“when it became clear that the presenter was interested only in the opinion of his two Euro-phile guests, and had brought me along as a sort of pantomime Euro-phobe, I saw no purpose in carrying on.”
Indeed the BBC can sap the will to carry on. Daniel Hannan persevered, and got results. Read all about it.
The conclusion he draws is that the BBC is unwittingly biased, and amenable when challenged. I’m not convinced this is more than partly true, but certainly one can get results from standing up and being counted.
(hat tip to Iain Dale)
Whether Katya wrote: ‘the Israeli press are asking’ or ‘the British press are asking’ makes no difference to the substance or gravamen of her point.
John Reith | 03.04.07 – 10:38 am
As in “fake but accurate”?
Is john Reith being deliberately obtuse, or is he coimpletely thick? I really can’t decide sometimes. The point made is fairly obvious, yet he seems to fail to see that he is failing to address it, and that he has headed off at a tangent.
Bizarre.
random,
There have been times in the past when Reith has conceded the BBC were wrong, just as there were times when I conceded that he was right.
But sadly he has become ever more obtuse, unwilling to climb down off his high horse and troll-like. Going off on a tangent, or obfuscating the argument has become a common tactic for him. Bizzare indeed.
ie:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/5304548027124912145/#335929
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/5304548027124912145/#335932
etc…
Random and BioD
the point made is fairly obvious
Glad you think so. As it happens, the Guardian piece was written by Seth Freedman – who lives in Jerusalem.
It was also published on his mostly Israel-related blog.
So was it British press, Israeli press – or both?
And why does it matter?
The original point made by Oscar was that the BBC was acting wrongly by raising the issue of divided loyalties.
I’ve pointed you to 3 articles – one by a Rabbi in the Jewish Chronicle, one by a Jerusalem based journalist and another by a Jewish writer in the Telegraph – all raise the same question (though in Stephen Pollard’s case – only to dismiss it).
That’s a pretty clear demonstration that raising the issue isn’t per se an anti-Semitic act.
Katya Adler claims to have seen some other articles in the Israeli press saying much the same thing.
Whether you believe her or not isn’t relevant.
Various Jewish writers (none of them self-hating) have raised the same point.
Ergo, raising it isn’t evidence of a desire to promote Jew-hatred.
Simple as that.
As it happens, the Guardian piece was written by Seth Freedman – who lives in Jerusalem.
The Guardian is not the Israeli press
So was it British press, Israeli press – or both?
And why does it matter?
It matters because nobody, not even you, has provided even one source in the Israeli press. I think it’s very relevant that we’re not prepared to believe Katya Adler just because she and you say so.
You should be worried that the BBC has ever less credibility, but instead you’ll probably just shrug your shoulders and accuse us of being bigots, or in the pay of the World Zionist Hasbara Conspiracy™.
If this debate centred on whether the press in an Arab country had published articles in Arabic on divided loyalties in similar circumstances, the BBC would have the answer in ten seconds flat.
The point that comes across most strongly here is the gulf which separates Reith and Adler and the BBC in general from the Israeli press.
Why would Katya Adler and crew need to know what is being published in Hebrew when they can simply lift the news from agencies publishing in English, put their own predictable brand of anti-Israel spin on it and sit back satisfied with a good day’s work?