The third story on BBC News Online’s home page just now (immediately below the story about today’s terrorist, sorry BBC, insurgent attacks in London) is headlined UK boy wrongly labelled bomber, complete with a picture and paragraph reading:
Evidence that London bomber Hasib Hussain visited Pakistan is called into question by a teenager sharing his name.
The story itself begins:
Evidence showing that all three of the London bombers of Pakistani descent visited Pakistan last year has been thrown into doubt.
A photograph of a passport purporting to show bomber Hasib Hussain was in fact that of a 16-year-old British boy with the same name.
The photo, together with documentation showing two other bombers visited Pakistan, was published on Monday.
This may well be true, with the clear implication from the BBC’s story and headline presentation that Hasib Hussain (the terrorist) hasn’t been to Pakistan. But (and there’s so often a ‘but’ with the BBC these days), if we look elsewhere, including at the BBC’s own recent coverage (obviously long forgotten about in the BBC Viewsroom), we find in, for instance, Suicide bombers’ ‘ordinary’ lives that:
Teenager Hasib Hussain had been known as a tearaway during his early teens.
Newspapers reported how he would start fights with fellow pupils at the Matthew Murray Secondary school in Leeds.
He left school in July 2003 with seven GCSEs.
Around this time, he was sent to Pakistan to visit relatives. He also went on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, grew a beard and began to wear robes.
Despite becoming devoutly religious, he was arrested for shoplifting during 2004.
According to Pakistani officials, Hasib Hussain also visited Karachi last July, but when he left and his port of exit have not been established.
So, whilst the Hasib Hussain that visited Pakistan 12 months ago may well not have been Hasib Hussain the terrorist, it seems quite clear that Hasib Hussain the terrorist did visit Pakistan at least as recently as 18 to 24 months ago, when, according to the BBC, he “grew a beard and began to wear robes”.
These facts about the travels of Hasib Hussain the terrorist are very pertinent to today’s BBC story about the possible identity mix-up with Hasib Hussain the non-terrorist, yet today’s BBC story omits these facts entirely and infers that Hasib Hussain the terrorist hadn’t visited Pakistan at all, even though they don’t actually say that. Once more we are left to wonder if this sort of inaccuracy is down to ignorance and incompetence or if it’s a straightforward attempt to manufacture one story out of another.
Anton,
Perhaps he had to get back to editing the BBC website?
no he been preaching peace on sky for the last 10 hours.sky news today very strange
Maybe another fatwa would do the trick. Do two fatwa’s cancel out an intifada?
A heart warming story
Spain sees first lesbian marriage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4707787.stm
Aww, that’s nice (and I’m all for it)
How about a report telling us about how islam condems homosexuals to death, just for being homosexuals?
Like these two here in Iran:
http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=1104
What? Might offend your ‘Worldwide’ audience, oh yeah, forgot about them.
One sided stories – from the BBC.
A fatwa lot of good so far
Miam
You posted about the Guardian article by the BBC man John Willis.
In his article he amazingly claims that commercial realities make US TV networks likely to follow the line of the White House.
Is the man on drugs ? CBS ? CNN? MSNBC ? Are they uncritical of Bush ?
And it is worth noting that he worked for a while in the US for a public bradcasting channel. They are noted for leftwing bias.
It is evident he opposed the war in Iraq. So he’ll feel at home now he is at the BBC.
But it is clear that people at the BBC hate Fox News with a vengeance.
Many will know that Professor Norman Geras is possibly the most famous blogger in the UK. He is brilliant on many topics such as his beloved cricket, but he has been to the fore in attacking the “root cause ot terrorism is Iraq or weherever” brigade.
But I have NEVER heard Geras on TV or radio to conter the likes of Galloway, Benn, Clare Short, Tariq Ali and many of the Muslim “spokesmen”.
Is the BBC trying to avoid him, even though so many people quote him ? Is it because what he argues with great clarity looks very close to what Blair spelled out in detail last week ?
He has severl sideswipes at the BBC, especially the Today progrmme, in this post :
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/07/towards_a_democ.html
He seems to be implying serious bias at the BBC.
And please note – Geras is not some rightwing wingnut. He is a leftwinger of some repute.
THIS JUST IN…
Christian leaders have urged islamofascists to explain why an Asian man exploded at Kings Cross underground in London.
The Christian Council of Britain feared that this was an “explode to kill” policy. A spokesman said Christians he had spoken to, were “nervous and jumpy”.
Matthew Mark added that there may well be reasons why Muslims felt it necessary to explode and kill fifty-six defenceless men, women and children, but they needed to make them clear.
espresso
I knew this would happen. The BBC has duped you into describing terrorists as ‘defenceless’. Others have been duped into describing them as ‘innocent’.
The reason is that the figure of 56 deaths the BBC has been putting out includes the terrorists, though it seems they conveniently omit to mention this inclusion as often as possible:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4703777.stm
A bit clearer here:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20050720-1644-britain-bombings.html
It’s hard to find futher evidence for this, because may news outlets around the world rely on the BBC’s info it seems.
JohnOfCoventry:
If you read espresso’s other postings you will see that he was being ironic. He was just turning the tables on our Mekka oriented friends… (I think)
I think so too Joerg
Just a minor point, JohninLondon – the article you link to on normblog is by Alan Johnson, not by Prof. Geras.
Doesn’t stop it being splendid stuff though…
.
Miam
Hah! Thanks for that Bomber’s mother speaks of anguish link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4706893.stm
What a looker too!
Lots of politically incorrect stuff on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News. Profiling, calling the terrorists islamofascists etc. Love it… Who needs the BBC? Digital TV – loadsa choice: Brilliant!
Joerg
Errr, yes I was being Scappleface slash ironic. Based on a word for word rewrite of a Ceefax item on the Muslim Council of Britain. I shall try to be less obtuse next time
Just making sure you’re not misunderstood. Use the tag if in doubt 😉
Oops… seems “” aren’t allowed.
Via LGF, it seems that a 12 year old Palestinian boy has been stabbed to death by Palestinians. The murder was immediately blamed on Jews by Palestinian authorities but eyewitnesses are fingering someone else …
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050721/wl_nm/mideast_stabbing_dc
Nothing I can find about this at the BBC. Then again, if Jews had murdered a 12 year old Jewish boy and blamed it on Palestinians the BBC would probably have ignored that too.
Stop laughing.
In othr news:
PROTEST MARCH ON GAZA CALLED OFF:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4702099.stm
The BBC won’t report on muslims murdering muslim boys and blaming it on the Jews, but a cancelled march makes the headlines.
We end with:
Israel has occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.
About 400,000 Israelis live in the territories, in settlements deemed as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
‘Deemed’ by who, oh BBC? Whoever ‘deems’ the ‘occupations’ to be ‘illegal’ is a liar or factually wrong. Israel’s occupation of thes lands are perfectly legal under ‘international law’.
Joerg/Joerg Appreciation Society/espresso
You misunderstand me. I appreciate Joerg’s humour; I just wanted to point out that he fell into the BBC’s trap of misusing their figure of 56. The terrorists, as far as I can tell, killed 52. The fact they killed themselves too is incidental, as I’m sure Joerg would agree.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the BBC has been pushing 56 as the number of victims in the first attack, prompting people to use phrases like ‘a death toll of 56 innocents’, when in fact they mean ‘a death toll of 52 innocents and 4 mass murderers’.
OT FYI
For those of you who don’t know it yet, the grauniad sacked the islamist reporter they were employing following the Daily Ablution’s exposure.
Blogs are effective it seems.
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2005/07/im_in_charge_no.html
Sorry folks, I seem to have got horribly confused in my last post and attributed the original post to Joerg, when it was espresso’s. Please substitute ‘espresso’ for ‘Joerg’ in the above post (although I appreciate your humour too Joerg!).
Cheers, John… and I’m totally with you on the point you’re making… For me the death-toll stands at 52 as well.
Me too Joerg.
Concentrate, boys and girls please. Another episode I didn’t see on the BBC was John Howard’s apparent drilling of the press on terrorism and Iraq:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/reporter_schooled/
http://instapundit.com/archives/024385.php
Did they cover it? I’m an avid watcher of the terrorist-lovers from White City and it’s only via blogs that I knew Howard was in the country!
Ok, we have some more. The latest death toll at Sharm el-Sheikh is 36 (Last Updated: Saturday, 23 July, 2005, 00:33 GMT 01:33 UK):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4709491.stm
A short, sharp piece ends with:
Last October, 34 people died in car and truck bombs at resorts close to Israel, on the on the eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
Hey, BBC, is it too much trouble to tell us who’s responsible for that act of terrorist mass murder? Why gratuitiously mention Israel without saying that most victims were Jews? and all of the murderers are muslims?
[Comment deleted] – Joerg, please confine your comments to the subject of this blog. Unsuitable comments will, in so far as is possible, be deleted. A repetition of this sort of comment will get you banned from commenting here – this isn’t the first time your comments have required some reluctant moderation. Thank you.
More tough talk on the Fox News Channel earlier (this time by John Gibson who called the terrorists “barbarians” – nice one!) A lot of criticism directed towards UK lawmakers and their failure to sort out hate-preachers like Bakri.
On a different note. It seems that the SAS are getting involved in the anti-terrorism effort: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1698575,00.html
Sounds like our radical muslims “friends” should be very afraid.
I’m also wondering… when is a comment considered to be unsuitable? Obviously comments should focus on the BBC and its bias but what’s wrong with pointing out that other news networks – even though they may also be biased – present the news in a totally different way. I know that a lot of people here don’t use the BBC as their primary source for news (because of the bias) but still contribute avidly. Comparisons wouldn’t be possibly without other news sources.
To be clear, the comments I deleted were gratuitously offensive, both in terms of their subject and their poor taste. They were not comments about other news networks – which are, of course, relevant, especially where they contrast with BBC coverage.
Biased BBC is a serious blog with a serious topic – comments that reflect badly on Biased BBC are not appreciated. Please bear that in mind. As for what is and isn’t acceptable, it’s like the difference between pornography and art – difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.
If you wish to enter into further discussion on this topic please email me directly.
StinKerr
On your comment regarding passports and traveling throughout the North American continent, you’re right on! Another thing they don’t consider is that some people just don’t like to fly!
JiL
“Is the man on drugs? CBS? CNN? MSNBC? Are they uncritical of Bush?”
Precisely. The liberals love to tell how Fox News is propped up by our government. The fact is that Fox News was created out of demand from the American people who were sick and tired of the onesided liberal bias of the rest of the MSM. Same goes with talk radio. The left doesn’t want to hear this but it’s not so much our government as it is the people in the red states. The majority. And they can put that in their pipe and smoke it.
I saw John Howard’s press conference with Blair live. He slapped down a reporter who asked if it was all to do with Iraq (the reporter’s line was that we are losing there and now we are losing on the streets here)
Lots of blogs have reported that it was a superb piece by Howard a direct and very cogent answer to the “real causes” brigade.
But I did not see Howard’s remarks being covered by BBC TV or radio news. His remarks were hardhitting, and made very good TV – and should have been shown as counter to all the stuff the BBC has been carrying from people like Livingstone, Galloway, Tariq Ali, Robin Cook and Clare Short. John Howard was interviewed briefly by the Today programme on Friday morning – but he should have been on the main BBC news bulletins.
Anyway – here is the video of John Howard at Downing Street. As an Aussie all I can say is top geezer !
http://treyjackson.typepad.com/junction/2005/07/video_john_howa.html
JiL
Thanks for the link. Way to go John Howard! 🙂
The BBC keeps showing spokesmen for the BBC community who trot out the “real causes” brigade’s “BIG BUT”.
In other words apologism for terrorism. The line goes “The bombings in London are bad BUT we and the terrorists don’t like what is happening to our brothers in Iraw, Afghanistan etc”. They drag in Ab Ghraib, but fail to condemn the real sufferings of their brothers, naamely the endless murders of hundreds of Iraqis by Al Q terrorists in Iraq. They fail to mention that the real sufferings of their brothers in Afghanistn was caused and is still being caused by their other brothers, the Taleban.
I have yet to see any BBC reporter strike down this logical nonsense. The net result is that it feeds aand legitimises the resentment in the UK Muslim commnity and thereby indirectly helps terrorism. These spokesmen are now already bleating about the police action aat Stockwell. Always “we are the victims”. As someone put it – forever seething and whining. Not enogh looking inside themselves to find the real root causes.
The BBC gives far too much rein to the real causes brigade, far too little challenge by the reporters, and far too little coverage of people like John Howard or Norm Geras.
In this they are in lockstep with the Guardin (what a surprise !). In this Guardian article, substitute BBC for “this paper” and you will get the drift.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1532738,00.html
A lot of criticism of the BBC in comments on this thread at the Daily Ablution blog.
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2005/07/it_is_time_to_d.html#comments
Daily Ablution’s Scott Burgess has just chalked up a blog victory – he outed the author of a Guardian article effectively defending the terrorism. The Guardian have finally buckled to criticism and sacked the journalist for membership of an Islamist extremist group.
They will issue a “correction” notice that they should have mentioned this membership in a footnote to the article. (That’s a good idea – why can’t the BBC always warn us, for example, that the MAB is a fellow-traveller of terrorism before they let their spokemen do the usual bleating ?)
But the Guardian is missing the point. They KNEW he held extremist views. They should not have employed him in the first place.
It is time the BBC challenged Spokesmen for the Muslim community haave a mantra thaat virtually all Muslims are against terrorism. This worrying opinion poll contradicts that glib rubbish.
And I bet the BBC does not report it, let alone use it to brief all their reporters and commentators. So the glib line “we are all peaceful” carries on unchallenged. The Guardian trumps the Telegraph all the time at the BBC !
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/23/npoll23.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/23/ixnewstop.html
Pakistan clerics explain ‘jihad’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4711003.stm
Thanks BBC, there’s an “explanation” for the terrorist carrying out suicide bombings that result in the murder of innocent civilians? What would we do without you, our BBC.
The article touts the same old tired propaganda;
1. Islam is a religion of peace
2. There is nothing in Islam that approves of the killing of innocents
3. BUT
4. We understand the causes – Iraq etc
4. Its your fault
5. Change your foreign policy and it’ll all go away.
Play it again, BBC. And again, and again, again, again…….
Neanderthal craziness.
In their excuses it is a never-ending blood feud.
Thank you BBC for telling s this.
Mysterious that the comments suggesting I was an idiot for saying I “wasn’t massively comfortable” with the police shooting people on suspicion dried up once it turned out they’d, err, shot an innocent man on suspicion. I’d have been “massively comfortable” had the chap been allowed to continue mending people’s fuse boxes and (I surmise) moaning to his fellow Brazilians about how London was so cold you needed to wear a coat in July…
StinKerr: no, my comment was aimed at Rob Read, who seemed to be claiming that anti-monopoly laws were an evil socialist plot to stop hardworking entrepreneurs enjoying the fruits of their labour.
Who cares what a person like you thinks ? You recommend assassinations on your site.
That depends who’s defining monopoly.
stop paying to sustain this ‘destroyer of men’s and women’s liberties’