Monthly Archives: December 2003

for Last Night’s BBC News. Read this blog.

. As Tim Blair reports, Iraq’s anti-terrorism demonstrations are ‘all over the internet’. Sadly, as well as missing out on coverage in newspapers, the demonstrations have somehow eluded our national broadcaster’s World edition website, renowned though the BBC is for its World Service. When you think of how they like to get the opinions of ‘real’ Iraqis, it’s strange they haven’t interviewed any of the marchers to see why they were risking their lives by defying the vicious Baathist losers. Funnily enough, this ‘crucial’ story hasn’t missed out, and nor has this opportunity to paint the USA in its usual colours. Update. To reinforce the picture, Nicholas Vance presents us with a good round up of what was not, and what was, the Ten O’clock News on the BBC last night (10 Dec. post).

. There is a difference of opinion between BBC journalists John Simpson and Nick Gowing over the deaths of journalists in Iraq- and it’s worth noting. When Simpson says that any journalists not ’embedded’ with troops became ‘potential targets’, he does not mean that they were deliberately targeted. Nick Gowing does- he believes in an Orwellian kind of conspiracy to ‘take out’ journalistic opponents. No steps are taken to separate the two forms of accusation that are currently circulating- presumably in order that the mud should stick more effectively. Simpson calls it, strikingly, the ‘ultimate act of censorship’. I suppose that would lead me to question whether in fact there is a disagreement between the two men, since they are happy to create the same impression through differing arguments in different outlets.

A month or two back I watched Simpson’s lengthy, atmospheric documentary about being the target of friendly fire in Northern Iraq. He did not spare to mention that the BBC failed to provide enough flak jackets to give protection to his Kurdish assistants. What he didn’t examine was whether he himself was culpable for trying to emulate his march into Kabul during the Afghan campaign, or whether they were sensible to be so near contested territories that they could be indistinguishable from the military when viewed from a distance- or whether they might have unwittingly contributed to the incident by expanding the convoy they joined. There was an old-fashioned high minded arrogance that the journalists are indispensible to the proper conduct of a conflict, and that the professional journalist ‘knows best’. There was a corresponding kind of patronising contempt for the honesty and integrity of the military. With such a frankly low opinion of the authorities and their men and women, I honestly wonder why Simpson put himself and his crew in the way of their ignorant sights. I also wonder why he thinks we should listen to him, and in fact how he can show his face at all.

Finally, I can’t help wondering what the BBC think they’re doing allowing journalists (often the same people that pick up Baftas and present television shows for extraordinary fees) to claim and define for themselves an exalted status and security in any warzone they might wish to enter. Can the same people who routinely parade errors of judgement and accuracy for the world to see persuade us that, far from being unlucky, or targeted, they themselves didn’t contribute to their own downfall? Meanwhile, their antagonists, soldiers, are ordinary people on ordinary pay, fighting- a thing that isn’t attractive or tidy. And anyway, Mr Simpson, try selling this spiel to the North Koreans, the warring Sudanese or Somalis next time you drop in on one of their military camps unannounced to check on the uprightness of their conduct. (Thanks to PJF for the Guardian article, and for his fine comments following my ‘more caterwauling’ post).

In this post left wing pro-Iraq-war blogger Harry Hatchet writes about John Pilger’s recent comments on the BBC. Harry writes:

But the idea that the Radio Four’s Today programme was pro-war or even comparible to the flag-wrapped cheerleading of Fox News, is hard to take seriously. But then Pilger is capable of believing anything to convince himself of the rightness of his postures – he is, after all, the man who described the Bush administration as “The Third Reich of our times”.

Pilger’s complaints are part of a highly irritating tendency on the part of the anti-war movement to pretend that they have been marginalised from the debate over Iraq. It may suit their self-image to portray their movement as ignored by the powerful pro-war media but the facts rather dispute this.

…BBC doesn’t let the facts of its own story get in the way of a headline

bemoaning American police racism…

The headline: Cincinnati death blamed on police

The exerpt: [The coroner, whose report is the focus of the story] added that the ruling should not be interpreted as implying inappropriate behaviour or the use of excessive force by police”.

Note the photo of a crying relative at the bottom, next to this:

“Police talk about Skip like he was animal,” his grandmother said. “But he

wasn’t. Skipper was just a good, old, fat jolly fellow.”

It’s not mentioned anywhere in the story that Skip Jones was high on PCP, which _does_ cause people to behave like animals. It’s the same substance, mind you, that Rodney King was on during his high-profile arrest and several subsequent arrests. Of course this is an awful experience for the relatives,

but the guy wasn’t exactly trying to stay out of trouble.

The BBC recently reported a “Google Bomb” which linked the words “miserable failure” to a biography of Bush. Fair enough, it’s a story. However the BBC refer back to the famous “These weapons of mass destruction cannot be displayed” web page as an example of something similar. In this post the author of that page, who also happens to write the “Black Triangle” blog, says that the BBC misrepresented him. He didn’t manipulate Google. The page became popular because it was funny and topical. Incidentally, he was not against the war.

. According to a recent Guardian article about the Beeb’s plans to pay their journalists to keep their peace instead of blabbing in newspapers, Greg Dyke (aka Boss Hogg) believes that managing journalists is like ‘herding cats’. Spare a thought then for the military trying to look after, or look out for, journalists in a battle zone, or an ‘intifada’, especially when some decide that ’embedding’ is just not real enough (and doesn’t make anyone famous). Much like a cat, you can guarantee they’ll blame you when things go wrong. Trust? Trust is for the dogs.

I wonder whether Nick Gowing’s caterwaulings would be neutered by Greg’s new policy? If so, is this progress? Once again thanks are due to Tim Blair.

, a number of people can see the implications of the Telegraph’s story yesterday. Of those, Tim Blair has gone to town on it very pleasingly- and on the journalistic standards which have brought us to this situation. Even if that Iraqi Colonel was wrong in the intelligence he gave, the fact remains that the ‘sexed up’ 45 minutes claim that was all there was left of Andrew Gilligan’s story (which was wholeheartedly supported in its general thrust by the hierarchy of the BBC) was a real piece of intelligence from a real source, and was not, as Gilligan implied, a fabrication. It does not seem to me likely that this Colonel would risk his life just to discredit the BBC for, presumably, a wad of cash from someone. That ‘even if’ is a big ‘even if’, too.

Meanwhile, this from the Ranting Profs is interesting. I would never pretend that the BBC is the only sneaky, often low grade, liberal yet jaundiced media organisation in the world. The Ranting Profs identify the same kind of blindness on CBS and ABC in recent days. The point about ignoring Afghanistan until it can be a stick to beat the US and its military seems to apply more widely than just the BBC- but of course the BBC is a master of such tactics.

. Here is an example of how the BBC’s thought processes continue to work. What would the news pages look like if they reported every university based ‘think tank’s’ report? Could they perhaps be trying to vindicate their own well known position on the justifications for war in Iraq? No mention is made of the political affiliations of this ‘think tank’. Glancing across the BBC’s Iraq ‘In depth’ page, I am astounded at the negativism of it all. No-one approves of the US apparently. There is an ‘Iraq Security Nightmare’ apparently. Japan is not obviously deploying troops but ‘buries slain diplomats’. Shias, or even Iraqis, do not march in opposition to the Terrorist Baathists in Baghdad, as they did on Saturday, but instead ‘US plan is unpopular with Shias’.

‘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.