Monthly Archives: August 2006

This isn’t evidence of bias, more lack of evidence of disinterested coverage.

Imagine a pro-Palestinian Israeli, accused of passing information to West Bank ‘militants’, being shot to death in front of a cheering crowd of right-wing zealots. People gather round the body, taking mobile phone shots, before the mother of an Israeli killed by ‘militants’ is led from the crowd to stamp on the head of the corpse. Finally the crowd are allowed their turn, stamping the body flat into the dust.

I’d think the BBC would cover it – almost certainly with a voice-over or editorial comment about Old Testament vengeance under the skin of a supposed modern, civilised democracy. Don’t you think they would ?

(via DFH)

UPDATE – talking of suppressio veri – a lovely little (domestic) example here. BBC sub-editors can do this sort of thing without even thinking.

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.

What does it say about the BBC that they have published a string of articles and photos in recognition of Fidel Castro’s 80th birthday, as well as a number of articles enquiring solicitously about his health? (I’ll be out by 100′ says Castro; Castro ‘will be back in weeks’ )

For one thing, it shows a naked admiration of power for its own sake. This article makes clear what is remarkable about Castro: “President Castro has outlasted no fewer than nine American presidents during his 47-year rule”

Ah, but BBC, this is not an achievement, it’s an indictment (as well as a compliment to the planned stable succession of US democracy).

According to Paul Reynolds, “He has cut a giant figure on the world stage during the 47 years he has controlled Cuba”

That’s right, all the world’s a stage etc. (much as I respect Paul Reynolds, I must say this is a duff note to strike, and that giving Castro a 50% rating in the balance of history will not do and is not objective). Why does the BBC need two articles, both venerating the dictator- one describing him as ‘the great survivor’, the other as a ‘world icon’?

Surely this is a root bias at the Beeb- for them the ideals of communism are rather romantic, the struggle of the Cold War the stuff of legend. For me, however, the Cold War is the great tragedy and its inciters great criminals.

If one cannot see that Castro is a bully with nothing to recommend him (if I don’t view him thus, I betray his many victims without a profile for history to view), how can one see objectively the more vibrant tyrants of today, ideologist heirs such as Chavez, Kim Jung Il and, more urgently, Ahmadinejad?

Answer: one can’t.

Perhaps the BBC would argue that there is nothing wrong in seeing good in Castro, where it exists. They repeatedly point to healthcare as his great achievement. I have heard otherwise, however (and, being objective, could one not suppose that a Cuba without the canker of communism and with a vibrant 21st century relationship with the USA would do much better for its people?).

From the blog I just linked, an apt quote with which to finish which shows how the BBC is even ahead of the liberal press pack around the world:

“Contrary to the media’s puerile awe at the 79-year-old Castro’s significance — he’s often reverently called “the longest-serving” Latin American ruler or “maverick leader” — he is one of the world’s most brutal, ruthless tyrants. And with popular democracy blossoming all over the world, pretending that Cuba’s an exception and Cuba’s people have no desire for freedom isn’t credible.”

At the BBC, not longest-serving or maverick, but “the great survivor” and a “giant figure”. Praise indeed.

See also: Tim Blair on the tyrant trail (via Instapundit)

(this is basically two posts compressed into one, since the contrast is instructive)

The Shadowy Network versus the Oppressed Community

Stephen Pollard has a post about the BBC’s stereotypically running to the old old story, blaming the influence of American Jews for the lack of a united international front against Israel (ie. in favour of a resolution favouring Hezbullah). The whole thing is laced with prejudice, but Stephen points out it’s also factually wrong.

meanwhile…

The BBC presents this whine festival of US muslim opinion concerning the US President’s use of ‘Islamic fascism’ as a term for the British-born Muslim terrorists of (mainly, with some tragic exceptions) Pakistani extraction who were caught plotting [ed] to destroy myriad flights from Britain to the US the other day.

Not only does this show how lightly the BBC takes the actual terrorism involved (and we know how lightly they take it- video), it undermines a valid and important use of language (and, having listened to and read transcripts of Bush a lot, his use of language is not stupid- he is just insensitive to the self-important press’s pc self-censorship, a kind of media illiteracy necessary to getting anything done). Update: thanks to Grimer, Bush statement video here– rather deliberate use of language I’d say.

No doubt if there had been a successful attack and Tony Blair had become all Churchillian, they’d have been giving the whine fest for British Muslims.

But, notwithstanding their ‘expert’ opinion and numerous Islamic mouthpieces, the term ‘Islamic fascists’ is really very straightforward: fascists who are Islamic. Like this fellow for example :

“At the Nuremberg Trials, Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny (subsequently executed as a war criminal) testified:

The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. … He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.”

The belief in the “strong horse”, the inferiority of unbelievers (in the Nazi’s case non-aryans, but really non-believers in the Reich), the desire to exterminate the Jews and the veneration of conflict (jihad/kampf) are certainly reminiscent of nothing else but fascism.

When Bush used the term, my reaction was somewhat similar to Ian Dale’s:

“As soon as I heard him say it I smiled. Why? Because I knew the predictable handwringing outpourings of faux outrage we’d get from the liberal so-called intelligentsia.”

Cue Beeebies!

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.

a plot to blow up US-bound airliners shows the US is still at war with extremists” – reports the BBC.

That’s the main news front page.

Liars.

He actually said, “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”

(Emphasis added by me in both cases.)

Clicking the link from the main news page to the actual story – fair do’s, it’s an improvement. Somebody worked quite hard; added a a totally unecessary paragraph break here, a line of dots covering up a single word there… all to make something nearly as accurate as just repeating the man’s actual words. It says,

President George W Bush has said a plot to bomb US-bound flights from the UK is a “stark reminder” that the US is still at war with Islamic extremists.

Mr Bush said it showed “Islamic fascists… will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom”.

Hat tip: Archduke and others.

ADDED LATER: It’s easy to find oneself beginning to accept the tendency of the BBC to make certain types of false statements simply because it keeps happening. For instance, as it did here, the BBC regularly changes non-PC words or phrases to their PC equivalents not only in its own reports (bad enough) but even when quoting people who did, deliberately, use words such as “terrorist” or “Islamic fascist”. Another example of a reprehensible behaviour that one finds oneself beginning to accept through familiarity is “stealth editing” – the BBC’s regular practice of quietly changing a story but not changing the “Last Edited” field at the top of the webpage. There have been dozens, even hundreds, of examples of this detailed in this blog – but one still meets people who are surprised that the BBC would allow a false statement to stand, and even people who say, “that story can’t have been changed, see, it says the time it was last edited up there.”

Events move fast. This roundup taken from scanning the newspapers, the blogs and our own comments over the last few days is already out of date. For instance EU Referendum – if you scroll up from the link below – is now posting the famous video of Green Helmet at the same tricks ten years ago, and Richard North is calling named journalists liars. I can’t keep up. I have several emails on file that I will make into posts when I get time. Still, here are some interesting links.

• EU Referendum says that John Simpson’s calmness and lack of a flack jacket while Israeli jets bomb Lebanon not far away displays a confidence in the ability and wish of the Israelis to target their attacks that contradicts his own complaints that the Israelis are indiscriminate.
• Hat tip to Will who flagged up this Sun mini-editorial.
• How the BBC tells a story – as described by pounce. More here.
• Mick in the UK comments:
  

  On Radio Four this morning [Monday] we were treated to a strange recording which was accompanied with a disclaimer.
  The item was used to bolster a description of the ‘bombardment’ of Beirut.
  It was a recording of constant explosions, BUT, before it was played the disclaimer said…”THIS RECORDING HAS BEEN CONDENSED”, and then afterwards, the presenter said, “This continued for another one and a half hours”.
  No it didn’t!
  If the sound we heard had continued for one and a half hours, there would have been nothing left of Beirut.

• Stephen Pollard’s BBC mole forwards a self-congratulatory internal email. Scroll up and down for more BBC-related posts.
• Brits unbiased? Bollocks! says the Toronto Sun.

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.

: never let it be set that the BBC headlines all news from Iraq negatively. Yesterday’s CEEFAX headline

Baghdad morgue dead rise again

suggested very positive if extremely surprising news from that quarter. Sadly, the article made it plain that only this month’s count had risen, not the dead themselves, so that morgue staff were ‘worried about their ability to cope’, making it a very unsurprising minor example of the BBC’s eagerness to squeeze every last drop of worry from the situation.

At the Social Affairs Unit blog William D. Rubinstein, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth, mentions the appointment by Australia’s Howard administration of a ‘revisionist’ historian, Keith Windschuttle, to the board of the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission.

“Alas, no Tory Prime Minister here has ever had the nerve or intelligence to make similar appointments to the Board of the BBC, which continues to be a free-to-air version of the Guardian.”