but not much. A BBC Online visitor unfamiliar with B-BBC and the blogoshere could (with the exception of precious few big media outlets) be forgiven for thinking this controversy is breaking news. The NY Times (registration required) has just done a hit piece on the Swift Boat Vets. (Will the Beeb follow?) The BBC has been forced, at least, to acknowledge that Swift Boat Vets who fought alongside Kerry, but don’t support his presidential bid and accuse him of falsehood, do exist. The story, at least online, is played as a typical election-year controversy between Democrats and Republicans. Still no attempt to investigate the facts of the book behind the ad and the 264 Swift Boat Veterans who have publicly signed on to its basis in fact. (Kerry is backed by 13 Swift Boat Vets.)
Note to the BBC: You are obligated (both morally and under the terms of your charter) to investigate and report this story just like you did with the ‘Bush was AWOL’ hype you were so quick to recycle from that paragon of investigative journalism, Michael Moore. Hugh Hewitt has done you the service of compiling a list of questions for John Kerry (and if not him, his campaign). And, by the way, though we’re all probably tired of hearing about Vietnam, Kerry’s insistance on making it the centrepiece of his campaign has given you no credible option but to check this out. This assumes, of course, that you really are the serious news organisation you claim to be. Or is your credibility beyond repair?
UPDATE: My, oh my, it’s bright out here. The Beeb has finally acknowledged a story that would not go away. Maybe pro-Kerry stories are preferred but Kerry’s determination to make his 4 months in Vietnam his campaign theme leaves the BBC little option. Besides, the Swift Boat vets’ book is now # 1 on Amazon and a second ad attacking Kerry’s anti-war efforts has just come out. Kind of hard to ignore.
The Beeb article is completely skewed. Notice the line of reporting:
‘US presidential contender John Kerry has accused rival George W Bush of using a front group to launch underhand attacks on his Vietnam war record.’
So, who is the onus on here? Who is under scrutiny. It should, it must, be Kerry, if they are covering the Swiftboats controversy- but it’s not.
It’s just another way of deferring the need to report the facts.
BBC World Service also tending to focus on alleged backing of the Swift Boat Vets by the Bush campaign. And an interview with a vanderbilt professor who was clearly behind the curve on the latest opinion polls. No actual details of the latest explosive ad were broadcast. BBC still lamentably vague or dismissive – or silent – on all this.
😆 They even got his name wrong in one of the paragraphs.
“While denying any role in the ads, the Bush administration and his re-election staff have declined to condemn the ads, which suggest Mr Kelly is exaggerating his valour in an election year where security is a key theme.”
The writer must have been frothing. 😆
Fear not, I’ve saved a copy in case of stealth editing. 🙂
I saw an interesting comment on a blog. The writer pointed out that rather than have his “band of brothers” refute the Swift Vets charges the Kerry campaign sends lawyers to shut them down and attempt to keep TV stations from running the ads.
O’Neil was ready for them though. He had depostions and documentary proof of the veracity of the ads ready to go when they tried the lawyer path.
This latest complaint to the FEC is another stage of that. I wonder if the Beeb knows that 10 of the top 11 donors to the ‘shadowy organizations’ (527 groups) are supporting Kerry with vast amounts of money. This includes more than $15 million from a non-citizen, George Soros.
I think I’ll search the BBC website for George Soros. Maybe search for the “Christmas in Cambodia” story (again) while I’m at it.
The World Service repeatedly flogged their story on John Kerry taking the -Swift Boat Veterans for Truth- to task over campaign coordination with the Republicans. Other than that, BBCWS didn’t reported the story at all until it was painfully obvious that the Kerry campaign’s would come back with a countercharge.
They are alleging misuse of the 527 clause of the law – actually they’re trying to use the allegation to shame the right altogether.
I’m sure, however that the Beeb would never report this:
MoveOn.org: 2004 Election Cycle.
527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $9,086,102
Total Expenditures: $17,435,782
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: 2004 Election Cycle.
527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $158,750
Total Expenditures: $60,403
Somebody used the terms “BBC” and “creditability” in the same sentence. Why?
To the beebs it’s like an oil and water thing. They don’t seek “creditability”. They want their own way, and the facts don’t matter.
Great post.
It looks like the SBVT story made the BBC front page after all. Well, one side of it, at least.
Anton V – quite awesome patience on the part of the BBC to wait until they had a rebuttal before mentioning the accusers. I’m deeply impressed.
Of course that’s only one of the incidents that the Swifties have called into question.
So no rebuttal of the many other serious claims. Indeed – the BBC has not even explained what ANY of those claims are.
There is this feature article too.
Not the worst thing I’ve seen, but this part is not so clever:
‘a group with ties to Republican Party supporters in Texas is running ads calling into question Mr Kerry’s heroism and criticising his anti-war activities after he came back to the US.’
Having ‘ties’, even ones with political party supporters (rather than with politicians), is part of belonging to a society- it certainly doesn’t explain the overwhelming numbers of Swifties opposing Kerry: 261 – 13 of Kerry’s band of brothers.
From the BBC feature article Ed posted:
“The Bush campaign will probably not try to exploit the issue directly, Mr Newman said, but will most likely look for discrepancies in John Kerry’s public statements about his Vietnam-era service to use in ads that reinforce his image as indecisive and a “flip-flopper”.”
The writer is in Washington DC and apparently hasn’t heard of the ‘Christmas in Cambodia’ story and the backpedalling that followed on that story that Kerry had been telling for years.
It must not have ‘seared’ itself in his mind.
Checking the first article again it seems that they have ‘stealth edited’ it to correct the Kelly/Kerry error. The ‘last updated’ timestamp remains the same: Last Updated: Friday, 20 August, 2004, 23:31 GMT 00:31 UK. As I have said before, I have no problem with corrections and edits. I do have a problem with them not being acknowledged.
Oh well, at least there has been enough attention drawn to the matter since the first Swift Boat Veterans for Truth press conference in May that the Beeb has finally taken note. Now that Kerry has mentioned it they have no choice, I suppose.
I’ve put a long list of links on my blog about this farce from the Beeb.
Kerry’s campaign are getting more and more shrill as they realise that the truth is starting to come out.
Why are the Beeb not registered as a 527 organisation working on behalf of Kerry?
“Poor Paula” – its all the fault of the Americans, of course. The race could have been run in the morning if it wasn’t for the demands of the US networks.
By the way, why do the BBC Olympic commentators have to reduce our expectations of the performance of our athletes by coming out with a list of excuses? I don’t notice such indulgence for the football or crickets teams. Perhaps it is because the athletes are all on the public payroll.
Anyone else notice that on the BBC website, the story on the UN’s commemoration of the end of slavery has a map showing current “hotspots” for present-day slavery, the US is listed as No. 1. Meanwhile China and North Korea aren’t even mentioned. HUH!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3589646.stm
Heard a remarkable story on World Service last night, a “report” from the future describing how pacific island nations were disappearing under the waves due to sea level rises caused by global warming. Who was at fault, well, take your best guess.. They even had a report on the nation being abandoned preparing lawsuits for compensation. A remarkable ill-conceived exercise for a “news” organization. The announcer emphasized after the piece that people shouldn’t write in (as they had already been doing) asking for the location of the endangered islands as it was all fiction; a point apparently lost on many listeners tuning in after the start of the piece. Surely a “news” organization can find some actual events to report on..
I heard a Beeb report about China’s celebration of Deng Xao Ping.
Curiously, Deng’s most notorious moment, Tiannemen Square, was not mentioned at all.
Very much a rose-tinted view of China (whose involvement in Sudan the Beeb has strangely not mentioned – the Chinese have troops guarding Sudan oil pipelines).
If you haven’t already clicked on dave t’s homepage link, do so. It’s worth the read.
The BBC article on slavery mentions problems in 53 African nations but they only highlight two on the map. Oh well, as long as they were able to slag off the U.S. again I suppose they’re happy.
I keep waiting for them to announce that Michael Moore has been appointed to their board. They certainly have taken on his style of ‘reporting’.
Meanwhile the Beeb are at it again….from chrenkoff.blogspot.com
The power of one missing word
I’m sure they don’t do it on purpose:
“US President George W Bush has praised the military record of his election rival, John Kerry, and called a halt to unofficial negative advertising.”
The President called FOR a halt on negative advertising. To write that he “called a halt” implies that negative advertising campaign was under his control and therefore it was in his power to stop it – that is, it implies the truth of the subsequent paragraph in the story:
“Mr Kerry’s campaign team has alleged Mr Bush backed ads by Republican-leaning Vietnam veterans which questioned Mr Kerry’s record for bravery in the war.”
For all those who have asked for examples of a pro Bush story on the BBC – check this out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3585296.stm
Sometimes you guys really try too hard.
Surely the word “unofficial” pretty much spells out that these ads were not under his control?
RB “examples of a pro Bush story on the BBC”
Yes, very fair.
I wonder if the US consists more of the people in the BBC article –
“everyone said was the reason they felt they could connect to President Bush was because of his straight-talking manner.”
or intellectuals like John Berger, who praises Moore in the Guardian. Berger obviously knows more about ordinary folk than Bush,
“Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it”
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1289516,00.html
RB, I wouldn’t call that “pro Bush” (except by comparison with normal BBC product). It was more or less neutral, with a smattering of moderate pro & anti comments;
“One can see how President Bush resonates so strongly in Middle America. He appears to relish this kind of campaign.”
is pretty much balanced by;
“…he was at his most impromptu, but the questions had all been set up in advance. He knew what he was going to be asked.
You hear the same stump speech again and again. The stump speech is now beginning to include attacks on John Kerry.”
However not a bad article, the sort of standard I would expect from the BBC whichever candidate they are reporting on.
Thank you, RB. That indeed is the most positive article I’ve seen the BBC write on President Bush. It’s not by any stretch a puff piece, but aside from a few zingers it’s fairly positive. As noted above most of the positive remarks are led or followed by something attenuating them. I guess some habits are hard to break.
I guess the next project would be to find a negative Kerry article. 😆
Kerry’s Vietnam service is under serious scrutiny and he has already been shown to be wrong on three counts (Cambodia, the first Purple Heart, and the running away from nil enemy fire. But the BBC persists in showing him in every story having a medal awarded.
By far the worst “smesr” was by Kerry himself, accusing the generality of Vietnam Vets of war crimes. He has never retracted that smear, and it is now being pushed back down his lying throat.
I can’t see that R4 flagship “Today” programme has featured the swiftboat saga at all. How strange.
Daily pieces about Abu Ghraib, however.
Maybe the BBC stayed clear of the “Swiftboat Saga” because it is in fact such an unreliable story that even the great man “Dubya” has publicly disassociated himself with it, even in an election year!!
The bias on this website is unbelieveable.