View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] has reached issue 167.3 There will be something there of interest if you are reading this. Owen Jones has an important piece about the pro-Israel bias of BBC reporting of the assault on Gaza.4 It has been followed by a detailed analysis of the BBC staffer at the centre of this, ‘BBC Middle East […]

Team mercenary GB: Part 1 – the early years

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] army raid on the Golden Temple ended in disaster’ at . Those who have heard any of the general news reports filed by Mark Tully, on either BBC Radio 4 or the World service, will know that he is a measured and peaceful man. In his Telegraph piece, however, one can feel the huge […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] power – and its equally complex internal politics – are boiled down to a dumb story about sex and satanism. Forget the Palestinians On 13 August the BBC News carried the story of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel to normalise relations.27 There was much related talk about how good […]

Spookaroonie!

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] assessment of the subversive influence in the media in the 1970s: ‘There have been virtually no instances of subversion in the presentation of new bulletins by the BBC or the I B A companies. The reasons no doubt lies in the careful selection of key personnel by management….’ (p. 663, emphasis added) But he […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] people in British politics. Commenting on Guilty Men, he rebuts a position that Oborne and Weaver do not hold: namely that there was a conspiracy within the BBC, and offers an insider’s view that is exactly that of the authors: ‘Oborne seems to imply that there was a covert plot within the top echelons […]

Some agent protection issues and more comment on SIS PR

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] N evertheless and in spite of ongoing reputational damage, SIS continues to run an adept stand-alone PR campaign. Doubtless coincidentally, it was bookended this year by two BBC radio programmes: Tom Mangold’s Ship of Spies broadcast on the BBC World Service in February 2011 and Andrew Marr’s Start the week discussion with Gordon Corera, […]

The Lexit delusion

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] workers and the lower middle-class of big cities’ is now overtaking support from the old industrial working-class. See Mason, ‘After Corbynism: Where next for Labour?’ . 7 BBC Reality Check Team, ‘How Many Labour Supporters Voted Leave?’ BBC News, 29 April 2019, . 8 (where public spending accounts for 56 per cent of the […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

The View from the Bridge Robin Ramsay Even Wikipedia….. In August much of the major media, including the BBC, ran a story about the late Cedric Belfrage, claiming he was a Soviet spy, ‘the sixth man’. Christopher Andrew was among those prominently quoted supporting this thesis. The estimable John Simkins published a devastating rebuttal […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] See . 29 30 12 Iraq invasion: tenth anniversary Monday 18 March was quite a day for those of us against the invasion of Iraq. On the BBC News Website, Peter Taylor conveyed the central gist of his programme later that night on Panorama about the intelligence failures which led the leadership of the […]

Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB’s Master Spy by Tim Milne

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] time) and Albania. He was, apparently, the model for the traitor Bill Haydon in John Le Carre’s 1974 novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Publicity for a two-part BBC 2 documentary about Philby broadcast in April 2014 (based on Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends)3 described him as ‘a fanatic and a ruthless killer who […]

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