. A commenter on B-BBC, Thomas, aka Grumpy Troll, has got a result from BBC Newswatch regarding the now more widely known BBC omission of coverage concerning Iran’s condemned-to-death rape victim (please check out the horrific details if you haven’t yet heard about it properly- we’re not talking about something in doubt here)
I notice that Mr Jolly (the BBC Newswatch man who responded) tries to excuse it by saying the story broke over the weekend, and then says effectively that failure to cover a story initially is reason enough for ignoring it permanently. Another interpretation is that the Beeb ignores stories that are presented to it by the online rabble (stories, in other words, that the Beeb are late to, ignorant of and culpable for omitting from their coverage).
It’s preposterous. Whatever happened to ‘the public interest’- or even a young girl’s? The coverage cited by the Newswatch man is just one instance of BBC coverage, five months back, reliant on one of their beloved transnationals, Amnesty, who voice ‘growing concern’. The rest (following links) tends to be generalised, infrequent, involving criticism mostly by proxy – and they turn up their nose at a specific example!
The Beeb’s Newswatch response:
‘Thomas,
I don’t think we have covered this story and to be honest, there’s no one reason why that’s the case. For one thing it became known on a weekend, and might not not have got picked up as quickly as it might have done during the week. Also, try as we might, it is impossible to cover every story, and we try to avoid running items simply because they have already been covered widely elsewhere.
To be fair, this particular story seems to have been covered largely on blogs and specialists websites, so may never have made it into mainstream media. However, the fact it isn’t running shouldn’t be seen as an act of censorship – we have covered the issue of Iran’s human rights in the past:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world…ast/ 4184598.stmI hope that goes some way to answering your question. I’ll pass your
e-mail on to our Middle East editor so he can check what the latest
situation is.Kind regards,
Ian Jolly
NewsWatch
‘In the past’- oh, ok, we only bother with Iran as a kind of academic, history exercise. It’s not like their business is news or anything. And it was the weekend- the three billions of public money just couldn’t cover that
Thomas’s initial comment:
—–Original Message—–
…
Sent: 24 January 2006 16:06
To: News General Feedback
Subject: Feedback [NewsWatch]…
COMMENTS: I am writing to ask why the story of a 17-year-old Iranian girl sentenced to death by hanging for having caused the death of one of her three rapists has seemingly not been covered by BBC News, at least not on the BBC News website.
(Story reported at the following URL:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Anno…601081013.htm.)I would appreciate an answer and do excuse myself should the story have been covered and missed by my searches.
(This blog mentioned the Iranian girl’s case via links to other sites- here and here, the latter post going back to Jan 11th, just a week after the sentence was handed out.)
I dunno. I’ve had this debate before on blogs and I stubbornly maintain that the Palestinian faction’s squabbles with one another are far outweighed by their collective hatred of Israel.
As long as Israel remains the focus of that hatred (i.e. forever), there ain’t gonna be no civil war.
I meant to add, ever notice how when these factions ‘fight’, there’s a lot of bluster and strutting around and firing of weapons but only an occasional body count?
Archduke
Lebanon is not so far away and the Falangists are still extant, so I would be tempted to believe that Arab Christians would head in that direction. Likewise with Fatah.
Despite Hisbollah and the strong influence of both Iran and Syria, Lebanon is slowly distancing itself from both. A bolthole free of theocratic domination may prove attractive.
Another alternative might be to cross the river into Jordan, but because of the expulsion of the Palestinians by the Late King Hussein, that choice might prove problematic on both sides.
paulc – yeah – but in order to get out of the Gaza strip, they’ll have to go through Israel.
Susan – I suspect we might first get civil war in Gaza. The spoils system means a lot of Fatah members will not have their profitable extortion rackets – after all didn’t Iranians elect The Nut as President to clean up corruption ?
If he is an example of Islamic probity cleaning the Augean Stables it won’t be long before Gaza is in complete chaos – Sharon was right to disengage – let them fight their tribal battles.
Which tribe was it Arafat came from ? Some top-drawer Jerusalem tribe I thought – I mean it is all tribalism smeared with EU/US money – the Arabs aren’t daft enough to fund this bunch of looters
Danish cartoon rage – now the Muslims are asking the UN to get involved:
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=809117
hmm… cartoons versus that Nazanin girl. what a strange set of priorities these Islamic types have.
http://www.doctorvee.co.uk/2005/02/28/biased-biased-bbc
O/t
Surely (D)HYS’s days are numbered with off-message contributions getting the most recommendations:
http://tinyurl.com/atklb
wooah – anonymous – just reading through those off message posts.
interesting how ferocious the reaction is.
o/t
the “hughes halo”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4656536.stm
There may or may not be a civil war amongst the “Palestinians.” What is certain is that with Hamas adopting sharia, there WILL be stonings, amputations, hanging of “uppity girls” and even worse oppression of gay people than there is now.
Hard lines on the poor Christians, but ultimately a silver lining for the Hamas elections: the Western Left will be fully and mercilessly exposed for the supporters of Islamic theocratic fascism that they are. Which means they will lose even more credibility (fingers crossed) unless they can weasel out of it by denying they ever supported Hamas in the first place.
Susan:
“Which tribe was it Arafat came from ? Some top-drawer Jerusalem tribe I thought….”
Long article here at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12387
includes the following information:
“Pacepa: “Tovarishch Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar,” was built into a Palestinian leader by the KGB in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War.”
And from another article by the same author [Pacepa] in the WSJ.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106419296113226300,00.html
“I was given the KGB’s “personal file” on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader.
First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat’s birth in Cairo,replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.”
Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service, was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.
OT – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4651950.stm
“My first stop was a dog farm in the countryside an hour from Beijing.
It looked like some kind of canine version of Guantanamo Bay
Each cage was barely six feet square.”
Comparing poor treatment of dogs in China to that of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, what rot.
Comparing poor treatment of dogs in China to that of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, what rot.
anonymous | 29.01.06 – 9:46 am | #
Send ’em over the border to Korea where they can eat them………….and the dogs……..
“paulc – yeah – but in order to get out of the Gaza strip, they’ll have to go through Israel.
archduke | Homepage | 28.01.06 – 6:55 pm | # ”
The Israelis aren’t going to stop Palestinians leaving
– or would they prefer to ‘keep the pot boiling’?
hmmm.
“The Israelis aren’t going to stop Palestinians leaving
– or would they prefer to ‘keep the pot boiling’?”
sure looks that way…
stand back – let them boil away:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1556092
Saudis to bail out Hamas PA:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1137605942427&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull