Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


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.

Impersonation. Some commenters are signing off with the names or nicknames of others in order to deceive. It may have started as a joke but this practice degrades debate. Please be warned that commenters impersonating others may be banned without notice.

Move the chair a little to the left, darling. I’m sure the lifeboat will be along shortly.

You know that BBC story that described Ahmadinejad as a “trenchant critic” of Israel? It now says… “outspoken critic.”

Hat tip: Biodegradable (and the ever-wonderful News Sniffer.)

Biodegradable provided a list of others described as outspoken critics by the BBC. And Byran pointed out that, “they were picking so delicately over the phrase that they didn’t notice it should be an outspoken critic.”

What’s your favourite word?

An odd one about the Festival Hall.

An anonymous reader emailed me this link and added simply, “Read the question at the bottom.”

Huh? I mean huh? Where did that come from?

UPDATE: The question at the bottom has now disappeared. (Hat tip: Nick Reynolds of the BBC. Even he thought it was “remarkably silly”.)

If you have come late to this party and want to know what the question was, Bishop Hill recorded it for posterity:

Should City bankers donate a proportion of their fortunes to causes like the Royal Festival Hall? Let us know what you think using the form below.

The earlier article was and still is simply about the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall, without any mention of City bankers. The question came out of the blue and has now disappeared back into the blue – without, as Bryan comments, “explanation, apology or updating of the article.” The Last Updated field still says 9 June.

Fair do’s

Dr Who was ace. Perhaps the best ever.

Apart from that, this is an open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


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.

Don’t blink.

“Who scares you more Russia or America?” asks the BBC

Who scares you more Russia or America?” asks the BBC.

This was a phone in, spotted by Epi-Me, then a 5 Live message board. On the latter, Sarah comments:

The poor punctuation is all theirs, as is the following discussion starter:

“The leaders of the world’s most powerful countries are meeting in Germany amidst growing tension between Russia and the West. There’s talk of a new cold war as Presidents Bush and Putin exchange rhetoric about American plans to site a missile defence system in the Czech Republic and Poland. The Americans say they’re just protecting all of us from a future threat from a so called rogue state like Iran or North Korea – but the Russians clearly feel threatened and have said they’ll re-target their nuclear missiles at Europe.

I guess they needed to do a little test to see how well all that time they spend whipping up anti-Americanism is paying off.

Not necessarily that well. The first comment said, “Apart from this being World News, it looks like another attempt to take a story (any story) and ask a loaded question designed to stir up anti-American comments.”

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


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.

BBC summary of the Six Day War

:

“The second Arab-Israeli war, also known as the six-day war, began when Israel launched a massive pre-emptive strike on three fronts.

Israeli forces took land from Syria, Egypt and Jordan, hoping to create a security buffer zone, and thus changed the whole nature of the Middle East conflict.

Here is a selection of your memories from that time.”

News 12.

Ian writes*:

Hi,

I just noticed the BBC has nothing about the democratic congressman who was indicted on bribery charges. I saw their America section in their website and nothing about that is there. I am sure if it was a republican it would have been given prominent first page display. It is one of the top news of today along with the US military judge dismissing charges on a ‘canadian’ detainee (I am sure the detainee hates canada). But only one news is on the BBC website.

Ian

Yup. Let us know when the story finally appears.

I’m sure the BBC will tell us about it eventually, but given the hoo-hah about its up to the minute worldwide coverage, it’s a little embarrassing that the the dead tree – and dead lefty – Guardian managed a story well before the BBC.

UPDATE 11.32 am: A little discussion in the comments, some from defenders of the BBC, brings up the jailed Republican Randy Cunningham as a comparator. I also thought of another Republican, Conrad Burns.

Ah, but Jefferson’s tale is so much more fun than the drearily predictable scandals associated with these dull folk. Wads of cash wrapped up in foil in his freezer! There’s even a mention on The Spoof. Yet so far as I can tell* Jefferson has never had a story to himself on the BBC – think of the opportunities forgone for puns about “frozen assets” – and the accusations against him have only been mentioned three times on the BBC:

US probes Nigeria vice-president. This story appeared in the Africa pages and was told from the Nigerian angle. Nothing wrong with that, of course, since it is also a Nigerian story – but it is going to be read by many fewer readers.

Scandal key to Montana senate race The main story is about a scandal involving a republican senator, Conrad Burns, and mentions Jefferson as a balancing example of Democrat corruption.

Nigeria senate urges action on VP Again told from the Nigerian end, a half sentence in this story gives Jefferson’s name and status as a congressman but not his party.

*Searching for “William Jefferson” is a little awkward, given that spurious results relating to some other fellow clog up the works. I tried including Louisiana in the search terms.

ANOTHER UPDATE: We have a sighting! This story seems to have appeared at 12.40pm. Hat tip: Jonathan Boyd Hunt, who also has search terms wisdom.

*Anonanon independently made the same point in the comments.

Hot off the press

 The BBC reports that… thirty years ago a junior diplomat heard a rumour from an unnamed source!Our crack team of media analysts have been wondering why this decades old tittle tattle qualified for a position on the BBC front page. They think there may be some secret code or message concealed in the wording of the headline:

Israel hijack role ‘was queried’

It has been seen as a daring raid by crack Israeli troops to rescue dozens of their countrymen held at the mercy of hijackers.

But newly released documents contain a claim that the 1976 rescue of hostages, kidnapped on an Air France flight and held in Entebbe in Uganda, was not all it seemed.

A UK government file on the crisis, released from the National Archives, contains a claim that Israel itself was behind the hijacking.

“Contains a claim”, the weasel words so good they used them twice. Here is the claim as reported by the BBC:

An unnamed contact told a British diplomat in Paris that the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) collaborated to seize the plane.

So if you get that far you discover that a junior diplomat chappie in, er, Paris, where they know all about events in Uganda and really know how to live, heard another chappie in Paris tell him that the Hand Of Israel was behind it all. The junior diplomat chappie then wrote it all down, writing down tedious gossip being what junior diplomat chappies are paid to do so that they can eventually become Ambassador to Belgium.

A little more info about the second chappie will be revealed later in this post, but even as it stands, this is pathetic. In its domestic reporting the BBC is painfully careful to avoid engendering prejudice, so careful in fact that it sometimes defeats its own object – but when Israel can be made to look bad it will grab any old mouldy leftovers from the back of the fridge and serve them up to its audience. The BBC is in no way excused by the fact it was not the only one. It is the only one I am compelled to pay for.

Hat tips to commenters Pounce and Ashley Pomeroy. The latter wrote,

“Inevitably this will be passed around the internet as the gospel truth, because it’s on the BBC. I can picture the arguments on Wikipedia in my head. “It is widely known that the Israelis faked the Entebbe crisis – even the BBC admits this” they will say.

Under the subheading “Ugandans killed” – not “Uganda soldiers killed”, just “Ugandans killed” – we learn that: “Two Israeli civilian hostages died in the shooting, and a third died later in a Nairobi hospital.”

The third hostage was an old woman who was strangled at the orders of Idi Amin, in revenge for his humiliation by the Israeli commandos. The report doesn’t say that. “A third died later” is incredibly misleading. It implies that the hostage was wounded in the shooting and expired of these wounds in hospital, whereas in reality she had been removed from the hostages before the rescue took place.”

Indeed. Dora Bloch, a 75 year old widow with dual British-Israeli nationality, was on her way to her son’s wedding when the plane was hijacked. The BBC has form on this use of “died” to mean “murdered while Jewish.” It played the same game when describing the murder of Leon Klinghoffer.

Now, about that second chappie, described as unnamed by the BBC.
The Times reported, but the BBC did not, that this mysterious person was “A contact Euro-Arab Parliamentary association”. The Times seems to have lost an “in the” at some point, but that’s nothing compared to the BBC losing a whole Euro-Arab Parliamentarian. Talk about Arab voices being silenced in the media, eh? Never mind, he did get a mention in Guardian, the Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post (Hat tip: Biodegradable for the JP) and practically every other outlet other than the BBC.

It would be nice to think that the BBC avoided mention of the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association because unlike the sheep in the Guardian / Times / Telegraph all copying the same news agency report, the ever-diligent BBC had bothered to ascertain that there is no such body. There is a Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation. But I have a feeling that someone at the Beeb just didn’t think that an Arab (OK, OK, it could have been a Euro, only I don’t think even the Foreign Office wallahs see Luxembourgian rumours about the Israelis as worth recording) … where was I? Oh, yes, someone at the Beeb just didn’t think an Arab claiming that bad things done by Arabs were really the work of duplicitous Jews had news value.

The BBC story ends,

The file does not make it clear how seriously the government took the claim that Israel also may have aided the hijackers.

And, in the great tradition of Yellow Journalism everywhere, neither does the BBC.