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Do you dispute that the incident at Qana took place?
With the amount of evidence of falsification it is impossible to know what happened, or if anything happened. The BBC of course sticks with an IDF are guilty until proven innocent meme.
reith
here is the most comprehensive analysis and taxonomy of all the photo fraud issues.
The BBC has helped perpetrate a lot of the fraud – news agences feed the stuff, the BBC disseminates it.
I still see no real sign that the BBC recognises how much it has been misled, or led by the nose.
And if the BBC does not recognise the scale of the fraud, we will be probably getting much more of it.
http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/08/worry_about_the_west_not_israe.html
The plot sounds very similar to the Al Qaeda 1995 plot that was foiled in the Phillipines – the intention was to down 10 airliners over the Pacific.
So how does the BBC carry on letting through without challenge the notion that terrorism here in the UK is all our fault – or Blair’s fault ? All because of Iraq etc.
Dumbcisco
This is the text of the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons posted on the BBC website at 17.19 UK time on 11th July 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po…ics/ 4673221.stm
You will see that it contains the word terrorist (4 times); terrorism (twice); anti-terrorism (once) and terror (twice).
YOU claim that the BBC at some time on the same day changed or ‘excised’each of these words.
I say you are wrong.
Since the words are clearly there now and the document says it was last modified at 17.19 on 11th July 2005, I suppose you must also believe that at some unspecified time since then, the BBC has crept in and ‘stealth-edited’ them all back! What rubbish!
You also employ one of your common tricks • that of praying in aid links to other writers in a way that suggests they support your proposition, when upon closer inspection they actually undermine your case.
Melanie Phillips restricts her criticism to what she explicitly calls ‘BBC Online’s account’ – i.e. a story written by BBC journalists, NOT the TEXT of the PM’s speech. She makes that absolutely clear when she refers to the fact that the story has been written under BBC guidelines: ‘because its Producer Guidelines forbid it from naming the particular threat that the Prime Minister has identified.’ Tom Leonard makes the same point • he refers to BBC Online’s ‘report’.
Only you, so far as I know, claim that the BBC altered the text itself. (I suspect Grimer is probably thinking of a ‘report’ or ‘account’ as opposed to the actual text.)
You invented the allegation that the BBC meddled with the text. You also invented the ‘fact’ that there were 12 mentions of the t-word. There weren’t.
In my earlier post I also linked to the 10 Downing Street text and to the Hansard report. They are both consistent with the BBC version.
FOX has some more
Chertoff: Disrupted Terror Plot ‘Suggestive of Al Qaeda’
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207710,00.html
“One senior U.S. counterintelligence official told FOX News that as many as 50 people were involved with this plot, which the official described as “the real deal.” So far, 21 people have been arrested and British authorities say the “main players” are in custody.
50 minus 21 arrested = 29 still at large….
I hope the tip-offs to self appointed unelected “community leaders” has in no way put any of us at risk by letting some of these terrorists make their escape.
That is inexcusable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po…ics/ 4673221.stm
that statement link again
reith
Your link still does not work.
OK – there were 9 uses of the T word by Blair on 11 July.
I commented on the fact that the MAIN online report by the BBC – the “front page report” that people saw when they arrived at the site – mostly excised the T word. You actually confirm that.
So it is pointless of you to refer to the full-text version. That was not what I criticised at the time, it was not what most visitors to the BBC website would have seen. And it was not what the journalists Tom Leonard and Melanie Phillips criticised.
After a major tragedy, I expect the the main BBC report on the Prime Minister says to the Commons STRAIGHT. Not doctored, not with deliberate excisions of words from within sentences. Not ALTERED thereby in tone. It seemed highly significant at the time that the whole statement by Blair was peppered with the T word. It was therefore quite wrong of the BBC to excise nearly all of them.
But as a BBC person I suppose you can’t see the importance of that simple principle. You would rather defend ludicrous BBC house-rules.
reith
At the time I commented on the BBC excising the T word – even though there was already public fury at the removal of the T word from the headline of the first report on 7/7 – the BBC had not posted the full text of Blair’s speech. That was posted as a link hours later – even though the BBC will have had the full text at the time of the statement.
More word-chopping by the BBC. Bush’s very short statement today used the term Islamist fascists.
The srart of the BBC story alters fascists to extremists. OK , they cite his actual phrase in the next para – by why alter it in the bold first para ?
Why can’t they report the President’s words STRAIGHT ?
latest from DFH
Link to an interesting video…..
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/and-action.html
dumbcisco -> i got a screen grab
http://islamophobic.blogspot.com/2006/08/bbc-caught-lying.html
dumbcisco | 10.08.06 – 6:14 pm |
“Your link still does not work.”
• here we go again then:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po…ics/ 4673221.stm
Pathetic you couldn’t manage that yourself.
“OK – there were 9 uses of the T word by Blair on 11 July.”
Yep. Nine, not twelve, as you said twice. And only nine if you include ‘anti-terrorism’ and ‘terror’ as T-words • which your hated BBC guidelines don’t. So that makes it 6 really. 6 not 12. That’s half as many as you said. So you’re not in line for any Mr Accuracy in Media award this year.
“I commented on the fact that the MAIN online report by the BBC – the “front page report” that people saw when they arrived at the site – mostly excised the T word. You actually confirm that.”
I would not use the verb ‘excise’. I can accept that a skilled writer like Melanie Phillips can use it figuratively. But the ever-present danger in doing so is that some dunderhead like you will take it literally. As you did.
What you call the ‘MAIN’ report was this one. It has a link in a box half way down to the VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT of what Blair said. If this were a print article in a newspaper spread, the equivalent would be Blair’s verbatim text in a box printed next to the article. No-one would then accuse the newspaper of ‘excising’ anything. The fact that it’s on a different web page accessed by a hypertext link doesn’t change anything. Integral to the MAIN story was the original, unexpurgated text.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po…ics/ 4670945.stm
Sorry chum, but you’re bang to rights here. You invented the story that the BBC fiddled with the text. You invented the number 12. You plastered these non-facts on various websites using different monikers. You were deliberately spreading falsehoods. And still are.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4670945.stm
http
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4673221.stm
…those anons were me…sorry ….they should work now…
dumbcisco | 10.08.06 – 6:39 pm | #
Caught you fibbing again:
“At the time I commented on the BBC excising the T word …the BBC had not posted the full text of Blair’s speech. That was posted as a link hours later – even though the BBC will have had the full text at the time of the statement.”
Time full text posted : 17.19 UK
Time ‘MAIN’ story posted: 17.46 UK
John Reith,
The BBC’s policy guidelines on use of the T-word state that it should not be used in an unattributed fashion. I take that double negative to mean that it can be used in quotes.
Now it could be that BBC reporters are not bright enough to understand these guidelines and simply steer clear of the T-word altogether. But I guess at times the deception is engineered at editorial level.
I have noted numerous instances of BBC reporters putting militant in the mouth of IDF spokespeople who have distinctly used the word terrorist on Israel Broadcasting Authority newscasts.
Is this lousy reporting by ignorant BBC reporters? Or simply PC out of control.
I suspect it’s a bit of both.
reith
I suggest you get the sequence right.
First – the BBC got a lot of flak on the day after 7/7 for altering its main headline on the London bombings to cut out the T word. (“Excise” means cut out in my dictionary, I can’t see why you quibble with its meaning).
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/07/08/the_bbcs_terrorist_problem.php
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001319.html
So when the BBC then excised most uses of the T word from its main report on Blair’s statement on 11 July, this excision appeared highly pertinant. I had just watched Blair live in the Commons, his repeated emphasis on the T word and immediately the BBC was reporting something different.
You say I exaggerated the number of references to the T word in Blair’s statement. You try to cut this down to 9. Just read the statement text which you posted – there are 11 uses of the T word. Can’t you read ?
That is peppering in my view. Blair made constant and consistent use of the T word throughout his statement – when it was a hot issue about whether weasel words like extremist or militant should be used – or “misguided criminals” in John Simpson’s memorable phrase after the bombings.
There were LOTS of T-word refernces by Blair, we saw and heard them, and the verbatim text available later confirms this. They were mostly EXCISED by the BBC in their main report :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4670945.stm#
Firstly their headline used the word bombers – when Blair was calling them terrorists. The most serious excision by the BBC was when he sated that the perpetrators were likely Islamist extremist terrorists. The BBC cut this to Islamist extremists.
And you also have the day’s timing wrong – you try to suggest that the BBC linked to Blair’s verbatim text almost immediately. Not true – and you must know that is not true. The verbatim text was posted at the BBC website at 5.19pm. That was HOURS after Blair’s Commons statement. The main BBC online story on his statement was updated at 5.46 – but was originally posted well before that. Blair’s statement (as Hansard shows) was at 3.30pm and completed in 10 minutes. Don’t kid us it took the BBC over two hours to post its online report on such an important statement – when they will have been given the text at the time by Downing Street.
Blair’s statement on 11 July 2005 :
1 The BBC used the word “bombers” in the headline for its main online story – “Blair vows to hunt down bombers”
Blair never used the word bomber once in his statement.
2 Right at the start of the statement, Blair said “We are united in our determination that our country will not be defeated by such terror…”
The BBC report said “The prime minister (why no caps ???) said Britons were determined … not to be defeated.” ie, excision of the T word.
3 Blair said “At the moment of terror striking….(Londoners behaved well). The T word here was not used in the BBC report.
4 He said “It seems probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists…..”(with references to other terror attacks eg 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Pakistan, Saudi, Egypt etc
The BBC cut out the T word, reducing the phrase to “probably Islamist extremists”. It also cut out Blair’s references to other terrorist attacks worlwide – the CONTEXT, the War on Terror which the BBC’s Power of Nightmares was dismissing.
5 Blair said “as this particular type of new and awful terrorist threat has grown….” This is included in quotes towards the end of the BBC article – part of the practice of the BBC only using the T word in quotes.
6 Blair mentioned “the imperative of tracking down those who carried out these acts of terrorism”. Omitted by the BBC report.
7 Blair said “Then there is the issue of further anti-terrorist legislation. During the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act this year we pledged to introduce a further counter-terrorism Bill later in the session.” The BBC report mentions the possibility of new ant-terrorism powers. This is the one area where the BBC at that time did not try to avoid the T word in their reports – they could hardly call the Prevention of errorism Act the Prevention of Extremism/Militancy/Plumbing Act, could they ?
8 Blair said the UN had passed a “unanimous resolution of condemnation of the terrorists and support for Britain”. Totally omitted by the BBC report.
9 Blair’s peroration was : “Together, we will ensure that though terrorists can kill, they will never destroy the way of life we share and which we value, and which we will defend with the strength of belief and conviction so that it is to us and not to the terrorists, that victory will belong.” That seems to have been very strong meat for the BBC. They omitted his conclusion completely.
Dumbcisco
“The verbatim text was posted at the BBC website at 5.19pm. That was HOURS after Blair’s Commons statement. ” dumbcisco | 10.08.06 – 11:09 pm |
Wrong. Blair began his statement at 15.30 and sat down at 16.25 after fielding questions on the statement. The protocol is that Parliament must hear it first and reports and texts can only be published after that.
The BBC website put out a key points summary at 16.33 (8 minutes after the PM sat down.) The full text was posted at 17.19 and the report, linking to the text already up, at 17.46.
You huff and puff about the fact that the report did not attribute t-words to Blair. I agree that was wrong. I also agree that his peroration should have been quoted.
But you are raising this as a distraction from the case in hand.
While there may be legitimate differences of opinion about how well or badly a reporter paraphrases or what quotations he/she chooses to include – the allegation you made is of a totally different order. You accused the BBC of falsifying the text • of changing the words in what it held out to the public as a true and accurate verbatim transcript. That’s an allegation of serious professional malpractice and studied dishonesty. You then sought to spread this disinformation around the blogosphere under a variety of assumed names. The fact is that it never happened. You made it up.
John Reith,
I don’t know why you are still arguing this. The BBC has for some time been excising the T-word from its direct quotes of anyone who uses it – in the body of its articles and, far more importantly, given people’s short attention span, in its headlines and lead paragraphs. You will not find the BBC including the T-word in a headline quote and then omitting it in a quote in the article. The BBC invariably leads with its bias, always trumpeting it to the public.
A few posts up I indicated that BBC reporters misquote IDF spokespeople in this fashion. It has almost become regular practice. And numerous other examples of the same practice have been exposed on this site.
And when they do quote the T-word, they take pains to make it clear that they are touching it reluctantly and with a very long barge pole.
Perhaps BBC reporters are too dumb or too bone idle to distinguish between reported speech and any other grammatical form when it comes to the T-word and simply play safe by not using it.
But by falsifying direct quotes they are, to use your own words, guilty of serious professional malpractice and studied dishonesty.
All in the name of pandering to Islamic terror, of course.
reith
You just don’t get it, do you ? We want the Prime Minister’s words reported STRAIGHT, not put through some BBC editorial filter that is based on the anal T-word policy> (A policy that most sensible people despise as moral equivocation at the BBC.)
I never said the BBC falsified the report. I said they kept omitting the T word, even though Blair put especial emphasis on using the T word consistently throughout his statement.
And in in their headline the BBC used the word “bombers” – a word Blair never used. He vowed to hunt down TERRORISTS, not bombers.
On timing – when I saw the BBC online story shortly after the statement, there was no link to the full text.
reith
You accuse me of trying to spread some myth around the blogosphere using a variety of assumed names.
You are lying.
Dumbcisco
“I never said the BBC falsified the report.”
dumbcisco | 11.08.06 – 5:53 pm |
Huh?????????!!!!!!!!!!
The BBC excised virtually every mention of the 12 mentions of the T word from Blair’s statement on 11 July last year.
dumbcisco | 10.08.06 – 3:41 pm |
[the BBC]edited out nearly a dozen mentions of the T word from Tony Blair’s formal Commons statement on 11 July.
Posted by: JohninLondon at July 19, 2005 08:31 PM
http:// hurryupharry.bloghouse.ne…l_compasses.php
“You accuse me of trying to spread some myth around the blogosphere using a variety of assumed names. You are lying.
dumbcisco | 11.08.06 – 10:57 pm |
Huh?????!!!!!!!
You mention the screennames JohninLondon and dumbcisco. The latter is what I have used for years on the US investment sites I visit. I started using JohninLondon on some US news sites after 9/11
dumbcisco | 10.08.06 – 10:55 am |
OK I have tracked back and reviewed all the evidence.
I find reith wins this one on the evidence presented.
But I think reith’s wrong to say dumbcisco was deliberately telling porky-pies.
On the balance of probabilities, dumbcisco read melanie philips’s blog entry in a hurry and got the wrong end of the stick.
So will you two shake hands now, wrap this up and get onto the new OT thread please?
Hmmmmm, an interesting and timely intervention from your Honour. Re the heated debate:
So the BBC didn’t actually go in and excise every instance of the use of the word terrorist from the text of Blair’s speech and replace it with militant/bomber/boy scout or whatever the preferred term was at the time?
Big deal. People who don’t have the time or the inclination to access links will have taken the BBC’s terminology and interpretation of the speech at face value.
dumbcisco also went many rounds with John Reith on the issue of whether or not the BBC had mentioned Hamas’ intention to destroy Israel. In common with the two protagonists, I did a good deal of research at the time to try to dig up the truth of the matter. I found that BBC journos did indeed mention said intention, but that they’d mentioned it more times in the flurry of articles around the time of the Palestinian elections than they had in the previous five years or so – though admittedly I gleaned this info through searching via the BBC’s cranky and misfiring old search engine.
This new interest in Hamas’ genocidal intentions was apparently given the green light by Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in an article he wrote at the time of the elections. The flurry of articles appeared to follow his lead.
I believe that Bowen was given the green light by Hamas, which is immensely proud of its acts of mass murder of Jewish civilians. The BBC is deep in the pocket of the terrorists in its reporting on this conflict.
I’m being overly suspicious? Paranoid? Possibly. But the BBC’s subtle but impacable justification of Palestinian terror against Israelis and its implacable and not-so-subtle hammering of Israel’s defence against terror lead me to these conclusions.
To return to the BBC’s handling of Blair – who appears to be the only Labour leader with any guts or sense of right and wrong when it comes to terror – John Reith can grimly stick to his guns on the issue as much as he likes but it wont change the subversive nature of the BBC’s reporting on terror. dumbcisco may not have been totally accurate re the details of his original observation but he is correct in the essence of his complaint and in his perception of the BBC’s orientation regarding terrorists. There is a mountain of evidence to back that perception.
There are exceptions, of course. There are a few BBC journos who strive for balance. (And by balance I don’t mean a false equivalence between terror and the victims of terror.) But they are so few and far between as to be mere specks of light in the darkness.
Now I’m going to take his honour’s advice and pop up to the latest open thread.
reith
I was not using a variety of names when I commented a couple of times last July on the BBC’s treatment of Blair’s speech. I used one name. You accused me of creating the urban myth at that time by visiting lots of websites using a variety of names – an urban myth picked up by eg Tom Leonard at the Telegraph. That is total crap – amd you know it.
The essence of the matter is that Blair was repeatedly calling the London bombers terrorists in his statement. The BBC headlined instead with “bombers” and mentioned the word terrorist only once – in scare quotes.
That is anal, and it is not straight reporting.
Meanwhile – there has been the expected absolute silence from you on
1 all the photo-fraud the BBC has swallowed
2 the staging they appear to have swallowed
3 the failure to distinguish Hezbollah deaths from civilian deaths in Lebanon
4 the willingness of the BBC to give endless airtime to crazy people alleging that terrorism is our fault, that 9/11 was by Mossad/CIA, that there is no proof the London bombers were Muslim and guilty etc. Frequently they are allowed to spew their anti-British bile without any challenge from highly-paid BBC presenters.