‘Bad’ news like this and this and this and this. Or even awkward news like this and this. [Update.To sum up- news on WMD’s, growing reason to believe in links between Iraq and Al Quaeda, the reality of Saddam’s genocidal brutality and Iraqi support for the US against the old regime- more or less in that order]
Today may be Sunday, but it’s a very news rich day. Time to get that Sunday Paper, I think. Unfortunately the BBC have chosen now to give top place to a tragic loss of nine children’s lives in Afghanistan, just when so much is emerging from Iraq. The fact that they largely ignored Afghanistan while the ‘American project’ there was only occasionally hampered by Taleban losers makes this sudden focus highly suspicious. The death of children may be tragic, but it is not as if the US military made an error- it was merely tragic coincidence that so many children happened to be surrounding a known terrorist at the time. This Afghan mini-tragedy has taken top headline place this morning, while several of the links I’ve given deal with stories that the Beeb appears not to be giving recognition to, with the exception of the Telegraph’s scoop. Little wonder, since most of the links point out that BBC journalism is being shown up as inadequate on every front- not least the Gilligan one. Sorry to blitz this post with links, but they are all good, are all interesting, and all cast unflattering light on the Beeb. I must thank Instapundit and give mention to Roger L Simon in despatches, as the military say.
What I especially like is this typically (offensive) schoolmarmish comment on the Afghan incident from (who else?) the BBC’s Lyse Doucet :
“The Americans will have some explaining to do”. Oh really? I think it’s the BBC that needs to do the explaining.
“US child bombing” is the title on the article. It’s a damn shame they don’t describe Palestinian suicide bombers that way. But of course, they would never do that, because it would be biased…
American C-SPAN viewers (poor, benighted souls) just received their own glimpse of the BBC’s growing dogmatism and disdain for facts in the person of Clive Myrie, its pious Asia Correspondent.
During a panel discussion about “Reporting War and International Politics,” Myrie announced that Iraqis may not have welcomed Coalition Forces as unreservedly as some had hoped because Saddam Hussein, for all his faults, at least kept his people fed and kept the lights on.
The apparently forgettable fact that Saddam did neither of those things failed to raise even an eyebrow, let alone the mildest of objections, from Myrie’s fellow panelists. (And of course none thought to add, oh, Post Traumatic Shock or thirty-odd years of police state propaganda to Myrie’s Baathist-approved list of causes for Iraqi ambivalence.)
Myrie closed by reminding an ABC reporter–who had just heretically admitted that he often had no idea what he was talking about when reporting in foreign lands–that t
–that the BBC, being a world news organization, can always be trusted to know what it’s talking about.
God help us.
It’s when Doucet asked the stunned colonel “why did you target those children?” that i actually slapped my forehead. I thought I was used to the BBC usual shoving of any idea into any situation – details notwithstanding… but sheesh!