asks Drinking from Home.
At some point since Wednesday 27 September the BBC changed the phrase “a Ministry of Defence (MoD) report has said” to “a research paper prepared for the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Academy says”. Paxman’s claim that “We didn’t say it was the Ministry of Defence view” is easier to justify with the updated version. Sneaky move, eh?
For those new to the game, this is standard BBC practice. Stories on the BBC website have a “Last Updated” timestamp at the top. Again and again this website and others have spotted that stories have been updated yet this timestamp remains unchanged. Let us assume that nine times out of ten this neglect is the result of idleness or forgetfulness rather than dishonesty. Given the vast sums we forcibly pay for the BBC, that is not an impressive level of service, but then again it is the nature of a nationalised industry to promote a organisational culture where sloppiness is the norm, so let us blame the unique way the BBC is funded rather than make harsh judgments on individuals.
Around one time in ten such a kindly interpretation becomes impossible. Stories are not merely “updated” they are corrected, as on this occasion. Bloggers and other people with a reputation to maintain usually make significant corrections explicit. My fellow blogger Andrew suggested some practical ways the BBC could do this. But even if admission of mistakes is too much to ask of a news organisation that says that trust is its foundation, ordinary honesty is not too much to ask. To claim, “We never said X” and also (before or afterwards, I wonder?) go back into the records and stealth-edit the bit where you did say X is dishonest. Where the very point at issue is “did you or didn’t you say X” that unaltered timestamp is not a mistake but a falsehood.
(Hat tip: Max.)
UPDATE: The editor of Newsnight has replied that the error “was a swift correction, not a subsequent stealth edit.”
I’ve had the dubious pleasure of walking up Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands during the summer months. It was easy to imagine how horrendous that assault would have been during the early weeks of winter, in the dark and with Argentinian snipers and heavy assault weapons trained down on you as John Kiszely’s Scots Guards had to endure during the campaign to liberate our fellow Brits down there.
I therefore found Paxman’s interview last night with Kiszelye as a disgrace.
Having obviously culled the worst bits from this discussion paper in order to show the British Army’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as faltering, Paxman and his BBC researchers are acting in their usual treacherous manner. That Kiszely kept his cool in the face of Paxman’s odious interrogation spoke volumes about the professionalism of our army and the barely-repressed hysteria that lurks beneath the skin of British journalism.
There is absolutely no doubt that ‘stealth editing’ is a policy, and such a policy would be unacceptable in sectors where traceability and individual responsibility are considered as minimum ethical and legal requirements.
The BBC ran a story several months ago which blamed the US navy for failing to block shipments of oil from Saddam’s Iraq to the wider world via Syria. When I sent an e:mail to the BBC pointing out that the frontier between Syria and Iraq is desert and that the US navy could not operate there, the text of the report was duly corrected, but the date stamp was unchanged. Fortunately I took prints of the article before and after.
There’s no doubt: they are lying bastards running a mendacious corporation and they blacken further the already sullied name of journalism.
The database the BBC use would almost CERTAINLY have the last edited time AND OR last published time of the article. They have chosen NOT to show this time but to use another bit of data.
When watching this interview I experienced the “Saddam’s statue fall moment” when each of Jeremy’s (even off his pedestal he is by far the best of beeboids) hack-ingnorant wooly vague and hostile questions was met with full-frontal quiet competent and knowlegable rebuff
‘Huge rise’ in Iraqi death tolls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6040054.stm
Why did I just KNOW that the BBC would not only run with this discredited MIT report on its front web page (see the reaction of the foremost military expert on Iraq Anthony Cordesman to see why the reports figures are hyped).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061011/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraqi_death_toll
“They’re almost certainly way too high,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election. “This is not analysis, this is politics,” Cordesman said.
but also that the BBC would go out of its way to hype up the figures even further.
“While critics point to the discrepancy between this and other independent surveys (such as Iraq Body Count’s figure of 44-49,000 civilian deaths, based on media reports), the Bloomberg School team says its method may actually underestimate the true figure.
“Families, especially in households with combatants killed, could have hidden deaths. Under-reporting of infant deaths is a widespread concern in surveys of this type,” the authors say.
“Entire households could have been killed, leading to survivor bias.”
For a clearer idea of why these figures are so exagerrated, remember that in 8 years of a far bloodier war with Iran, where Chemical weaponns and massessed trenches were use Iraq racked up less than 500,000 dead.
Oh now I remeber why I KNEW. Its election time in the US soon.
Time for Al Beeb to churn out its propaganda.
HAIL TO THE CHIEF
When the Supreame Leader speaks .. the BBC listens.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6038932.stm
BBC: ITS OFFICIAL 72 Million people ARE WRONG.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6040056.stm
Having thrown in the towel in its trashing of Blogs, BBC is trying its luck with trashing YouTube.
Too many politically embarassing videos
Disrupts Tony Benn; gets thrown out
means the great unwashed (aka the licence payer) can access untampered footage as opposed to fabricated ones
and form their own opinions … leading to a corrosion of Al Beeb propaganda.
“Where YouTube wins on choice, the traditional broadcasters have a clear edge on quality.
Yeah right, especially when it comes to news & information. 🙂
I hear Kofi Annan is ‘deeply concerned’.
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/konsistent_kofi/
YOUTUBE FAR BETTER THAN BBC BOOBTUBE
Look up Moonbat Media on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MoonbatMedia
Far more accurate, honest and informative source than Al Beeb.
Especially when it comes to issues dealing with the RoP.
Take this as one example. It wont be on Newsnight anytime soon.
Smug British Terrorist mocks victims of 9/11, 7/7, etc
Taji Mustafa speaks at Hizb ut-Tahrir rally, London
Bijan
If you are telling people to watch that on you tube they may as well watch series of 6 videos by ukTruthSeeker.
Islamification of Britain
This is funnier and all together better.
Islamictionary: Islamist Dictionary
Correct me if i am wrong here.
But I’m sure when I read this earlier on today it read that the people who were struck down had Aids..
Now it reads;
“Most of those who were affected suffered from other diseases.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/6039216.stm
I wonder why? (If I’m right on what I read that is)
Wasn’t Winston Smith’s job in 1984 to alter historical documents to fit the current political requirements? Rather like the BBC in reverse – the political requirements dictate the first version and then our modern Winston Smiths gently nudge it as far towards the truth as is unavoidable, stoutly denying their actions as they go.
He knew a thing or two about the BBC, that Orwell.
I actually heard this report on “Today” this morning and I distictly heard that some of these clubbers were suffering from aids and therefore suseptable to this deadly TB virus.
Actually pounce didn’t write;
pounce:
I actually heard this report on “Today” this morning and I distictly heard that some of these clubbers were suffering from aids and therefore suseptable to this deadly TB virus.
pounce | 11.10.06 – 7:32 pm | #
Anybody wish to put their hand up?
Charlie
George Orwell says that he based the Ministry of Truth on his experience of working at the BBC.
@Pounce
A collegue referred me to your post. I’m the journalist who was covering the story for radio and tv and provided information for online.
Of the six people infected with bovine TB in Birmingham we know of three whose immune systems were already compromised. One was HiV+, one had diabetes and it is thought another abused steroids as a weight lifter.
I mentioned that fact on TV and radio. It featured in the early version of the online report but for clairity and brevity that was later edited down.
Dear Mr Gregory
Thank you so much for your reply. That cleared the matter up for me, and prevented me having a bash at NICE for withholding Donepezil from little old me. Once again thank you.
“Why did I just KNOW that the BBC would not only run with this discredited MIT report….”
It’s ingrained in their reasoning and comes out involuntarily in the words they choose.
Note that the BBC report says the figures are ” vigorously disputed by supporters of the war :
….not vigorously disputed by statisticians, or experts, or academics, or even just disputed.
In other words, in the minds of BBC reporters and editors, people disputing the figures must obviously be “supporters of the war.”.
It’s not so much a deliberate, sinister bias, just stupid reporting that sees every fact coming out of Iraq in terms of the reporter’s personal opposition to the war.
The bias in BBC reporting is so ingrained in the culture of their newsrooms that they simply can’t see it…which is why I’m sure most of them genuinely believe they are not biased.
For the record BBC people, shonky figures like these would be “vigorously disputed” by any intelligent pollster or statistician, regardless of their opinion of the war.
Reminds me of the McDonald’s staff in Moscow who just could not understand why they should be nice to the customers…”after all”, they reasoned, “we’re the ones who control distribution of the food.”
The BBC is probably beyond help, but as an exercise, try re-writing the report as a balanced report about causalities, without any subtext anywhere on whether the war is supported or opposed.
Pounce – sorry mate it was me – I don’t know how that happened.
It’s been posted here so often how the Have Your Say counts are manipulated, whether the counts are re-started when going against the group-think, or simply closed. This could be because the Beeblings who manage this activity centre cannot believe what appears before them, so they ‘correct’ it.
“try re-writing the report as a balanced report about causalities, without any subtext anywhere on whether the war is supported or opposed”
This is a fabricated poolitical story. I wouldnt even bother to try to rewrite it – but would instead look to see why it was put out now.
For starters its worth pointing out that the Lancet is a biased source which has consistently issued anti-Isreali and anti-Western reports in the past.
The “650,000+ Dead” is fabricated with the aim of capturing news headlines. Last night it was the main story on 10 O’clock news and Newsnight. And not only were the viewers told by the BBC that these “may” be the “real” figures. But they were instructed to begin to feel “contrition” about what “we” had done in Iraq.
The figures are so unsound that they shouldnt have been given any coverage without having first been verified in the methodology and sampling of data.
IIraq’s 8 year war in Iran. The tital number of Iraqi deaths amounted to some 500,000 – in what was a far bloodier war.
Then we have for comparison the total Britsh deaths in WWII. Both civilain and military stood at 450,400 after 5 years of Global war. Total US casulties were 418,500 for the same war.
In WWI. Total British deaths Both civilain and military stood at 733,633. Total US casulties were 126,200 for the same war.
Also note that the number of seriously British injured in WWI was some 1,663,000.
Given that the provision of medical services are comprable the unanswered question is if there really have been anywhere near 650,000+ dead WHERE ARE THE 1,500,000 injured?
Iraq Body Count which is not noted for supporting the war gives the maximum death toll at 48693. This may be a little exaggerated but much closer to the true death toll.
When are people really going to start taking the BBC to task for fabricating the news. You woudl have thoght that after Gilligan was caught wit his pants down they would learn a thing or two but it is quite the opposite.At teh BBC they feel they can make stories up with impunity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6044938.stm
“Man admits UK-US terror bomb plot ”
Muslim man surely?
PLAY THE AL BEEB MISSING WORDS GAME:
Have a look at this article by Al Beeb
Man admits UK-US terror bomb plot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6044938.stm
In case you cant guess the missing word its the first word in most other headlines.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ah4.iYHF7tMw&refer=uk
Al Beeb making the world safe for the RoP. Its what we do.
The BBC is not alone in giving uncritical publicity to dubious statistics. It has been a serious disease in all the MSM for decades. I have decided, in the interests of academic research, to give it a label.
For want of a better, generally accepted term I call it the Scoop Factor (SF), in honour of Evelyn Waugh’s magnificent documentary on war and journalism in Abyssinia, Scoop. I don’t know if the root causes are bias, gullibility, laziness, pressure, corruption, group-think, incompetence or what but I do think it is measurable against standard examples.
The SF has two components I called the Squashed Gaza(SG) type and the Massacred Jenin (MJ) type.
In the SG example, a journalist solemnly declares Gaza to be the most (or one of the most) densely populated place on earth (or some other easily checkable myth). In the MJ example, a journalist declares in horror that hundreds or thousands of mostly civilians are dead without saying the only source for this claim is the people who have most to gain in the publicity stakes for an extremely high or low figure.
Both types are of course adaptable to any other sociological or economic statistics.
The Scoop factor in both cases is the ratio between declared figures and commonly accepted figures after serious investigation. The Lancet article would therefore have a Scoop factor of about 15:1.
Do I have a case?
Mind control pervades every facet at the BBC. Have a look at the ancient History front page.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/
Notice that Rome is the only civilisation described as brutal.
Now before you click on the link guess what which other”empire” is compared to the Roman one.
Now look at the treatment given other cultures. Why is there no mention of the people who wrote the Bible being refered to here. Perhaps because they are J–s?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/sodom_gomorrah_01.shtml
Back on topic – I’ve had a response from the Newsnight editor.
Looking at the online version of the Lancet report into the post-invasion death toll in Iraq a couple of methodological peculiarities stand out. Setting aside any questions about the extraordinarily wide margin of error (an issue in itself), the sample size and weighting factors used, it isn’t clear from the discussion of methodology to what extent standardised quantitative questionnaire techniques were used to gather the information that forms the backbone of the report. When it came to ascertaining ‘the cause and circumstances of deaths’, the report states that interviewers used ‘additional probing… taking into account family circumstances’ (p2), presumably rather than standardised precoded questions that enable responses to be rendered statistically comparable and thus produce ‘meaningful’ data. Whilst a degree of flexibility/ sensitivity is an accepted necessity in ‘medical’ research interview techniques (as apparently used here), standardised quantitative methodology still underpins such surveys. The absence of a published questionnaire to accompany the report does not allow us to review the original questions, let alone the unscripted open-ended probing used by the interviewers when ascertaining this information.
The survey design did incorporate an element of independent verification of this data, whereby the interviewers ‘requested to see a copy of any death certificate’, which was then recorded. Death certificates were requested in 545 (87%) of reported deaths, of which 501 were presented. Discrepancies between verbal and written causes of death were further clarified by ‘discussion’ (again presumably involving unscripted open-ended questioning) between interviewer and respondent. Although there is no obvious reason to doubt the report’s claim that that only experienced interviewers were employed, in the absence of a published questionnaire and research design it remains impossible to review the extent to which ‘interviewer effect’ and other intentional and unintentional biases may have influenced the published data
“UPDATE: The editor of Newsnight has replied that the error “was a swift correction, not a subsequent stealth edit.”
So this whole post was another non-issue dressed up as a major scandal.
Gotta be more picky guys.
FoXY – So this whole post was another non-issue dressed up as a major scandal.
No – it proves that the BBC’s method of updating its articles is flawed. If the Beeb doesn’t want to arouse suspicion it should come up with a better policy.
“UPDATE: The editor of Newsnight has replied that the error “was a swift correction, not a subsequent stealth edit.”
So this whole post was another non-issue dressed up as a major scandal.
Gotta be more picky guys.
I see … so the new jargon for being caught red handed with distoorting facts is “a swift correction.”
Very similar to the new phrase “a British Man” “a man” as in “A man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder people in a series of bombings on British and US targets.”
I prefered the English language the way it used to be ….
where an mistake vital to the newsworthiness of the story was called this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error
and sometimes was followed by an admission and apology.
And a British man when plotting to mass murder people could still be called this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moslem
But thats too much to ask for.
a “swift correction” distoorting shoudl read distorting
GuyR | 12.10.06 – 7:26 pm |
On top of all that, it was an epidemiological study, which is useless when trying to determine war deaths. You can’t go in to a war zone, pick out a few sites where people have been killed and then extrapolate the results of those surveys across an entire country, because bullets aren’t a transmissable disease. 😉
Why didn’t the BBC investigate the numbers (it’s not difficult) and have a headline “Lancet Errors harm Anti-war movement”, but getting away with telling lies has allways been the lefts strong point.
.
“There is little doubt that we live in the dying days of the multicultural fantasy.
It will end in misery and may lead to the loss of Europe as a part of Western civilisation.
Our children and grandchildren will look back to our days and wonder why so many so easily accepted what patently contradicted history and common sense.Then, however, the current thinking elites, just like Lenin’s useful idiots in the past, will have conveniently forgotten their part in the dismantling of 2000 years of European culture within a mere generation”.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1492
THE AL JAZEERAIZATION OF THE BBC: WORKING FOR THE ISLAMIC DICTATORS OF IRAN
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/speaking_to_iran_1.html
Well its official now. It was clear that this was coming after the “Iran Uncovered Series” better know in Iran as the whitewashing of the régime of the Mullahs. All that fawning by John Simpson and Frances Harrison is now beginning to make sense..
Take note of the BBC claim by Richard Sambrook.
“The service will reflect the BBC’s core editorial values of impartiality and fairness and crucially bring a broad range of international reporting to an audience which cannot always get access to free and independent information.”
That Sambrook can make such a claim after the BBC has done next to NOTHING to report on the violations of widespread human rights carried out by the Islamic government beggar’s belief.
The only question is what agenda is being served here? This is what Sambrook claims:
“Although the service is funded by the British Government, as is the rest of the BBC World Service, the new channel will of course be editorially independent.”
Its the British Foreign Office that will be paying £15m a year for this service. The FO is riddled with Islamicists and Arabists, they are the same people who have funded the propaganda missions of Qardawi the foremost Sunni extremist Imam. As Sambrook himself mentions already some 10 other services have been closed in order to fund an expanded Arabic service.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=395592&in_page_id=1770
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2291753,00.html
This new service is part of the concerted drive by the FO to realign British Foreign policy along the European line of appeasement and reconciliation to the Islamic and Arab worlds.
The one saving grace of this new development judging from the comments to Sambrook’s post is that many here and in Iran are aware of the real agenda behind move by the BBC.