Monthly Archives: June 2006

to anyone other than the rapist prompted paragraph headings such as “disturbing attitudes” when the BBC reported on the Amnesty survey of attitudes towards rape. (My personal view on the subject of responsibility for rape can be read here.)

Hat tip to Grimer, who has pointed out an example of the BBC being less clear about ascribing responsibility for rape to the rapists. Grimer writes:

Stop Press!

EU and USA responsible for rape of of Palestinians (according to the BBC)

Rape in war ‘a growing problem’

Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding. Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly since the EU and the US cut funding after January’s election of Hamas, Luay Shabaneh of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says.

So, because we’ve stopped giving them billions in aid, they are now raping each other. How quaint.

I think Grimer has somewhat overstated his case, although I have no doubt that this was overstatement was conscious and rhetorical. One aspect of the BBC climate of opinion that I have no quarrel with is its sincere abhorrence of rape. Still, feminist writers (who also sometimes use rhetorical overstatement) have pointed out that separately trivial forms of words can combine to harmful effect.

“Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding.”

Google the phrase “rape culture” and you will find many writers who would say that words such as those support a culture that excuses rape. I don’t agree – it is legitimate to raise the hypothesis of “links” between incidence of rape and other variables. But I think it likely that that particular possible link (rape to development funding) was especially congenial to the BBC, despite being so indirect. Otherwise why did the BBC not focus on another possible link, more direct, more plausible and equally implicit in the article’s own words. You can see this link by cutting out seven words from the paragraph quoted above. What is left is still a true statement.

Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly … after January’s election of Hamas.

Read this post from Classical Values, “Hamas honors women!” on the attitudes of Palestinian society towards women who have been raped – attitudes exacerbated by the electoral victory of Hamas.

Anthropologist James Emery explained in 2003, how “among Palestinians, all sexual encounters, including rape and incest, are blamed on the woman.” Men are always presumed innocent and the responsibility falls on the woman or girl to protect her honor at all costs. When 17-year-old Afaf Younes ran away from her father after he allegedly sexually assaulted her, she was caught and sent home to him. He then shot and killed her to protect his honor.

That case and others like it happened when the EU’s development funding was in full flow. I hope the BBC takes a more questioning attitude to statements by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics next time.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

I have had several emails saying that people are getting the message that they have been banned from comments.

Count yourselves lucky! Right now I myself can’t see any comments at all. Obviously there is some hiccup with the system. I’m seeking technical advice.

If you get the banned message, please email me with your IP address so we can investigate the problem. You can get your IP address here or here. If I get hundreds of emails I’ll cancel this request.

Update by Andrew: ‘Invisible’ comments problem fixed – a minor templating glitch that affected Internet Explorer. Sorry. For those still using IE, you may wish to consider downloading Firefox – it’s widely considered to be a better browser, what with tabbed browsing, all those useful add-ons and so on. It’s easy to setup – just download it and run the installer, and you can still use IE if you want to.

Update at 9pm: For those experiencing commenting problems earlier, please try again. If you still have trouble, email your IP address to me at biasedbbc AT gmail.com. For those who manage comments with Haloscan, you may be interested to know that you can use ‘regular expressions‘ (but without the ‘\’ escape character) to define banned ranges – a big improvement over Haloscan’s documented features.

Update at 3am: Have worked on ‘unbreaking’ whatever it was that broke the ‘new comments’ thing. I think it’s fixed – let me know if you spot anything unusual. Everything will be unread when you first view this page. Comment totals are taking a few minutes to update after comments are posted – I think this is a Haloscan issue as this lag isn’t new.

says the BBC.

Troublemaker. Stirrer. He’s going to go to a meeting and say exactly what everyone expects a Catholic cardinal to say. Can you believe that? Just when every decent person had finally come to an agreement about what the law on abortion should be.

Hat tip: Archduke.

UPDATE: It now says, “Cardinal urges abortion rethink.” Hat tip: me, and King Herod. Mirabile dictu, the timestamp has been changed as well.

Adloyada says Human Rights Watch now says it “cannot contradict” (huh?) the findings of the Israeli Defence Force that the fatal explosion at a Gaza beach was not caused by Israeli artillery fire.

As of now (8.38 am BST) the front page of the BBC’s multi-million pound news website says that… Palestinian workers receive wages.

Given the wall-to-wall coverage by the BBC of this story when the explosion happened, and of the earlier claim by HRW that the explosion was caused by incoming Israeli artillery, it will be interesting to see how much attention this latest turn of events receives.

Expect updates to this post.

UPDATE 9.29am: Though not yer something new to report type of update. The most likely cause of the explosion, Human Rights Watch now say, was unexploded Israeli ordnance from some earlier clash. Mr Garlasco of HRW is also quoted as saying,

“… that he was impressed with the IDF’s system of checks and balances concerning its artillery fire in the Gaza Strip and unlike Hamas which specifically targeted civilians in its rocket attacks, the Israelis, he said, invested a great amount of resources and efforts not to harm innocent civilians.”

Will these remarks of Mr Garlasco’s be quoted as widely by the BBC as his earlier assessment that “it’s likely that this was incoming artillery fire that landed on the beach and was fired by the Israelis from the north of Gaza”? I trust the old stories will be updated.

UPDATE: 10.15am. Here is the BBC’s Middle East front page. Nothing there on this. OK, so why do I expect there to be? Because, as this Newswatch piece twice says, this story is “so significant.” Images of Huda Ghalia screaming in grief flew round the world on media wings. The story was presented then by the BBC as one of the Israelis first being trigger-happy and then trying to dodge responsibility. The BBC said (middle link under “as” above):

Of course, the Palestinians have rejected this case. On top of that, a military expert for the Human Rights Watch organisation, Mark Garlasco, says the evidence he has seen points to Israeli shelling as the cause.

He has been to the site of the blast. And he happens to be a former Pentagon intelligence analyst.

Smug, or what? Now the same former Pentagon intelligence analyst has praised the Israeli inquiry. The same man now thinks that the most likely cause of the tragedy is one – unexploded Israeli ordnance – that, while it can still be attributed to Israel’s past actions, is no longer in Israel’s power to clean up, since Gaza is under the control of the Palestinians. If everlasting peace were to be declared between Israel and Hamas this afternoon people would still occasionally be killed by UXBs for years to come. If Garlasco’s and HRW’s views were news last week they ought to be equally newsworthy this week.

UPDATE 6pm. Dunno why I call it an update. Still nothing from the BBC. But Barker John has pointed out that the subject is being discussed on this BBC message board. See Message 29 onwards. Here are two samples:

Message 31

A Pentagon-trained ballistics expert working for the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch is here in Gaza.

He has surveyed the scene and has forensically examined evidence from the beach.

He concludes that the explosion was *caused* by an ISRAELI shell.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/…

Even the LIES of Israel are clear for all to see.

And

Message 33

“And even Mr Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who blamed ISrael, has now cleared Israel of responsibility. In fact he even praised the IDF’s professional investigation.”

I can find no evidence for this statement.

Can you provide a reference for it?

says an article the BBC Sports section, referring to John Pantsil, a member of the Ghanaian team that unexpectedly defeated the Czech Republic in the World Cup match on Saturday. It is an odd choice of headline. Those who get no further than the headline might be forgiven for thinking that the unspecified gesture was obscene.

Actually it was much more shocking than that. He waved an Israeli flag. Mr Pantsil plays for an Israeli team and had apparently promised his Israeli fans that he would do this if Ghana scored.

Commenter Archduke says:

note the BIGGER factoid buried in the story:

FIFA “had said they had no problem with the gesture.”

also note the quote from the israeli sports minister at the end.

you could argue that the headline should read “Ghana gains Israeli support” or “Israelis delighted by Ghanan gesture”

I think that the BBC headline did originally say something very like what archduke suggests. At time of writing (4.50pm BST), this Google News search shows a link to a BBC Sport story, and the link text says, “Ghana win friends in Israel.” But if you click the link you get to the story with the “Apology” headline.

UPDATE: Blogger wasn’t working so I was unable to publish this post until several hours after I wrote it. Google News has changed but you can still see the link to the BBC story saying “Ghana win friends in Israel” if you press “All 36 related.” Am I right in thinking that was the original headline? If I am, why was it changed to one that seems designed to depress interest?

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

are to pick up interesting stories from the Sunday Papers, I’m surprised to see that they missed this fascinating story by Philip Sherwell in the Sunday Telegraph, Ayatollah’s grandson calls for US overthrow of Iran. A couple of excerpts:

The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country’s clerical regime.

Hossein Khomeini’s call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran’s Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah’s death.

“My grandfather’s revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course,” he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. “I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy – but it has persecuted its leaders.”

and:

The Dubai-based satellite channel’s website spelt out his backing for armed intervention by America, a country excoriated as the Great Satan by his grandfather and Iran’s current rulers.

It stated: “As for his call to President Bush to come and occupy Iran, Hossein Khomeini explained that ‘freedom must come to Iran in any possible way, whether through internal or external developments.

This is all the more surprising since BBC Views Online has already shown its commitment to covering the 17th anniversary of Khomeini’s death… still, it’s not too late to cover this latest story – get to it Beeboids!

In yet another of those strange BBC coincidences, Dr. Who’s latest foe, a greedy, grasping, people-absorbing monster, the Abzorbaloff, is… a Daily Telegraph reader! Strange how things always seem to happen that way at the BBC!

A Daily Telegraph reader is really…		a greedy, grasping monster…
that gobbles up its enemies and…		sticks up two fingers to the world!

Hmmm. I wonder what was the inspiration for a large greedy, voracious monster that gobbles up its enemies as it expands in every direction…

To be fair to the large voracious monster (the BBC that is, not the Abzorbaloff), we should remember that the Daily Telegraph is the last of the broadsheets, now that The Times and The Independent are tabloids, sorry, comicpacts, and The Grauniad is a Beezer or Berliner format, or something like that.

Hat tip: commenter Rob.

examine the following introductory excerpts from two news reports about the same ongoing Old Bailey trial:

Using your skill and judgement, try to determine which report is from The Times, freely available on the web, courtesy of News International, and which report is from BBC Views Online, available on the web courtesy of the compulsory BBC tellytax.

Give up? You don’t really need me to tell you, do you? Oh, you work for the BBC? In that case, the BBC’s is on the right*, the one that doesn’t mention a certain ‘I’ word** anywhere in the whole article. For the full story, read The Times article, by Nicola Woolcock, free of charge too.

* a first for a BBC Views Online report, I know 🙂

** or plumbers either, for that matter.