According to one of Tim Blair’s readers, Richard Compton, the caption to the picture of Condoleezza Rice on this BBC piece about her appointment as Bush’s secretary of state has been changed.
It originally read “His master’s voice.”
If you scroll down the post there is another useful comment on the BBC article from “Bill”:
Wow, that Beeb piece is off the wall… “the influence of the State Department which tends to take a longer term view of world affairs… [than the president]”
Cause Islamicism and tyranny always just fix themselves if we’re nice to them… the “long-term” view. In fact Theo van Gogh was just saying the other day… oh, wait. No. No, he wasn’t saying anything.
“The State Department has lost power over the past 30 years as influence has moved to the White House.” Errrrrummmmmm…. yah. Last I checked it was and extension of the Whitehouse, not a separate branch of government…
Good to know they’re incompetant as well as biased.
And what a lovely, flattering photo of the pair! Glad to see the BBC dropped their usual trick of choosing a photo taken from an unflattering angle, maybe with Bush looking on from above and behind to convey to the reader ‘these are sinister people’ … erm … hang on …
Here we have a correspondent attempting to take a journey by taxi around the Gaza Strip:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4021095.stm#map
The usual slant is in place (no mention that Israeli roadblocks exist because of terrorism etc) but its interesting also to note that
“A brand new banner hangs in Nuseirat in which the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are renamed the Martyr Abu Ammar Brigades, in honour of Arafat.”
That’s odd, I’d heard from a number of sources that the ‘activists’ are
now called the ‘Yasser Arafet Martyrs Brigades’. This could well be the BBC’s way of getting out of the embarrasment of stating Arafat’s name when more Jewish children get in the way of a bomb.
Yes, the State Department is part of the Executive Department, i.e., they all work for the President.
Yes, people in the State Department tend to focus on diplomatic solutions to problems. That’s their job: they’re diplomats.
All Presidents set the course of their own foreign policy. State’s job is to carry out that policy.
The BBC is blowing smoke. It may come as a surprise to them that the Secretary of State has no power over personnel decisions of (career) foreign service staff at the Dept. of State. Foggy Bottom is notorious for being a world unto itself. The class system is alive and well in its marbled corridors. Rice and Bolton will have their hands full.
Do you seriously think the caption was intended to be racist?
Condi is generally perceived as far less independent than Powell, and to follow Bush’s line on more or less everything. There’s room for disagreement on whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but little room for disagreement on whether or not it’s the case.
It’s far more likely that the subeditor thought the caption sounded good, then they changed it after receiving emails of complaint from people who misinterpreted it as malicious…
Not as incompetent as your spelling Rob.
Whilst Bush’s unfortunate resemblence to a chimpanzee in no way hinders his ability to do his job, it does make it extremely hard to come up with flattering pictures. You might as well criticise the BBC for making Prescott look fat.
…or could another way of looking at it be that pictures are sometimes selected because they’re different to the usual boring head & shoulders mug shot? Or because they illustrate the point an article is trying to make (whether you agree/ disagree with the truthfulness of that point or think it a good/ bad thing)? But no, that would be madness, because of course the sub editor just sat there and thought “how can I make Bush look like an idiot”.
Would they have printed such a caption for a black person who was serving a liberal Democrat? I doubt it. The Beeb is just following the US lib-left press on demonizing “uppity” blacks who no longer inhabit the Democratic plantation. It’s okay for leftists to indulge in all kinds of racist rhetoric against conservatives of color, because everyone knows that “they” are on the “correct” side.
Colin Powell was called a “House N*gger” and worse by leftists.
Here’s a nice one from the US Press depicting Ms. Rice as the slave “Prissy” from Gone With the Wind:
http://mhking.mu.nu/archives/049887.php
Someone who knows
“…or could another way of looking at it be that pictures are sometimes selected because they’re different to the usual boring head & shoulders mug shot?”
It must surely then be an amazing coincidence that such shots are selected on such a regular basis when the story involves Bush. This has all been covered here before, most recently during the US election. You’ll have to look it up for yourself, I can’t be bothered.
Susan
Thanks for that, very enlightening.
Today in britain a thug was found guilty of the racist murder of a teenager. Given the BBCs extensive coverage of ‘race’ issues and ‘racism’ , you’d have thought that it would be a prominent item on the national news.
Why wasn’t it???
I suspect that most people will conclude the reason is that the victim was white (Kriss Donald, a schoolboy who was repeatedly stabbed, doused in petrol and set alight.) and the racist murderer asian(Daanish Zahid, 20).Time the BBC stops treating ‘racism’ as a one way street
Story–> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4023795.stm
jst. it wasn’t featured because there were other news stories on that day. It’s covered in full on the bbc site.
http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=newsukfs&tab=news&q=Kriss+Donald&go.x=44&go.y=8&go=go
Blaming prejudice when stories don’t get leads makes you look silly.
SteveJones,
There were other news stories on that day – indeed, as any day.
Yesterday (the same day) there were stories like this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3198264.stm
Covering the racist murder of an asian by a white – making the headlines across the BBC.
Sure, editorial decisions about news priorities have to be made, but they still too often reflect a left-liberal agenda.
“It’s covered in full on the bbc site.”
really???? Big deal. But no mention on the main TV news broadcasts though -I wonder why that could be ?
The BBC may well be downplaying the Kriss Donald story for “left-liberal” reasons but it’s just as likely that it’s because the murder took place in Scotland. The BBC coverage is on its Scottish page rather than the UK one. That’s normal for stories which are of UK significance but which occur north of the border. Equally, the Beeb constantly presents England-only items on the UK news as if they apply to the whole country. The British (sic) Broadcasting Corporation is the SNP’s best recruiting agent.
I agree there’s a metropolitan bias + anything happening outside the M25 is less likley to be reported than trivia in London , but the BBC made a big story of a turkish ‘asylum seeker’ being stabbed in Glasgow when it was assumed it was a ‘racist ‘ killing .
Also ,it seems highly unlikley that a verdict involving a child murder as shocking as this one would be totally ignored , so the question remains , why was it in this case?
Living up here I can confirm that the murder of Kriss Donald and the resulting court case were reported by BBC Scotland. NB This is the regional news and not the national network. It appears that for a race-related crime to get on the national network, it has to involve white-on-black. Anything will do; even ill-mannered jeering of a black footballer will be racist enough but murder of a white boy is not PC hence local news only I’m afraid.
Condoleeza Rice has been gaining on Rudi Giuliani in the last few weeks. Some Conservative pundits are backing her to win the Republican nomination for President in 08.
She is the perfect candidate. Her backround, her intellect, her oratory skills, her looks, her faith, her social conservatism, her hawkish foriegn policy etc etc etc.
I think that the European media are going to have an extremely hard time villifying her should she run (as the usually do with Republican candidates)
If Rudi runs then they’ll probably propagate that he’s a racist (over the Amadou Diallo incident) and that ‘some in america accuse the republicans of exploiting 9-11 by nominating the former mayor of new york’.
The dilemma which the leftist media will find themselves in if Condoleeza Rice wins the Republican nomination causes me some delight. They might find it difficult to attack a black woman who will be attracting millions of votes from ‘racist rednecks’ – plus it would also crack the lock that the Dems have on the black vote. Don King – a Bush supporter – said that blacks should think about their vote rather than being sheep taken to a dip. This would start them thinking.