says the BBC.
As Instapundit says,
Are the terrorists trying to pull a Tet in Iraq? Of course. And the media are trying to help them. “Not surprisingly to me but shocking to many, the President obviously knows more history than his interviewer.”
Knowing more history than most journalists is no great feat.
Instapundit is quoting from and links in turn to Tigerhawk, who says:
Not surprisingly to me but shocking to many, the President obviously knows more history than his interviewer. When President Bush “accepts” the analogy of the surge in violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, he is not “accepting” that Iraq is an unwinnable struggle against a noble enemy. He is saying that victory or defeat in Iraq will not be a function of the amount of violence that the enemy is able to do during any given period, but our will to keep fighting notwithstanding that violence. In that one regard, Iraq is dangerously similar to Vietnam, which fact the mainstream media would know if the typical editor read military history instead of the journalism pretending to be history that fills the bestseller lists.
Tigerhawk’s complaints about the word “accepts” refer to ABC news, but it’s no surprise that the same can be said about the BBC headline and coverage. Nor is that one word at all unrepresentative of the whole tone of the BBC article. It says both in the text and a subhead that Tet was a “huge pyschological blow”, and that it “eroded support” – while not laying quite such stress on the fact that the people who made that blow land were the media with their false reports that the Tet Offensive had been successful.
On balance the BBC is not worth paying for.
Nick Reynolds,
To quote Rage Against the Machine “Nothing proper about your propaganda”.
😉
BTW I had to check the spelling. Good to see we all make the same spelling mistakes.
I can assure you that BBC staff in my experience do spend rather a lot of time debating, discussing and examining both their stories and their attitudes. .
Nick Reynolds
Then their gaze falls on the Bush poster on the wall, with the legend, “Hail to the Thief” & the editorial line is suddenly clarified.
Nick Reynolds:
As you have returned to the fray we’d be interested to learn your views on the Pilger interview this morning which has been the subject of an amusing exchange.
You mention “a properganda(sic) war”
Wasn’t the broadcast of the interview a shot in a ‘propaganda war’ or was the Today team merely trying to illustrate how such a war is conducted in their own incredibly subtle way?
Your insight would be appreciated.
What a damn shame about the Pilger / Tet thing – that was why I picked up on it. It would have been an absolute gift.
Another pilger will be along soon, though.
My apologies for my poor spelling.
I haven’t heard the Pilger interview so can’t comment on it.
Well, at least you didn’t spell it propergander!
What does “getting it right” mean according to the BBC?
Nick Reynolds | 20.10.06 – 2:56 pm |
“I haven’t heard the Pilger interview so can’t comment on it.”
Congratulations on your foresight. I regret to say I did, but then I lack your insider’s knowledge.
“The vote for Hamas was actually a vote for peace.” • John Pilger
Has anyone at the BBC actually asked him how voting for a terrorist group is a vote for peace?
“Has anyone at the BBC actually asked him how voting for a terrorist group is a vote for peace?”
I can’t speak for Pilger or the BBC, but one argument could be that Hamas are more likely to be pushed down the moderate route by being in power and being forced to engage with Israel and the international community than the dead certainty that they will remain hardline as a responsibility-free voice of opposition to an official government.
AntiCitizenOne:
“The vote for Hamas was actually a vote for peace.” • John Pilger
It worked too. Fatah and Hamas are so busy fighting each other that Isreal is now getting some peace.
In conclusion:
John Pilger – A man who is to investigative journalism what Vlad the Impaler was to proctology.
I thank you.
DifferentAnon:
…one argument could be that Hamas are more likely to be pushed down the moderate route by being in power…
It could be that they cast a deeply subtle vote counter-intuitively designed to force Hamas to rejoin the human race.
Or it could be that people voted Hamas precisely because it believes in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, wants Israel driven into the sea, and encourages children to dress (and grow) up as suicide bombers. It could be that Hamas supporters thought, Yeah! Sieg heil, Hamas, you’re our kind of party! I’ll vote for that!
You just don’t know, do you? And thus it is partial and dishonest for al-BBC to give airtime to a loony like Pilger so he can speculate on the matter from his own position of special ignorance and bias.
It is of a piece with the BBC’s furious reaction to the French rejection by referendum of the EU constitution. “What the French people were really saying by this was…..” went the BBC reaction – in other words, BBC journalists somehow knew what every single French voter was thinking, and perish the thought that they voted No to the constitution because they didn’t want the constitution.
Nick Reynolds (pseudo name or brother to Paul Reynolds – see above) is unique in his openess for a BBC journalist). Not only does he appear on this blog but he also gives his email at the end of his “report”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6062688.stm
Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Now this is a practice that the BBC journalists typically avoid because they know from experience that all it does is get them a MOUNTAIN OF FLAME MAIL.
I wonder if all BBC journalist emails follows the above convention.
if it does can I suggest a number of interesting addresses to try out in giving feedback to the BBC hacks that try and pass out propaganda as news.
Addresses – Bias Speciality
Frances.Harrison-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
(Iran)
Orla.Guerin-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
(Israel)
John.Simpson-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
(Arabs)
… you get the drift …
be intersting to see how they would respond.
The best description I’ve ever read of the utterly shattering nature of the defeat inflicted on the NVA and VC during the Tet offensive was in the book “A Viet Cong Memoir” by Truong Nhu Thang the former Viet Cong justice minister. He reinforces Giap’s view that the offensive was a military catastrophe and also how gob smacked they were by the American media response to it. Without the media’s fawning adulation of the VC and NVA, the Vietnam war would have reached a much earlier and very different conclusion.
… one argument could be that Hamas are more likely to be pushed down the moderate route by being in power and being forced to engage with Israel and the international community than the dead certainty that they will remain hardline as a responsibility-free voice of opposition to an official government.
Ah yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what went through the minds of the thousands who voted for Hamas.
I actually admire people who were against the war in Iraq ( I may be in the minority here) – they had their opinion and they stick by it – What I cannot stand though is those people who, now we are at war, back the enemy. These people are not anti-war they are pro-war but they side with the enemy (which makes them traitors).
Pacifists are not all miserable cowards – but they do not defend or condone acts of violence no matter who is the aggressor. These true pacifists are not the people like Pilger and his buddies at the BBC – they are an anathema to any true pacifist.
The bias at the BBC cannot be seen by the people who work there as in Nick Reynolds case perhaps, he may try hard to be unbiased, but by treading this path and by trying not to favour the west they are in fact favouring the enemy.
I do not say this is the case in most of the BBC output as the majority of it is downright anti-Bush and even anti-British. The headlines bear this out – click on the World News page of the BBC website and it is a piece about Bush’s tactics in Iraq. But why is this not the headline?
“Iran’s president has warned that Muslims around the world will take revenge on states which support Israel against the Palestinians.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6069456.stm
This is in the Middle East section. You could argue that that is where it should be – but Iraq is also in the Middle-East. The Iranian pressident is threatening all who are not muslim • which is a hell of a lot of people • therefore with regard to who threatens the most people in the world anyone with any sense would see this as a World Headline.
Maybe the BBc are in a dilemma as Nick points out but if they think that being unbiased means giving air time to one side only with the interviewer suppposedly taking the contrary view, I think he is mistaken. I do not want the BBC to be left or right wing – I don’t want the BBC to back anything. I want the BBC to get the people in power on both sides to debate the issues with no opinion at all from the interviewer. Now wouldn’t that get Nick out of his dilemma?
I’m surprised that some people are taking as ‘fact’ that the effects of the Tet Offensive on the US are to blame on the reporting!
The military and political leaders had been misleading the US public for a long time and this approach continued after the offensive. Support goes down if you are lied to and we have been lied to big time on Iraq as well! Remember Gen. W saying everything was great from the embassy when the visible evidence was to the contrary. In fact it was luck that such a symbolic target was not overrun! He soon after requested a 40% increase in troops! etc etc
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