Monthly Archives: November 2003

Most of us will remember how the BBC was criticised for using the term ‘quagmire’ to describe the war in Iraq, when in fact nearly miraculous progress was being made on the road to Baghdad. The BBC took such offence it would seem that they’re hanging on to the word whatever the cost- they’ve even dipped into their Oxford Book of Quotations to support it.

This article by Paul Reynolds first appeared some days ago, and then disappeared, and then reappeared. The prime theme is how Iraq might be like Vietnam, but then again it’s unlikely to be Vietnam, and in fact it’s more like that little known colonial conflict fought by the USA about 100 years ago in the Philippines, which was described (according to Reynolds) by Mark Twain as “a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater.” So, in appearing sceptical (but suggestive- read the article) towards the Vietnam comparison, Reynolds is able to revive one of the BBC’s favourite words (‘quagmire’) and seemingly vindicate the stupid journalism of six months ago.

Well, as Sandy P. also noted below, a ‘Middle East Policeman’ anyway. According to the Telegraph, Malcolm Balen has been appointed to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the Israeli (and British) Government, who felt short-changed (to put it mildly) in recent coverage of the Intifada (and Iraq). Now, I might be being over literal (it has been known), but don’t you have a policeman to curb the activities of criminals? The BBC still denies it has done anything wrong, so why the ‘policeman’ except to send everyone the right sort of spin?

is BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme.

During the 11th November edition from 6:00am onwards, BBC Radio Scotland ran the following in their half-hourly news summary very prominently

“Over 2 million people in Britain are malnourished. The elderly, poor, socially isolated and chronically sick are particularly vulnerable”

Sounds like a case for higher welfare payments and ‘social inclusion’ – right? Presenter Maihri Stuart interviewed one of the authors of the report that prompted this headline at around 7:50am, clearly of the opinion that this was a poverty issue, and possibly connected with Scotland’s notoriously poor diet.

Oops! As the author of the report pointed out “I should say we are really talking here about the very sick – for those in hospital and in poor health one of the first things that can suffer is a person’s appetite”. The report is a warning to healthcare professionals to watch the diet of their patients, and to watch for sudden weight loss.

Not surprisingly, by the 8:30am news summary the item had disappeared without trace. However, anyone listening between 6:00am and 8:00am will have been misinformed.

For me this was an interesting item because I’ve often suspected BBC journalists take press releases from the fax machine, and never read beyond the first paragraph. Is it bias? Only in as much as shows the instinctive, almost knee jerk reaction to any story, and the angle they use to present it.

for useful news coverage during his Africa travels. Only the Beeb and a “nameless French network” were on offer in Rwanda and Ethiopia.

I give [the BBC] credit for better overall war reporting than we see in the States; but it’s pretty laughably biased. Apparently there was an ANSWER protest here in the US while I was away: watching the BBC, I half expected to come back to find America’s streets in ferment, and civil unrest rising over this war in Iraq we are evidently losing badly. Right. Well, it made for exciting copy, anyway.

So, I suppose there’s some use for overheated reporting after all.

Bernard Goldberg, 28 years with the American TV network, CBS, explains why elitist news organisations like the BBC need help seeing their bias.

They don’t think that their positions on the most controversial issues of our time are liberal positions. They think they’re mainstream positions, because all their friends in the bubble think the same way as they do. They think everything to the right of center is conservative. Correct. And everything to the left of center is moderate and mainstream. That’s how crazy it is.

And that’s why you can go up to these people and say, ‘Well, there’s a liberal bias.’ And they’ll say, ‘No there isn’t. And anybody who says there is, is a conservative ideologue and that’s the only reason they’re saying it.’ They don’t look at themselves because it’s as if you asked a fish what it’s like to be wet all day. And the fish says, ‘What do you mean wet? What’s wet?’ The fish has no concept of wet because he has no other frame of reference. Well, these people live in the same type of environment. And that’s why–that’s why fixing the problem themselves is so incredibly difficult.

Goldberg is interviewed on the CBS-fisking blog RatherBiased. Much of the interview features US news but one will have no difficulty seeing a familiar pattern. (What’s missing is the license fee.) Goldberg was largely frozen out by his former TV newsies after his book Bias was published a few years back. They closed ranks real quick-like. Even Larry King refused to have him on. Bias sold a gazillion copies anyway because it resonated with many Americans. His follow-up to this is Arrogance. Hmmm. I wonder what he’ll name the next one?

Denis Boyles wonders if the BBC might want to spew its newslurry in other direstions.

A report in the Guardian isn’t very encouraging: “Today, a senior BBC news executive will make a controversial case for desanitising the presentation of war on British television. In a speech to a conference of broadcasters in Budapest, Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC News, will say the current position is a ‘disservice to democracy’.” The problem? Not enough dead people — and, of course, not enough bias. Dear Deputy Director: How about desanitizing the presentation of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism? Or “a certain type of late-term abortion”? Or the effects of hypertaxation on the entrepreneurial spirit? Or how about sanitizing the way the BBC is funded and managed?

Mr Boyles makes an instructive point here. If TV news is to be desanitised, let us hear more about the driving philosophy of islamofascists just as thoroughly as the BBC pursues those “radical republicans” advising President Bush. Just let the truth be told.

. It can be expressed in the approach and assumptions made about a subject. It can also be much more subtle, such as in the choice of subjects it gives airtime to, or those that receive no airtime at all. One of the more subtle forms of bias is the ‘wrongly imprisoned’ articles which crop up frequently on BBC radio networks. The ‘wrongly imprisoned’ are always concerning subjects close to the BBC’s heart, and are usually treated with undue respect.

So it was on Radio 4’s Today programme on 6th November. Ed Stourton introduced an item about an ‘anti-capitalist protestor’ arrested in Greece called Simon Chapman. I do not know (and neither does Stourton) if he was going to commit or committed acts of violence – what I do know is that this man travelled to protest at Thessaloniki where the usual groups of violent hooligans were congregating to destroy other peoples property and fight running battles with the police. Chapman has been on hunger strike for four weeks.

The Greeks allege he was arrested with a bag containing molotov cocktails, an axe and a hammer, and is now charged with ‘rebellion’ and G.B.H. Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford has taken up Chapman’s case.

Stourtons first question was real hardball – ‘So you think these charges are dodgy then?’

Ludford is then allowed to complain that Chapman has not been given bail, and that ‘it does seem that he has been fitted up’. Stourton does not interject anything here, or point out that anyone likely to abscond bail like a foreign national (especially on such serious charges) has a poor likelihood of bail. The assertion of ‘fitting up’ is not challenged either. I’d rather like to see the evidence for this myself.

The Greek justice system is then trashed by Ludford, and the Greek police accused of ‘beatings’. The item then ends abruptly.

It’s hard to imagine a more one sided account, and I am at a loss to see why this was included at all on a news programme, but I would contrast this with how a far-right thug in the same situation would be treated by the BBC. I’d have like to known for instance if Chapman travelled alone, or as part of a group. Has he any previous convictions for violent protest? I don’t know – I simply was not informed. It was really a soapbox piece presented as news, with one leftie (Stourton) chatting to another (Ludford).

I was surprised and pleased at some aspects of the phrasing in this feature about Israeli checkpoints.

“Since the beginning of the three-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada, Israel has significantly increased the number of roadlocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to rising Palestinian violence.

“In September 2003, a group of 20 aid agencies issued a statement calling for the removal of the travel restrictions, which they said were limiting Palestinians’ access to schools and medical care, increasing frustration and destroying hopes for peace.

“Israel sees the barriers as vital to stop suicide bombers flooding into its cities to terrorise the civilian population.”

Emphasis added by me. It’s fairly unusual to see Palestinian violence described as Palestinian violence, but that use of the verb to terrorise really made me blink. Time was when I was an admirer of the BBC. The first letter to an MP I ever wrote, when I was still at school, was to ask that funding to the World Service not be cut. If there is one single thing that turned me into a maddened termagant given to adding “Ceterum censeo BBC delenda est” to observations about the weather, it was the BBC decision not to use the word “terrorist.” It made me sick. The BBC (not to mention Reuters) does not pretend to be “above” moral judgements when discussing murder, or rape, or child porn, or racial harassment. It also inserts moral judgements into reporting of poverty, war and politics; sometimes with the platitudes appropriate to a tax-funded organisation, but often in a manner so partisan as to violate its Charter. It certainly pushes the line that continued state funding of the BBC is desirable for the “public good” i.e. on moral grounds. But after all that it still frequently pretends to be “above” morally judging people who, in defiance of the laws of war, hide among the civilian population to blow up families in pizza parlours. In refusing to judge them the BBC show themselves traitors to the civilisation they claim to represent.

But if this small instance is the start of a return to the common values, I will soften my line.

In the next paragraph the writer reverts to the “militant” usage, which is a vile insult to all the extreme but basically non-violent Trotskyists and Leninists in the British Left who were the previous people designated by the term “militant”. But hell’s bells, look at it again: “terrorise”. Implying that those doing it are terrorists. It’s a start.

UPDATE: Might’ve known it was too good to last. Regular commenter PJF has observed that the reference to rising Palestinian violence has disappeared, along with the whole first paragraph I quoted.

of the multi-lingual blog “any criticism of Jewish people is still a taboo in Germany.”

Nicht war! Like, if an Israeli programmer wrote some bad code for the program you are using, no German can say so, and if a Jewish hairdresser in Hamburg gives you a haircut with a wonky fringe you must tip heavily and not mention it, and if the 1998 winner of the Eurovision Song Contest appeared to you to be lacking in talent your lips must be sealed, and if Ariel Sharon’s policies seem to you mistaken then not one word must be said until you are safely across the Rhine and standing on French soil?

That surprises me very much. Or it would if it were not a load of cobblers. Germans of all ranks from Chancellor downwards can and do make all sorts of criticisms of Jewish people, both Israeli and non-Israeli, and it’s not taboo at all.

The thing that is a leetle bit sensitive given events from 1941-1945 is when some jerk says that the Jews orchestrated the killings by the Russian revolutionaries, and compares that to the Holocaust.

is Radio Scotland’s flagship morning news programme.

Yesterday, the US Government passed a USD87 billion programme for operations in Iraq – of which is USD18.6 billion is for genuine civil and economic reconstruction. This money is paid as grants (not loans), so does not need to be repaid.

To discuss this significant event with the BBC’s Derek Bateman, the BBC wheeled out Martin Lewis, announced as a ‘US-based political commentator’. They could have announced him as ‘arch self publicist and Beatles historian.’ Read more here .

A few things stood out from the bizarre discourse that followed. Firstly, the tone is always to attack the US government for everything, as Bateman says

“The [US] government is spending more on Iraqi healthcare than American healthcare”

This may be true, but an alternative way of looking at this is it shows the commitment of the US to the country it now occupies.

Lewis chips in with

“the package was passed by voice acclamation, without a proper, formal vote…”

which went unchallenged by the BBC’s Bateman. For me, this was a nice little smear, implying a stitch-up in the Sentate to its Scottish listeners. American readers of this blog will be able to explain better than I that there is nothing sinister about this procedure.

And then comes the following from Lewis, again unchallenged

“During the election in 2000, George Bush said he didn’t believe in nation building abroad…yet here he is investing a huge amount at a very time when the American economy is fragile”

I seem to recall four hijacked airliners, around 3,000 dead people, and the most grievous attack on American civilians in living memory. Maybe, just maybe, this caused a total rethink of American diplomatic and defence policy. Also, although the US is building a very large budget deficit, the US economy is reporting very strong rises in GDP and confidence at the moment.

The question is this : is this bias? Possibly, in that the correct angle to approach any story is that US policy is wrong or corrupt (if you work for the BBC). It is certainly lazy journalism, and does not inform or serve it’s listeners well.