that took place in this troubled world on Friday night/ Saturday morning concerned crimes and alleged crimes by US soldiers in Iraq, according to Ceefax.
For those unfamiliar with Ceefax, the BBC’s teletext system displays about twenty-five pages of news stories each day, starting with the news summary on page 101.
Pages 125 has four sub pages on the alleged massacre at Ishaqi. When you get to the fourth page, if you are still awake, you discover the source of this video – a “hardline Sunni group.” These four pages make no reference to the news on page 107 that says US troops have been cleared of the same massacre. After suffering that annoying news on page 107, the ideal BBC reader can at least cheer himself up on page 108. It bears “new allegations” from a US deserter. Another massacre? No, someone in the army told him that in the event that he killed anyone he ought to put an assault rifle next to their body to cover it up. Page 117 tells us that one of the Abu Ghraib accused is not going to jail but will have to do hard labour at an army camp instead. I think they should have the Abu Ghraib man on Desert Island Discs, then at least we’d be able to finally learn what his favourite music is when they trailed the show on the Radio Four news bulletins.
Not everyone is impressed by the BBC’s use of a video from a “hardline Sunni group.” Regular commenter Dumbcisco sends the following roundup of what some US blogs are saying:
“Guns caused gunshot wounds”
“Number of editorial layers unknown, but probably a lot” : Point Five
[Point Five also had a link to a post from All Things Beautiful called “Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!”]
Michelle Malkin (- a blog read by the President’s new Press Secretary, I believe)
“The BBC shills for a hardline Sunni group” : The Political Pitbull.
“Who needs Al Jazeera when you have the BBC ?” : Democracy Project
“BBC airs propaganda obtained from Sunni insurgents” :
Security Watchtower“What the heck is wrong with the BBC – this story was reported 6 weeks ago and was debunked then……For the BBC to fall for this now only shows how far some people will go to promote an agenda against America and the war” : Rightwing Nuthouse
Total incredulity about the credulity of the BBC in this story : Riehl World View
“BBC reports : Guns cause gunshot wounds ” : Blue Star Chronicles
“The BBC says they “uncovered” the video evidence….this is a strong word to use when it was GIVEN TO THEM BY SUNNI INSURGENTS …” :Outside the Beltway
“….The press is unbelievable. I wish they would just come right out and say – AMERICA IS EVIL. WE OPPOSE EVERYTHING IT DOES. LONG LIVE ISLAMIC FASCISM” : Ninth State
“UPDATE ….looks like the BBC should not only be ashamed of themselves, they should issue an apology to the US armed forces….They were carrying water for the enemies of the iraqi people …” : A Blog for All
“Anxious to pile on more accusations against US troops, the BBC has an article out today …The most curious thing is …a line buried 15 paragraphs into the 16 paragraph story : “The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to US forces”….. Texas Rainmaker
Oh – and here’s the BBC story described in an editorial as a My Lai and splashed across the Middle East : Arab News
and here is a decidely odd new story from the BBC saying that Iraqis are not focussed on Haditha or Ishaqi anyway. Is the BBC backing away from all its screaming blue murder ? : Iraqis not focused on massacre claims
dumbcisco
The BBC story linked to last is indeed decidedly odd. It says
There are a number of possible reasons for this. One is that many Iraqis already believe that civilians are targeted on a daily basis by coalition forces – whether accidentally or deliberately.
Another is that people have become used to images of alleged massacres and attacks – sometimes these are even made available on DVDs in markets or used by militant groups to recruit new fighters.
But perhaps the main reason is that people actually have more pressing concerns.
More than a thousand people are being killed every month in the country. The sectarian divide in places like Baghdad is growing daily.
Who are these thousand people killed by, exactly? You can guess from the mention of the sectarian divide in the next sentence. But the BBC isn’t going to tell you. That would involve directly comparing the scale and nature of alleged American massacres (subject to investigations and punishment if proved) to the much greater number of bombings of mosques, of bombs set to go off as children were being given sweets by Americans, and all the other massacres carried out by the various factions of anti-coalition “militants” that, far from being a cause of shame to them, are celebrated and praised.
Yet that very comparison must be one of the reasons why Iraqi reaction has been so muted.
Remember the BBC Rule 1: “Active Israelis, Passive Palestinians”? Rule 2 is Active Coalition, Passive Insurgents.
Nice work Natalie. It seems that al-beeb still has slagging off America and Israel as their shibboleth. For example they keep referring to “Occupied Territories” when mentioning Gaza even though the Israelis shlepped themselves out of there.
Note to readers: I just ought to stress that the blog roundup was not by me, it was posted in comments by “dumbcisco.” – NS.
Edited By Siteowner
Here’s a few more blog comments on the BBC’s Ishaqi story/non-story :
“Latest attempt to smear our troops falls flat ” :
http://chickenhawkexpress.blogspot.com/2006/06/latest-attempt-to-smear-our-soldiers.html
“An over-zealous BBC spearheaded that witchhunt ” :
http://thebosunlocker.blogspot.com/2006/06/rush-to-judge.html
“BBC story false….No worries, the BBC did its job and riled up the Arab world with false reporting again. Does it matter that the story isn’t true ?” :
http://bizblogger.blogspot.com/2006/06/bbc-ishaqi-story-false.html
(And how many Muslims here in the UK were set afire by the BBC’s reports on Thursday ?)
These are some of the blog stories criticising the BBC. But there are dozens/hundreds of media and blog stories that simply repeated the BBC’s original allegations. 290 blog entries on Technorati, 8 full pages of references of newspaper and TV stories worldwide on a Google News search on “Ishaqi BBC”.
The story has done untold damge. The fact that it looks to be false will not undo that damage.
For example – one of the biggest blogs in the US is by Andrew Sullivan. He had a simply entry throwing up his hands in horror at what US troops were apparently guilty of :
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/06/the_unspoken_fe.html?promoid=rss_daily_dish
and he followeed this up with several other entries based on the BBC’s purveying of allegations based on the photos provided by the Iraqi insurgent source.
“A lie is halfway round the world before Truth can get its boots on”
“Earlier today the BBC all but convicted our troops over some video stills ….provided to them by terrorists” :
http://sayanythingblog.com/2006/06/02/troops_cleared_of_shootings_at_ishaqi/
Apparently Fox News/Bill O’Reilly was on the case last night – even before the denials of the story, focussing on why the BBC chose to run with the story even though the source appeared to be so tainted. It will be interesting to see if O’Reilly goes to town on the BBC now the story has been declared “absolutely false”. He is a longtime critic of the Beeb and its bias – including total scorn for its T-word vacillations.
My abiding thought is the acid description in one blog of the portentous John Simpson as a “forensics expert” – he is seen in the video apparently vouching for the authenticity of the photos.
For Simpson – was this hubris before nemesis ?
How on earth could Simpson present this gruesome story so forcefully when Knight Ridder appear to have discounted it way back in March ? (It took me just a few minutes of googling to find the Knight Ridder stuff) Did Simpson check his story with the US military authorities in Baghdad before it was headlined across all the BBC channels ? The US military investigation cannot have been completed YESTERDAY – they must have known the results of their enquiries earlier, and surely those results could have been available to Simpson if he had bothered to check his story properly with the US people in Baghdad ?
Is this another Gilligan moment – rushing to air with allegations without the basic journalistic courtesy/stringency of checking properly with the people facing the allegations ?
And how was it that “guru” Juan Cole was making a full post on the original BBC/John Simpson story within minutes of us hearing about it here in the UK ?
http://www.juancole.com/2006/06/ishaqi-massacre-emerges-in-wake-of.html
Couldn’t possibly be friendly cooperation. Of course not. Perish the thought. The BBC would never stoop so low as to be on good terms with an apologist for terrorism.
Sorry – the 9.25am post was me
You seem to reserve judgement about whether there have been *any recent massacres by American forces — hey maybe the BBC fabricated everything right? Have you heard that even Fox News is saying that at least one massacre has occured?
Here’s a report from TWO MONTHS AGO suggesting that the Ishaqi massacre story was looking like a con.
Two months later the BBC and John Simpson run with it. On the face of it without checking properly with the US people in Baghdad – if they had checked, the detailed denials would have been available.
The best news service in the world ?
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-28186.html
nice article Natalie.
and another thing to ponder – in all the anti-terror raids that the police are conducting, how come not a single Iraqi has been arrested/involved?
could it be that Iraqis are somewhat grateful to be rid of Saddam, so therefore self-detonation on a crowded tube train is something they wouldnt even think about?
It is one of the problems today when so few people have military experience. You hear the BBC describe soldiers as “colleagues”, “people”, rather than soldiers.
Yesterday I heard them describe the crew of a cruise ship as “staff”.
The vocabulary is so limited. Myself, I have an open mind on what goes on in Iraq. There are terror gangs kindnaping and killing – Saddam did release 100.000 criminals during the invasion – and there are NGOs and fellow-travellers ready to set up anything to damage the Allied troops – then again there may even be units which get too gung-ho or snap and shoot when it is not politic to do so – that is part and parcel of war.
I doubt Korea or France or Italy or Germany were scenes of chivalry and saintly benediction. Certainly being in the way of front-line battle troops is not like attending the PTA. Bandits planting IEDs tend o make surrounding areas vulnerable to irritated soldiers.
I have no real conclusions and I do not eed the BBC to supply them
Rick
I agree with you – nasty things can happen under battle stress.
But the BBC is pre-judging – and not seeking comments from the accused.
That is sheer bad journalism.
And it is obvious why they stoop to such a low level of journalism – they are spinning it to match their Quagmire/We shouldn’t have gone there theme.
It is much easier to pen a story and make accusations against the US, British or Israeli governments because anyone can accuse them of anything without fear of serious retribution. Governments don’t generally sue or threaten violent retaliation.
Journalists who stick their noses into ‘sectarian’ affairs risk kidnapping, death (see Steven Vincent) or some other delightful riposte. This partially explains the lack of coverage of ‘sectarian’ battles in places like Nigeria, Darfur, Iran, Gaza and Iraq. Rather than risk upsetting the local warlords and gang-leaders or getting sucked into vicious battles, journalists stick to bashing easy targets.
This is fine up to a point because one risks creating a kind of moral inversion whereby your average AK47-wielding, Koran-quoting jihadist ‘leader’ becomes the ‘good guy’ and George Bush becomes the baby-eating religious nut-job.
It is a basic rule of journalism to assess the quality of your source before broadcasting or printing a report. If you know that your source is totally biased and untrustworthy then you should not report their claims without supporting evidence.
There is plainly a real problem with the BBC News editorial board, one they seem happy to ignore.
Ralph
The BBC has not ignored the problem, they have used it to their advantage.
The BBC explained several weeks ago, that the lack of security for reporters on the front means that the media have to use US forces propergander to gain most of its material. Strongly leaving the impresion that the situation is much worse than they are able to report. This clealy because the situation on the ground is so dangerous and out of control.
They did not mention that they themselves are targeted by the enemy in order to have this very result.
This allows the enemies Anti-American propergander to reach the British and American public unchallenged.
I personaly dont believe the “propergander war” is quite as important as some US political pundits may indicate as far as the war itself is concerned. This has more to do with internal US party politics. The only reason that Bill Clinton is not in the same place as George Bush is that he was elected 8 years earlier.
I dont think Bin Larden and Arab nationalism in general care to much whether the US president is REP OR DEM. They are all evil “sons of bitches” to them.
Remember it was Democrates that got America into most of Americas wars.
Remember it was Democrates that got America into most of Americas wars.
Gary Powell | 03.06.06 – 2:07 pm | #
I am grateful to them…………without Woodrow Wilson and FDR who knows what position this country might now be in.
I hate to make war party political – but since I must be grateful to Democrat Presidents, I shall be.
This Simpsongate business is very similar to the Rathergate business. Both involved reporters rushing to judgement because the story was what they wanted to hear and believe.
I hope Simpson suffers the same fate as Rather but I doubt it will happen.
If the Americans did kill civilians, why make such a fuss about it when the other side does the same but on about ten times the scale?
Why does the MSM hold America to a higher standard of behaviour than the noble Resistance in Iraq?
It appears the Times has just committed as serious a smear as the BBC on US forces in Iraq :
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005321.htm
The Times has made an instant apology for printing a gruesome picture of corpses of people murdered by Sunnis – not by US servicement. But the correction to the original June 1 story is just a few lines of text, utterly out of scale with the brutality of the Times’ error.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2205982,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World
I heard some idiot the other day suggesting that the US was lucky that we had stood by them during the cold War. We stood by them ? God help us from this ignorance. For all its faults the US is still our prime ally, and has been our protector for 60 years. It is still the City on a Hill, still imbued by anglo ideas of the rule of law, of freedom, of justice.
The BBC on the other hand traduces or slimes or insults the US as a matter of course, as part of the mindset, day in day out. And there will be no apology. The BBC will slip sideways, segue out of the matter if it can.
I am convinced there is a high-level covering of tracks going on right now at the BBC over the Simpson story. NOTHING will be published re. the story without Simpson’s personal clearance, every word will be parsed to help the slippery move sideways. We saw it all happening over the Gilligan affair – because it came out in the published evidence to Lord Hutton. But this time we won’t see the internal minutes etc.
Here is another take on the BBC rushing to publish the Ishaqi massacre allegations :
Meanwhile Mudville Gazette points out some of the key details that the BBC omitted from the John Simpson story on Thursday. All known details – eg an Al Q man was killed at the site and another fled.
Why were these crucial details omitted ? Was this deliberate on Simpson’s part ? Why didn’t he refer back eg to the Knight Ridder debunking of the story back in March – he is on record as sayiong that the BBC respect and use a lot of stuff from Knight Ridder as the BBC seldom leaves Baghdad.
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/005366.html
Then again Simpson was slagging off Raggie Omagh the other day trying to claim that the BC staff did not hide in the Green Zone and claiming they did not use Iraqi stringers….aye right!
Since he liberated Kabul on his own, could it be that Simpo is a wee bit jealous of the Yanks liberating Baghdad without his worthy presence to advise them on how to make a triumphant entry into a city?……..
As John Howard keeps saying – be careful what you wish for. If the likes of the BBC, mad liberals in the Uk and EU and NuLabour/NuTory continue to pee of the Yanks then they might just take their balls, aircraft, soldiers and nuclear shield and go home to leave us to suffer as the hordes of non-Polish plumbers sweep across Europe unchecked….honestly if I was a Yank I’d have gone home years ago so thanks for staying guys and sorry for the way some muppets over here behave.
OT
dave t
How are your finals going ? I hope you aren’t caught up in the lecturers’ strike ?
gordon-bennett called this issue Simpsongate – as compared with Rathergate.
Come to think of it, there are similarities, as g-b says. A rush to publish a story that fits the “US troops are bad” wishlist, a failure to check and doublecheck before publishing at the top-of-the-hour.
A key difference is that many in the US had always regarded Rather as Democrat. It was a given. Plus he had Mary Mapes as the producer who was driving the story. Is there a BBC backroom person driving this one ? WHY did Simpson latch on to this STALE story, already rubbished by Knight-Ridder ? Who fed it to him ? He only visits Baghdad every 6 weeks, it is not a story he unearthed himself. WHO FED HIM THE STORY ?
In the Rather case the feed for the false docs was a known nutter, who should have been distrusted. Juan Cole is a known nutter – but I don’t know that if has been pushing the Ishaqi story. Who else might it be ?
A free press is part of our defence of our freedoms. But a biased press is an oppressor. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” – Who watches the watchers ? In the case of the BBC, there is no-one to bring them to account.
You in your former service life were accountable, subject to rules and discipline, most of us in our lives are accountable. If we screw up and are caught – we pay. So we try to avoid screwing up.
In the army if you had a minor transgression you’d get a slap – but there was iron in the velvet glove. You knew damn well that a serious transgression would NOT be covered up, would not be condoned or ignored.
The BBC can screw up all it likes. In this case – who in the BBC is going to challenge John Simpson ? He seems to be a law unto himself .
Gilligan screwed up – but the BBC machine protected him to the bitter end, even though they knew he was a loose cannon.
Simpson has feet of clay, I believe. This story stank to high heaven the moment I heard it, that is why have been obsessing about it. The failure to give context and US comments was what made it stink. It only took a few minutes to find out how stale the story was, how Knoght Ridder and the US authorities had already dealt with a lot of it. And to find the key details that Simpson DELIBERATELY omitted.
It may all boil over. The BBC will sure try to smother it. But maybe it will ignite ?
sorry – the last post at 10.07pm addressed to dave t was by me.
I find this haloscan thingy keeps dropping my name.
The BBC dust of one of their favourite defences of terrorism:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5045104.stm
It is likely to be “only” a homemade device. Like the one in Bali then, or the ones in London last July, or in Madrid…why do they constantly harp on the terrorists only producing ‘home-made’ bombs?
Hubris, nemesis or Simpsongate, it matters little.
Simpson’s credibility is shot and the BBC dosen’t have a bucket of whitewash big enough to cover the mess.
Simpson is over.
Time to put the boot in. A good start would be his tax-free living in Ireland, which won’t stand much examination by the taxman.
a trifle perturbed
Do you know, I was about to mention John Simpson’s tax avoidance as an example of how he writes his own rules, calls the shots. But I could not find any link on Google – and I think he has now domiciled himself back in Britain.
Didn’t Private Eye run stuff on all this ? But it cut no ice – he swanned on regardless.
Has anyone else taken note of the fact that the police report filed by local Sunni Iraqi police officers was signed off by Staff Colonel Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, and that 5 of the people killed in the firefight in Ishaqi had the last name of Khalaf?
Is it a coincidence, or is the police officer related to the family that was harboring an al Qaeda operative and a Sunni insurgent recruiter?
It seems to me, there should be an investigation into the Iraqi police officers that initially made this claim.
dumbcisco O/T in reply
I regret to inform the assembled populace that we were offered two options last week. Bear in mind Stirling do two semesters a year not the normal three at other unis (our semsesters are longer but with bigger breaks in between so we get 8 weeks holiday at Chrimbo and 15 (!) during the summer)
Choices:
Accept a final Honours grade based on 7 semesters but not the 8th one we just did ie gain an award without having our dissertation included as part of the award! Huh? So if one screwed up last term we could actually get a better grade than we deserve ! This grade will NOT be downgraded if when the marking IS done they find the grade was worse than the one awarded.
or:
Wait until the strike is over and accept an award based on our four years work inclduing dissertation etc ie an award that is late but honest!
Naturally I went for the honest option but I KNOW many of my peers are taking option one to get a 1:1 or a 2:1 which they in their own minds KNOW they don’t deserve. Hey I’m not knocking them – they were offered the choice and it is hard when you know you’ve cocked up the last term not to accept the chance of wiping out your bad term.
So I graduate on 28 June with BA(Hons) and DipEd, get to dress up and snog Diana Rigg (our leather clad Chancellor) but when we go off stage right to collect our certificates, mine will not be there along with others of my group – we will wait for the honest grades in due course.
Fortunately the General Teaching Council of Scotland have said they will give us conditional registration and sort us out in due course so we DO get to start our probation year on 21 August and get paid at last!
Dumbing down? Who said that?!!! 😎
And I KNOW that above was OT but where else was I going to put it to answer the question asked of me? Apologies and I promise it won’t happen again
*backs away tugging forelock under the stern gaze of the Beloved Natalie*
Congrats – it must have been a long slog.
Gordon asked:
“Why does the MSM hold America to a higher standard of behaviour than the noble Resistance in Iraq?”
It could be that the MSM expect higher standards from the US wrt the arabs because they recognise that Americans are civilised and that arabs are not.
On the other hand, they may simply hate the US for being civilised and decent (relatively). Neither of these positions reflects well on our MSM but one of them has to be true.
Allan
Both of your explanations are valid, not always at the same time but they, while implicitly determining the BBC spin, must never be made explicit because that would be to assert the moral superiority of our side.
Similarly while the propensity to commit violations of human rights varies by about five orders of magnitude from one nation to another everything is presented as being on a similar footing.
C.S. Scott
Is it a coincidence, or is the police officer related to the family that was harboring an al Qaeda operative and a Sunni insurgent recruiter?
The relationship need not be any closer than clan level. While there should be some family relationship the various Khalafs in this article didn’t necessarily know each other.
In Israel the term used for clan relationships is Hamula. (Sorry I don’t have any Sunni Iraqi information). If you are interested Celia E. Rothenberg has written a article available online at http://www.uib.no/jais/v002ht/rothen.htm
About a quarter of the newsworthy events that took place in this troubled world on Friday night/ Saturday morning concerned crimes and alleged crimes by US soldiers in Iraq, according to Ceefax.
OK, so Irag and Israel receive a disproportionate share of BBC coverage. Has anyone ever looked at the problem from the other end?
Which newsworthy countries receive a disproportionately low share of BBC coverage? What are the critieria for covering an event?
deegee
I think the focus will shift from week to week.
eg
How about the BBC doing a PROPER report on the 17 arrested Canadian alleged terrorists ? This is international in ideology – it directly affects us.
Why didn’t the BBC cover the Hirsi Ali story properly ?
Why didn’t the BBC properly present the DEBATE about the Danish cartoons. Not just the protests – the rights and wrongs of suppressing the cartoons, the rights and wrongs of the BBC itself refusing to publish them.
Why doesn’t it tell us far more about the internal politics of Iran, the protests, the schisms in Iranian society ? This could be a really serious nuclear threat.
“Which newsworthy countries receive a disproportionately low share of BBC coverage? ”
off the top of my head:
Holland, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Australia
France – gets coverage, but only when Muslims start rioting.
correction : by “ireland” i mean southern ireland of course.
come to think of it, i could also add our new Eastern European friends – Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
amazing isnt it – how a tiny strip of land called Gaza, gets vastly more coverage than an entire continent called Europe.
lets look at it this way:
Does an incident in Gaza affect me as a license fee payer, directly?
No.
Does something in the political process , be it taxation or elections or trade or whatever in Poland/Estonia/Ireland affect me directly?
Yes , most definitely.
(think : job outsourcing, immigrations to here for higher wages, property market abroad , holidays to those countries… etc etc etc)
So, in day to day life , our European neighbours really do matter.
Gaza – if it dissappeared into a cosmic black hole tommorow, would the rest of the world just carry on as normal? Yes.
archduke : it was ever thus. I could never believe how important South Africa was in the world back in the 80s – the BBC ran story after story about the place. Not so nowadays….
I would add to your list India, Pakistan; no matter that millions of people in this country actually do care about what happens there, we hear very little.
indeed D Burbage.
i cant help wondering that if the worlds media, including the BBC, carried out a media boycott of all things Iraq/Hamas for a month , would the terrorist attacks actually decline?
we have evidence that the terrorists are using the BBC already – with John Simpson and his Rathergate “massacre” story.
Here’s some more comments on the Simpson Ishaqi story :
“Grand Dhimmi El John Simpson firing off his usual rant against the Great Satan…..Don’t hold your breath for the BBC to admit they have spun half truths and lies from Islamic terror groups…”
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2006/06/bbc-lies-on-us-desertion-figures-when.html
Last year, Simpson was ‘out and about’ with British Soldiers on foot patrol in Basra.
As you can imagine, it was all doom and gloom. He approached Iraqis in the street and asked them what they thought of the Brits, if they wanted them to stay, etc.
Everybody he spoke to, had good things to say about the troops. Nobody wanted them to leave and gave good arguments in favour of them staying – averting civil war, etc.
Simpson just couldn’t accept this. Instead, he spun their words as ‘politeness’ and ‘fear’. These poor oppressed people, couldn’t tell the truth with the British soldiers nearby. Because, let’s face it the soldiers would have come back when Saintly Simpson wasn’t there, and probably killed any critics.
It never occured to Simpson, that it might actually be more dangerous to support the Brits and critisise the ‘insurgents’, than the other way around.
The man is a joke.
The man is worse than a joke.
He is paid via a tax on UK TV owners.
He avoids paying tax, by claiming artist status in Ireland!