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A TOP BBC EXECUTIVE pushed Oscar-winning British actor Riz Ahmed to join spy agency MI6, he revealed yesterday. The man was “someone senior, high up at the BBC,” he told journalist Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo.
The BBC has a long and shocking history of partnering with spy agencies. Reporters and spies even share a desktop app. Eight important points below:
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1. DIVIDING THE WORLD
In 1939, the BBC met with the CIA (originally called OSS and then CIG) ito divide the planet between them, the focus being on gathering data for spies by monitoring all news sources everywhere.
The CIA took China, Japan, and Latin America, while the BBC took the Soviet Union, Africa and the Middle East.
The result was the creation of a division called BBC Monitoring (BBCM) which still operates today, gathering data for spies and military intelligence.
The exact division of labor today is not public information, other than the fact that the BBC division is believed to monitor about 25 per cent of global media while the CIA processes the remaining 75 per cent.
The operation promotes a strong relationship between UK spies and the BBC news department, and also between UK and US intelligence agents.
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2. THE SECRET MELODIES
High profile journalists at the BBC and other mainstream media news outlets were spies, said a report in December 1968 by an investigative reporter at Izvestia, a Russian newspaper.
The paper provided plenty of evidence, including their names, codenames and handlers—along with photographs of documents confirming the details.
One document showed that the BBC had a list of specific melodies a presenter could play to highlight actions by MI6 officers in the field as a signal of authenticity.
The western media dismissed the claims out of hand as absurd propaganda, pointing out that the publication was state media.
More than 40 years later, in 2013, BBC reporters interviewed intelligence historians, who agreed that the Russian scoop was real, as were the documents.
But the wholesale dismissal of anything produced by Russia (or Chinese or Iranian) state media in the west continues today—even by BBC, which is itself financed by the state and politically compromised.
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3. SERVING SPIES
BBC Monitoring still works for spies.
“The six government ‘key customers’ of BBCM are the Ministry of Defence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Cabinet Office and three Security and Intelligence Agencies,” a UK parliamentary paper said in 2016.
The three British spy groups mentioned would be:
- MI5, the Security Service;
- MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service; and
- GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters.
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4. GENOCIDE HOAX
While BBC News presents itself as an independent media outlet, it directly partnered US spy agencies in pushing the now debunked “Uyghur genocide hoax”.
The disinformation campaign was created by the CIA spin-off called the National Endowment for Democracy, which the Trump administration defined as a group which works to “destabilize sovereign governments”.
When data showed the opposite of a genocide, the China destabilization group switched to a Uyghur “slave labour” fiction, which BBC News again distributed.
The fictions were so patently fake that even human rights campaigners complained.
“The BBC should know better,” said Gene Bunin of the Xinjiang Transitional Database.
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5. SHARED TOOLS
BBC News says it is independent of the government, the spy agencies, and military intelligence groups, but no one believes it. Not only are there links among senior executives (as Riz Ahmed found out), but there are shared tools.
For example, the BBC adopted an internal desktop tool to alert newsrooms of urgent breaking news. “BBCM has access to this tool, and uses it as events require,” the parliamentary document said.
BBC Monitoring even has a web-based product for spies (it calls them “customers”), called BBCM Portal, launched about 10 years ago.
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6. BBC DEMONIZES CHINA
Separately, UK independent academic researchers looking at reports from BBC News on China found that the content overwhelmingly served to demonize the Chinese.
An analysis of BBC News reports on China from September to December 2021 found they were almost all negative, with only four per cent being describable as positive.
It went from bad to worse.
In a follow-up study looking at BBC News reports on China from August to November 2022, only 2 per cent were positive.
A further related study, looking at BBC News coverage of China from December 2022 to March 2023, showed only 1 per cent as positive.
The study was published by King’s College, London, under the title “Shaping the Policy Debate”.
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7. BBC NEWS FILTER
BBC News became notorious for its use of a “yellow filter” and other tools to make images and videos of China look polluted.
This was not just a conspiracy theory. Independent journalist Brian Berletic showed clearly how the BBC doctored a specific image of China to turn live green trees black.
After the expose was published, BBC News replaced the doctored image with the original picture. No admission of guilt or explanation of the change was provided.
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8. DEFENDING BBC NEWS
Defenders of BBC News say that it does do a great deal of genuine reporting.
This is also true. The department has used hundreds of working correspondents, stringers, and professional journalists around the world, including the individual who is writing this article.
Yet that doesn’t absolve it. The coverage of China and the doctored photos are indefensible.
The wise conclusion is that individual BBC News staff do, on occasion, produce honest, works of valuable reporting. But on big topics with a geopolitical angle—think China, Russia and Iran—don’t believe a word.
In particular, BBC News reports on Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, should be discounted in their entirety.
Conclusion: Consume BBC News reports, if you have to, with narrowed eyes. Look for independent sources.
[Friday news project]
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