, asks BBC Newsround’s al-Qaeda posting: why, oh why, did they do it?, mentioning Biased BBC’s role in getting the BBC to revise their CBBC Newsround 9/11 Guide (again).
Roy describes Biased BBC as being being “cock-a-hoop because, lo and behold, it appears to have achieved a major climbdown”. And there was me thinking my ‘It looks like we’ve had a result‘ post was quite restrained – particularly since we haven’t had any word from the BBC beyond the change itself, given our experience of BBC Views Online pages magically changing whenever the BBC think’s no one is looking.
Roy is right about it being a major climbdown for the BBC, the revisions coming all of 48 hours after Sinead Rocks, Newsround’s Editor, declared “we stand by” the previous version – and this was after she’d taken it offline for a day ‘for review’. I wonder what changed between one review and the next a couple of days later.
More interestingly, Roy writes:
I tend to be, as a liberal, somewhat sceptical about claims of bias, but I have to say my breath was taken away by an extraordinary revelation on Damian Thompson’s Daily Telegraph blog [referring to Biased BBC’s story] about an item on the BBC Newsround website which is, of course, to inform young people.
Having recovered his breath, Roy concludes:
I think it’s fair to ask the BBC to be more forthcoming about how they did do it? Was that really unconscious or conscious bias? Who was responsible? Have they been disciplined? We need to know more.
Those are questions we’d like to see answered too – tellytaxpayers deserve a bit more of an explanation than just a few quiet anonymous edits. Time for another post on the BBC Editors Blog it seems.
I have a question for Roy (and his fellow BBC bias sceptics) though. Given that the version that the BBC “stood by” took Roy’s breath away, what is his reaction to the newly recovered CBBC Newsround 9/11 Guide (see post below) that was online for several years, until June 2007, when the matter was first raised by Biased BBC?
Thank you to Peter for the link.
Best to quit when you’re ahead, don’t you think?
The BBC Editors’ Blog ‘BBC In the news’ section doesn’t feature Roy Gleensade’s account of this story. I wonder why?
JR – after the BBC rubbished peoples objections don’t you think they owe an explanation? Perhaps even an apology? I know you find it hard to believe, but some people found the original BBC 9-11 account offensive.
And how about an assurance that things wil;l improve? What measures will/have been taken? Who has been disciplined?
Best to quit when you’re ahead, don’t you think?
John Reith | 17.09.07 – 2:45 pm | #
Since when was just getting to the facts, not to mention the truth around them, something one ‘quits’… ahead (whatever that means) or otherwise.
As I look at my licence fee demand I am reminded that this is not some petty game where players gain or lose points. It’s a multi-billion £ industry with tens of thousands of staff and the bearer of a national standard worldwide.
It seems to me that a reasonable pursuit of truth and accuracy (I’ll leave balance to those who can cope with being a irresistible force or an immoveable object) has, in this case, had little more than insult, diversion, innuendo, abuse and intellectually-stagnant derision thrown at simple questions from the off. With, to date, few answers.
Quitting is what you do when such things cease and you can be sure they won’t return.
ps: when do we get the answers to the questions you asked for on this topic in another thread?
bodo | 17.09.07 – 3:06 pm
I know you find it hard to believe, but some people found the original BBC 9-11 account offensive.
Why should I find that hard to believe, given what I said about it myself?
ttp://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/7942901149372255110/#369908
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/7942901149372255110/#369923
Clearly Ms Rocks didn’t find it hard to believe either. She wrote a sincere apology to Mr O’Connell in the US and duly changed the pages.
Something that wasn’t very well drafted was …..improved.
Good.Three cheers.
Hats off to B-BBC, Mr O’Connell and Matt Drudge for pointing it out.
Now anyone who has any sense will want to move on.
But a number here are like those obsessives who, when some issue has been finally sorted to general public satisfaction, want to have a public enquiry about it.
Who cares which kiddies’ editrix knew whether such and such a page was in version 1.1 or version 1.3 or which page was purged first?
Chuck it.
John Reith: are you willfully misunderstanding the issue. It doesn’t matter that the BBC puts up propaganda on CBBC in a single instance and that a determined effort here got that corrected. It matters that the BBC is biased in general, doesn’t admit it in general, shows no signs in this case of drawing general conclusions, will not plainly acknowledge what it did, will not discipline anyone and shows every sign of treating this as a one off so that its vast resources and secrecy will always give it the heft to shrug off us lilliputians.
…when some issue has been finally sorted to general public satisfaction,
By what measure, please?
Chuck it.
John Reith | 17.09.07 – 3:39 pm | #
You could almost imagine the words ‘or else’ on the end. Which would be a worry for a non-obsessive.
Chuck it.
John Reith | 17.09.07 – 3:39 pm | #
Until the next time, John, until the next time. And there WILL be one. 😎 The BBC can’t help themselves can they?
Mr Reith (our anonymous pet BBC contributor for those new to Biased BBC), you are deliberately mixing up the timeline of events in your desperate atttempt to spin the truth.
JR: “Clearly Ms Rocks didn’t find it hard to believe either. She wrote a sincere apology to Mr O’Connell in the US and duly changed the pages”.
No. She wrote an apology for the earlier ‘really offensive’ version.
Mr. O’ Connell, Drudge etc. were clearly complaining about the revised version (as proven here using Google’s cache).
Ms. Rocks, at the same time as apologising for the ‘really offensive’ version took the ‘newer’ version offline – so many, many people thought that the BBC had done the decent thing at this point.
But then, the next day, Ms. Rocks, realising that she’d caused confusion about what she was apologising for, said that the BBC stood by the revised version, and put it back online (having reviewed it over the day it was offline).
The immoveable Ms. Rocks then met the determined lilliputians of Biased BBC and the blogosphere again, and then 48hrs later changed the ‘newer’ version (the one that took Roy Greenslade’s breath away) into the latest much improved version.
JR: “Something that wasn’t very well drafted was …..improved”.
If it was poorly drafted why didn’t Ms. Rocks spot that and fix it during the daylong period when it was offline for review?
You ought to get a job as a spin doctor JR – you’re clearly well talented in that direction – I expect that’s why you fit in at the BBC 🙂
Andrew 17.09.07 – 4:48 pm |
Where we differ here is that you want to plug on with all this because you think you will find a smoking gun.
Whereas I don’t believe there is a smoking gun.
Why not?
…..Because I don’t think anyone’s been shot.
…..Because I don’t think anyone’s been shot.
John Reith | 17.09.07 – 5:06 pm | #
Shot? No. Well, not this time.
Just so long as my kids don’t end up thinking that some 3,000 innocents were [tangent-debate free phrase] to death by another pretty lethal method simply because some folk were angry with America for some stuff they had done to some folk in the Middle East.
Or the holes that still remain in the explanations to Andrew’s original questions on the timeline to the site changes, that still don’t seem to tally with unenhanced truth.
If so, please point them out. Anyone?
Peter,
Please don’t give JR any ammo for his cause. Nearly 3000 innocents – including 30 people from my neighborhood, as well as a couple of business clients and acquaintances – were slaughtered because some Muslims were, in fact, angry at the US for various reasons. The problem lies with the way CBBC spelled out those reasons, as well as the fact that CBBC wouldn’t say that said Muslims were, in fact, behind the attacks, but instead offered that as just US opinion.
JR has already conceded that last point elsewhere, but it is important that we hammer on the other point that the offense was caused by the way in which Islamo-fascist grievances were related, not whether there were grievances or not.
We have to point out that the way it was written sounds like something agreeable to a lot of people who are not fond of American foreign policy. The facts about why AQ did what they did are quite clear, in their own words, and quite different from what CBBC had written. They committed the atrocity because they were angry at the US, there is no question. The point is the way the reasons we were given for the anger, not the anger itself.
I truly understand your concern. I’ve got British friends with children and grandchildren who are exposed to this. I don’t want them to grow up thinking that the US has been evil and oppressed Muslims worldwide, or that it was all about the Palestinians, or some vague foreign policy missives, which could be interpreted as anything they like.
Reith has a good point. Good generals don’t sit around gloating over victories, they move on quickly to planning and executing the next battle.
And, don’t underestimate the amount of internal distress the enemy is suffering with the constant harrying of B-BBC and others on many fronts. Don’t give them chance to regroup, find the next weakness and target it. Sadly, not many battles will be as satisflying as this one, but that’s war.
Nobody who has commented at Greensdale’s blog gets it. In fact, they have no idea what they’re really talking about, because they are all looking at the most recent version and not the original. They all clearly think that the US just might have done enough bad things for Al Qaeda to be angry at them. While this does not mean that these commenters condone the attacks, it does mean they understand them.
They are unaware that the original version blames it on sympathy towards Israel, and that America doesn’t understand them. They also don’t see anything wrong with saying that AQ were merely “widely believed”, never mind the original version that “the US is sure” that they did it. Fools all of them, although Greensdale is partially responsible for not linking to the original version.
I am loathe to register at the Guardian website, but if no one else here wants to soil themselves by posting a rebuttal to these people, I will.
Reith, really is an idious obfuscator. I look forward to the day when Reith and his parasitic Marxist Beeboid chums, are chucked onto the scrap-heap of history and decent people are not forced to pay for their endless left-wing claptrap.
[Deleted and banned from commenting. Email us if and when you wish to apologise. The Moderator]
Ammo for causes, good generals and talk of wars is not an arena I feel awfully comfortable being part of. But, agreed, in argument it is not wise to offer an opposing view the opportunity to come back and undermine gained ground. For what it’s worth I didn’t set out to, and don’t think I did with a mock version in passing of what seemed deemed to be a ‘good enough’ version should you think it necessary to explain 9/11 to a 6 year old on a public website.
I was not too thrilled with the way this piece of history was created, maintained and then changed in the way it was, the explanation of how and why, or what I was told of the thinking and manipulations of the regime that oversees such things in the name of news or education.
However, as the ping-pong games both here and on other blogs indicate, there are plenty of ‘soldiers’ prepared to pour into the pass simply to block it up fighting on subjective arguments on tone. In this case the weight of the cause, if not the numbers, seems to have moved things enough to a ‘clearer’ ‘result’ (depending on one’s point of view). Better than nothing.
However, I remain still in the dark about the procedural inconsistencies and official statements that Andrew first outlined (and has dipped in to remind us of from time to time, and even here) to show what was not accurate, and which engaged my participation. And despite asking only for answers (resulting in a ‘don’t know’ from a normally all knowing, instantly referenced and usually well informed Dept. of Reith – which frankly rendered this auto-default rebuttal service of little further use as it got stuck in its groove, skipping from the inconvenient to more productive areas when cornered) I am still none the wiser.
My main concern was/is that arguing over points of interpretation was in fact allowing such facts as how and when the news goes up, down and is manipulated to get pushed on the back-burner. And that IF there are those who told untruths, knowingly or through ignorance, these are exposed and/or explained properly. A point that I thought Roy Greenslade made pretty clearly (as did a few others who I am sure will appreciate additional – considered – thoughts on the matter on his blog as full rebuttal forces are still marshalled there, if only by those who can’t be bothered to read back on the history), but as you point out sadly drowned by the waves of counter-dismissal around some paras of slightly less than ideal words that were ‘improved’.
No one speaks for me. No one tells me what to think. Yet I will be moving on. Not because I am satisfied with what has transpired. I just don’t think I’ll get the answers here any more. Or the Guardian. Woah, both ‘sides’ get what they want. Is that a result or what?
ps: Parting shot • I hope that last post gets moderated soon. Helps no one.
That last but one post is charming.