15 Responses to Xenophobia, racism, anti-Travellerism, evil Italians.

  1. rob says:
    August 11, 2004 at 2:45 pm

    Even Polly Toynbee has spotted the lack of professionalism of BBC journalists & editors

    “But the question for the BBC’s new director of news is why the high-flown BBC guidelines translate into the casual, breezy Mail-influenced throwaway lines from under-briefed presenters in programmes edited and staffed by those who too easily forget the difference between the Mail and the BBC.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1280505,00.html

    Polly is reporting on vaccine scares. But we know that the BBC attitude she spots on this subject infects a lot of their news reporting.

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  2. rob says:
    August 11, 2004 at 4:17 pm

    Further to the “under-briefed presenters”
    Reports on TV (not just BBC) today on the appeal court ruling on the detained foreign terrorist suspects all rely on the extensive briefing given by defence lawyers & human rights groups. Presumably the Home Office were not supplying sound bites.

    The broadcasters seem to feel no responsibility to balance the partial views of the detainees’ supporters/retainers by adding their own comment & qualifiers.

    So we get “Britain’s Guantanamo”
    Often no reference to the detainees being free to leave the UK.
    Often omitting to mention that we are dealing with foreigners (who have probably entered the UK by deception).
    And we are treated to Vanessa Redgrave type emotional despair from Gareth Pierce a solicitor for the suspected terrorists.

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  3. Eamonn says:
    August 11, 2004 at 10:23 pm

    Honestly I despair of BBC reporting. Just now on the 10 o clock news, we have had a report on the elections in Afghanistan, which featured purely negative reporting and the usual cynical remarks (you know the script by now – the Bush administration is rushing elections through to score points before the US election etc etc etc). Also the fact that Donald Rumsfeld was visiting Afghanistan was, ipsi facto, proof that the devious and evil USA are up to no good there. By the end you get the distinct impression that the BBC is in effect saying “well, the elections (which are the first in Afghan history) are just a sham and the country is no better than under the Taliban”. Hardly balanced reporting, and the BBC’s apparent easy contempt for elections in a former brutal theocracy turns my stomach. Perhaps they have Yvonne Ridley as special adviser to the news.

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  4. Ant says:
    August 11, 2004 at 11:41 pm

    OT: 2 + 2 = 5!

    “The head of Iraq’s nuclear programme under Saddam Hussein has said Iraq destroyed its nuclear weapons programme in 1991 and never restarted it.”

    “One of the most powerful arguments in the case for war on Iraq was the US and UK’s claim Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear programme.”

    Why are these two statements sold as being mutually exclusive?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3556714.stm

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  5. Ant says:
    August 11, 2004 at 11:46 pm

    OT: “continued fighting between US and coalition troops and militants has disrupted output.”

    Since when is the US not coalition?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3556170.stm

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  6. rob says:
    August 12, 2004 at 2:29 pm

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1212564,00.html
    “Muslims in Britain are being turned into pariahs” Inayat Bunglawala (media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain)

    He says “We have had enough of anti-terror raids, stop and search and a hostile press” & is supported by others –
    “”BRITISH MUSLIMS have reached a turning point. I don’t think they’re going to take this for much longer,” remarked a seasoned TV news reporter attending a packed Muslim conference in Tooting, South London”

    I wonder who. And what action is Bunglawala & TV reporter proposing that Muslims in Britain should take?

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  7. Anonymous says:
    August 12, 2004 at 2:39 pm

    Isn’t the MCB an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, linked to Hamas etc ?

    How come the mainstream media seldom remind us that many of the main “spokesmen” for Muslims in Britain actually espouse extremist causes – but speak bland words to the media ?

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  8. rob says:
    August 12, 2004 at 2:48 pm

    Re Tooting Conference above
    BBC were there
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3546766.stm
    and described the meeting as “a London conference about the treatment of Muslims under anti-terror laws”

    Did the BBC Online reporter also address the meeting or were the BBC there in force?

    Also the BBC forget to mention the organisers –
    “Stop Police Terror” group
    http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/news/asianspotlight/spotlight/display.var.515438.0.conference_debates_mistreatment.php

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  9. Rob Read says:
    August 12, 2004 at 3:49 pm

    Rob,

    I’ve seen the “stop police terror” group before outside the another mosque. As whenever I see SPT I also see SWP, I wonder if they are yet another crypto-SWP group?

    I think the Muslims completely under-rate the resentment against them. If they cause more trouble, things may snap back around them much harder than they could possibly imagine.

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  10. es1061 says:
    August 12, 2004 at 4:29 pm

    Shia Iraq violence: Your reaction
    ” As a member of the UK military, I can honestly say that if it were UK forces in Najaf, the picture would be totally different. An inferior US Army that cares more about techno advances then training its men on the ground can never expect to win this kind of isometric warfare….
    Craig Deyes, Hull UK”

    “isometric” warfare 😉
    I love this quote….

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  11. es1061 says:
    August 12, 2004 at 4:29 pm

    cont..
    The question is: Is the BBC editor that posted this comment as ignorant of asymmetric warfare as Craig Deyes, or
    Does the editor just want to show the world that the UK has its share of moronic armchair generals too?…

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  12. Anonymous says:
    August 12, 2004 at 5:24 pm

    To be fair if he’s really a member of the UK military he’s hardly an ‘armchair general’.

    I’ve seen quite a few cases of British troops questioning the competence of the Americans.

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  13. laban tall says:
    August 12, 2004 at 10:38 pm

    Tonight on Radio 4 news they spoke of the ‘torture at Guantanamo’ as if it were a proven fact rather than an allegation by the Tipton Three … I feel a ‘Jenin massacre’ coming on …

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  14. StinKerr says:
    August 13, 2004 at 7:31 am

    I wonder if Craig Deyes knows that there are more bureaucrats in the MoD than there are soldiers in the U.K. Army? Probably the reason the Jocks had to resort to a bayonet charge when they ran out of ammunition a while ago.

    It’s a damn shame that your government is gutting your military like Clinton did to ours while expanding their mission.

    Everyone believes their own military is the “best in the world”. They have to. Otherwise they’d just go home and hide under the bed.

    I will refrain from any further comments about my experience with this attitude which was prevalent in the Royal Navy too. Even on a submarine packed with American equipment. 😆

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  15. Roxana Cooper says:
    August 20, 2004 at 6:31 pm

    I thought ‘Travellers’ and Gypsies were two different groups: The former being a counter-culture survival of the hippy-dip sixties, and the latter The Rom, the nomadic people who have been drifting around Europe since the 1400s. Which btw means they wouldn’t have been in the UK before the Normans much the less the Angles and Saxons, Romans, Celts, Picts, whoever built Stonehenge, etc.

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