in which he is quoted – Stop castrating the language, by Nick Cohen, continuing the theme that:
A misguided obsession with objective reporting is undermining the BBC’s credibility as a news organisation.
Cohen makes a number of excellent points, for example: “the relativist wisdom that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ is not as secure as the saloon-bar sages and BBC managers maintain” and “At the BBC and elsewhere, the pressure of events has pushed neutrality into euphemism and euphemism to the edge of outright falsehood. And nowhere more so than in the case of that pretty circumlocution – ‘insurgent'”.
Speaking about Iraq and the reporting thereof, Cohen says:
In theory, it would be clear to everyone that a struggle between fascism and democracy is underway, not a fight against ‘insurgents’. But in practice, this is Iraq which was invaded by the woefully unprepared George W Bush. Solidarity with the victims of fascism was suspended as preparations for war began, which was understandable. But, with the honourable exception of the trade union movement, the indifference has continued, which is scandalous.
In these murky circumstances, filled with self-deceit and double standards, the corruption of language is inevitable. The statement that: ‘Insurgents killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday’ is entirely different from the statement that: ‘Al-Qaeda and the Baathists killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday.’ The latter at least allows those members of the audience who want ‘to make their own assessment about who is doing what to whom’ to find out what al-Qaeda and the Baath party believe in and whether decent people should be on the side of the victims or the perpetrators.
The former is castrated language which has been emptied of precise meaning. It gives the vague impression that what we’re up against is the armed wing of Liberal Democrats: a regrettably violent force which, none the less, has understandable demands that may be met.
Cohen’s point about the use of language that discourages viewers from finding out more for themselves, ‘about who is doing what to whom’, is an especially valid criticism of a wide range of BBC News output. Pertinent details and relevant background information are so often ignored or fudged in news reports, at best, to keep things simple for the ‘dumb’ viewers – who are more sensible and intelligent than they are given credit for – or, at worst, to present a particular world view in such a way that viewers may not even realise there is more to the story than meets the eye.
They think we’re so dumb that when they are telling us about a rail strike, they show us a 10 second film of a train. When they tell us of beer going up in price, it’s a 10 second film of a man at a bar having a pint. Road tolls? A 10 second clip of some cars going along a road. Years ago BBC TV news was 10 minutes long. Now it is 30 minutes when nothing is happening, longer if something newsworthy has actually occurred. Bring back the testcard with the girl and the clown toy. It was cheaper and better qulity than the programmes that have replaced it.
Want to hear John Reid savaging the anti-war platitudes of James Naughtie? Then go to:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/index.shtml
and listen at around 7.30.
Music to the ears, particularly the noise of Naughtie spluttering with indignation and disbelief that anyone would come on Radio 4’s flagship programme and challenge the BBC world view.
Eamonn
That was as clear an example as you could find of the Today programme grinding on with its own agenda, harping on about what happened 2 years ago to try to rewrite history and prove that the Iraq war was wrong.
I wish John Reid had slapped him with “But the BBC is still in denial about using the word terrorism, either for suicide bombings against civilians, either in London or in Iraq”
It is good that John Reid’s key message is now in the news headlines.
Eamonn
Many thanks, I enjoyed the broadcast immensely.
Author of report: “AQ exploited the conflict to the maximum extent..AQ has used the invasion as a propaganda weapon to recruit more people…Britain and its allies should stay in Iraq to support democracy”
….Lots of talk….
John Reid: …”the fact that we are discussing this is an indication (of how succesfull AQ have been in using these events as propaganda tools)
BBC bloke (splutter)…”We can be accused of many things, but acting as a propaganda tool for AQ…”
Perhaps John Reid hit a raw nerve?
Certainly a fine display of conviction politics from Dr Reid. The problem is that I can well imagine him speaking with equal conviction in the opposing case if he was currently Shadow Defence Secretary.
Let’s not forget many Labour MP’s dubious record on the Falklands War and the IRA campaign.
Radio 5 live phone-in this morning. The “balanced” panel to comment on the “root causes” of the London bombings include Rima something from Chatham House (anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Israel etc) and a guy from Spiked Online (antiwar, but reasonably sensible). So where is the balance?
Then we have the phone-in with all the usual tropes:-
The bombs in London were due to
Bush
Iraq
Blair
Sharon
Israel
Oil
Do I detect an echo-chamber in the BBC? Where are the silent majority who are glad we got rid of Saddam? presumably silent, which suits the BBC.
…and of course there’ll be no mention of the extreme revolutionary left connections of the spiked-online team.
John Reid savaging the anti-war platitudes of James Naughtie
I wish New Labour would realise how bad John Reid is.
As soon as I heard about the new Chatham House report last night, I KNEW the BBC would just lap it up. Chathm House is n opinion shop and its opinions are very suspect, as are some of its people. But the BBC trots them out as “independent” a stick to beat the Iraq war policy.
Irshad Manji is on 5Live now and dumb Victoria Derbyshire is SHOCKED by what she is saying. As if it was new.
Thye BBC is HOPELESSLY AMATEUR as well as biased.
Where are the silent majority
They have fallen silent since they know that the BBC will prevent their views being heard. Our experience of (D)HYS extends to all broadcast of audience feedback.
Chathm House is n opinion shop and its opinions are very suspect
Like that well balanced fellow, Dan Plesch, who was at Chatham House whilst used as the BBC’s independent expert during the invasion of Iraq.
The BBC seem to have relaxed their prohibition on use of the T word – at least in relation to the London bombs. The word terrorism has been used in stories and headings on the BBC website, and in news broadcasts. Used as BBC text, not just in quotations from someone else’s statement.
So – surreptitiously the BBC has bcked down in the face of criticism here and worldwide. They have been roundly mocked and they have have flinched and buckled.
But they still refuse to use the T word in the context of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks in Iraq or Turkey or Israel or Thailand or wherever. Not just on the World Service but also in our domestic broadcasting and on their enormous website.
And this splitting of hairs, this ridiculous exercise in semantics, this sheer moral equivocation, sums up the hypocrisy and cowardice at the heart of the BBC “to a T”.
Surprisingly, the ‘Today’ website have the clip as one of their 3 choices of the day. It is a ‘must’ hear for B-BBC readers.
In the ‘new labour attack-dog’ (Paxo’s choice description) John Reid shows how to reduce Naughtie to a spluttering, “well, er, um” wreck.
Reid should be taken out for a walk to Beeb House on more mornings, although I doubt he’ll be invited back on Today very soon.
Others above have commented on Reid’s piercing comment that Al-Beeb’s constant whining and moaning about how we were “Wrong to go to war with Iraq” is being used by the terrorist recruiters as propaganda material. A sharp point well made by Reid. Handling Naughties retord “can’t accuse us of supporting terrorists”, Reid replied with “No, but what I’m saying is that the terrorists will use this material as propaganda in support of their aims, thats a fact”. Subtle distinction but effective and not one Naughtie was able to bat away.
Feeling brave, Naughtie thought he would pursue a ‘Gilligan-style’ un-named source(s) approach to back up his allegation that the war in Iraq was wrong. “I have spoken to many people in the defence department whos view is that the war on Iraq was wrong.” ‘Hutton’ anyone? Has Naughtie taken the BBC online College of Journalism post-Hutton quiz (sorry ‘exam’) yet?
Transcript:
Defence Secretary Dr John Reid reacts to a report released today which claims that Britain’s involvement in Iraq has made us a target for terroist attack.
9:14 mins into the interview.
Naughtie: “Can you put your hand on your heart and say that everyone in a senior position in your department believes that the Americans handled the situation in Iraq after the invasion very well? Because you say to me “who do you ask about these things?” I’ll tell you, I’ve asked some people in your department who can’t talk publicly, and I know what they think and it’s rather different to you, to what you’ve just said.”
Reid: “Well, I don’t know anybody in my department who thinks that our intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was wrong Jim, but I’ve no doubt if you do, you will publish their names.”
Naughtie: “No, I won’t.”
Reid: “Ah well, in that case we’re left with a hypothesis that can’t be tested, like so much journalism which is based on anonymous sources which is un-named but allows you to make any form of assertion without presenting any evidence whatsoever.
Naughtie: “Well…”
Reid: “I am putting to you what I believe is the evidence of history. I am putting to you that, as far as the threat from Al-Qaeda is concerned, they have a very clear ideology, it is not a clash of civilisations, it is the intent to impose their will, on arab muslims as well as westeners, that they are prepared before Iraq and Afghanistan to murder and massacre innocent civilians in New York, Tanzania, Kenya, Bali, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and any number of other places. And the thesis that this would not have occurred, even the ones that occured before Iraq, even the threats against us, the Lockerbie bombing, terrorism goes way back to the late eighties and early nineties Jim, and the idea that somehow by running away from the ‘school bully’, then the ‘bully’ will not come after you, is a thesis that is known to be completely untrue, by every kid in the playground and it’s also refuted by every piece of historical evidence that we have. Now, do I think that this is an easy task? No, it’s not. This is going to be a long and a hard struggle. It is going to be an international problem which will only be stopped by the international community. Terrorists will kill anyone who stands in the way of their own perverse ideology. So I do not accept, when the report says that we have made ourselves more of a target because of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and our efforts to tackle Al-Quida, that there is another alternative that is ‘easier and better’.”
Here is an attack on the BBC as being in the “root causes” brigade that are not just apologists for terrorism but are also COLLABORATORS.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/07/democracy_in_pe.html
I’m slightly shocked that Norm Geras has agreed to let such a mad bigot post on his site…
JohnInLondon –
And this splitting of hairs, this ridiculous exercise in semantics, this sheer moral equivocation, sums up the hypocrisy and cowardice at the heart of the BBC “to a T”.
Well said, and I wholehartedly agree.
Whilst I also celebrate the fact that the BBC are now using the T-word in reference to the London atrocity, I believe they are only doing so, becase they simply can’t get away with not doing so in the UK. The undercurrent of ‘there was a justification for it’ is still there, and of course has always applied to non-UK ‘terrorist’ attrocities. It was an uncomfortable week for the Beeb last week once other MSM picked up on the T-word story, first highlighted by blogs such as this. I think this has forced their hand into a ‘UK’ solution, to avoid escalating the criticism.
However evidence suggests that the BBC view remains that ‘martardom operations’ are justifiable, definitley in the case of non-U acts but the implied sub-current is that “we mean the UK as well”. “We’ll may sometimes call them ‘terrorists’ in the UK if forced to do so, but it’s just a sop to the UK masses.”
The Beeb view remains that the ‘misguided individuals’ who have suffered poverty, alienation etc etc and must be ‘understood’. Even when none of the so called ’causes’ fit, we still must try to justify, and blame whoever from the usual suspects i.e. the rest of society, capitalism, Israel/Palestine, or the USA.
A good example of this was on the Politics Show with Jeremy Vine over the weekend. The Beeb thinks it can get away with justifying terrorism by making the crass distinction between ‘justifying’ a terrorist act and ‘just discussing the causes’.
A lefty academic on Today this morning was blathering on about muslim ‘alienation’ and ‘injustice’ etc and was asked “What do you think the causes (of terrorism) are”? He didn’t give any usual so-called ’causes’, because none of them fitted the profile of the terrorists from Leeds who were middle class, well educated, opportunity aplenty etc.
Instead his cop out reply was that the causes were ‘complex’. i.e. “come back to me when I get one to fit my lefty, hand wringing, we must understand the causes, view.”
If the Conservatives had a couple more John Reid’s on the shadow front bench and a couple less Oliver Letwin’s, they would have been much more effective at demolishing the utter cr*p that spouts from Naughtie et al every morning in the “We were wrong to go to war with Iraq” slot.
Actually, I have just forgotten who the tory shadow defence sec is – is it Nick Soames? Just shows you how poor whoever has that portfolio has been.
From the piece on Norm’s Blog linked by JiL & written by Shalom Lappin
From part of the right wing tabloid press and elements of the populist right we see a racist reaction against the entire Muslim community and immigrants in general.
I really have not seen anything in the MSM that could be so described.
john b: “I’m slightly shocked that Norm Geras has agreed to let such a mad bigot post on his site…”
Seems reasonable. After all, we let you post your comments on this site john b… 🙂
john b appears in my view to have libelled some Scotsman journalists on his loopy and vulgar site today. It will be interesting to see if he retracts.
http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/full_post.asp?pid=1258#comment6232
Andrew – perhaps, but you don’t turn over the front page to me (or more relevantly, to the Muslim-hating commenters who share your aims re the BBC but not your admirable moderation when it comes to mass deportation, internment, etc).
JiL – libel requires untruth. So, no retraction.
Que?
john b is digging himself deeper into his possible libel, here and on his own site IMHO.
If they sue his sorry ass, he can’t say we didn’t warn him. Loonies like john b always go over the top once too often.
Re Reid v Naughtie – interesting insn’t it how quickly the BBC hacks huff & puff with indignation as soon as someone is prepared to aggressively counter the BBC line.
Naughtie is ludicrously affonted that Reid is accusing the BBC of being al-Qaeda progagandists, when Reid had said no such thing (even if there would be an element of truth in such a suggestion).
The BBC just love to kick politicians, but they have a very thin skin when they receive some mild retalliation.
Like Little Caesar said “They can give it, but they can’t take it.”
Andrew – sorry if I was unclear.
Many of the views expressed in the comments section here – by me and by other commenters – are, I imagine, not views you’d be happy to guest-post on the front page.
If Norm had comments, and Mr Shalom had posted a comment on his site, I wouldn’t view that as remiss on Norm’s part. Instead, he invited Mr Shalom to post his article on the front page.
dan
You forgot our own Corporal Jones. “They don’t like it up’em !”
http://home.btconnect.com/howejam/dadsarmy/bios/characters/da_jones.htm
(even if there would be an element of truth in such a suggestion).
OK, whilst were all covering our sorry asses, I do not mean that the BBC intends or seeks to act as al-Qaeda propogandists, only that all questioning of our government’s actions in Iraq or of the publication of support/sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers is grist to the al-Qaeda propoganda machine.
dan
That is wht Gramsci calls being “useful idiots” who are part of the “march through the institutions” to waarp Western opinion. And the medi was a focus for the march.
Essentially, useful idiots further the cause of the enemy, for instance by parroting his propaganda.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895261391/ref=ase_civicsandpolitic/002-0591349-5067237
More from Scott at Daily Ablutions about the ridiculous guardian employing an Islamist extremist :
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2005/07/deafening_silen.html
john b
You haven’t mentioned exactly why you think it a mistake for Norm Geras to give space to his Jewish friend.
Ah John Reid, a communist who came to his senses. Maybe you could follow his lead John B?
P_L – Mr Shalom’s article can be summarised as:
1) “Our society is in peril”
2) “Foreign inflitrators are to blame”
3) “Aided and abetted by our own decadent intelligentsia”
4) “Our traditional tolerance has been exploited”
5) “The hour to act is now and we must act to preserve our unique traditions”.
These are not, to say the least, traditionally democratic sentiments.
“These are not, to say the least, traditionally democratic sentiments”
That’s because this time the intelligensia can’t filter the truth of the above statments out.
I’ve thought for a long while that state worshiping collectivists and theocratic god worshiping statists like AlQuaeda would align, but to do it so openly is a little distasteful.
Rob – I didn’t think I’d need to spell it out, but steps 1-5 are reognised by historians as the classic stages of the development of fascism (sometimes #2 are the Jews, sometimes the Communists; this time, it seems they’re the Muslims).
john b,
You could have said the same 5 things about anti-Axis polemics from the Allied nations in WWII (including no doubt polemics coming from your favorite ally, the one commanded by Uncle Joe).
Were the Allies fascist nations? Were the Axis powers there not fascist nations because they were attacked thusly by Allied “fascists”?
Inquiring minds want to know.
No, when we were fighting the Axis powers we were, err, fighting the Axis powers. The peril came from the German bombs and troops, not from a nebulous Enemy Within.
Although German citizens were interned (which was a bit harsh on the Jews who’d just escaped…), nobody seriously claimed the main threat was from anywhere other than the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht.
(Stalin, meanwhile, did indeed execute a whole load of people as infiltrators and saboteurs. This was because he was a mad, evil bastard; Stalinism as an ideology was hardly far from fascism…)
“1) “Our society is in peril”
2) “Foreign inflitrators are to blame”
3) “Aided and abetted by our own decadent intelligentsia”
4) “Our traditional tolerance has been exploited”
5) “The hour to act is now and we must act to preserve our unique traditions”.”
And your problem with this is? Are
we not in peril? Are foreign infiltrators not responsible? Do not our leftist inteligentsia apologize and protect the ideology of these extremists? Has our tolerance not been exploited to the breaking point. But of course if you don’t see our Western civilization as worth defending you would strongly disagree with point 5.
John b,
Don’t know about Britain’s experiences, but in the US we had a well-funded and very active pro-Nazi Fifth Column called the Bund organization. Even so, the Bund organization did not go into the final step of committing terrorist acts against Americans on their own soil; they were better in that respect than the Islamofascist Fifth Columnists.
It does take some doing to make war-time pro-Nazi Allied citizens look good in contrast, doesn’t it?
PS — Stalinism as an ideology was hardly far from fascism?
Actually, as the body count was much higher for Communism than for fascism, you might more properly reverse the statement.
Susan – fair play, I’d forgotten the shenanigans about US entry into the war. In Britain we had no such problems.
But your wartime analogy is silly: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan existed and were a threat to the Allies in themselves, backed up to a limited degree by fifth-columnists like the Bund. The latter’s treachery was potentially disastrous because it could have helped the Axis powers to defeat us.
When considering Islamist terrorists, we *only* have the fifth-column, and they don’t have any ‘powers’ backing them up. This makes them rather less scary…
Roxana – no, no, no, no, and yes-if-the-answers-to-the-previous-four-questions-had-been-yes.
This makes them rather less scary…
Matter of opinion. I don’t find them “less scary” than the Axis powers. On 9-11, they managed to beat the “score” of the dead Yanquis racked up at Peal Harbor by Imperial Japan — by a good 30 percent.
Internment was justified at least initially because the threat was unmeasurable. The UK had to fear invasion and no risks could be taken of sabotage, provision of information etc. There was no internment before war actually started. In the present case, the war has started. So it would be ludicrous to suggest that if Parliament in its wisdowm legislates internment in certain cases, eg prior to deportation, that is NOT fascism except maybe in the eyes of idiots like john b.
Susan. Interested in that figure about Pearl Harbor. When I visited the wreck of the Arizona, surrounded by Japanese with their video cameras whirring, I was told there was 2,000 men still aboard that great ship alone. What source are you using?
“This makes them rather less scary…”
I don’t think so. Perhaps you should be thinking about what a Britain 20 years from now will be like if we go on kidding ourselves about the nature of islam.
Islam already has far too much influence over Britain as it is. With a ‘parliament’ (is there a Hindu or Sikh parliament by the way?), with attempts to introduce islam into state schools, with the setting up of a separate banking system and now attempts to dictate foreign policy to the rest of the country.
All this and more for just 3% of the UK’s population. What do you think it’ll be like when it’s 10%?
Simo,
2,000 is what I remembering reading of all casualties at PH, not just of the Arizona. I remember the Arizona crew as being around 1,100.
Edit: Okay, I googled, this site says around 2300 killed in toto at PH, with about 1,200 on the Arizona. I wasn’t far off.
I’ve visited the Arizona site as well, and yes, it is very popular with the Japanese tourists. I recall that a lot of the signage was in Japanese as well as in English!
Sorry, forgot the link:
http://www.nps.gov/usar/ExtendWeb1.html
john b
Any reading of your site shows you to be wrong on most things. Much of it is trivial anyway so hey ho. But on terror and the threat to Britons in Britain you’ve been spectatularly wrong.
You’ve long claimed that the terror to Britain is negligable, that governments have inflated the threat. You’ve now been proven to be utterly wrong. You can still have credibility in not calling a prediction right but when you’ve lost any credibility it’s time to shut up.
Susan is right that the September 11 attacks killed more people than Pearl Harbor – the death toll at the latter is accepted at 2,471, while the former killed 2,986 (I know Wikipedia isn’t an unimpeachable source, but this is in line with figures published elsewhere). However, WWII killed 407,000 Americans, while compelling America to devote its entire economic and political focus to total war. This is what I meant by the significance of a nation-state backing the fifth-columnists and being “more scary”.
Pete_London: I’ve been predicting a London Islamist terror attack since September 11. I was expecting that when it happened, casualties would be higher than they actually were the week before last, which is possibly a blow to my credibility, but not perhaps in the direction you’re suggesting.
“which is possibly a blow to my credibility”
What credibility?
John b,
One nuke exploded by Al Qaeda in downtown Washington, Los Angeles or New York would certainly take out more than the 407,000 Americans killed in WWII.
And even the peaceful democratic takeover by Islam of certain Western countries — like Holland or the UK — and the installment of sharia law would be possibly even more onerous on those nations than Nazi occupation.
Try again.
Susan,
I think that demographic takeover by islam of Holland is more a-propos, and is indeed forecast: I doubt that it will be peaceful.
I’ve spent the last three months working on a demographic model to (among other things) forecast numbers of people from different ethnic minority groups in Europe and the US. I’ve consulted far more sources for this than anyone here has read (not hubris; I just very much doubt anyone else has been paid to spend months looking into it).
It’s entirely clear that birth rates are declining among people from South Asian and North African/Middle Eastern backgrounds, and there are no sane grounds for believing that ethnic minorities will become either the majority or even significant (even to levels approaching the number of black people in the US, for example) anywhere in Western Europe within the foreseeable future. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or is lying.
Yes, an atom bomb in a major city would take out more Americans than the whole of WWII. It’s lucky, then, that Al Qaeda aren’t even capable of supplying their operatives with decent industrial high explosive, never mind anything nuclear.
john b,
Did you incorporate “family reunification” policies into your demographic model? Thought not.
You remind me of something I read from a Dutch commentator not long ago. He pointed out that when the Muslim immigrants started to predominate, the line from the left was, “Oh, they’ll never be in a position to affect the way we live.”
After that was proven false (Theo van Gogh murder, several Dutch MPs forced to live underground in their own country), the commentator noted, the line from the left switched to, “Oh,they’re all here, there’s nothing we can do about it now, we might as well accommodate them.”
It’s interesting to see that you are following number 1 in lockstep. I suppose it’ll take awhile for you to admit to number 2.