00:08 |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------+
waider: (Default)
I am having some difficulty figuring out the picture in this BBC news item on maturing Special Savings accounts. For the record, my own account doesn't mature for another year, so I get to see the resulting insanity without participating in it.
waider: (Default)
The BBC's coverage of the British Airways staff strike is causing more than a few odd juxtapositions. This morning, the top story was "Cypriot plane crashes killing 121", while off to the side was "Thousands still stuck at Heathrow" (referring, obviously, to the strike rather than the Cypriot crash). Just now in the RSS feed I read, "thousands expected a VJ-day ceremonies" immediately followed by the same "thousands stuck at Heathrow" headline.
waider: (Default)
"Extra votes gave Mugabe victory"
waider: (Default)
I still don't understand what the BBC are up to with their headlines. Today, we have
Bigley 'handed' to another group
Spain vows to 'crush' Eta
but despite this frequent use of scare quotes, they still managed
Psycho actress Janet Leigh dies
which IMHO could have done with said quotes to avoid implying that Leigh was short a few marbles.

media bias

Apr. 20th, 2004 12:30 am
waider: (Default)
Mostly I find that the Beeb is pretty fair in its reporting, but today's article on the Bush/Zapatero phone call was intially headlined, "Bush rebukes Spain for Iraq pull-out" before being somewhat toned down to "US chides...", if you could even call that toning down. Mostly there doesn't seem to be any direct indication that any rebuking or chiding took place, just that much-quoted line about giving the terrorists a false sense of comfort which, well, I don't see what's false about it.
waider: (Default)
From The Beeb's RSS feed:
The World Health Organisation is upbeat on TB Day, but a top medical charity claims drugs are archaic.
I can so imagine that. "Drugs, are, like, so 1960s, man! You should be using CRYSTALS and shit!"

BBC bias...

Feb. 2nd, 2004 12:44 am
waider: (Default)
White House sources say the inquiry will be modelled on the Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy's assassination in the 1960s.
Was there not a less contentious comparison they could've picked? Anyway. Good to see there's going to be an investigation. I wonder if it'll proceed as quickly as the Plame investigation?
waider: (Default)
Seen at the Beeb: Seven foreign al-Qaeda suspects are questioned in Karachi with guns and grenades, officials say.. Is "questioned with guns and grenades" some sort of euphemism?
waider: (Default)
The Beeb gives you the important details from the infamous Oval Office tape recorder(s):
LBJ: The crotch down where your nuts hang - it's always a little too tight. It's like riding a wire fence. See if you can't give me an inch where the zipper ends, right back to my bunghole. (The president then lets out a magnificent belch.)

huhuh. he said "bunghole".
waider: (Default)
"US Secretary of State Colin Powell says Pyongyang did threaten to test a nuclear weapon at last week's talks."
waider: (Default)
At least, that's the impression you'd get if you read their listed-on-front-page article about bad scifi movie science.
waider: (Default)
The British are still encircling Basra on three sides.


Caroline Wyatt, BBC reporter. I thought these people knew how to speak English.

Profile

waider: (Default)
waider

April 2017

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
232425262728 29
30      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 09:38 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios