First it was “militant”. The BBC used to use that term to describe far-left figures like Derek Hatton – not an admirable man, in my opinion, but someone who worked within the political process. Now it means terrorist.
Then it was “activist”, which brings to mind images of earnest, sandal-wearing young folk seeking signatures for a Greenpeace petition. Now it also means terrorist. Does the BBC really think that using the same word for members of Hamas and someone like this Burmese woman who runs a Women’s Action Network in that unhappy country contributes to understanding?
The latest revamped word is “dissident”. Remember when dissident meant (to the BBC and the rest of us) someone like Vaclav Havel or Alexander Solzhenitsyn – men and women who peacefully spoke out against oppression and often suffered imprisonment for doing so? Now the BBC says that dissidents – not even “dissident republicans”, just “dissidents”, are people who firebomb shops.
Do you ever get the feeling that there is something the BBC is trying not to say?
I just loved the term “micro-organisations” used by a certain party (itself also allied to “activists” of course).
Language is wonderful when you want to obscure.
The BBC have double checked with the IngSoc Department of Communication and they say they are double plus correct.
Excellent post. Highlights the corruption and devaluation of the English language at the hands of the supposed “British” Broadcasting Corporation.
natalie – you are witnessing Newspeak in action – the gradual *reduction* in words, so that eventually one cannot speak out against “the party”.
another aspect of modern IngSoc is the BBC rabbiting on and on about how the british public “loves” the bbc.
kinda similar to the “love” of big brother, for a “party” member cannot hate big brother. it would be like hating water or hating breathing – in other words , an impossibility in Newspeak groupthink.
the BBC also plays games with the proles, getting them to hate “Eurasia” (Israel, America) , whereas in fact, the real enemy is Oceania (Islam, terrorists etc)
And when Oceania eventually launches a big rocket bomb at london, the BBC will tell us that we’ve always been at war with Oceania, not Eurasia. It will deny,obscure that it ever gave succour to Oceania.
To be fair to the Beeb – Sinn Fein are also masters at obscuring the obvious with rhetoric.
TV-Tax freedom is TV Slavery.
“Sinn Fein are also masters at obscuring the obvious with rhetoric.”
v.true. they came up with “securocrat”
and now, here’s a new one –
“micro organisation”
thats 2 or 3 thugs with petrol bombs, to you and me.
Archduke, your post at 2:44 says it so well. There is just one factual correction: Winston Smith lived in Oceania (in Airstrip 1) and Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia or Eastasia, depending upon the date.
Only the brain dead rely on TV for their news – all channels have bulletins aimed squarely at the very low end of the market. I do object to paying a bunch of overgrown student journalists to produce the self-indulgent rubbish seen on BBC news programmes when all I need my TV for is watching football on Sky TV. Why can’t they fund their own drivel, or fund it by selling it to willing customers?
thanks for the correction charap. i’m forever getting them mixed up.
“Why can’t they fund their own drivel, or fund it by selling it to willing customers?”
But…but..but the British public *LOVE* the BBC.
There obviously something wrong with you – i’ll arrange an appointment with O’Brien.
After all – you didn’t think they have Room 101 on BBC2 for fun do you……
If memory serves, Room 101 was actually Orwell’s office when he worked at Broadcasting House; it was AN office, at least.
Cheers.
Troublemakers who cause violence and material damage for a football-related cause are ‘hooligans’.
Troublemakers who cause violence and material damage for a politically-related cause are ‘demonstrators’.
Some context to the “dissident” vs “Terrorist” debate.
EVIDENCE
BBC website on Saturday, August 22, 1998
STORY: – President Clinton has signed an order forbidding American companies to trade with the exiled Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden – the man Washington says was behind the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
BBC website on Friday, August 6, 1999
STORY: – Speculation has been growing in Afghanistan that the US is preparing to launch another missile strike against the millionaire Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the man that Washington says was behind the embassy bombings of a year ago.
And also: Wednesday September 12, 2001 • after 9/11!!!!
Finger of suspicion pointed at Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden
Within hours of the attacks in New York and Washington, the US and other western intelligence organisations put Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist in hiding in Afghanistan, at the top of the list of suspects.
The last posting is the most interesting one • both “dissident” and “terrorist” are used in the same story. I’ll bet there was a high level meeting at the BBC about that one! “We must be fair to an innocent man till he is proved guilty” they would have said. On the other hand both the August 22nd story and the August 6th 1999 story explain: the accusations are “what Washington says” Subtext: the claims can be discounted as they are from the USA.
Note how when it is clear that Osama is looking as guilty as hell “Washington says” becomes “the finger of suspicion”. Subtext: Washington cannot be seen to correct.
There is a long trail of this kind of willful disbelief at the BBC, a refusal to accept Osama’s guilt and not to hold him responsible for terrible acts of TERROR against civilians over decades. How many excuses have their been for him and his movement? How many justifications of his terrible acts? How many falsehoods published. EG The BBC in its profile of Bin Laden on line states that one expert says Bin Laden was trained by the CIA. This is disputed elsewhere – something the BBC should have popinted out. By not doing so the Beeb CONCURS with the expert’s statement.
It is not in the headlines that we can see the BBC bias but in the hundred little mispeaks, the little errors, the tiny misusage of words and most of all in what the BBC DOES NOT say.
The news staff at the BBC is inexperienced, young, liberal, idealistic, anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-capitalist and anti- military. They are eager to please their editors (and get promoted). Their editors in turn are mostly from or been influenced by events of the 1960s and 1970s, They feel comfortable in a world where every US president is Nixon and very war is Vietnam. No wonder Al Jazera recruited most of its staff from the Auntie.
OT
Sorry for posting this here but I thought people would like to see this BBC report on Lebanon and bloggers. Not bad really.
Concerns about Qana being staged are addressed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4775393.stm
Of course they leave out a few things.
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2006/08/lebanon-blogging-conflict.html
And what about ‘civilians’?
All Hezbaz apparently are civilians. They are not servicemen in the official (Lebanese) army and have no military numbers or soldiers dog tags and their casualties are routinely included in the number of civilian casualties.
Perhaps if we were to point out that in strict application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) we (and the IDF) are entitled to summarily shoot anyone found fighting in civilian clothes…… it might cut the number of ‘civilians’ and increase the number of ‘martyrs etc’
“Perhaps if we were to point out that in strict application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) we (and the IDF) are entitled to summarily shoot anyone found fighting in civilian clothes”
Many thanks for the above. It would also be great help if people actually read the Geneva Convention before commenting on supposed breaches of it.
I guess calling a trade unionist or political campaigner a ‘militant’ is now grounds for serious complaint as it infers that they are a terrorist. This semantic game of ‘hide the terrorist’ by using sanitised language is self defeating. Eventually no one will hear the word ‘militant’ without conjuring up an image of suicide bombers and men firing katyusha rockets.
To expand on RL’s comment:
The fashionable word for terrorists seems to be ‘people’. I’ve noticed in both Lebanon and Afghanistan, the BBC is specific about British and Israeli military losses (and to be fair they have more reliable figures), but all deaths on the other side tend to be ‘people’ or ‘people, many of them civilians’. The terrorists disappear among the people. It’s not technically a lie, since terrorists might be classified as people in the zoological sense, but it is very misleading.
For example, if the British in Helmand kill 700 Taliban and lose 9 of their own (I believe those figures were given by MoD), the Beeb will tell us the British death-toll has risen to 9 in fighting against a resurgent Taliban, and 700 people have been killed in the province. In this way, the public is (un)subtly invited to think the troops are out there merrily slaughtering civilians, while the enemy suffers no discernible casualties, and is therefore obviously winning. So a careless viewer/reader can easily end up believing the opposite of the truth. By this and other methods the BBC and the rest can portray the most successful campaign as a disastrous failure, and it seems to me they have consistently done just that.
You know when a retired U.S. General comments on the Iraq war it gets instant play on the legacy media.
Wonder when we’ll see this reported on?
We, the undersigned, believe that Israel’s military operation to remove Hezbollah from southern Lebanon is a correct and legitimate response to the creation of an armed force accountable to Syria and Iran residing within the boundaries of Lebanon and using Lebanese territory to engage in cross-border warfare. Israel voluntarily withdrew completely from Lebanese territory in 2000 under the terms of UN Resolution 1559, but the Government of Lebanon was unable or unwilling to assert its sovereignty in the area Israel vacated.
We believe further that the IDF has taken care to focus its response so as to minimize civilian casualties among the Lebanese, even as Hezbollah indiscriminately rockets Israeli towns and cities. It has become increasingly clear that Hezbollah took advantage of Lebanon’s weakness to hide its forces and its weapons in the south of Lebanon and its command and control capabilities in Beirut, within the civilian population. This ensured that any Israeli response would create civilian casualties that would dominate the international media.
The relatively few Israeli casualties in the face of widespread rocket and missiles attacks appear to be the result of an active civil defense system in Israel, not humanitarian concern by Hezbollah.
We have traveled to Israel over the years with The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). We brought with us our decades of military experience and came away with the unswerving belief that the security of the State of Israel is a matter of great importance to U.S. policy in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. A strong Israel is an asset upon which American military planners and political leaders can rely. Israel shares our commitment to democracy, freedom, personal liberty and rule of law.
As American defense professionals, we view events in the Middle East through the prism of American security interests, in which regard we make two points:
First, the problem of militias and non-state actors operating in sovereign country is precisely the same as that faced by American and coalition forces in Iraq. The militias and foreign fighters facing our troops are also supported by Iran and Syria.
Second, we have a particular interest in the demise of Hezbollah. Until September 11, 2001, Hezbollah was the terrorist organization responsible for more American deaths than any other, including 241 American servicemen in the Beirut barracks bombing and 17 Americans in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. We have not forgotten William Buckley, Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and Lt. Col. William (Rich) Higgins, USMC.
We believe strongly that any cease-fire must be accompanied by a determined international military effort to assist Lebanon in rooting out the armed remnants of Hezbollah and ensuring that the Lebanese Army is the controlling armed force in the south. Anything less would be a prescription for renewed fighting at the time of Hezbollah’s choosing.
Throughout our travels and our talks, the determination of Israelis to protect their country and to pursue a fair and workable peace with their neighbors was clear. Thus, we view the current conflict in and around Israel with great dismay. America’s responsibility as a friend to Israel – and to Lebanon – should strengthen our country’s resolve to assist and support Israel in its efforts to dislodge Hezbollah’s military capabilities from southern Lebanon and work with the international community to ensure that the Lebanese Army is deployed to the international border in a manner that protects both countries.
(Signed as of 07 August 2006) *
1. RADM Fred Ames, USCG (ret.) – Assistant Commandant for Human Resources
2. Lt. Gen. Marcus A. Anderson, USAF (ret.) – Inspector General, HQ USAF
3. Maj. Gen. Max Baratz, USAR (ret.) – Chief of the Army Reserve
4. Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton, Jr. USA (ret.) – Commander VII Corps
5. RADM Charles Beers, USN (ret.) – Commander, Submarine Group Ten
6. Gen. William Begert, USAF (ret.) – Commander, Pacific Air Forces, and Air Component Commander for the Commander, U.S. Pacific Command
7. Lt. Gen. Walter E. (Buck) Buchanan III, USAF (ret.) – Commander, 9th Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces
8. Lt. Gen. Anthony Burshnick, USAF (ret.) – Vice Commander-in-Chief, Military Airlift Command
9. Lt. Gen. Paul Cerjan, USA (ret.) – Deputy Allied Commander, Europe
10. Gen. J.B. Davis, USAF (ret.) – Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (NATO)
11. Lt. Gen. Joseph DeFrancisco, USA (ret.) – Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff, U.S. Pacific Command
12. ADM Leon Edney, USN (ret.) – Commander in Chief, Allied Forces NATO
13. Maj. Gen. Bobby O. Floyd, USAF (ret.) – Director of Logistics, Air Mobility Command
14. Gen. John Foss, USA (ret.) – Commanding General, Training and Doctrine Command
15. Maj. Gen. Paul Fratarangelo, USMC (ret.)
16. Maj. Gen. David Grange, USA (ret.) – Commander, Task Force Eagle (Bosnia) and Task Force, Kosovo.
17. Lt. Gen. Tom Griffin, USA (ret.) – Chief of Staff, Allied Forces Southern Europe
18. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, USMC (ret.) – Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific/Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command/ Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific/Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Bases, Pacific
19. Lt. Gen. John Hall, USAF (ret.) – Commander of U.S. Forces, Japan and Commander, 5th Air Force
20. ADM Jerome Johnson, USN (ret.) – Vice Chief of Naval Operations
21. VADM Bernard Kauderer, USN (ret.) – Commander, U.S. Submarine Forces
22. VADM Anthony Less, USN (ret.) – Commander, Naval Air Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet
23. RADM Frederick L. Lewis, USN (ret.) – Commander, Naval Doctrine Command
24. Lt. Gen. Donald M. Lionetti, USA (ret) – Commander, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command
25. Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch, USMC (ret.) – Commander, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island and the Eastern Recruiting Region
26. Gen. Gregory S. Martin, USAF (ret.) – Commander, Air Force Materiel Command
27. Lt. Gen. Charles May, Jr., USAF (ret.) – Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, USAF
28. VADM Paul McCarthy, USN (ret.) – Commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet
29. Maj. Gen. James C. McCombs, USAF (ret.) – Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Special Operations Command
30. Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, USMC (ret.) – Deputy Commandant for Aviation MG
31. RADM William F. Merlin, USCG (ret.) – Commander Eighth Coast Guard District
32. RADM Riley Mixson, USN (ret.) – Director of Air Warfare
33. Maj. Gen. William C. Moore, USA (ret.) – Director of Operations & Plans
34. Lt. Gen. Carol Mutter, USMC (ret.) – Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
35. Lt. Gen. Tad Oelstrom, USAF (ret.) – Superintendent, U.S. Air Force Academy
36. Lt. Gen. Garry Parks, USMC (ret.) – Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
37. Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson, USAF (ret.) – Commander, Special Operations Command & Commanding General 23rd Air Force
38. VADM James Perkins, USN (ret.) – Commander, Military Sealift Command
39. Lt. Gen. Charles H. Pitman, USMC (ret.) – Deputy Chief of Staff for Aviation, HQMC
40. RADM Richard Rybacki, USCG (ret.) – Commander, First Coast Guard District
41. General Crosbie Saint, USA (ret.) – Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army
42. RADM Norman Saunders, USCG (ret.) – Commander, 7th Coast Guard District
43. Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, USA (ret.) – Commanding General, JFK Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg
44. RADM Sumner Shapiro, USN (ret.) – Director of Naval Intelligence
45. Gen. Lawrence Skantze, USAF (ret.) – Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force
46. Lt. Gen. Bob Springer, USAF, (ret.) – Vice Commander in Chief, Military Airlift Command
47. Gen. Donn A. Starry, USA (ret.) – Commanding General, U.S. Army Readiness Command
48. Maj. Gen. Larry Taylor, USMCR (ret.) – Commanding General, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing
49. Lt. Gen. Lansford E. Trapp Jr, USAF (ret.) – Vice Commander, Pacific Air Forces
50. ADM Jerome Tuttle, USN (ret.) – Director, Space & Electronic Warfare
51. Gen. Louis C. Wagner, Jr., USA (ret.) – Commander, U.S. Army Materiel Command
52. RADM George R. Worthington, USN (ret.) – Commander Naval Special Warfare Command and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations
53. RADM Guy Zeller, USN (ret.) – Commander Cruiser Destroyer Group Three/Commander Battle Group Foxtrot
Or, if you are really struggling for inspiration, just omit any mention of the perpetrator:
“Shooting kills priest in Turkey”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4683548.stm
(In the BBC’s defence, the word ‘dissident’ was used by Unionst MP Danny Kennedy.)
Eustoned:
Shouldn’t it be “Bullet kills priest in Turkey”?
Marc:
Classic BBC tactic. Massive, blanket 24×7 coverage of the incident when it occured, laced liberally with anti-Israeli bias. All over the front pages, “analysis” columns, etc.
Then when the truth emerges, they ‘address’ it with half an article tucked away where only 0.005% of the readership will ever find it, and they will be the ones actively looking.
The BBC ticks off a box called ‘balance’.
Dear AntiCitizenOne –
Do you have a link to that US military comment?
Cheers.
I try to comment with context, with examples, with links or with direct references to specific BBC programme items.
I would be happy to go face-to-face with any BBC news manager – MANAGER – to prove their bias, example by example.
But right now – and we KNOW the BBC is SPINNING the news like a top, I DESPISE the BBC.
I DESPISE the BBC.
I am not Jewish. I am not American.
I voted Labour for 20 years. I then voted SDP – I had worked in the Cabinet Office and seen Labour in action. With bailiffs at Downing Street in 1976.
BAILIFFS – the IMF. It tooks weeks to get a release from UK bankruptcy.
OK, I voted Tory after that – but I am not rabid Tory. If Blair stood next time, I would probably vote Blair not Cameron.
But like everyone else at this site I join the circle of “right-wing hate merchants”
Kulibar Tree
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/963/documentid/3485/history/3,2359,2167,963,3485