Monthly Archives: August 2004

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.

this picture on the BBC site (or on The World’s Rudest Home Videos). But I wonder if this is what the Beeb meant by ‘standing ovation’ for John Kerry? Here’s the accompanying caption:

War veterans Jere Hill, middle, from Warham, Mass., and Robert Gibson, right, from Lexington, Ky., stand with their backs turned during Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news – web sites)’s speech at the 105th Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2004. Man in foreground is unidentified. Kerry received a polite if not overwhelmingly positive reaction from the VFW. But there was a clear divide, with scores of veterans sittings with their arms folded while others clapped. (AP Photo/David Kohl)

Hat Tip: The Kerry Spot and B-BBC commenter PJF.

UPDATE: Interestingly, I just came across this as well. It doesn’t quite fit the BBC version of the event.

CAN’T BUY ME LOVE

Sen. John Kerry is said by several advance staffers to have been visibly upset at the reception he received at the VFW convention on Wednesday in Cincinnati. “He was upset after the speech, visibly upset when he was out of public view,” says a Kerry adviser, confirming the story.Kerry was greeted by polite applause in the large auditorium, with many VFW members sitting with their arms crossed and not applauding at all. A few VFW members stood in the rear of the room with their backs turned to the dais.

Kerry appeared thrown by the reception, giving a flat, sometimes-meandering speech that was intended to be a strong rebuttal of President Bush’s announced troop pullback in Europe and Korea. Two things apparently changed Kerry’s aggressive stance. First, before going onstage, Kerry was informed that NATO officials in Brussels had essentially backed the Bush proposal as being sound and in line with NATO’s own troop deployment plans. Second, according to an advance staffer, the candidate had been told that he would be received at the very least warmly, based on feedback the campaign had received from VFW officials.

“He’s not used to not getting a warm reception,” says the advance staffer. “He can handle the Bush hooligans we get, but when he’s told he’ll be greeted well, he expects that to be the case.” Apparently Terry Kerry’s money can’t buy the candidate that kind of love.

with a scathing denunciation of the way Jo Brand of course made political jokes about Bush and Howard but not about Kerry or Blair in The World’s Rudest Home Videos. Then I realised (a) it would involve admitting that I had watched The World’s Rudest Home Videos and (b) it’s on ITV. Drat. I shall retire for a week to consider my wicked ways.

:

Yesterday, there was a remarkable example of biased BBC reporting relating to the Hugo Chavez referendum.

BBC World Service’s radio program on August 15th reported correctly that Chavez had likely won the referendum. They followed with commentary about how this result would undoubtedly not please Washington. To educate their audience about why Chavez might be unpopular with the Bush administration, did they turn to a member of the administration itself to articluate its view of Chavez? No. Did they turn to someone from outside the administration who might sympathize with Chavez’s opponents and be in a good position to provide a defense of Washington’s perspective? No. Did they reach out to a neutral third-party academic who could illuminate the tension between Chavez and the Bush administration in a vigorously neutral way ? No. Instead, they turned to the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, an economically leftist non-profit, to give its view of Washington’s view of Chavez. Mark Weisbrot, a consistant backer of Chavez in Op-Eds and radio programs, provided the following quote:

“They don’t like him because he’s a populist, because he’s also against some of the things they want for Latin America, like the Free Trade Area of the Americas, because of the oil price question, and because of his relationship with Cuba,” said Mr Weisbrot. “They add all these things up and feel they shouldn’t have to tolerate such a government even if he’s won seven elections in the last five years.” – link

In the first sentence, Weisbrot purports that Washington’s opposition is based purely on Chavez’s populism, free-trade reluctance, something vague about oil, and the fact that he has a “relationship” with Cuba. Since populism, protectionism, and normal relations with Cuba have been commonplace among Latin American governments for the last few decades, (including with U.S. allied regimes) this explanation for Chavaz’s status as a semi-rogue is unconvincing. Absent is anything about the Chavez’s authoritarian tendencies and the possibility of the end of Venezuelan democracy – such as feared in this Human Rights Watch Story.

Absent also is any mention of Chavez’s support for other dictatorships such as Fidel’s Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq, and the mullah’s Iran and his dream of organizing and rallying opponents of the United States and the ideological opponents of liberalism. Absent finally is anything about reports that Chavez has been actively aiding Al Qaeda financially.

In the second sentence, dripping with rancor, Weisbrot slanderously implies that the United States feels no obligation whatsover to tolerate popularly elected democracies if it has policy difference with that regime.

Some Have Remarked on this piece of trash masquerading as a feature on BBConline.

Little surprise then that the centrepiece of that article is very jaded indeed. I found the gist of it described at this site, posted on July 1st. Oh, and Fayetteville, N.C., is a town with five cinemas, and 60,000 inhabitants. Only one of the cinemas showed Fahrenheit 9/11.

Even a journalist as decidedly left-of-centre as Nick Cohen can write matter-of-factly of the BBC’s liberal bias:

The liberal media treat al-Qaradawi’s views with tact and circumspection. BBC News Online barely mentions them, and instead describes al-Qaradawi as an “articulate preacher and a good communicator”.

“I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared–seared–in me.”

But he doesn’t say it any more.

This official retraction, of a serious claim that had been made repeatedly and that was part of the candidate’s own explanation of his why he holds the views he does, ought to be news. At 11.30pm I couldn’t find it on the BBC website.

More can be read about the “Bush AWOL” story here (4 February), here (10 February), here (14 February), here (also 14 February), here (27 April), here (31 May), here (10 July), and here (24 July).

The February cluster of stories are evolving versions of the same basic framework. But that’s the point, isn’t it? The BBC was on top of every twist and turn of that story.

Yup. Scott Burgess’s title pretty well states the case.

I do not subscribe to the argument that the BBC should resemble the nation as a whole. The nation as a whole is too varied, fickle, inconsistent and unclassifiable for that to work. The two issues he picks as examples of “broad liberalism”, support for the death penalty and support for not persecuting homosexuals, are, in their very different degrees of public acceptance, a vignette of why his argument smacks of trying to sell a package deal to a customer who wants to buy goods separately.

Humprhys himself would be horrified if he were asked to represent the views of a majority of the nation on asylum seekers, say. Gypsies – don’t even think about it.

ADDED LATER: Thinking further, I could go with the argument that the BBC should generally represent a highest common factor of British values (acknowledging that the HCF is a pretty low number!) Obviously I’m talking about the BBC’s collective persona here, not about individual opinion honestly labelled as such. Yet I also agree with commenter “billg”, that there are times when the BBC should rise above popular opinion – and I’m fully aware how dangerous that sentence is. Finding a definition that allows for both these views is beyond me at the moment. Yet I suspect that the right course is hard to define but fairly plain to see.

Just another day at BBC radio.

…if not the story. As Natalie, Ed, Andrew and B-BBC commenters have noticed, bias by omission is an ingrained habit in Beebdom. For example, in this story on Bush and McCain, the BBC manages omit a developing story whilst misrepresenting the Republican party.

He [John McCain] called a Republican campaign ad criticising Mr Kerry’s military service “dishonest and dishonourable” and urged the White House to condemn it.

To begin with, the ad in question was neither produced nor funded by the Republican party but by a group of Vietnam War Swift Boat Veterans who have just published a book rebutting key aspects of John Kerry’s version of his Vietnam experience. Though McCain seems to have rejected their version of events out of hand, a careful examination of the Swift Boat Vets’ account (registration required) seems far from a simple bashing of Kerry. The BBC remains studiously uncurious about this story. Recall that there was plenty of coverage of George Bush’s military records, even to the recent mention of the Bush National Guard records mysteriously being ‘found’, as the BBC put it. No, if the story diverges too far from the script, the Beeb simply omits the unpleasant facts and bears down on earthshaking issues involving Donald Duck or Koko.

Hat Tips: Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, and Power Line.