Classic BBC and Richard Black bias

The UN climate talks are heading to a deal, Richard Black tells us - which to those of us outside the bubble is pretty surprising.

But "the new version does not specify a date from which the new agreement should come into force", so maybe it's not that big a deal. However, let us press on.

It gets vaguer. It turns out that this new draft which Richard Black is hymning hasn't got general agreement yet.

How the new version will be greeted by the BASIC group and the US is not yet clear.

Which is surely the big issue. Black then nails his colours to the mast, writing (my italics):

India has been accused of being one of the main countries blocking a progressive deal here, along with China and the US.

This is editorialising in a news report. Not only did Black feel relaxed about doing this, no alarm bells appear to have rung at the BBC about posting it on their "news" website - and that just after Booker's long analysis of BBC bias on greenery had cause to keep on naming Black as an offender.

"A number of observers", we are told, "suggested that of the BASIC bloc, Brazil and South Africa were minded to move towards the EU/LDCs/Aosis position - and if China did likewise, India and the US would then come under intense pressure to give ground". And pigs might fly. Just who are these observers? If "a number of observers" suggested this, were "a number" of other observers less bullish? Was there perhaps some other point of view? Black declines to tell us, positioning himself as a cheerleader rather than a reporter.

He concludes his report with quotes from demonstrators and Greenpeace. As we know from Sir Anthony Jay's introduction to Booker's report, this is a classic trick of the propagandist, to leave the reader with the viewpoint you favour. Here is the conclusion of Black's piece:

Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo was among those escorted from the conference centre for leading the protest.

"The United States delegation is right now organising, line-by-line, the means by which United Nations member states will be eradicated from the map," he said.

"I ask the proud American people, in whose name this is being done, to take just a moment today to consider what they would do if they learned that a conference of powers was plotting to wipe their great nation off the map, because for low-lying islands that is the future they face."

Is there a case to be made against the views Black has chosen to quote? Not that you'd know, for Black has chosen not to refer to any counter-arguments at all, let alone quote anyone with opposing views.

This is not straight reporting - except, evidently, by the standards of the BBC.