Monthly Archives: February 2004

, it is safest to have your say as a comment. Writing to me is always a gamble: will I lose your email, misattribute it or merely ignore it? Here, belatedly, are some that slipped through:

From Stan Brin:

I am an American journalist specializing in media criticism. Two questions:

1. Does anyone in Britain know how horrid the nightly

North American BBC television broadcast is? Pure

propaganda, paid for by the British taxpayer.

2. A few years ago. BBC and the American PBS teamed

up to produce an account of the Arab-Israeli wars

called “The 50 Year War.”

I interviewed the producer the PBS version of the

documentary. He called the BBC version a damned lie.

I am curious about the BBC version, never having seen it.

Although PBS often caters to the Arabs, their version of

“50 Years War” is the finest, most balanced story of its

kind I have ever seen.

It would be useful to compare the two, somehow. Any idea

how that could be done?

Stan Brin

John W. Matthews is a regular correspondent to Geitner Simmond’s Regions of Mind blog. He provided us with the following two links:

Reporting from London

But not a word was said about where [BBC reporter] Andrew Gilligan was and what his reaction to the report was. Nor was there any discussion of his future with the BBC. I didn’t even hear a mention of where he was, although a friend latter told me a BBC radio report early in the morning had said he was going to Broadcasting House.

There was no reporting on the reactions of BBC editors and news execs. mentioned in the report.

Yes, it’s tough to report on colleagues, but this is the organization that prides itself on “asking the awkward questions of anyone.” (“We know it only been a hour since your son was murdered, but can you tell viewers whether you think the police are doing enough to find his killer?”)

and

More from London

Any news organization would have difficulty seeing itself described as Hutton described the BBC. However, the report was especially problematic for the BBC for two reasons.

First, at the time of Hutton’s selection and in the weeks leading up to the report’s release, the BBC repeatedly and fulsomely praised him. He was an “extremely well-respectd judge” with a reputation for “thoroughness and fairness.”

And no one, the BBC often said, could question the courage of Lord Hutton to stand up to any kind of pressure. As a judge in Northern Ireland during the worst of the terrorism, he presided openly over trials of terrorists in situations where it was too dangerous to impanel a jury. A judicial colleague was the victim of an assination attempt. Hutton and his wife had to send their two young daughters out of Northern Ireland when it became known they might be targets of kidnappers. But he stayed and administered justice.

Now, how do you attack the report of a judge you’ve been describing like that? The BBC, after many hours, found a way: use surrogates…

The BBC did praise Hutton fulsomely in the run up to the Report. As Mr Matthews says, the BBC was quite sure until the last moment that Hutton would come down against Blair.

While I’m here at the keyboard… it’s not a reader’s letter, but read Mark Steyn: “The BBC takes the rap.”

“Does the BBC really need six million more enemies at this time, six million more people who think BBC self-regulation has failed, and the licence fee is no longer justifiable?” asks the author of this surprising Thought for Today.

They seem to think they do. They seem really quite proud of Popetown.

Just in case anyone misses the point: I support freedom of speech for the vilest messages, for stuff far worse than this tawdry effort. My objection is to being forced to pay for rubbish like this, to having it go out under my country’s name, and to being constantly told I should be proud of it.

I also object to blatant double standards. Quoting Clifford Longley’s Thought for the Day again:

We can surely all agree that the BBC would be too ashamed to carry a programme that ridiculed Jewish leaders like this, and too scared to ridicule Muslim leaders.

But supercilious metropolitan attitudes regard Catholics as fair game, and ridicule as an appropriate weapon to spread ill-feeling against them.

Perhaps now would be a good time to re-read the BBC’s statement of values:

The BBC exists to enrich people’s lives with great programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain. Its vision is to be the most creative, trusted organisation in the world.

It provides a wide range of distinctive programmes and services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias. They include television, radio, national, local, childrens’, educational, language and other services for key interest groups.

BBC services are hugely popular and used by over 90% of the UK population every week. The BBC also runs orchestras, actively develops new talent and supports training and production skills for the British broadcasting, music, drama and film industries.

The BBC is financed by a TV licence paid by households. It does not have to serve the interests of advertisers, or produce a return for shareholders. This means it can concentrate on providing high quality programmes and services for everyone, many of which would not otherwise be supported by subscription or advertising.

BBC values

The BBC has signed up to these values:

• Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest
  

• Audiences are at the heart of everything we do
  

• We take pride in delivering quality and value for money
  

• Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation
  

• We respect each other and celebrate our diversity so that everyone can give their best
  

• We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together

Twelve Governors regulate the BBC, upholding standards and defending it from political and commercial pressures. They set its objectives and report on its performance in their Annual Report to licence payers and Parliament.

Anyone know if the line about “Trust is the foundation of the BBC” was put in pre- or post- Mr Gilligan’s little early morning escapade? And anyone know the music to “We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together”? What is it, some remix of something the New Seekers did in 1972?

UPDATE: Reader Alan comments:

“Or for that matter would we ever see a cartoon about the BBC? “…A satirical and bizarre take on the world of personal politics, sex and fame set in a fictional version of one of the most revered and mysterious corporations in the world…”

There has been an unexpected applicant for an important position at the BBC.

. An absolute must-read as Gerard Baker of the Financial Times, writing in the Weekly Standard, surveys the state of the BBC:

‘The sheer scale of the BBC means that “the truth as seen by the BBC” is what gets believed. Aunty is simply too big and too powerful for the modern media era. The BBC is, in fact, a curious vestige of pre-Margaret Thatcher Britain: a massive public monopoly, a Soviet-like bureaucracy accountable to no one. If you own a TV, your almost $200 a year goes into the BBC’s coffers–irrespective of whether you watch it–and, yes, the BBC will prosecute you if you fail to pay up.’

Now I am going to put it to good, if belated use: a few days ago Dave Holroyd wrote:

BBC America’s 6.00 PM EST (their only evening news report) news coverage of Gavyn Davies resignation was a peach! First selections from Hutton’s summary (3 minutes), then Campbell’s press conference (2 minutes), then the resignation speech (4 minutes) and finally a six minute segment about international reaction to the Hutton reports findings. The BBC America news anchor interviewed two people live: Andrew Wilkie, an ex member of the Australian intelligence service who resigned in protest over the Iraq war and Guillaume Parmentier, head of the French Center on the US, at the French Institute for International Relations. Wilkie predictably presented the case that no WMD meant Hutton was wrong, and Parmentier gave the French government party line. Balanced reporting from the BBC as ever. The show’s produced in the US, Parmentier was in Washington – but no American reaction!

The previous evening, the BBC America 6.00 PM ‘News’ included a 4 minute live interview with a no name professor of history at the American University (based in Washington DC, a third rate liberal arts college). The anchor asked if the lack of WMD’s was a scandal in the US. Answer: not yet, but there might be a scandal if various people (republican congressmen, independents etc.) decided that it was a scandal. The message: it should be a scandal in the US, but wasn’t, so by reporting that it should be, the BBC hoped it might be. Wishful reporting at best. But is it news?

Natalie: I posted this as a comment on one of the posts at Biased BBC. I think you guys need to cover what the Corporation’s up to here in the US. BBC America’s a cable/satellite channel with one 30 minute evening news program.

Please note the last paragraph. So far as I can see the BBC in the US serves as a “legitimator” of the liberal consensus of the American media; an ostensibly impartial outside witness who appears to provide independent support for their view of the world. I don’t think that vast numbers watch it but it is influential.

, but the little caption in a grey box on the main BBC news page linking to this story used to say something like “American troops in Iraq: giving out sweets by day, kicking in doors by night.” I’m not complaining about the story itself, but that caption somewhat gave the impression that the door-kicking was mere vandalism that the soldiers indulged in under cover of darkness. Actually the story says that doors are kicked down as part of military action, not indiscipline.

I’d put it down to chance or my own misreading, but these slightly “off” captions so often seem to mislead in the same direction.

ADDED LATER: Here’s another example of weird and misleading link text, spotted by Brian O’Connell. His example is almost a platonic BBC text, involving the misuse of quote marks, stealth editing and being plain wrong.

…it also demonstrates that the BBC does not get their ironical, dubious, so-some-mentally-ill-people-believe quotes from actual quotes, because there is no such quote in the article. Nor anything close. The headlines, scare quotes and all, come from headline writers whose choice of what to ironically quote represents their own views of what’s ironic, or dubious.

This is somewhat off our usual beat, and I am the last person to come to for for an opinion on computer stuff – but here’s an email I received, which I shall reproduce for reader interest.

Hi.

I’d like to draw your attention to a remarkably ill-conceived article on the current “MyDoom” virus at

this link.

Almost every paragraph contains either errors or gross distortions of fact, and the presentation of personal opinion as fact. Not to mention

an extremely one-sided view of SCO’s lawsuit against IBM.

Some facts:

The MyDoom virus has nothing to do with Linux. It is a Windows virus that exploits the general lack of security on Windows machines. It is true that it is designed to launch a denial of service attack on SCO (in version “A” of the virus) or Microsoft (in the less-common version “B”), but its main function is to turn the victim’s computer into an “open relay” to be used for sending spam. In fact, this seems to be the purpose behind a number of recent and widespread Windows viruses.

SCO, despite all its bluster, and despite court deadlines, has so far

presented no evidence whatsoever that backs up its claims. Two supposed examples that became public were quickly shown to be code that SCO had no claims to.

A discussion of the article is taking place on Slashdot right now.

Regards,

Andrew Maizels

(Pixy Misa of Ambient Irony)

. True, everybody’s done it in this case, so what the heck, but you might have thought the BBC would have had enough of misreporting sources. Nicholas Vance has an excellent account of how the BBC has managed to distil the the interviews given by Dr Kelly,… sorry, Dr Kay, into a pithy little sound-byte, ‘it turns out we were all wrong’. True, the ‘sound-byte’ itself as an irritating noun could as well as have been invented by Blair and Campbell, but the BBC reminds me of a person who thinks they know the rules of a game, and then proves by performance (by performance I mean, well, a number of them have had to resign) that they don’t- and can’t stand the fact. What’s irritating in particular is that there’s a perfectly good sceptical approach to be taken, but the BBC can’t resist the controversial name-calling that, again, they’ve learned from the politicians.

As Nicholas points out, referring to a Guardian profile (I’ve ruthlessly borrowed Nicholas’ links), they’ve also learned from their recent mentor, Greg Dyke. Dyke’s obviously an excellent media man (who triumphed at the BBC in the ratings over his old ITV employers) and an ideological warrior- but Hutton showed he knew nothing about Government, either with a big or a small ‘g’. It seems to me that the politicians can only get away with their spin and their name-calling while the press lacks the moral authority to criticise them for it- which is where the BBC’s political stance interferes with their primary job of being impartial observers. They can’t have their cake and eat it; they can’t accuse the UK Government or the US President on their chosen ideological grounds (here I’d call them ‘post-colonial relativism’)- and report Dr Kay’s remarks faithfully. Melanie Phillips explains why the two don’t tally in the case of Dr Kay.

When I noticed what Eamonn pointed out in the comments- that the BBC website was giving extraordinary prominence to two short protests against the Hutton Report before and during its debate in Parliament- I zipped along the wires to see for myself. I couldn’t find it until I realised they’d put it on the World Edition page- where there were two stories about the protests (the second story is totally trivial), presented as follows:

Protests delay UK’s WMD debate

Anti-war protesters heckle Tony Blair as MPs debate the Hutton Report on Iraq weapons expert David Kelly.

Obviously it’s weird that this is ‘World News’. It’s also a bit odd to describe it as a ‘WMD debate’, implying a bust-up over the tricky political issue of WMD, when it was launched as a debate on the Hutton Report- a tricky political issue for the BBC. Having seen the cynical and confused world press’ reaction to the Hutton Report via BBC surveys, however, I can see why the Beeb think that broad definition has some mileage. Perhaps they see the Hutton Report as a domestic, British judgement (who could be more domestic, more ‘British’ than Lord Hutton?), whereas their vindication is seen to be found in the reaction of their world audience. The key part of the major report is Mr Blair’s response to the dossier-phrasing fears expressed by Dr Brian Jones- apparently given some fresh energy by an interview with Jones in The Independent according to the Beeb. Whether that was actually raised in Parliament as part of the Commons debate is not at all clear (and it should be, in this report), but it was certainly dealt with in Jones’ interview with Lord Hutton.

Update: I’ve just noticed that the headlines covering the same story have changed considerably- rather Gilliganesque I’d say. The main headline now reads ‘Hutton report ‘was no Whitewash’ ‘– and no-one’s accusing the PM of lying, either, absolutely not, just let’s make that clear. It’s now been put onto the UK Edition as well, which begs the question- why not there in the first place? Oh, I get it, it’s a naming strategy to help the world get up to speed on the Beeb’s No1 story. Update2: Melanie Phillips cuts down to size The Independent’s report which helped fuel the Beeb’s afternoon anti-Hutton bonanza.

– the storm has passed and they’re not kicking up another one just at the moment. Meanwhile, pundits are stock-taking, generally with a sense that somehow journalism has been the loser. Few have come out and praised Lord Hutton, and even if they have they’ve said at least something about his ‘unworldliness’, or being a bit Northern Irish for the subtleties of London affairs, or ‘hackings’ to that effect.

Rounding up, I’d start with Johann Hari, admirably honest in admitting the Gilligan debacle but terrier-like in defending the basic beast that is the BBC. He’s also (unintentionally) funny. His antipathy to privatisation of the Beeb is fuelled by his dislike of Murdoch and what he calls ‘the late unlamented Conrad Black’- whose death is news to me (nothing like being first with a good news story, eh, Johann?). Johann’s one who believes that ‘the basic case for public service broadcasting needs urgently to be restated’ and that ‘The BBC is necessary because, unlike all other media outlets, it is accountable to us, the viewing public’. I might agree with the first point- in my own modest way- but how on earth does he believe the second? Would that be in the ‘Have Your Say’ bit on the BBC website, which has been regularly the source of angst for the good people of this site (including me)? Or was he thinking of ‘Points of View’, with cuddly Terry Wogan, or icy Anne Robinson, or Angela Rippon (see, I have been thinking about this for a while)?

He considers ‘It is essential for democracy that a range of media sources not owned by rich people is entrenched in Britain’s de facto constitution’. Is that a description of the Beeb’s position? Even roughly? [nb, I think this ‘even roughly?’ remark was a mistake. What I think is that it’s questionable whether the BBC truly represents ‘a range of media sources’, and whether people like, for instance, Dyke, Wark and Paxman can be considered ‘not rich’ and not representing therefore vested interests.] ‘Rich people’ would obviously be those who earn a lot more than Greg Dyke earned- something way over £400,000 ($700, 000+) per annum then. To be fair to Hari’s point Greg Dyke must be excused because he only acted like he owned the BBC. And he wasn’t untouchable, on last week’s evidence, but neither was Lord Black, on recent evidence. In fact, Black’s a classic example of where private wealth does not render people untouchable, as his almighty litigation hangover will testify- watch out for Lord Black’s accellerated ageing process on a TV screen near you soon, though not fast enough for Johann- and it’s not as if Murdoch hasn’t had to face a shareholder’s inquisition over the Murdoch succession in the last year. It really did take a man to die for harsh scrutiny to happen at the Beeb.

To refer to other commentators, firstly I will declare that I really have no time at all for Max Hastings. However (moving on), Norm Geras has been his usual guarded self, which often seems to lead to firm and dramatic conclusions- and he gives us Martin Kettle and Mark Steyn as his favoured commenters on Hutton, the Beeb et al. I would add Melanie Phillips, who’s been stalwart and rapier-like on Hutton and the Beeb. I particularly liked her one sentence summary of the current fog of disbelief over WMD- but that’s unrelated, that’s just me. It’s a brilliant piece of ordered thinking expressed in quick-smart writing, so good you have to pinch yourself to appreciate it fully. BTW, I’ll also ignore Rod Liddel, which is the best policy for us all I feel- right, left or BiasedBBC.