Monthly Archives: June 2006

, by Graeme Wilson, the House of Lords BBC Charter Review committee has criticised Tessa Jowell for refusing to give Parliament more say over the BBC’s tellytax and the “democratic deficit” surrounding decisions on the tellytax and the long-term direction of the corporation. Jowell has rejected recommendations from two separate reports over the last eight months:

Lord Fowler, the committee’s chairman, said: “Parliament should have a much greater role in examining the BBC Charter and the BBC bid for an increased licence fee.

“The BBC now receives over £3 billion from the public. On the basis of the BBC’s bid this will rise to £4 billion in the next seven years. The way this bid is scrutinised is totally inadequate.”

The committee said it was deeply concerned about the “democratic deficit” surrounding both the licence fee and the BBC’s Royal Charter.

It continued: “We strongly believe that the government has too much unchecked power in these areas and that Parliament must be given a greater role.”

Hat tip: commenter Barker John for the DT link.

a fisking and a digging following the return of Jonathan Charles on the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent – a taster:

I emailed Dr Solis to ask if Jonathan Charles had represented his views accurately. Here’s his response in full:

I do not recall saying anything like, “all they’re thinking about is getting home alive,” although I did say that which precedes that phrase. I don’t believe I would have used the term “trigger happy.” I did say something to the effect that any lessons learned through classes on battlefield conduct would soon be forgotten and soon there would be further incidents involving the deaths of noncombatants.

I say “I do not recall” not as a weasel-worded phrase, but because I have recently spoken to many reporters, hosts and interviewers and it is impossible for me to recall with exactitude each phrase I may have used. But I am confident that I would not have said anything about getting home alive and I doubt that I would have used so trite a phrase as “trigger happy.”

Oh dear, has Mr Charles been sexing up his reports again? One might even begin to think that he has some sort of agenda.

Do read the whole thing.

– Thais complain as BBC ‘reopens tsunami wounds’ by Jan McGirk:

The BBC says its forthcoming mini-series, Aftermath, is a “thought-provoking drama of loss, survival and hope”. But for many Thais who lost their families in the 2004 tsunami, the film-makers are reopening wounds.

Further outrage has greeted the decision to hire Thais to play corpses at a cut-rate pay of £6 a day for the series, to be broadcast later this year.

However:

But Robert Reynolds, who runs a charity for tsunami orphans in Krabi province, was incensed after discovering Western extras were routinely paid 1,400 baht [£20]. He says he wrote to executives at the prize-winning Kudos productions, demanding that they take care not to offend. “Thais lost everything,” he pointed out to The Nation. “They had no homes to go back to.”

Maybe this story is something that could be included in BBC Views Online’s Ten Things we didn’t know last week column next week – perhaps this is a true story even, unlike last week’s Labour con that Views Online so happily fell for.

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.

magazine we learn that:

Number crunching:

200 – Number of staff the BBC is sending to Germany to cover the world cup;

20 – Number of senior BBC executives who also find it necessary to go.

Nice work if you can get it!

was limited to gems such as Fawlty Towers and Are You being Served?”–so Gerard Baker concludes. As a Yank, I must agree.

To much fanfare, and a fair amount of predictable gushing from its liberal admirers in the US, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the state-owned bureaucracy that bestrides the UK cultural and political landscape like a colossus, launched a 24 hour news channel in America last week.

Billboards in Manhattan bellowed the BBC’s message to passers- by, promising that the corporation would be bringing “news beyond your borders” into Americans’ parochial little lives….

Emboldened, its mangers now clearly think the time is now ripe to enter the US TV news market and offer a distinctive product. A few years ago the former boss of the BBC attacked American television news for too slavishly following the government line. Instead the BBC now says in its publicity, it will offer “both sides of the story”.

Roughly translated this means the BBC thinks that, while the vast majority of Americans are morons who are perfectly content to swallow right-wing rubbish from their political and media masters, there is an educated and sophisticated elite on the coasts that feels somehow its worldview is underrepresented by the current giants of the mainstream media in the US.

This is no surprise to B-BBC visitors. I find it interesting to have a former BBC employee underline the elitist snobbery of the institution. (Yes, lurkers, he’s got to be a right-wing nutcase.)

(too lazy to pick up the phone to Kenneth Clarke, that is), BBC Views Online’s weekly Magazine Monitor: Ten Things column lapped up and repeated the story that:

5. The croquet set John Prescott so memorably used at Dorneywood was presented to the grace-and-favour house by previous resident Kenneth Clarke.

Except of course he didn’t, as anyone who saw Kenneth Clarke being interviewed on Sky News in the middle of last week knows. And here was me thinking that Beeboids while away their hours at ‘work’ watching Sky News…

Alice Miles, writing in Saturday’s Times, confirms The truth about that croquet set:

THEY probably thought it was just a bit of spin: John Prescott’s special adviser, Joan Hammell, tried to roll those embarrassing croquet balls back out of sight last weekend by claiming that Conservative ministers used Dorneywood far more than Labour ones ever had, and, “in fact, the croquet set was given to the house by Kenneth Clarke when he was the resident there”.

Blame it on the Tories. What sounds like just a piece of political trivia is in fact an extremely good example of an outdated instinct that Labour desperately needs to kick and can’t: pointing the finger for everything, be it chaos at the Home Office, deficits in the health service, or even croquet, at “18 years of Tory rule”.

This mantra, honed in Opposition when a lot of problems probably were the product of 18 years of Tory rule, simply doesn’t wash any more, as Tony Blair is discovering at Prime Minister’s Questions week after week. The formula is dated, predictable and increasingly ridiculous after nine years in power. Only Labour seems not to have noticed that.

Oh and incidentally, Mr Clarke didn’t buy the croquet set.

So there we have it. I expect the Beeboids at BBC Views Online will get round to publishing a correction to this piece of blatant Labour spin that they so eagerly fell for.

Also on Saturday, fellow blogger Iain Dale exhorted Check your facts BBC News Online!, noting typical BBC attention to detail, as well as unattributed lifting of chunks of an exclusive David Cameron interview from ConservativeHome.com, tsk, tsk.

BBC Views Online presents In pictures: Remembering Khomeini:

On the 17th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomenei, Iranian photographer Mohsen Shandiz (centre) presents his memories of the return of the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution to Iran in 1979.

Coming soon to BBC Views Online’s In Pctures series: Remembering Hitler, Remembering Stalin, Remembering Pol Pot, Remembering Saddam, ad nauseam.

For an alternative selection of Khomeini pictures, many snapshots, plus a smattering of, shall we say, alternative images, simply browse through Google Images selection of ‘Khomeini’ results.

For a fuller picture of the result of the Islamic revolution in Iran, do take a look at the likes of: Iran Focus: Human Rights, Iran Focus: Women, Mission for Establishment of Human Rights in Iran, and so on. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the Iranian Revolution, including links back to some of the BBC’s better Iranian coverage, as well as some interesting thoughts on the machinations of various Iranian factions, the CIA, President Carter etc.

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.

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