UK multi-culturism under spotlight, by Roger Hardy, BBC “Islamic Affairs Analyst”, but didn’t have the energy to get stuck into it at the time. Thankfully, Dumbjon has been on the case, and has done a remarkably good demolition job, Beeb Bandwagon Hits Clue Tree, Reverses, Steers Round It, in his own inimitable style. The post below it is rather funny as well.
I saw this BBC News Online story last week,
Bookmark the permalink.
Rob
The beeb should get a quote from comentator & broadcaster Melanie Phillips – she’s been debunking the ‘all must have prizes’ theory since 1998 when she wrote a book with same title
http://www.melaniephillips.com/books/#amhp
Let me put on the record here and now my admiration for john b. There can’t be many, in the blogosphere or elsewhere, who can cite such a discredited source as the Lancet ‘Study’ in support of their view without and remian so deadpan.
He is truly the only blogger I’ve ever come across who will put Juan Cole (if you don’t know him then Google him) on his front page without taking the piss out of the poor fool.
john b – you believed me to be a liar in that particular thread ealier today because I didn’t post the ‘back up’. I do apologise, I assumed that anyone who knew of Juan Cole would be aware of his dubious reputation. Well, I posted the link some hours ago and you’ve not commented. You wouldn’t have gone to the loo and climed out of the toilet window, would you?
I see eddie mair has got his relativist mitts on Newsnight. Does anyone have any views on this man?
Rob Read indicated the urine extraction in this story regarding the wonderful world of Associal Teaching Professionals http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4697461.stm
to which I can only add that the builder that misses out a course on a five foot wall on one of my projects is likely to be confronted by some comments among which “deferred success” do not figure prominately.
However I am fascinated to discover a teacher that understands the concept of feet and inches. I can only recount the instance of the primary school teacher who asked borrow my tape to measure the windows in her new flat. She must of been unaware that builders’ tape measures usually have imperial markings down one edge and metric down the other. All I can say is that she ended up with more curtaining than you would believe possible.
Bloody hell, “prominately”. How promin[e]ntly embarrassing.
Newsnight has just ended (sorry, Rob Read Reader, I’ve only heard Eddie Mair on non-political matters in the past on BBC Radio) and they give us one for the diary:
BBC2, Monday 25 July – “THE NEW AL-QAEDA”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?day=monday&service_id=4224&filename=20050725/20050725_2100_4224_64203_60
I hear that Adam Curtis will be washing his hair on Monday evening.
Most of you won’t have seen this but up here in Scotland, BBC Scotland’s regional bulletin of Newsnight has run an item on the “Homeless World Cup” which, as it implies, is a football competition for homeless people from around the world. The ‘problem’ is that the British Embassy in Nigeria has refused to provide visas for the homeless (really?) Nigerians who would constitute their team on the (not unreasonable) grounds that the Nigerians would be likely to disappear once they arrive in the UK. Nigerians do have some form in this respect as the staff in Lagos were obviously aware. After interviewing the usual (“let them all in – it’s so unfair”) mouthpieces, one would have expected a glance at the absondment rates of Nigerian incomers to see whether the fears of the Lagos staff were justified – for balance etc. Nope!
Up here, the BBC is run , not by sympathisers of New Labour, but by sycophants of George Galloway. This should surprise no-one because Scotland is now a socialist mini-state supported by the English taxpayer with a state sector consuming over 50% of national output.
John B
From page 53 of the Iraq Living Conditions Survey (ILCS), on infant mortality:
“Even though the estimates of 193 and 127 differ in the time reference, there are no reasons to infer a trend in the data: most likely, the differences are due to the inherent uncertainty in estimates of the maternal mortality rate.”
Your ‘Lancet study’ link points at an Economist article sympathetic to the highly controversial Lancet study, but:
“Of the increase in deaths (omitting Fallujah) reported by the study, roughly 60% is due directly to violence, while the rest is due to a slight increase in accidents, disease and infant mortality. However, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt because the more detailed the data—on causes of death, for instance, rather than death as a whole—the less statistical significance can be ascribed to them.”
Exactly how does this “make clear that the war has worsened mortality from sources other than violence, not lessened it”?
From the foreword of the ILCS ( p8 ):
“After a 10-year period during which the living conditions of the Iraqi individuals and families could not be statistically monitored, the Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT),
under the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, and in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme and Fafo-AIS has undertaken a large survey of the living conditions in Iraq in the second half of 2004.”
The ILCS is in 3 large volumes: I have not read them all, but as far as I can tell, it does *not* provide a pre-war/post-war comparison, and certainly makes no assessment of the human cost/benefit of the war. Please explain how in your view it shows the war has “worsened mortality from sources other than violence, not lessened it,” and how it “broadly confirms” the results of the Lancet study.
As for your ‘tasteless’ sense of humour, how can you claim to care about Iraqis, yet glibly joke about the suffering and death of millions of Russian men, women and little children? Are you going to register http://www.baathist.com and treat us to a few ‘dead Iraqi’ jokes too?
to say again – john b has recommended on his site that various people be assassinated. Enough said.
Coventry John:
Tasteless humour broadly because I believe it’s entirely possible to both care about and joke about something.
I read the ILCS fully when it came out. Its figure for violent deaths was in line with the Lancet study’s figure. In terms of infant mortality: the authors stand by the table on p52 which shows a sharp rise. The 127 vs 193 difference refers to the two different methodologies they used, one of which produced the table on p52 and one of which produced a single estimate for 2002/03.
JiL:
As you know very well, I posted a parody Cole that wrote that had absolutely no relevance to his expert vs idiot status. I’m aware that he’s unpopular among right-wing bloggers; I’d missed the Jenin fuckup (which is an extremely lame lapse on his part, and probably mine); however, given that Tim Blair posts something scientifically illiterate every other day (usually while bashing Tim Lambert, those Aussies love a fight…) you’re hardly entitled to link to him for the purposes of suggesting I’m an idiot for linking to someone else who’s wrong.
Also, while you’re welcome to continue telling everyone that I’ve sarcastically recommended assassination over and over again, it could be viewed as a little redundant when someone else has said the same thing on the same thread.
JohninLondon
On the other hand, john b also recommends this site: http://catalog.grandopening.com/catalog/det-audioh.html where “this bit of kit” has caught his eye. He’s “tempted to buy one,or several.”
No doubt the manufacturers will be thrilled to receive a product endorsement from ‘One of the UK’s most prominent sexual soloists’
john b
People who visit here need reminding that your site has nasty things. As well as a crowd of off-the-world lefties.
I didn’t say anything about Juan Cole. But now you mention him – I am not surprised that you would be impressed by someone whose “expertise” and balance has been down the tubes elsewhere.
I wonder… is there actually a basis for discussion when someone is as far off the chart as John B.? Would we miss him if he had perished in the terrorist attacks? I’m not going to answer that – I’ll leave it to you to contemplate. Fact is: I wouldn’t allow the guy to enter any discussions if I ran a blog. After all communists don’t believe in free speech so why should they be allowed to spout their venom… If you consider that the current Labour Government isn’t leftist enough to his liking – unbelievable.
I’d like to add my thanks to Paul Reynolds for making the effort to defend his story from the slur by Miam; successfully I must add. I hadn’t read the piece in question, and might have been subconsciously misinformed by Miam’s remarks as to it justifying terrorism. I say ‘subconsciously’ because I am painfully conscious that the comments section of this blog is increasingly rarely a reliable source of information on BBC Bias.
This is something I hope most visitors to the site recognise – the comments at BBC Bias Blog are not BBC Bias Blog. The site owners (a rather amorphous collection of bloggers) are inclined towards free speech, and some of the speech in the comments is undoubtedly racist and Islamaphobic (and was so before the London Islamist terror attacks).
There is a delightful irony that the tone and quality of debate in comments has been raised by the contributions of a BBC correspondent (racists, Islamaphobes and general tosspots take note). And it is equally delightfully ironic (karma?) that the quality of BBC news reporting has been improved by direct, open interaction (first?) of said BBC correspondent and a commenter here.
Now that I have read your report, Paul, I have some concerns and questions.
Given that one side of the story (as argued by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom government) is that the so-called “Iraq connection” is bogus, would not the title of the piece be better presented as a question? How about: London bombs, was there an Iraq connection?; or even better, to avoid the glancing possibility of anyone thinking Iraqis were involved, London bombs, was the Iraq war a motive? The title “The London bombs and the Iraq connection” looks rather like a leading statement, and may even have been a root cause of Miam’s error.
In your rebuttal above, you state that “the Chatham House analysis is relevant here but nobody says that it justifies terrorism”. It is absolutely true that the briefing paper (or mention of its contents) does not offer justification for terrorism. Indeed, as your report makes clear, the Chatham House paper does not even directly suggest any Iraq motive whatsoever for the London terror attacks. In addition, given that one of the report’s authors states that ” there is no doubt that Britain was on the target list before the invasion of Iraq” – is your notion that the issue of the Iraq war motive “has been highlighted in a report from [Chatham House]” rather overstated? Would it not be more accurate to say that one side of the argument is making use of the Chatham House briefing paper to highlight a supposed Iraq motivation (that Chatham House doesn’t actually directly support)?
Further to that, regarding the first quote you offer from the report:
“the UK government has been conducting counter-terrorism policy ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the US, not in the sense of being an equal decision-maker, but rather as a pillion passenger compelled to leave the steering to the ally in the driving seat”
– what relevance does this have to the notion of there being an Iraq motivation for the bombing?
Rather than use up space covering irrelevant (to the Iraq motivation angle) condemnations of the London bombs, why did you not refer to the very relevant possibility of alternative motives for the atrocity – such as the propaganda coup of a terror attack occurring concurrently here in the UK with the high profile G8 meeting?
In the interests of balance, would it not be fitting to complement the quote sidebar from your anonymous source arguing for there being an Iraq motivation; with one arguing the contrary, perhaps from the aforementioned Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
I hope I haven’t misrepresented your article in detail or intent; and I hope you are able to return and address these points.
Yours, with a little more faith
Peter
.
Sounds like you’re about to form a Paul Reynolds Fan-Club, Peter… Have fun!
Back to watching Fox News
Joerg
john b wrote:-
So today we’re criticising the Beeb for exposing our childrens’ delicate minds to the site of negroes, Asians, women and homosexuals
Er, no. I am criticising al-BBC for apparently operating race-based quotas. If this policy is in fact OK by you, then presumably you’d also be OK with it if a different BBC management decided to hire only white English performers? I mean, you can’t surely object to or support racial quotas according to which race gets favoured?
Joerg, well done for living up to your national stereotype of not getting subtlety.
Back to watching the insides of my eyelids.
.
PJF
Yes – I hope my detailed interaction with Paul Reynolds at least cleared up the confusion the BBC had made between the 15 July Statement and the 18 July Fatwa. The BBC story waas corrected, and the full text of the fatwa obtained by the BBC.
I would still welcome some explanation of the fatwa snafu at the News Room, which looked rather serious. And more importantly, some answers on the specifics of the fatwa. Lots of people have commented to me that the fatwa could be seriously deficient. In ways not reasily obvious to non-Muslims. I put those questions straight to Mr Reynolds and there have been no answers.
You suggest rather glibly that the comments section of this blog is full of crazies and of little value. The comments section of any blog is a mixed bag – but you are too dismissive, mainly because you do not agree with most of us.
How about us putting this back at you ? This blog played a part in turning the spotlight on the silly and offensive BBC policy on the T word. And it was on this blog where the extreme example of that policy was raised, namely the extensive filleting of the T word from the report of the Prime Minister’s statement of 11 July. I KNOW from personal contacts that rang discordant loud bells with journalists here and the US. I KNOW it caused the BBC to be rightly mocked – for instance in two reports on Fox TV in the Anerican market where the BBC competes for credibility. Fox did not get their material out of thin air. And in turn little birds might tell us that it could have rung bells in Downing Street as well, where offence might quite rightly have been taken.
We now KNOW that the policy has been adjusted/fudged such that the T word is in full use for 7/7. And the BBC medi monitoring staff will KNOW that there are now several thousand press and blog references to the stupidity of its original stance. The BBC’s repttion hs been qestioned by an awful lot of people here and internationally.
So please cut the patronising.
Thank yo.
Peter, if you were subtly ironic I apologise… Don’t stereotype someone’s nationality though. I’m as un-German as they come.
Thanks once again to the moderators of this blog for providing this forum.
I second that… I am sure you’ve opened the eyes of quite a few people who weren’t aware how biased Al-Beeb actually is!
More criticism of the BBC for providing a platform for an extreme Islamist group and a worryingly anodyne obit. on the late BNP leader. Poor judgment again ?
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/07/19/the_mainstreaming_of_hizbut_tahrir.php
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/07/19/wonky_moral_compasses.php
JohninLondon complains that I have not replied to two points he made about the ‘fatwa.’
The first was how the story was originally written and the second was about its content.
Frankly, JiL, I was not involved in the story when it was written. It was done by someone on the home news team. I tend to work on foreign news.
The story did give the guts of the ‘fatwa’ but lacked the original text. This sometimes happens for practical reasons such as the text not being reaidly available. It took some time to get it even when we sought it.
As for its potential weaknesses, I take the view that its strength is its main point. When Salman Rushdie was threatened, we did not look for loopholes but took that fatwa seriously. We should take this one seriously as well, in the differing circumstance in which it applies. The extremists will dismiss it entirely anyway.
john b
“in general, men are more comfortable murdering other men than they are women or children, irrespective of whether the other chap is a soldier, a terrorist or a civilian.”
But I thought that most of the casualties are caused by indiscriminate American attacks on civilian areas, or are they now fitting their cluster bombs with testosterone sniffers?
JiL – my apologies, I confused you with Pete_London.
Joerg – do you use ‘communist’ as a phrase to slur anyone who doesn’t approve of deporting Muslims, or is it just your reading comprehension that’s problematic?
Gordon – most of the total Iraqi civilian casualties were caused during the fighting bit of the war (oddly enough), and most of these were killed by US/UK troops. However, terrorist murderers are now killing Iraqi civilians at roughly 5X the rate of the coalition.
Paul Reynolds
Thank you for your further reply. I don’t think you dissent from the suggestion that the BBC should not hve published its original fatwa story when it had not even seen the fatwa. The story misleadingly quoted chunks of the earler MCB-et-al statement.
You suggest that all we need to do is look at the main thrust of the fatwa, how positive it sounds. Yes, that is very important. nd hopefully it will impress on the people in the mosques this Friday that many senior scholars are condemning 7/7 and anything like it. It may give some people pause if they are toying with moving towards extremism.
But it is wrong, in my view, to ignore the fact that people are pointing to loopholes, to vagueness and equivocations about suicide bombings. The fatwa does not appear to prohibit young British Muslims from the path of suicide bombings in Iraq or Israel for example.
A bit like BBC policy on the T word ! Suicide bombings against civilians are finally called terrorism here and condemned as such. But it is not condemned as terrorism if it happens overseas.
Paul Reynolds
Sorry — my 9.31 reply left off my screenname.
john b
I agree generally with your two points, but I can’t see where the 80% bias comes from, unless most deaths are due to male on male criminal murders, not directly linked to war/terrorism.
Incidently do you agree that the terrorists are mainly Fascists, whether of the Islamist or Baathist persuasion?
However, terrorist murderers are now killing Iraqi civilians at roughly 5X the rate of the coalition.
So have I got this straight?
UK bombers are comrades of those terrorists killing Muslims in Iraq.
The tone of the BBC etc, & Muslims in this country, whilst claiming opposition to the London bombings, nevertheless consider that they were caused/justified by the killing in Iraq.
So the UK bombers are justified in carrying out a terror attack to show their opposition to the actions of their comrades in Iraq.
Off the topic of this current forum thread but there was a minor bit of bias on BBC Breakfast.
At 8.10am on BBC1, Natasha Kaplinski (?) introduced a piece on Niger as “Its been almost 3 weeks since Live8 and thousands of people are facing starvation in Niger”
Blimey, did she really think that Live8 would change the world over night?
Paul Reynolds
For you and other reporters on world affairs – I hope you can stomach the BBC T-word policy as it continues to apply overseas.
A policy under which Al Qaeda is NOT described by the BBC as terrorists.
And Osama bin Laden is NOT described as a terrorist.
And the aimed-at-civilians headchopping and suicide-bombing by the Al Q offshoot in Iraq is NOT described as terrorism, nor its leaders as terrorists.
And the Bali bombers are NOT terrorists.
I hope you have people at the BBC keeping track of all the criticism of the BBC worldwide on this issue. There are already hundreds of blog and media references to the policy just this past week. I have not seen a single instance where the BBC is defended. The policy is surely damaging the BBC’s good name and standing.
As I say – I hope you and your colleagues can stomach all the criticism and mockery of the policy. It is time the Governors ripped it up.
Please do not reply to this. It is just an observation. We know that defence or review of the policy is for the panjandrums, not the PBI. (Poor Bloody Infantry).
dan
You have the conundrum it in a nutshell.
I don’t think the BBC itself is saying that deaths in Iraq CAUSE or JUSTIFY the terrorism in London. But they have been giving a platform to those who do, sometimes without ramming the false argument and illogic back down their throats. Even when the reference is to Abu Ghraib, which hs been clled in id on the BBC as justifiction for the London terrorism.
And why is the “root causes” argument not trashed by the BBC every time it crops up ? Maybe because a lot of people at the BBC believe it is true?
Rob: “Blimey, did she really think that Live8 would change the world over night?”
Popular though Natasha Kaplinksy seems to be with the BBC panjandrums, she seems to be far from the sharpest tool in a box full of tools. A bit of a latterday Princess Tippytoes even, for those who recall Eamonn Holmes putdown of whatshername that was on with him at the time.
I remember during the Iraq war NK was wittering on to Andrew Gilligan (who he? :-)), reporting from Baghdad that Iraqi TV was playing martial music, about how much that must be encouraging the Iraqi people. Oh yes, that’d be right – so naturally I was surprised later to see the joyous scenes when Saddam was toppled and everyone took to slapping his image with their shoes.
But they have been giving a platform to those who do
They do more than that. The Iraq connection has been the consistent line from BBC reporters ever since the bombing (eg Panorama).
They give the highest posible prominence to any report that is on the same lines.
e.g. The Chatham House report was one of 3 news subjects covered in a 5Live bulletin. The Iraq Body Count numbers have been around for 2 years, but they become headline news (co-incidently filling The Independent front page).
Also the BBC amuse me with their oft repeated accusation that the government were warned by the secutity services of the increased threat to the UK from attacking Iraq (as if that should have been the clincher for leaving Saddam in power)
So security services warning is godlike: how selective – security services are wrong when reporting on WMD or level of threat in last few weeks.
OT
Why didn’t the BBC bring us these images of all those worthy G8 protestors ? We heard enogh of their arguments, why didn’t we see what they look like on duty ?
un-r-us.blogspot.com
Gordon: the insurgency encompasses people ranging from snipers to schoolyard bomb terrorists, and the less mentalist ones will still find it easier to shoot men than women. Meanwhile, given that Iraq is both Muslim and very very dangerous, women and children will be less visible (and therefore less killable) than men.
John and Dan,
I think you’re confusing cause and justification. The BBC has featured stories involving speculation that the terrorist attacks were partly motivated by Iraq, but I can’t see where they’ve ever claimed that Iraq justifies the attacks. If others do then surely that is news and should be quoted.
Are you suggesting that Iraq as motivation should be dismissed out of hand? As Dan says many Muslims and intelligence experts in the UK seem to make the link so why wouldn’t the murderers? Against this we have Tony Blair’s opinion and some unconvincing arguments about Al Quaeda philosophy and chronology of previous attacks.
Does it matter? I thought one of the purposes of the war was to make British citizens safer? Clearly there’s other considerations in terms of making life better for Iraqis and the benefits of long term Middle Eastern democracy which might (and probably do in my opinion) swing the argument, but given the billions of our money spent i think the british public deserves better than for stuff like this to be swept under the carpet.
JohninLondon
“worryingly anodyne obit. on the late BNP leader. Poor judgment again ?”
Probably remarkably good judgement bearing in mind current events.
Doing a hatchet job on the BNP for voicing opinions you can hear in most egg, bacon & fried slice caffs in the country would hardly play very well when you’ve been giving a platform to the more extreme elements of the falafal and mint tea fraternity in the name of understanding and balanced reporting. It might cause a few too many people to revisit the Secret Agent http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3900381.stm and find Griffin being vilified for voicing views that are now in the leader columns of many of our national papers. Does West Yorkshire Police want to be reminded of the time and resourses it devoted to persuing the BNP http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_archive.php?id=5475&issue=2005-01-01.
The prosecutions it was hoping to bring seem to have faded away without trace whilst the terrorist plot that was being hatched unnoticed on it’s patch came to fruition in London.
That the Bradford riots were provoked by the BNP may be received opinion in Islington but it’s not one that is widely shared in Bradford.
The BBC may at last be waking up to the realisation that the campaign that it and the rest of the Guardian/Independant troika have been persuing against the BNP is becoming counterproductive. The BNP may have been defeated in last week’s Becontree council election but getting 20%, the second largest share of the vote, does not make the defeat a ‘rout’.
The BNP’s platform may be too damned close to National Socialism for comfort and here I’m referring to their economic and foreign policy ideas. On immigration, multiculturalism and other aspects of British society the BNP are striking a chord with a sizeable proportion of the public. The liberal media establishment has been denigrating anyone who opposed their views on these subjects for decades. They can hardly complain if when they label all who disagree with them as ‘right wing fascists’, right wing fascism starts looking an attractive alternative.
Oh and before john b et al make the obvious comparisons,drunken meanderings about putting canine do-do through letterboxes and machine-gunning mosques do not really equate with suicide bombing tube trains. Anybody who frequented Labour Party bars during the Miner’s Strike will have heard a lot worse than that said after a few lagers.
As an exercise in pre-emptive rebuttal regarding the above post (commitments other than keyboard activities will occupy the rest of the day)
I’m endlessly fascinated by the way that unrest and criminal behaviour amongst the minority communities must always be explained, excused and ‘the root causes’ addressed whilst similar actions in sections of the majority are to be inevitably challenged, condemned and ‘fought’.
I in no way support the BNP or their policies. However, I feel that the BBC has no right to censor them. They are a legitimate political party that fields a large number of candidates. As such, they should be allowed to appear on Question Time. In the recent elections they polled more votes than the Green Party. If the BBC is going to allow other “minority parties” to appear on their discussion programs, then they can not prevent the BNP appearing, simply because they find their views distasteful.
A (black) friend in Manchester had a visit from the BNP during the recent election. They tried to persuade him to vote BNP. When he asked them about their “deportation policy” towards black people, he was told, “Yes, we do want to deport black people, but not you. We know you, you’re OK”. As long as the BBC prevents people from seeing the true face of the BNP, they will be able to tailor their message to each person they meet in an attempt to be all things to all people. Much better, in my opinion, to allow them on Question Time and let the audience and panel ridicule their policies.
I’m not holding my breath though; the BBC doesn’t trust the general public to make the “right decision”.
Yep, Rob. That’s one of the most annoying things about the Beeb, not just the bias, but the superiority complex. Do people in SW1 really think that the public is going to see some knuckle-dragging Gruppenfuhrer from Preston banging on about contamination of the blood line and think to themselves ‘why, that’s just the type of person we should vote for!’
It’s not as if Beeboids are known for their powers of perception, but no – they can’t let the skunk introduce itself, they have to run in front of him waving a red flag, warning us that the guy who thinks the Jews are controlling the weather is a NUT.
[unless he’s a Mullah, of course, then he’s an ‘alternative voice’]
Rob – youve hit upon the dilemma there. If the BNP are allowed to appear on grown up progs they wont be ridiculed as much as you hope. Sure Jane Fonda types will be wheeled out to debate intelligently (Im sure you all saw her masterful technique on QT recently – banging her head on the desk at one point) but it wont be the Roman circus atmosphere that you would like.
The most irritating thing about the BBC’s attitude is their belief they have a right to interfere in the democratic process. The way they choose Question Time panellists effectively creates a “BBC Shortlist” for the election. Only “BBC Approved” parties may present their policies or argue their case. The BBC clearly does not have the right to influence the outcome of elections, in fact the BBC Charter explicitly forbids it.
I guess they only care about The Charter if:
i) They agree with The Charter
ii) They can get away with ignoring it.
My comment on the Tyndall piece was really to say that the man himself was a nasty bit of work, as I far as I knew. The BBC downplayed that.
But the BNP itself, its pltform, I simply don’t know about. Largely because the BBC has decided that I should not know clearly its platform. But as people say, they push the Green Party line ad nauseam, even though they are a miniscule splinter party. Yes – that is part of the endemic bias, the constant filtering through the BBC prism.
I want my licence money back.
Why doesn’t the bbc point out, as the President of Afganistan did yesterday, that Muslims have been killing fellow Muslims for centuries without any help from outsiders.
Poor deprived Muslim youth in the UK!
That justifies TERROR? (Oops, sorry, militancy, insurgency)
A cheque in the post will do.
Cockney
Please red more closely. I did not say that the BBC were saying that Iraq is a cause or a justification for 7/7. But I was saying that the BBC sometimes gives too easy or frequent a platform to people who do argue direct cuasality or justification, without always challenging them hard enough. Galloway is case in point last week on Any Questions.
That’s often the pattern of the bias. Kid gloves for anyone who agrees that Iraq was wrong, or for other BBC themes, but attack-dog interviewing and/or constant interruptions for anyone who does not. Not always – but often. And Eddie Mair looks already as though he might be shaping up that way on Newsnight.
jeremy bowen to be chief of middle east reporting said to be impartial by the bbc chiefs(thompson?)
the fox has just taken over the chicken coop.
anyone remembers his biased/hysterical reporting from lebanon?
permit me to add the bbc word that sets me rushing for my remote control.
“engagement”.
if you wish to solve the world’s problems then you have to stay “engaged” this gospel according to the bbc is thought to have leaked to a recent ft editorial.
puts me off marriage forever.
permit me to add the bbc word that sets me rushing for my remote control.
“engagement”.
You will just have to “try to come to terms with it”