Jeff Jarvis catches the Nanny State defending the BBC against Fox News even though what Fox reported about the Beeb was true! Well, someone’s got to defend the little guy. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
UPDATE: John Gibson of Fox News replies to the ‘censure’. He notes that a BBC intern was one of the 24 complainants to OffCom. (Hat Tip: B-BBC commenter, StinKerr)
The Beeb’s tribute sours (further).
Tom Carver, familiar to viewers of NewsNight, has a supercillious air about him. There’s a sneer never far from his upper lip. Check out this combination of suggestion and anti-Bush sarcasm in an article which manages to insult former president Reagan as ‘illusory or insubstantial’, while dismissing Bush as nowhere near his equal (what, less even than ‘illusory’?):
‘The president’s biggest problem is that he is no Ronald Reagan, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s famous put-down of Dan Quayle.
Can you imagine a website with George Bush’s top 10 speeches?
Though denounced at the time as inflammatory, Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” remains an undeniably influential phrase, whilst George Bush’s “axis of evil” already seems like a cheap rip-off with no coherent logic.
There are more references to Reagan’s phrase than those of Mr Bush on his own website.’
Well, I can imagine such a website, I don’t equate GWB with Dan Quayle, I do consider Bush’s “axis of evil” phrase to have been necessary and resonant, I don’t think it was a ‘cheap rip-off with no coherent logic’, and, finally, I don’t expect a speech made in the last couple of years at the beginning of a conflict to appeal the way one made twenty years earlier does with the benefit of glorious hindsight. Why I should pay for this alienating garbage?
But I am not the largest broacast news organisation in the world, famed for depth of knowledge and providing a global picture.
The BBC reports that Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais has been invited as a guest preacher to the opening of the East London mosque. Some unexceptional remarks of his are quoted in the story. However David T of Harry’s Place made the connection with the the preacher called Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudays (also sometimes transcribed as Sudayyis) who has been banned from Canada and who said,
“Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others’] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers… the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs…’
and urged Muslims to turn from all peace agreements with Jews.
Whether the BBC failed to make the link that David T successfully made between Sudais the advocate of cohesiveness and Sudays the advocate of hating the Jews, or chose not to make it is an interesting question. Probably the former, but it is a characteristic failure.
Fair play to Sarah Brown and the Beeb for this story on Iraqi blogs, especially since their coverage is a prime example of why ordinary Iraqis had to find alternative means of publishing news.
While reconstruction in Iraq remains fraught with violence and political infighting, the country is experiencing a surge in popularity of online diaries, or weblogs.Written by ordinary Iraqis keen to tell the world about life in the troubled country, the sites are also attracting the attention of a global audience keen to learn about the lives of local civilians.
One such blog is Iraq The Model, an online diary focusing mainly on politics and reform which is written and run by three Baghdad-based brothers – Mohammed, Omar and Ali.
Ali, a doctor, told BBC News Online that he and his brothers developed the blog because he wanted to send out a more positive message about events in his home country.
“More than 90% of major media outlets have a rather negative agenda and what’s the benefit of us doing the same?” he asks.“We do feel optimistic about the future of Iraq, but we see many facts about Iraq that are not covered, which is a shame.”
“They [the media] ignore pictures of good relations between the Iraqis and the coalition and the good interaction between both sides, they only focus on bad events – like what is happening in Abu Ghraib.”
Let’s hope Sarah holds on to her job!
It’s been a long hard road, brothers and sisters. Years of patiently explaining that we’re aren’t necessarily particular fans of Liberace. Now at long last we have reached a level of public recognition where we get smeared by the BBC. In an article about the Bilderberg conference I read:
And while hardline right-wingers and libertarians accuse Bilderberg of being a liberal Zionist plot, leftists such as activist Tony Gosling are equally critical.
Emphasis added (on orders from ZOG delivered by thought-beam to the receiver in my left upper second premolar.)
On Today’s BBC One O’Clock News bulletin Anna Ford reported the following: “The three Italian hostages kidnapped in Iraq have returned home to a hero’s welcome. They were met by their families and friends at Rome Airport and will now be questioned by government and military officials about their two month ordeal”.
And that was it – cue jaw dropping in our household. What about the fourth hostage who was cruelly murdered? Isn’t he worth a mention? What about the fact that the hostages were rescued by a special forces operation, rather than by, say, the benevolence of their captors?
A similar item running on Sky News just now mentions all of this – yet the BBC One O’Clock news didn’t. It’s also covered properly on BBC News Online. This was amongst the usual One O’Clock news mush – some real news, some filler (e.g. ‘Titanic treasures under hammer’), so it’s not as if time or space was the reason for missing out these facts.
Again we must ask, especially since the BBC is paid for by the compulsory BBC Tax, is their penchant for this sort of editorial omission conspiracy, cock-up or just lazy incompetence?
I said earlier the BBC’s coverage of Reagan’s death was OK. The same cannot be said for Greg Palast, who describes himself as a “BBC investigative reporter”. As USS Neverdock reports Mr Palast exults in Reagan’s death.
I think this guy is a freelance rather than a regular employee. He obviously writes to shock, and is probably rather looked down upon by the urbane types at Broadcasting House. But ask yourself whether his equivalents on the right would ever in a million years be employed by the BBC even as freelances. Kilroy-Silk was sacked by the BBC for much less. (Though don’t forget that KS was actually once a Labour MP.)
“Monica” in the comments to a post below directed me to this link to LGF and the post below it.
The value of LGF, the thing that keeps me coming back there, is that it tells you stuff you don’t hear on the mainstream media. The worst part of it is that some (certainly not all) of the commenters lack human sympathy and are undiscriminatingly hostile to Islam.
The facts are these: on Monday a BBC cameraman, Simon Cumbers, was murdered in Riyadh by Al-Qaeda. Another reporter with him at the time, Frank Gardner, was severely injured in the attack and may die.
(I have just seen that while I was writing this post, Kerry Buttram was independently writing another on this topic.)
This story raises several issues so close to the heart of what this blog is about that they cannot be ignored. I am sorry that lack of time obliges me to list them in a less organised way than the seriousness of the subject merits.
When Frank Gardner was shot, he called out to the bystanders, “Help me, I’m a Muslim.” It seems they did not help. Some say this is because there is a law in Saudi Arabia forbidding bystanders to come to someone’s aid before paramedics arrive. Others say that the crowd were sympathetic to the killing of a foreigner, whatever his religion. Still others say that the crowd may have been afraid of reprisals from Al-Qaeda.
There is some doubt as to whether Gardner actually is a Muslim. [INSERTED LATER: The Australian, quoted by Tim Blair in an update to the link below, says that he was not.] Some say that claiming to be Muslim is a survival trick well known to reporters. In either case it reflects ill on Saudi society that such a strategy is thought necessary.
The BBC did not report the words “Help me, I’m a Muslim!” and has not commented on Mr Gardner’s religion.
If he is not actually a Muslim – i.e. it was a desperate ruse – I don’t blame him for trying it in extremis, and I see the BBC’s point in keeping quiet. It might endanger other reporters to have it publicly known that this deception is practised. However the point is moot, as the Arab media have certainly reported his words widely.
If he is a Muslim, it is still a difficult matter to know whether the BBC ought to have mentioned it. Do we really want to get into obliging people to disclose their religion before writing in public? When some green activist made a list of all the prominent “neo-cons” who were Jews it was considered distasteful, and would have been so even had the list been accurate. On the other hand, as Tim Blair points out, the BBC has made enough of George W Bush’s religion and Tony Blair’s. Sometimes religion is undeniably part of the story.
Frank Gardner’s reporting seems typical of the BBC. He is certainly knowledgeable about the Middle East. If his stance is affected beyond normal BBC sympathies by his possible Muslim religion, it is not apparent to me. In this report he is sympathetic to oppressed Moroccan women – I approve. In this one he calls the late Sheikh Yassin a “spiritual leader” and says that “What I have found from my personal experience is that people in the US state department tend to have a very good understanding of the problems of the Middle East and why al-Qaeda is so popular and they tend to steer a relatively middle course” – I disapprove. I do not know anything significant about the opinions of the cameraman, Simon Cumbers.
On March 13th, in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings, there was a bitterly controversial post (controversial among both Biased BBC posters and commenters) by Patrick Crozier on this blog in which he said he said, “I want these people to feel pain” (specifically referring to those who excused terrorism on the Channel 4 coverage of the train bombings, but by extension to the moral equivalence tendency in the media generally), it was the only way they would wake up. In an exchange of emails and later a phone call I asked him if he meant it literally. He said no, but he defended the general sentiment that only personal experience of its evil would ever stop some minds sympathising with terrorism
I find two thoughts inescapable. One is that I don’t want anyone to feel that sort of pain, ever. (To be fair I don’t suppose Patrick does either, outside of rhetoric said in anger.) I would not wish it even on our actual enemies, Al Qaeda, though I am happy to see them dead or captured in the course of defeating them. Far less do I wish harm on unarmed reporters and cameramen doing their job. This whole blog is about the BBC in part because it is, or was, or could be an institution of our civilisation worth being (metaphorically)fought for.
The other inescapable thought is that the BBC did suddenly rediscover the word ‘terrorist’ when it was their own people being killed.
Going back a few days, when the acting Israeli ambassador to Britain Zvi Rav-Ner used the word “terrorist” the BBC paraphrased it as “militants”. They did not say they had done so; in effect putting words he did not say into the Israeli ambassador’s mouth.
In contrast, in “Manhunt after attack on BBC crew” the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sherard Cowper-Coles, is quoted thus:
Sherard Cowper-Coles said the area had seen “a number of clashes” between security forces and terrorists.
Not only were this ambassador’s words not edited, the terrorists have even escaped outside the quote marks. This is correct. The attack on Simon Cumber and Frank Gardner was terrorist murder and attempted murder. And the other victims of Al Qaeda, be they Americans, Israelis or Iraqis; be they Christians, Jews, atheists, Sunni or Shia Muslims; or whatever nationality or religion you care to name, are also victims of terrorism, not “militancy”. The indiscriminate nature of the killing is what makes it terrorism. That is one more reason, along with common humanity, to hope that Frank Gardner makes a full recovery and that the murderers of Simon Cumbers are caught and punished.
Our hearts go out to the family and friends of BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers who was murdered by terrorists in Riyadh as he and correspondent Frank Gardner filmed a report. Many questions remain as to whether Saudi Arabia will descend into further instability, but there is no question that anyone can become a target in this war on terror. I recently posted on Frank Gardner (and the BBC’s) questioning stance on the very idea of a ‘war on terror’. Though we may disagree on this point, all of us at B-BBC wish and pray for the speedy and full recovery of Mr Gardner and comfort to the bereaved family of Simon Cumbers.
of the D-Day commemorations yesterday was good and the news coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan, if not affectionate, at least respectful. There. I’ve said it.
