Monthly Archives: September 2005

Honest Reporting has a roundup of coverage of the synagogues burnt by the Palestinian mob in Gaza. It features an old B-BBC standby, Orla Guerin, who wants you to understand. She says,

“Israel stole thirty-eight years from them; today, many were ready to take back anything they could.”

Watch the video clip.

Hat tip: Teddy Bear and others. That reminds me of something I meant to say ages ago, but I got snowed under and forgot. Check out Teddy Bear’s useful Discussion Board on BBC Bias. I am adding it to the links column. It is very well organised, and easily searchable if you want to find a particular story.

So I’m wondering what’s on the tv tonight and I go and take a look at the Radio Times website. Yeah, I know it’s run by BBC subversives, so it’s all part of the Axis of Evil, but even so… Here’s the promo for No Sex Please We’re Teenagers:

“There are some surprising results when the teens trying to give up sex for five months face the zeal of the American abstinence movement”.

And as for Medium:

“Death-penalty-themed episode of the new US supernatural drama that no doubt appealed to American right-wingers”.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s programming anyway. I wonder how they’ll review Lost:

“Survivalist drama much loved by red-state oil-guzzling republicans who dream of living in a no-tax, pro-life hellhole”.

Rob writes:

There is an interview with Kofi Annan on the BBC website. The interview is conducted by Lyse Doucet. Not an entirely surprising line of questioning by a BBC “reporter”.

I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered to write a transcript of Annan’s replies. I think the questions speak for themselves.

Q1) Let us start with the crisis in the US state of Louisiana. Has the aftermath of this crisis shocked you?

Q2) As you say, you offered it [assistance]early on, but they accepted it only recently.

Q3) They have been criticised for being too slow to respond. Did that exacerbate the crisis?

Q4) Kofi Annan, in a few days time, what has been described as the largest ever gathering of world leaders will start in New York. You have described it as nothing less than “a mandate and a vision to change the world”. Are you angry that the US is now trying to highjack it?

Q5) So you worked on it for about a year. A team has been working on it for about 6 months. Weeks ago 750 amendments come from the US ambassador John Bolten.

Q6) Is there a risk of failure?

Q7) Can you fight poverty if, as the United States demands you remove the target for countries to give 0.7% of their national product?

Q8 When John Bolton came to the UN you told me he had to operate in a spirit of give and take. He didn’t take your advice, did he?

Q9) Do you suspect that those critics you mention may be behind the timing of the next independent report for the oil for food program coming this week?

Q10) Are you braced for devastating criticism on Wednesday when the Bolton report is published?

Q11) For you, this comes at a time when you need the strongest hand possible. Critical summit beginning on reform and for your critics the oil for food is the single of human incompetence, efficiency and corruption [sic].

Q12) And sadly for you there is a personal dimension for you. The leaks suggest that you will be personally cleared of any wrong doing, but your son Kojo will again be in the spot light for trading on his father’s name.

I was not quite sure where Rob’s transcript came from. [UPDATE 15 SEP: Rob writes to say he did the transcript himself.] In one or two cases Rob’s transcript, which looks as if it might have been taken from computer-generated subtitles, differs from the presumably final version on the link. For instance, there are differences between his wording for Q11 and the wording on the website:

Q: But for you, it comes at a time when you need the strongest hand possible: a critical summit beginning on reform. And for your critics, the oil-for-food is the symbol of UN incompetence, inefficiency and corruption.

There are also one or two questions not included on Rob’s list – for instance the one about Make Poverty History. However these minor differences do not diminish his point. Lyse Doucet’s questioning is gentle to the point of sycophancy. Half of it is just feeding Annan lines of defence. And do you possibly think that Doucet might have a bit of a thing about the US?

Remember this next time you hear the BBC praise itself for “speaking truth to power.”

generated by Matt Well’s now famous piece (Quick! Slap on the “Viewpoint” label!) that I am genuinely not sure whether Rottweiler Puppy’s fisking has already been mentioned on this blog.

The BBC was earlier congratulating itself on having had 400,000 page impressions on this piece over the weekend 3-4 September. Ed gently suggested that even then not all of them might have been from fans – although I am willing to believe most of them were: the sort of person that makes up the audience of Question Time would have lapped this up. It would be interesting to know how high the total is now, and what the referring pages were.

Over two years ago I wrote a short blog entry on ‘black American conservative writers’, and ended the piece with ‘A prize for anyone who ever gets to hear one of them on the BBC’.

Well, I’ve checked my mail and no-one’s written in, so I’ll have to drink the prize myself. For yesterday morning, the voice of Deroy Murdock was heard on Radio Four – admittedly as the last item (RealAudio) on the Saturday edition of the Today Programme, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Alright, he was introduced as writing for a ‘conservative’ journal, whereas the Guardian’s Gary Younge, whose ‘personal view’ prefaced the interview, was not apparently a writer for a ‘liberal’ or ‘left-wing’ publication (other guest Alvin Hall is a BBC favourite) – but hey, a step at a time – it’s difficult for these guys.

Let’s hope the BBC show more respect for intellectual diversity in future, and we get to hear from people like Thomas Sowell and John McWhorter. The BBCs usual spokespeople for black America are more in the mould of Bonnie Greer, a writer and long-time UK resident. In December 2001 BBC TV ran two documentaries, looking at the 9/11 attacks from a pro and anti-American perspective. At the time I wasn’t blogging, but I made a few notes.

“A couple of nights ago BBC2 featured a documentary by Bonnie Greer, who started by saying what a patriot she was (she left the US for Britain some years ago) before trawling her immediate family (who to a man or woman thought ‘the chickens were coming home to roost’) then various Chicagoans for their views. She nodded wisely when people said ‘what goes round, comes round’, but those who, like the solemn 10 year old boy, said ‘these people should be put to death’ were pointed out as examples of US ‘insularity’ and lack of empathy with the Muslim world.”

I remember discussing the programme at work the following day, and saying that I hoped the pro-American show, to be broadcast that evening, would redress the balance.

“What do you mean ?” said a colleague, “that WAS the pro-American view !”

UPDATE – Commenter David H points out that the linguist Professor John McWhorter, unknown to the BBC (other linguistics professors are luckier), has a long piece in today’s Sunday Times.

UPDATE 2 – Clive Davis with the understatement of the year.

“It’s not often you hear a black conservative like Deroy Murdock given a chance to speak his mind.”

.It’s fascinating to read this Newswatch article (hat-tip to commenter Ritter) and compare it to the article ‘From the Editor’s Desktop’. Compare and contrast:

‘It doesn’t happen that often, but every now and again the heroic team that handles all our feedback looks up from the wave of grumbles and groans and points out a stack of praise for something we’ve done.’ (he was referring to response to this article by Matt Wells, a former Guardian mainstay freelancing from LA)

‘A recurring theme is the allegation that the BBC is biased against US President George W Bush and his administration, and is using the disaster as an excuse to attack the Republicans’

Is the same BBC during the same period being described here? The NewsWatch report makes all the points that we’ve been making here: the anti-Republican, editorialising, ignorant BBC. The only difference is that it refers to the broadcast coverage, as opposed to the website. All it is missing is a comment about anti-Americanism. Let me add that here. Yesterday on BBCWorld I saw a HardTalk extra interview with horror director Wes Craven. The interviewer persistently pushed the line that Americans, as opposed just to human beings generally, were always being afraid of something. He went on to pursue the line that ‘Americans’ always needed a ‘foe’. ‘What about the need for a “foe”?’, his line went to Craven. It was the only time there was an edge to his voice in the interview.

But, to return to the Desk Editor, can we really buy his line that Wells’ article produced a plume of unmixed praise? He mentions not a critic but says proudly that ‘It picked up some 400,000 page impressions last weekend’. Well, about 10 of those were probably me- and I was a critic- and we may have sent up to about 1000 thousand visitors to see it. Furthermore, I seem to recall comments like ‘How do I complain. Please, someone, give me an email address. This was infuriating’. Can it be that many of those sensitive to Wells’ utterly bigoted commentary have, like me, become resigned to the fact that their negative comments to the BBC get neither airing nor response, even when addressing matters of real public interest? I sent them a lengthy and hard-wrought email about their coverage of the visit of Al-Qaradawi in July 04 and got nothing in return. It took about an hour, referencing posts and revisiting programmes on online feeds. That man’s view of suicide bombing and Jihad may have had a bearing on countless suicide bombings in Israel, let alone the events of July 2005 in London, but do the BBC care?

There seems to be a parallel here. The pathology of someone like Al Qaradhawi is allowed to escape public attention, even when explicitly he identifies and expiates on Islam’s ‘foe’, yet the BBC go looking for America’s supposed subconscious desire for a “foe”. Seems to me to be a recipe for journalists as headless chickens, looking for something where it isn’t and covering something up where it is. And the recipe does work- take a look at this post from the American expat about John Simpson’s article concerning media responsibility for accuracy, relating to Newsweek and the sensibilities of Islam. Simpson’s definition of overwhelming public interest includes the sacred nature of the Koran. Think about that for a moment, and read this comment from the superb (better every day) Marc from USS Neverdock (I would have christened his blog HMS Indefatigable)- the Neverdock lynchpin report here.

‘Marc said…

Because of his anti-American and anti-Israeli bias, Simpson is a valued asset to the BBC. How valuable?

Well, thanks to the internet and technology we can show you.

Back in January, Simpson lied in an article for the BBC and claimed he had proof that the coalition was responsible for far more civilian deaths in Iraq than the terrorists.

http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2005/01/iraq-bbc-obtains-casualty-figures.html

Caught out, the BBC admitted Simpson lied, without saying so explicitly. Natch.

http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2005/01/iraq-bbc-lied-about-casualty-figures.html

If you follow the links in my posts today, you will not find any reference to Simpson at all! Not in the original and not even in the Google cache. Simpson just vanished from the whole story as if he never had anything to do with the lie.

Ah, but here is where technology comes in. I took a screen shot of the Google cache before the BBC stealth edited Simpson out. And for your viewing pleasure I present the original article – complete with Simpson’s photograph!

http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2005/01/iraq-bbc-admits-it-lied-about-iraq-war.html

Click on the image and it should take you to the Google cache of the article. Notice what’s missing?

Simpson’s photograph.

Mustn’t have the BBC’s poster boy linked to a scandal, now can we?’

Simpson (as Scott points out) states in his article that the responsibility for inaccurate journalism such as Newsweek’s lies with those military personnel who made the story believable- ‘It is hard to avoid the inference that the people who are really to blame are the men and women who have abused their prisoners, not those who have reported allegations about the ill treatment.’. In other words, it’s more of the inaccurate-but-true philosophy. This from just about the Beeb’s most senior journalist. Incredible- and bankrupt. What is to stop journalists doing a perpetual Jayson Blair if the main tool of their craft is to use their imagination based on what they know (or think they know) to be the case? Nothing, it seems, at the BBC. How very M’Wellsian, a man who knew exactly who to blame for whatever he thought was happening in New Orleans as he sat in his LA condo. [NB. Post slightly updated- Simpson link plus quote]

, writing for Tech Central Station, excoriates the Beeb. (Hat tip: the guys at ¡No Pasaran!) Ed’s post here and mine here, and the American Expatriate‘s post on Hurricane Katrina: The Real Story all get a mention.

In a spirit of strict honesty, I have to say that it wasn’t Mr Paxman who said, “This is going very badly for the Republicans.” It was whatsisname.

I very rarely post here simply to vent my emotions. Sometimes I also post to wound, to show off, or to send the children of harmless TV presenters crying home from school. But after the last week I feel compelled to finally let free my inner urge to go the top of the bus and whisper hoarsely to a stranger “George Bush has got a hurricane in his bag, you know.” Why not? It would make me feel better, and everybody else seems to enjoy it. Especially the BBC.

Rob White tipped me off to this piece… From the editor’s desktop:

This week the upbeat messages were for this piece from Matt Wells, a freelance journalist who writes for us quite often. It picked up some 400,000 page impressions last weekend.

It was certainly strong stuff, but it struck the right note for many. One wrote: “I am so grateful to Matt Wells for writing his article ‘New Orleans crisis shames Americans’. It is true to a depth that I can’t begin to express.”

The place that opinion pieces have on the site is a tricky one. Readers respect us for our impartiality and balance, but does that mean we should never carry more strident views?

We won’t be foaming at the mouth and ranting just yet, because that would fox our audience, but as long as we properly signpost opinion pieces they have a place on this site.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the piece originally went on the site with a straight headline. That was a mistake, and it was amended to make clear it was a “viewpoint”.

How generous of you to make that amendment, Mr Desktop. Wasn’t the bit about Foxing the audience cute?

In the Guardian John Humphrys justifies a great social evil:

“Independent journalism is too ingrained in the BBC. It is our lifeblood. It is the main reason for the BBC’s existence. It is by a mile the most important thing we do”.

Really? Not as important as presenting Mastermind, surely?

It’s a pity that this story about the blogging revolution is hidden behind the subscription curtain at the Scotsman. From my printed edition I offer this extract:

At their best, they provide an authentic new source of first-hand information. They break stories. They challenge professional reporters to get it right. They keep the media honest. They increase the flow of information. In that context, it doesn’t matter that most of them are rubbish.

Now who could that be? Glenn Reynolds perhaps? The folk over at Samizdata maybe? No, it’s none other than Bob Eggington, former editor-in-chief and creator of bbc.co.uk

(Cross-posted to Freedom and Whisky.)