I noticed today’s Telegraph with the headline ‘Terror Alert Based on ‘Plot’ Three Years Old’– and I thought (not for the first time), ‘the Telegraph are getting in on the act’.
The point is that where the Beeb leads, others follow. Not that this is always the case. The Beeb’s fawning coverage of Sen. Kerry’s Convention was not imitated by all that many- which is a good job for the sake of public understanding, and bad news for Kerry’s flaccid ‘bounce’.
In the case of the recent terror warnings, however, the Beeb has paraded some of its worst journalism because its own instincts and the public’s cynicism are perfectly matched. Their silliness has gone nuclear, ‘twould seem.
Jonathan Marcus states the BBC party-line:
‘Inevitably the Iraq War has given intelligence a very bad name and so it is easy to
see why each new alert draws a fair measure of cynicism.’
and then goes on to ‘inform’ that:
‘The prevailing wisdom is that al-Qaeda actually “likes” George W Bush in the sense that his muscular rhetoric is seen as playing up the very divisions that al-Qaeda wishes to emphasise.’
In fact this was the gist of an Al-Qaeda missive to the West, but I haven’t had any sense that this is the ‘prevailing wisdom’ here. It rather begs the question of your definition of wisdom and who the BBC correspondent is listening to.
Meawhile, Paul Reynolds is rather hung-up on old versus new intelligence. The simple answer, without all his ramblings, would be ‘it’s new to us’. Instead, Reynolds’ ramblings give him space to offload some trademark cynicism:
‘Mr Ridge might argue that he was being truthful. But it was not, it appears, the whole truth.’ etc. etc.
Finally, more than half this article about the response of Washingtonians to the terror alerts is devoted to reporting scepticism about Bush’s crew’s tactics, culminating in the irrestistible line on the terror alert phenomenon (from a stray alleged Republican sympathiser):
“Bush has to have something to get him back into office,”
The one sidedness here is reflective of an inconsiderate and gleefully selective kind of journalism motivated by anxiety that their man (Kerry) is being hurt by the apparent efficiency of the Bush administration in picking up and disabling AL Qaeda plots. The news in this train of events is clear; the BBC’s version of it as ‘Bush accused of playing politics with terror’ (examples of which line in every report) is terribly mangled by their bias.
Luckily, Jeff Jarvis has the common sense answer to this kind of journalism, and the appropriate conclusion.
cont.
Being free of the marketplace does ensure one thing however and that is you will see and hear what they want and need you to hear. Because without competition what incentive is their for them to be truthful or better, hell they already have you locked up, now they no longer need or care about your input. Besides quality crap is still crap and I won’t watch or listen to taxpayer subsidized quality crap anymore than I would pure unadulterated crap either. But then some people are just sheep; they will stay in their place as long as somebody slops the trough and tells them everythings just fine. Oh and they will eat crap too if you tell ’em it’s quality taxpayer paid-for crap.
Harry,
The higher level of government intervention in Europe surely results from the ‘freedom’ of it’s citizens to choose the political ideology that best suits them, based on their cultural priorities.
Clearly there’s pros and cons of any system. When I was in the US (DC) I earned a higher net wage but worked longer hours in a more stressed environment (what is the antipathy to a couple of pints at lunchtime??!!). I also had to live in a godawful soulless suburb because the inner city was full of the type of poverty you just don’t get in North Western Europe, largely because of the higher taxes. Plus the food was crap and they didn’t play proper sports.
Clearly different priorities applied which is the reason for a DEMOCRACY.
There are two thinngs that they missed entirely:
1. The President’s approval rating *drops* every time the terror alert level is raised. The consequences of this scares me more than anything.
2. It you were the AQ cell who knew that there plans were discovered, you might act on them immediately before the defenses against it are complete.
It won’t do a thing to us here in the U.S. We need to thank the beeb for making the U.K. government more reluctant to raise terror alerts through this type of reporting.
Good points Joe.
Mr Hirst your points are ignoring the fact that a)They still praise unambiguously his convention appearance, and b) They are trying to get to grips with how Bush isn’t utterly sunk in the opinion polls- hence the need to patronise the US public. Tenuous is too good a word for your facetious offerings.
Ed, you are theorising on point b), not stating facts. Who’s to say it isn’t a sinister BBC right wing plot to big up Bush?
Another one…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3548846.stm
Israeli government source is indirectly quoted as saying that new houses in existing built up areas of settlements meet an understanding with the US that settlement expansion would be frozen.
Nowhere is it pointed out that strictly speaking this doesn’t comply with the road map (the actual text is refers to the cessation of ‘all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)’).
Sickening etc etc etc
Honestly, Mr Hirst (by the way, if that’s not your real name I think it’s really unsporting on the Andrew Hirst who commented earlier)- read the next paragraph:
‘All settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.’
The BBC does not consider the exact terms of the roadmap worthy of mention- and they prefer to contextualise otherwise, for very significant reasons. On a number of occasions I’ve read the BBC referring to it as ‘the so-called roadmap’- so they simply regard it with contempt.
Not only do we at B-BBC read the whole of the articles we criticise (especially the paragraphs following the ones we highlight)- we also read many of them. So it’s not as easy as you think to go cherry-picking. Good luck though if you can find the BBC violating some of its deeply held biases- I wish I could.
Different concepts surely Ed.
Whilst there is longstanding deadlock on the legality of the existing settlements, the present Israeli government has, however tentatively, made semi-positive noises about the ‘road map’ in principle.
In tiptoeing around this blatant non compliance the BBC is clearly demonstrating a shocking pro Israeli bias.
They prefer to mention “international law” rather than the US-sponsored “roadmap” because it fits their tranzi world-view much better. To the tranzis there is something mystically sacred about “international law” even though much of it was not implemented democratically.
Last I looked every Western democracy other than the US was pretty much committed to ‘international law’. It’s a bit much to expect to to be completely ignored because the current US administration isn’t over keen.
Yes, THFC, we Americans are rather skeptical about “international law” that is made by countries like Sudan (now starring in “African Genocide II: The Sequel”) the current head of the UN’s “Human Rights” Commission (sneer quotes fully intended). Yanks are funny that way.