Monthly Archives: January 2004

The Panorama show last night on the Hutton Enquiry was riveting viewing. The most interesting part was where the unbroadcast interview with Dr Kelly was shown:

‘INTERVIEWER (SYNC) Are they an immediate threat?

DAVID KELLY (SYNC) Yes, they are. Even if they’re not actually filled and deployed

today, the capability exists to get them filled and deployed within a matter of days

and weeks, and so yes, they’re a real threat.’

I think Natalie was being kind to the BBC on this point – the BBC has even spun this.

Democrats Slam ‘go it alone’ Bush.

Umm, for a start, why did the BBC website give this top headline billing, many hours after Bush’s speech? At the same time yesterday evening on CNN, the headline was ‘Bush: ‘Stay The Course’ ‘- which may be hinting that Bush is a beleaguered President, but is not influencing the political momentum much either way. Meanwhile, the Democratic response was given a subheading at CNN, ABC, and CBS, and on alternative British sites the Bush speech itself was a subheadline. My understanding is that the State of the Union Address is the President of the United States’ big moment, when he gets the opportunity to be heard and to make his assessment of the, uh, state of things in the Union. Yes, the opposing side get an official chance to respond, but that’s secondary, not of equal billing. Just what did the Democrats do that was so exceptional as to overturn this? It was Glenn Reynolds who said ‘Bush looks better now that the Democratic reply is on’, but obviously the Beeb didn’t agree.

The second thing is that, although it may seem unfair to reasonably well informed people for the Democrats to attack ‘go it alone Bush’, on reading the BBC site we don’t find that bit of the Address where he himself listed many of the thirty-five countries that have sent troops to Iraq. This is suspicious, partly because the multilateral thrust of Bush’s comments have been described by conservatives as the strongest part of it, and the Democrats are thus naturally trying to take away whatever gloss they can. This ‘money’ quote in particular is noticeable by its absence:

‘There is a difference… between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few.’

The BBC, by not reporting that emphasis and instead headlining the Democrat attack on ‘isolation’, give the Democrats a chance to score points unopposed- kind of a reverse of State of Union logic- in spite of the actual record of Bush’s speech. A related issue is that the ‘Key Point’ page the BBC devotes to Bush’s speech is clearly a ‘Most Boring Key Points’ page, with colour and specificity drained out. Since the BBC has a history of describing Bush as isolated over Iraq, and has frequently ‘forgotten’ the range of countries assisting the US militarily, at this point the Democrat’s strategy and the BBC’s editorial slant coincide to negate the impression that George Bush’s policy on the War on Terror is reasonable or sustainable. Biased old BBC. For any US readers or Bush sympathisers who would like a British antidote to this particular anti-Bush slant, Alice Bachini is a pick-me-up from point 1 on.

The late Dr Kelly, reports the BBC with an audible sigh of relief,

… said it would take Iraq “days or weeks” to deploy weapons of mass destruction.

Whole days, eh? Sheesh, what’s all the fuss about then? No one cares about what happens days or weeks from now.

His view, at odds with the claim Iraq could launch weapons in 45 minutes, is in a previously unbroadcast interview to be shown in a BBC Panorama special.

And with those words “at odds with” the BBC is vindicated. Isn’t it?

We’re doomed anyway. Pass me that burger.

: Those pesky unilateralists.

Many complaints about the BBC’s sneering treatment of Christianity have been made. Meanwhile, in an article about the Hajj, this interesting line:

‘An estimated two million worshippers are expected at Mecca, where the prophet Ibrahim was told by Allah to build a shrine dedicated to him.’

I do not pretend to be an expert in Judaism or Islam, but I understand Ibrahim is the Islamic equivalent of Abraham. Whether in fact the person Jews believe to be the father of the Jewish people really went to Mecca is highly debatable,and certainly not to be reported by the BBC as if it were fact. It would have been much more sensible to say ‘Islam holds that the prophet Ibrahim…’, but that would be questioning the beliefs of non-Christians, a PC anathema.

I don’t know if this one represents BBC bias or simply shows how little I know. Perhaps better-informed readers can tell me.

Here’s the item: the answer to question 3 of this BBC quiz on the US presidency says:

“President Truman had an 85% approval rating at the beginning of 1945, but that sank to a little over 30% after he ordered two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan.”

I was very surprised at this. My impression was that the news of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the surrender of Japan within days, was greeted in the US (as it was in the UK) with awe and a certain amount of heartsearching, but that the overwhelming reaction was relief; relief that the war was so suddenly over without the need for a massive attack on a fanatically-defended Japan. In support of Truman’s decision, Churchill said:

“To avoid a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.”

While I am certainly aware that there were a few on the Allied side who opposed the Bomb in 1945, in general my impression was that Churchill’s reaction was atypical only in its eloquence. I wondered if the BBC’s explanation of Truman’s unpopularity was not an attempt (possibly unconscious) to impose modern BBC disapproval of the atom bomb onto the Americans of a previous generation.

UPDATE: Good heavens! Whoever reads this site for the Beeb, congratulations on your fast response. I had just pressed “publish” and clicked the link to check it worked – and found the reference to the atomic bomb had gone. It now reads:

President Truman had an 85% approval rating at the beginning of 1945, but that sank to a little over 30% in the wake of the Korean War and domestic problems.

Thing is, now I know I was right and it wasn’t true that the the reason for Truman being unpopular was the Bomb. The question remains how this error came to be made in the first place. Know what I think? I think it was BBC bias.

. The BBC’s relativistic ‘impartiality’ explores the new depths available when you accomodate the Al Jazeera perspective, with this report of the Taleban’s drugs policy. We all know what sensitive and sensible civil administrators the Taleban were, so thank goodness the BBC have The Noble British Academic to rely on for this insightful appraisal. It does seem a bit coy, however, not to explain what having your face ‘blackened’ involved, and what ‘eradication’ implied; what it might be like to be ‘paraded through the streets’ or what an Afghan prison was like under the Taleban. Apparently we must just swallow our ‘neo-con’ pride and learn from their success. Draconian measures (intimidation and terror, for instance) when implemented vigorously, increase the authority of the authorities- wow, I am surprised to hear that. The fact that they worked at ‘local levels’ suggests that what was going on was little better than vigilante behaviour- ok for the Afghans, it is implied, but not for us.

, the BuzzMachine’s been a fine place for scrutinising and debating the BBC. Thanks, Jeff.

In the comments to the previous post reader Lee Moore said this:

A beautifully balanced tale of how the Lebanese have returned to the barbarity of the death penalty:

Link.

We hear about protestors, we hear about the former Prime Minister who refused to approve executions, we hear about Amnesty’s objections, we hear about other “human rights” groups’ objections, we even hear about the EU’s objections. Nothing is omitted, except…..

surprisingly we hear nothing about the views of other Lebanese people, either the people who did approve the sentences or about public opinion. Nor do we hear that Amnesty and friends are, on this subject, a minority opinion in this country.

I wonder why. Oh, all right, I don’t really.

The Lebanese government ought to hire some terrorists, sorry “militants” to burst in and blow up the three condemned men in the name of Free Palestine. Then the Beeb would bend over backwards to understand the killers.