I know, I know – the PLO are merely activists for change, just like B-BBCers.
I never knew that Marwan Barghouti was one too:
“The rebel list is headed by a jailed activist, Marwan Barghouti, under the new name al-Mustaqbal (the Future)…
Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison over militant attacks.” [emphasis added]
Mr Barghouti is a rather forceful “activist”:
“He was convicted on May 20, 2004 of five counts of murder, one of the victims being a Greek Orthodox monk, resulting from three attacks, one north of Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and one in the West Bank. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder resulting from a failed suicide car bomb. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks. On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.”
I suppose we should be thankful that the BBC bothered to refer to the somewhat inconvenient gaol term.
bbc preachiness and messianic fervour reaches new heights.we now have
1 the world trade organisation.
2 aids.
3 global warming.
with these three topics they do not so much give us the news as push it up our noses.
and they are milking the cia extraordinary rendition business for all its worth.
Like St Marwan Barghouti, we also had St David Hicks featured on Radio 4’s pm programme a couple of days ago. This poor Australian fellow and soon-to-be British citizen who is currently detained at Guantanamo was presented as a decent chap who cannot possibly be regarded as any sort of threat. Noting that Eddie Mair made no reference as to why Hicks was detained, I decided to look it up myself. Interestingly, Hicks had changed his name to a muslim one, and had fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army before being trained in military matters at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Well, fancy Eddie Mair and the BBC conveniently omitting these relevant facts! But typical of the BBC’s desire to beatify pond life.
Toby
Apologies, as you had already mentioned the Hicks story below!
Well, the report isn’t entirely innacurate. Marwan Barghouti can be seen as a political activist for a bona fide political party… and he just happens to be imprisoned for a few actions which some people might regard as that of a misguided individual and others as an understandable reaction to years of political oppression. (It’s quite easy to write this BBC guff isn’t it)?
8.17 am 17 Dec 2005
I’ve just watched BBC 1’s Breakfast News top news report – a survey of hospital cleanliness which finds that many hospitals fall short of the required standards. However there was no mention of the relative performance of hospitals run by the private sector. Suspecting that the omission was indicative of political bias, I did a Google on the issue and found the reason why. Today’s Times reports the hygiene survey with this headline: “Private hospitals outdo the NHS for cleanliness”.
QED
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1930972,00.html
In Today’s Independent: Those pesky Jews getting uppity about anti-Israel bias at the BBC:
Sir: Greg Dyke’s article (Media, 12 December) does not reflect the Chief Rabbi’s views on the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East.
At the meeting with a BBC management group to which Mr Dyke refers, the Chief Rabbi argued that there was in his view a failure to provide viewers with an Israeli perspective on events in the Middle East. He urged the Director General to commission a documentary that would do this by contextualising these events. He followed up this request by letter. He repeated his concerns when he addressed a subsequent gathering of BBC producers, at their request, several months later.
The Chief Rabbi shares the concerns held by the Jewish community about the BBC’s Middle East coverage, and is constantly reminded of these on his frequent visits to communities both in the UK and abroad.
ZAKI COOPER
HEAD OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS OFFICE OF THE CHIEF RABBI LONDON N12
Barghouti is just one of thousands that al-beeb simply ignores. The PA pays tribute to many of its killers, including the TERRORIST who massacred 21 people in a Haifa restaurant in October 2003, and to whom a collection of poems was published and awarded the PA’s Book of the Month prize earlier this year.
Abbas and his spokesmen have never found it in themselves to express sorrow or condolences to the thousands of Jewish families afflicted by the bombers and murderers who have gone out from the areas under Palestinian Authority control.
The Gaza Strip has become anything but a model for future Arab-Israeli peace since the Israelis withdrew from there. Gaza has been used to launch untold numbers of Kassam rockets and the abandoned settlements are being used by the various terrorist organizations to train their killers. Terrorists and more weaponry has been flooding into the Gaza Strip.
THe BBC is the only political party in Great Britain whose Manifesto is known to all.
It is an Evangelising Organisation dedicated to the Propagation of Its Own Doctrine of Infallibility and Omniscience.
It is does not seek to replace The Pope but to replace God.
It asserts that the United States is beset by Primitivist Christians who execute Murderers whereas Europe in contrast is “Enlightened” for liberating babies from the womb and circumventing life itself.
If the World is round the BBC will assert it is flat and commission polls and docudramas to prove the assertion. It propunds the Pantheist Religion of Environmentalism and seeks to make itself the Sole Arbiter of what is Right and what is Wrong.
It has become like Orwell’s 1984 with the BBC being the embodiment of a regime without a leader – it is the world of Winston Smith which has O’Brien but not yet personified Big Brother
Simon Hughes on the Today programme this morning states:-
“Charles Kennedy was right on Iraq”
So which bit was he right on, given that millions of Iraqis are voting in free elections today? Also why didn’t John the Hump pick up on this, but instead let the remark pass without challenge? Well, of course, the reason is that the BBC heartily agrees that “Charles Kennedy was right on Iraq”. Why not just save time and spit in the faces of Iraqi democrats?
Another interesting point. Ming Campbell, that sanctimonious mouthpiece of the Lib Dems who is wheeled out daily by the Today programme to spout anti-Bush, anti-American and anti-Iraq war rhetoric (in his typically civilised fashion) is strangely absent from the airwaves when his presence is, for once, really required. Kennedy is in trouble, Campbell is silent and may be angling for the leadership, but he is nowhere to be found at Broadcasting House. This just underlines the political opportunism of the Lib Dems. It’s easy to spout off when criticising Iraq, but when the story turns to Campbell, he disappears from view like the shifty politician that he really is, under the civilised and reasonable veneer.
Typical of the BBC to sanitize Barghouti. He’s a vicious murderer. One of the attacks he ordered was the cold-blooded killing of an Israeli woman as she sat in her car at a garage. Her killer shot her in the head.
That’s ‘activism’ and ‘militancy’ in the BBC’s phrase book.
Eamonn –
Ming Campbell is strangely absent, given his near permanent presence at the BBC since … oooooh, we went into Iraq.
Bryan –
I just called the BBC to make a complaint – 08700100222 – over its reporting of Barghouti, and it seems we have at least one sane person there. The fella I spoke with mentioned the large number of complaints the BBC receives becasue of news stories, to which I replied that I’m not surprised, given how biased an organisation it is. Well blow me down, but the fella agreed!
The upshot is that he gave me an email address for the news service which isn’t normally given out the the public:
newspublic@bbc.co.uk
I intend to make use of it.
Ming Campbell, that sanctimonious mouthpiece of the Lib Dems who is wheeled out daily by the Today programme to spout anti-Bush, anti-American and anti-Iraq war rhetoric (in his typically civilised fashion)
Thanks Eammon for sharing my view of this sanctimonious barrister, the kind of people who are forever judging others whilst themselves inert and ready to pervert truth with oleagenous verbiage
We interrupt the usual broadcast to give some free publicity to a play…a message of peace and harmony:
Suicide bomber play to tour
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4528760.stm
The son’s name is Jihad?
Pete_London,
That’s good to know. Maybe there’s hope for the BBC, after all.
Not that they bothered to respond to a couple of complaints I sent them re comments on ‘Have Your Say’. They wouldn’t even publish my rebuttals. And these involved facts, not opinion, that the anti-Israel crew was distorting, and blatant lies like the claim that “Israeli snipers regularly fire on Red Crescent ambulances.”
Also, their ‘ten day’ response to formal complaints is a bad joke.
If they were honest, they would say they can’t/wont respond to complaints that challenge their bias.
Bryan –
I’ve found that the best way to get a response is to call the number – 08700100222 – and state that you want a written response or someone to call you after you’ve made the complaint. As bad as the BBC is I’ve always had a phone call from someone responding to my complaint.
Pete,
You might want to note the name, Malcolm Balen. He is supposed to be in charge of fielding complaints about Israeli-Palestinian coverage at al-beeb. I don’t think he has been very effective given the appallingly low standard of general corporation reporting and overall bias from the region.
Is there an I.Q. test to be a bbc reporter? Are they required to know or learn a region’s language, or languages in the case of the Mid East?
Only the most ignorant, or as our American friends would say, the most “educationally challenged” need apply.
08700100222
So to complain you pay a National Rate fee of 8p/min with at least 0.5p/min going to the BBC……………….but if you want to moan about someone else you can call “You & Yours” BBC Radio4 FREE on 0800 044 044
Pete_London or Natalie,
Can you change the address Pete_London typed in to “mangle” it so that spammers can’t get it?
Pete_London it’s considered good netiquette to use something like BBCPublic [AT] bbc.co.uk instead as this stops spam clogging up the inbox (especially for addresses that are read).
Rob Read
I’m all for stopping spammers but (seriously) I haven’t a clue what you mean. I’m not a techie, so any chance of putting it into ‘Idiot’ for me?
“any chance of putting it into ‘Idiot’ for me?”
just dont use the @ symbol. Write it like you’d read it over the phone. That way spammers find it hard to “harvest” the email addresses.
Rob Read
Ah, right, my email address. Gotcha.
Pete_London,
I’d phone them, but I live in Israel and I don’t think that 087 number is accessible from here.
And if it were, I imagine it would be costly.
So I’ll just keep on hammering away at the keyboard.
Help defeat the bbc money grabbers. Go to:
http://saynoto0870.com/companysearch.php