Monthly Archives: April 2004

comparing the grilling of the acting Israeli ambassador to the UK to the slight warming of the Palestinian chief negotiator when both appeared on Today this morning.

Also, check out the two posts below about the methodology of the BBC poll that put “the power of the US and large corporations” as the biggest threat to the world.

In particular, I questioned the methodology – which wasn’t revealed in the web article – and the fact that ” the power of the US and large corporations” were concatenated as a single issue. The latter would obviously skew the results, combining as it does the response of someone concerned with, say, US military power with that of a respondent worried about globalised agriculture.

In my view, this virtually guaranteed the result – and the leap from that to the headline seems immoderate, to say the least.

UPDATE: more on this story from Scott Burgess here. PJF, whose regular comments here anyone who follows this blog will have seen, spotted some changes to the wording of the headline.

Come back, Lord Reith, all is forgiven.

sez Beeb. It is good of the BBC to call attention to the obvious, but they did manage to miss Bush’s apology.

UPDATE: Fred Barnes and T. Bevan explain why Bush has self-important media elites climbing the walls.

writes:

One story prominently featured over the Easter holiday weekend was the leftie march to Aldermaston, including various puff-pieces in advance (i.e. advertising for fellow-travellers).

Monday’s ‘News front page’ featured two links to stories about this relative non-event. The same story is highlighted a day later on the UK news page:

Joy as nuclear marchers hit base

Deep joy indeed. The story, by Hannah Bayman, features interviews with various protestors, Giulia Giglioggi, 11-year old Leela Levitt (from Southampton “pleading with parents Malcolm and Latha”, Daniel Franceschini and Reverend Hazel Barkham.

Knowing the BBC’s rigourous and honest approach, I did a little Googling for these people.

Giulia Giglioggi returns nothing. Google helpfully suggests “Giulia Gigliotti”, from Southampton, who it turns out is a major organiser of such protests (inc. a letter in the Grauniad signed ‘Giulia Gigliotti, Nuclear Information Service’) – all omitted (or simply unseen) by our scrupulous BBC inquisitor. (‘Nuclear Information Service’ turns out to be www.nukeinfo.co.uk – also based in Southampton).

Reverend Hazel Barkham (Google alternative ‘Barking’!) is also, unsurprisingly, a prominent anti-nuclear activist, popping up around the web and around the world.

So, how could our rigourous BBC reporter omit to mention the prominence of these anti-nuclear organisers whilst writing such a happy, nay joyous, report of this traditional outing?

Another spot of Googling, this time for ‘Hannah Bayman’, reveals a number of interesting Hannah Bayman coincidences:

– Revolutionary Communists “Rock around the Blockade at Guantanamo” (in April 2000 no less), inc. Hannah Bayman “I am really interested in the Pioneers and the UJC (Union of Young Communists)” (Link);

– “Operation Desert Rescue – 9.6m children in danger” – list of supporters includes “Hannah Bayman, Southampton, BBC journalist” (Link);

– Socialist Worker 26Apr03 letters page – an angry rant about Iraqi freedom, from Hannah Bayman, Southampton (Link);

– Globalise Resistance “free Nicola and Richard” petition – signed by Hannah Bayman, freelance journalist (Link);

– The Observer 21Jul02 letters page – Hannah Bayman of London N1 writes “People across the world have marched against Israel’s war in Palestine, including 80,000 in London in May, largely ignored by the mainstream British press. In September thousands more are expected to rally in London against the threat of a bloody war in Iraq. In November thousands of activists will converge in Florence for the European Social Forum, a weekend of demonstrations and debate on the future of the anti-capitalist movement.” (Link)

It seems I’m not alone in doubting the objectivity of Ms. Bayman – Robert Hinkley has posted details of his dealings with her here and here. Note also the picture here which is remarkably like the BBC picture here.

For those with long memories, I wonder if the Chris Blake in the first picture is the same as the one interviewed by Hannah for the BBC here. If so, Hannah seems to have a remarkably intimate interviewing technique – too intimate one might think to ensure the impartiality and objectivity that a Beeb-taxpayer might expect from the “World’s premier news broadcaster”, as they term themselves.

Just to be clear, BBC reporters, like everyone else, are entitled to their personal opinions. However, in the interests of transparency, when a reporter interviews a personal acquaintance (in this case Chris Blake, a former comrade on a political magazine “Resist”), it is, at best, a discourtesy to his or her readers not to mention it.

– it’s like the normal missionary position, except you approach it from the left.

When the corporation that spent a reported £2M on Popetown (an everyday story about corrupt Catholic cardinals and a mad Pope ) and the presenter Gavin Esler (author and presenter of The New Jerusalem, a hymn to the welfare state in Britain) decide to discuss the subject of Christian missionaries, the outcome is decidedly predictable.

So it was during yesterdays edition of ‘Four Corners’ on Radio 4 (sadly not available online) – one of a large number of cheap ‘talking head’ programmes that typify the Radio 4 schedule. Hosted by Esler, one of the subjects was the decline of Christian belief in Britain contrasting with the strength of Christian belief overseas. This is a subject worthy of discussion.

The focus of discussion was primarily on the work of Christian missionaries overseas, where Christianity is a growing religion. To discuss this with Esler, they had a researcher and a Muslim cleric (I’m sorry I did not get the names – no pen to hand at the time). Needless to say, Christian missionaries are generally a Bad Thing because…

– They sell Christian beliefs on the basis of ‘this religion gets you a better job, and a nicer car’

– You can be as greedy as you want with these Christian beliefs

– They don’t respect local customs

– Christianity is the religion of computers and progress (presumably opposed to Islam)

The researcher and cleric did not bring differing points of view – just the opposite, they kept falling over themselves to say ‘how right you are with that point’.

So, what was wrong with this programme? Simply this – it’s one-sidedness. It would have been nice to hear from some of the recently converted – maybe from Africa or China. Many Africans I’ve met have had a compelling Christian belief. It would have been nice to hear from organisations involved in missionary work, such as the Catholic church. Most importantly, just some other point of view other than the BBC view – this was a good example of an inward-looking BBC talking to itself.

First we got the bomb, and that was good

‘Cause we love peace and motherhood

Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s okay

‘Cause the balance of power’s maintained that way

– so sung the American satirist Tom Lehrer.But the Beeb tells it differently.

Michael Gill writes:

I visited the following URL: “Still fighting the bomb, 50 years on.” (Typical output from the Beeb)

From that page, I followed the link to “RELATED BBCi LINKS: On This Day 1957: Britain drops its first H-bomb

Now this page did have an interesting bias.

Take a look at the “Timeline: Arms Race” box. Note how we are given dates when the US exploded H-bombs, when the UK exploded H-bombs, when the French exploded an A-bomb, even when the Chinese detonated an H-bomb.

But no dates for the Soviet Union! At all!

[Well, there are lots of dates for the Soviet union participating in talks to reduce nuclear weapons and several mentions of it having missiles and warheads. It just doesn’t say how it got them. I blame the tooth fairy. – NS]

Interesting arms race where one side doesn’t appear to be participating!

Even though the Soviet Union did detonate by far the biggest H-bomb of them all, the BBC can’t find room to mention it.

According to this website the first Soviet test H-bomb was exploded on 12 August 1953. I gather there is quite a difference in difficulty between making a static experimental bomb and one capable of being launched from an aircraft or missile. (Britain, unusually, went straight to this stage.) The first Soviet thermonuclear bomb to be dropped from an aircraft was exploded in Kazakhstan on 22 November 1955. The biggest H-bomb ever, as mentioned by Mr Gill in his e-mail, was exploded by the USSR over Novaya Zemlya on 30 October 1961. Given a very basic general knowledge of twentieth century history, these dates aren’t hard to find via Google. It’s downright odd that they weren’t mentioned in a timeline that includes such relatively obscure details as the date of France’s third H-bomb. And what the devil is the banning of landmines by the UK doing in a nuclear timeline?

That’s just my little joke. Scott Burgess quotes a BBC report which is slightly less alarming. Slightly.

Ceefax is a bit of a poor relation nowadays. Even so they ought not to let this through: yesterday’s page 120, headed “Algeria’s leader wins landslide” said,

Mr Bouteflika is credited with taming an Islamic insurgency which has claimed some 100,000 lives in two years.

No dout the insurgents themselves claim to be the true representatives of Islam. But there is no reason for the BBC to underwrite this claim. Their bitter opponents in the Algerian government are also overwhelmingly Muslim. Millions of other Muslims from other countries would also object to the description of the insurgents as simply “Islamic”, just as I would object if the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda were described as simply “Christian.”

A reader writes:

As of 00:21 UTC this story is linked on the BBC’s front foreign web page:

“End of an era: Debate still rages over the toppling of Saddam’s statue”

To his credit, Mr. Wood includes his firsthand recollection that the crowd at the Saddam statue (which some have claimed was faked) was in the several hundreds. To his shame, he mentions that wide shot of the square as if it shows anything like what the activists claim.

Here’s the wide shot, folks:

link Notice that the BIG, BLACK STATUE is nowhere near its pedestal, and therefore the picture could have been made any time AFTER the event.

Typically, the BBC Online editors spin the story as a “raging debate,” in which the firsthand account of the BBC correspondent carries as much weight as a photograph scribbled on by someone thousands of miles away.

I propose a photoshop contest in which people prove that other historical events did not occur by scribbling on well-known photographs in Indymedia fashion.

I think Wood’s own testimony clearly and deliberately debunks the conspiracy theory – which was feeble even by the usual standards of such things. It was a pity that he doesn’t seem to have looked at the famous wide shot very hard or read the many criticisms of it written at the time. Like, it’s getting dark yet the statue fell in bright sunlight. Read this post by Josh Chavetz of Oxblog for more analysis.

As so often with the BBC the link text or the headlines let the actual reporting down. When I linked to this article the headline was “The Day Saddam’s Statue fell.” I think the reader who sent this is saying that the original headline was the one mentioning debate as still raging. If so, it’s good that they’ve changed the headline.

The reason I have no trouble believing that the original headline gave credence to the conspiracy theory is that the link to this article under the under the heading “Analysis” (in the right hand column common to all this clutch of articles) is still offering a leg-up to the conspiracymongers.

At 11.20 BST it says “Toppled But questions remain about the iconic moment when Saddam Hussein’s statue fell. “

Excuse me, no they don’t. Not unless you think your own reporter – all of your own reporters – and several dozen others from many countries – and several hundred Iraqis – and dozens of US troops – have all agreed to tell the same barefaced lie and have maintained it with superhuman consistency for a year since.

Incidentally, having tracked a number of BBC stealth edits I know that the the “Last updated” field at the top of web stories means nothing.

isn’t so happy. He recounts one of those little gems of newsreader wit that the BBC fondly imagines make the newsreaders more lovable. The post below about the three headed toad is also interesting.