Escalation, Beeb style

(Do scroll down; we’re building a nice little series on the BBC’s behaviour over the Lebanon situation. The general point seems to be that when the stress is even slightly on, the Beeb reveals its activist colours. Maybe it’s partly that yours truly awakes to them; who knows such things?)

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Escalation, Beeb style

The trouble is, they’re dying to interfere, aren’t they? DFH notespossibly an even worse example where the BBC twists an interview, reporting robust Labour minister Kim Howells in a way which seems to ride roughshod over the thrust of his comments.

What he did in fact do, was to take Claire Short to task over her absurd view concerning Israel’s right to defend itself. At least part of what he said could only be read in terms of a defence of Israel. But the BBC has Howells on the Short side of things, condemning Israel. Can there be anything more absurd than a news organisation which reports the opposite of what actually happens? [I should point out to readers that my computer doesn’t like the BBC options for listening and viewing for some reason- I am relying on DFH’s quoted sections of Howell’s interview. What I think is clear from that is that Howells supports Israel’s right to defend itself- contrary to moonbats like Short and Galloway, whose demos the BBC like to patronise- even if he misunderstands the measures necessary for that. From this page you can follow links to the Howells interview, and also see that the BBC is trumpeting this meme of criticism. I also note that “UK protests over Israel actions” is the BBC’s semantically confusing link to the moonbat rallies, which, as DFH also points out, they also misrepresented in a carefully sanitised set of photos]

In the comments Will and Kerry noted the detail from the report I highlighted that the BBC were claiming that the UK Govt. had condemned Lebanon but not Israel. We are agreed that this is untrue, but that the UK has condemned Hezbullah and not Israel- contrary both to the Williams report and the Howells report.

Not as a footnote but as another example of the BBC getting things diammetrically wrong- in line with their wish fulfilment- Fran drew attention to an admission of failure on the BBC’s part, this time concerning… well, Christians and Palestinians:

‘Fran W, had complained that an item in the BBC’s Sunday Programme reported by Katya Adler, suggested that Bethlehem Christians are treated by the Palestinian Authority as a “protected minority”.

In fact, Christian and other human rights organizations have reported that the Christian Palestinian minority has suffered substantial abuses of human rights dating back several years’

I can understand errors of fact, but manufacturing ‘fact’ is a massive step further. But what’s a lie in the service of a cause, eh?

Oh, and well done Fran! The guilty secret of all B-BBC contributors is that our commenters are often better poised than we are. All it takes is one smooth stone and a little sling (or so Glenn Reynoldsmight say)

Final point- one might call this a roundup- is to point to Stephen Pollard’s frustration over Sunday morning’s BBC coverage. I can well imagine it. I prefer the website, with all its manifest faults…

Final final point: this at Stephen Pollard’s site made me laugh, as did the Observer piecewhere they said that “The BBC is particularly sensitive to accusations of impartiality, however.”

Figures.