Whilst reading this Guardian story (“Republicans bring out the knives”, indeed) that mysteriously appeared on BBC News Online I noticed the Related Internet Links list reads:
Who or what is Counter Convention I wondered? A quick look later, and lo, it’s a website set up by a ‘collective’ of ‘protestors’ and ‘activists’ who are ‘dedicated to helping New York City’s diverse social justice movement oppose the Republican National Committee’s Presidential Nominating Convention’ on which ‘People of color, LGBTQ, women, poor people, immigrants, and their allies are encouraged to list counter convention organizing and events’. Right on!
But why is the collective’s website listed there? A quick Google later and it turns out that Counter Convention is listed all over (52 pages) the BBC’s coverage of the Republican Convention. How subtle.
Studying a selection of pages covering July’s Democrat Convention I found, in the main, that they linked to Kerry, Bush and sometimes something else directly relevant to the story at hand – e.g. Boston Police, Barack Obama, etc. – but little, if anything, to third-party opponents.
One page, Democratic convention: First day in quotes, links to International ANSWER – Act Now to Stop War & End Racism. Google shows forty-five News Online pages contain the term ‘international answer’.
And who are International ANSWER? Unsurprisingly, it turns out, according to an article in LA Weekly (and many others) that they are a front for the World Workers Party – an offshoot of our old friends the SWP (a schism dating back to the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, apparently).
None of this is a huge surprise to seasoned News Online watchers – leftie groups are often favoured with links, more so than seems to be the case with groups that aren’t so right on. What is shocking is that the leftie sympathisers at News Online who indulge in such petty favouritism day in and day out think that it’s acceptable. It’s not. They’re a bit like young children – they know they shouldn’t do it, they know Mum and Dad (the telly-taxpayers) are watching, and yet they strain so much to mutter the last word, to do what they know is right, to go to the limit of what they can get away with, that they just can’t help themselves.
Any one of these instances of favouritism could, of course, be ignored – but a long term pattern of small digs, sly nuances, subtle references and selective omissions reveals an awful lot about the motivations of those who compile News Online.
Note: In consideration of feedback I have deleted the original paragraph six – it compared occurrences of ‘Kerry & MoveOn’ vs. ‘swift boat’. This comparison was erroneous and shouldn’t have been included. It was irrelevant to the points – that: 1) News Online have listed a leftie protest group on many stories about the RNC (a lot of free publicity on pages that aren’t even about protests); 2) International ANSWER, linked from many News Online stories, is a front for hard-left anti-democratic Marxists. The original paragraph six was online from ~4.00am to ~11.45am UK time.
Erm, that looks like a pretty balanced list of links to me. Convention, counterconvention. Bush, Kerry. Counterconvention.org covers quite a wide spectrum of protest groups who are out there, y’know. As for “who or what”, it’s pretty well known actually – it’s just that it’s well-known (unsurprisingly) within liberal circles. No doubt there are plenty of people in there who are radically leftist, and more than a few clueless idiots who just love a good whinge about whatever, but the point here is that the Counterconvention alliance is a democratic (with a small “d”) response to various aspects of the Bush administration’s ideology. What’s wrong with that?
Please, using Google search results to back up claims of bias is stupid.
You claim searching for Kerry and “MoveOn” returns 148 hits whereas “swift boat” returns only 58. For a start a better comparison would have been simply “MoveOn” versus “swift boat”, i.e. no Kerry? The result then is that “swift boat” wins 58 to 48.
But if you had bothered to check the results in your original search you would have seen that the figure returned is meaningless (stories from 1998 feature on the first page of results)
Perhaps you could correct this “fact”, with of course a note pointing out the innacuracy. We wouldn’t want any stealth editing.
Thank you for your feedback PD – I have removed the paragraph in question and have annotated the article accordingly (unlike the BBC, we are honest on occasions when things need to be changed).
superglaze – Counter Convention has been linked to from pages that aren’t about and don’t mention protests. News Online’s approach to links is normally quite minimalist. It’s free publicity for fellow-travellers. Similar operations from a non-left perspective would not be favoured in this way to this extent. Simple as that. Likewise, International ANSWER is a front for political extremists* and should not be prominent on so many News Online pages.
* although given that at least one RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) supporter is at home writing for News Online one wonders at their definition of politically extreme.
Andrew
What would you suggest as a counterpoint to the convention’s website then? Is it wrong that the site specifically co-ordinating opposition to said convention be listed alongside the convention website as balance?
I agree that similar balance should be shown with Democratic convention coverage, but I cannot think of an equivalently sized and organised anti-Democratic-convention alliance (let me know if you find one, as I’d like to read that) for the beeb to list!
superglaze
Did the Dem convention coverage link to Bush’s site in the same way the Rep coverage linked to Kerry’s? That’s got to be the key bias test – as superglaze said, there isn’t a Republican counterconvention umbrella group (the Swifties hardly count…)
OFF Topic
Coverage of the Russian school terror by R5Live
Studio guests soon complained of chaos, as if the incident should have been as orchestrated as the procession of a departing DG.
Then it all became the government’s fault. Nice to know that “government’s fault” is the international stance of the BBC.
A man brought in to talk about conflict resolution turned out to be a spokesman for Chechnen independence.
To seek a wider view we got reports from Russian based journalists – of the Guardian & Independent (who else!). They majored on Russian incompetence & brutality.
The word terrorist did not pass the lips of any of the above.
E-mails from Russians were then read. All except one thought that the government had botched it. The only one dissenting Russian, being the only one to have his/her location revealed, had e-mailed from Jerusalem.
John B.- I think it’s frankly amazing that the BBC links to the Counter Convention in the light of the 527 controversy. It’s not easy to get a link on the BBC- most articles have just one or two if you’re lucky. I don’t think the Swift Vets have had one.
However I know the BBC loves giving a helping hand to protesters so it doesn’t surprise me- I just find it pathetic they are so in step with the lunatic fringe.
They’re not in step with all of the lunatic fringe, ed.
Using the BBC’s search engine, I checked the online stories this year on the BNP. In all, 63 stories relating to the BNP had links to non-BBC sites. 23 of those stories linked to the BNP website.
That might seem a reasonable number, but then you have to remember that there were major elections this year. All the stories with links to the BNP were between May 2nd and June 11th. 16 of the 23 links to the BNP were part of special tables that contained links to all the parties. So, in 2004, only 7 BNP stories had a specifically placed link to the party. There were no links before or after the election campaign period. A random sample throughout 2003 stories turned up no links.
The BNP is a legal political party that (sadly) gets such a big share of the vote that it is entitled to party political broadcast time. The BBC’s Charter obliges it to represent all sectors of society. The BBC deliberately short changes the BNP.
.
Update/correction.
Searching for another subject revealed a story featuring the BNP that was not discovered by the BBC search engine using ‘BNP’. And this story, from last Friday, does contain a link to the BNP. I’ve no idea if there are other BNP stories hidden by the BBC search engine.
My comment above is still correct in the context it was made, but I feel obliged to mention the story containing the link; and that there may be others (and others without!).
.
Ed – sorry to break it to you, but here’s some examples of the beeb linking to / helping that lunatic fringe known as the swiftboat vets:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3599216.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3595388.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3587750.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3587582.stm
john b – I just checked out the coverage of the dem convention – fair point there.
The Russian troops had no choice but to act; kids were being shot at.
What are they supposed to do?
Sit and watch children being shot?
I think the crowds should have been kept away, certainly, but that’s difficult to do when your priority is to safe as many children as possible.
An interesting thing is that the school is in a Christian region of Russia.
10 Arabs. Alot of dead Christians.
The Muslims will be happy with that.
Hey Superglaze- feel free. After all, the Swifties were the topic covered by the articles so they ought to be linked.
I think it’s unfair though in this case. The stories have nothing to do with the Counter Convention other than by the self-proclaimed interest of the group- which the BBC are accepting on face value apparently. I think it’s a well chosen title that’s garnered the website unjustifiable attention.
James Naughtie is being paid to cover the Rep Convention in New York, no doubt with a team of BBC researchers. Budget of how many tens of thousands this week in NYC ?
Yet this morning he described the Swift Boat Vets as spending large amounts of money on their ads. Hey, that is the story completely upside down. The Swiftees had virtually no money to spend, compared with the tens of millions spent by Dem 527s, but their message had enormous resonance.
Trust the Today programme to skew the story. If it ain’t bias, is is downright ignorance of the recent US political scene. Either way – why should we be forced to pay for their jollies in the Big Apple ?
superglaze,
I thnk that referring to Swiftbooat Vets as “lunatic fringe” is unfair and indicates a severe bias. These men are decorated heroes and well established citizens in their own communities. Whether you agree with them or not they are hardly “lunatic fringe”.
StinKerr – it was a joke, theoretically ironic, given ed’s employment of the phrase in reference to what the BBC is “in step with”. (Which, you could argue, might even indicate “a severe bias”… who knows.) The Swifties are hardly lunatics but hey, aren’t they discredited these days?
Sorry, superglaze, I didn’t catch the joke/irony. Perhaps I should pay more attention. Maybe the use of ‘sneer quotes’ would have clued me in, I dunno.
I know that some are trying to discredit the Swiftees. I think that’s due to them being unable to attack the message so they attack the messenger.
Hey, I don’t know the veterans personally and I’m genuinely sure they’re good men. The particular issue I have with them is their proven ties to the Republicans, and the way Bush got to play good cop by belatedly voicing disapproval. It just all seems rather hokey to me.
BBC News24 – Tim Sebastian, “Hard Talk”
Interview with Iraqi ambassador.
We know Sebastian considers himself a toughy & he will ask hard questions.
But the line of questioning is biased – life was better under Saddam, the current government is illegitimate.
How can the BBC, as a tax funded body, justify this?
They don’t have a counterbalance to Sebastian’s views. So shouldn’t Sebastian also ask hard questions that recognise that Sadr etc are anti-democratic & therefore have even less legitimacy that the interim government?
Look a little further, superglaze. I believe that Bush has been complaining about the 527 groups for a while. I think they filed a complaint with the FEC in March. On the other hand it has only been since the Swiftees started their campaign that the Dems are screaming “foul”.
Their advocates in the guise of moveon.org, ACT, and others have been bashing Bush for more than a year now to deafening silence from the Dems.
As to connections, you overlook the relationships between the anti-Bush 527 organizations and the Kerry campaign. I believe they have lawyers/advisors in common (which was the “connection” that was pointed to concerning the Bush campaign and the Swiftees) as well as actually exchanging personnel between organizations: One of the MoveOn people went to the Kerry campaign as IT adviser and somebody from the Kerry campaign went to work with ACT, if I recall correctly. I suppose I could search out names, but I’m lazy today.
Aaah, the world of online news.
Check out my story on Russia and the Chechen rebels that I wrote Thursday on my blog.
Tom
Much of the BBC coverage of the atrocity in Russia has tended to blame the Russian security forces. But this was a deliberate murderous attack by Muslim radicals – many from outside the region.
Why does the BBC pussyfoot around the root problem – Islamofascism ? The debate should not be about the Russians, it should be about how a perverted religious cult can spawn atrocities all around the world.
Islamic atrocity –
JiL – YOu could have been forgiven for thinking the attack on the school was an attack by “nationalists” or “rebels” if you’d relied on early coverage from teh BBC. People would have had no clue as to their religious background or motivations.
Now it seems even the Arab media are admitting a connection between Islam and this terrorist super-outrage.
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
A few more 9-11s like this and there will emerge a global consensus on the menace that Islam represents to non-Muslims across the planet.
David
Following on from what David F. said, there’s an interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph, ‘Innocent religion is now a message of hate’, by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al- Arabiya news channel, originally printed the day before in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.
The pictures on the front of the Sunday Times are very moving – a young girl in underwear and smart sandals (first day of term and all that) is blown out of a window, gets up, struggles back in, and is then, presumably, engulfed in the fire that followed not long after. I imagine most youngsters in that situation would do that – either to get back to a parent or just through simple disorientation. The whole business is just so tragic.
At the BBC it’s still ‘siege’ rather than massacre, ‘militants’ rather than terrorists and ‘separatists’and ‘rebels’ rather than Islamic-revolutionaries. Sha
And there will be people like THFC getting squeamish about the use of the word “terrorist”, or trying to drag in extraneous issues such as Iraq or Palestine. Some of these folks carry on trying to defend or reason away the indefensible way past the point of all decency.
I have read that the “millitants” raped little girls during the siege.
“Freedom fighters” my arse.
Muslims killing Christians in Sudan
Muslims killing Christians in Russia
Muslims killing Nepalese Buddhists
Muslims killing Jews and inciting people to kill them
Can you see a pattern hear?
If (when) this happens in the UK, I wonder if the BBC will call the terrorists “millitants” and “insurgents”…I dare them to!
The incident in Russia was a REAL hostage crisis, unlike the pantomime stunt which has so excercised the French.
When is THFC going to concede that there were Muslim terrorists from outside the region involved in the pre-pmeditated Breslan atrocities ?
Or will he still try to argue that it was all done by Chechnyans, and that it was all the Russians’ fault anyway ? Try telling that to the bereaved relatives in Breslan.
If and when it’s proved.
I haven’t argued any of the points you attribute to me above – merely that we don’t know exactly what happened as yet.
Zevilyn – I find it interesting that you dismiss the French journalist situation as a pantomime. I think that the response of the French Muslim community blows holes in some of the arguments I’ve read here. By choosing respect for and allegiance to their countrymen over a more conservative response on the hijab-in-schools issue, they have shown great patriotism. So, where is “the menace that Islam represents to non-Muslims across the planet” (David F) now?
THFC
You continue to dispute what even Muslim leaders and commentators have conceded. No-one is now seriously claiming that the atrocity did not include people from outside the region – except people like you.
There are none so blind as those that won’t see.
JiL – “The official claim that international terrorism is behind the Beslan tragedy is a trick designed to divert responsibility away from the Kremlin,” liberal politician Boris Nemtsov said.
That’s from ITN. Similarly, you won’t find Sky or anybody claiming that there were Arab terrorists at Beslan, except from the dodgy, most-likely-coerced testimony of Nur-Pashi Kulayev.
You are jumping to conclusions about the guy being coerced.
There is plenty of info around about the links between Chechyan extremists and the people who fought in Afghanistan, linking them with Al Q, from the top down.
The politician you quote is by definition critical of Putin. To ascribe responsibility to Russia rather than the evil people who set out to kill all those children and their parents is a typical liberal stance these days.
Who’s saying Russia is to blame? I’m certainly not. But do you honestly think that Putin’s policy of refusing to speak to even moderate Chechen leaders for the last five years has helped matters?There’s a history to all this and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
That said, let’s be clear here – terrorists were responsible for Beslan and there is no excuse, whatever their cause or whatever the history. Those who are responsible (and NOT the civilians of Chechnya or Ingushetia or wherever) deserve whatever’s coming to them.
Putin flatly denies that he is trying to avoid any political settlement for Chechnya. And he seems justifiably peeved at people like superglaze or the EU preaching at him. Try preaching at the Chechnyan side for a change, or at the Islamofascists – at the culprits for this atrocity. The Muslim Mufti of Chechnya has condemned them, has not condemned the Russians.
John, the fact that you continually refer to Chechens as Chechnyans suggests you have an extremely limited knowledge of this particular conflict, hence your need to automatically lump it in with the ‘Islamofacism’ which you feel more comfortable with.
Nobody is to blame for this particular atrocity other than the murderers, however in looking for possible solutions it is necessary to consider the wider issues such as the tens of thousands of Chechen kids killed (murdered?) by Russians soldiers over the past few years. It might seem ‘sick’ to look beyond the immediate horror but it we can’t do it on obscure web sites 10,000 miles away who can?
Clearly there are both those with legitimate grievances and ‘Islamofacists’ on the Chechen side of the conflict. Deal with the legitimate grievances and you’ve flushed out the nutters. Trample them all into the dirt and you breed national grievances which will inevitably create periodic mayhem for ever.
It’s impossible from your posts to work out what you see as the correct response, other than sitting in your house fulminating over the evil that lurks everywhere.
What should we do? Please tell us!
Hello Anonymous – who is your last post directed to, and who are the ‘we’ that you refer to? You’re not someone from News Online are you?