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General BBC-related comment thread:
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I think the real colours of the BBC have come out over the Rowan Williams affair. They are a state within a state. They have an agenda and they filter and manipulate news and current affairs to achieve their goals – very successfully.
They have misused their monopoly power and there should now be a readjustment.
Suggestion:
I suggest that the BBC’s digital broadcasting infrastructure is opened up for use by simultaneously broadcast and competing news programmes made by other private companies – such as Telegraph TV and many others. This would be similar to the way BT’s infrastructure was opened up to competing companies.
Enough of the talking – time for action.
.
I suggest we use the Islamic methods. They are very effective.
Even in the “old days” th BBC was known as “Auntie”. As un auntie knows best but its actions were deemed more benevolent rather than a sinister attempt to subvert public opinion.
Today the soft coercion has turned hard amd Gramsci would be smiling in his grave at the success of his astute observations about how coercion of public opinion is achieved in NON totalitarian demcracies.
it is almost as if the reporting of news is now dead and only News commentary is of any importance, a very subtle BBC language in which the commentary actually poses as “NEWS” so as to indoctrinate.
perhaps i was foolish to ever believe that there was such a thing as impartial News and it never existed except as a concept of honesty.
The cultural Suicide that has been hoisted on the British public is very very sad indeed and proof that soft coercion of public opinion is a far more powerful weapon than any armed forces could muster.
The comments in the HYS sections regarding the upcomimg trials of the 911 perpetrators are painful to read and illustrate how far thigs have evloved in the last thirty years or so.
This was too hot for BBC NEWS
The Times was shown photographs of the two young women’s severed heads, which were recovered from the wreckage. One very obviously had Down’s syndrome. The other had the round face, high forehead and other features often associated with Down’s syndrome, but her symptoms were less pronounced.
The attraction of mentally impaired women to al-Qaeda was obvious, he said. Being women they could get close to targets with less chance of being stopped or searched; being mentally impaired, they were “less likely to make a rational judgment about what they are being asked to do”.
The February 1 attacks were the deadliest – and most chilling – to hit the Iraqi capital in months. One of the women was given a backpack full of explosives and ballbearings, the other a suicide vest laden with explosives. They were sent into the middle of al-Ghazl and New Baghdad markets, which were packed with people. Their explosives were then detonated by remote control.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3353482.ece
The BBC is little more than an unofficial mouthpiece of the liberals that run our Country.
There is no debate with the BBC, just a statement of views that agree with the liberal mindset.
This whole nonsense of Mosquito for example is a total distraction from the fact our economy is in a nose dive, that we have soldiers being killed every week in either Iraq or Afghanistan, that immigration is out of control, that the EU is making more decisions than our elected parliament, yet we are fed a diet of McLabour spin (such as lies over crime levels), chav celeb stories of deliberate distractions fed to the BBC by McLabour.
When was the last time you saw McBean or his glove muppet being given a kicking on the BBC over the state of the economy?
ITV early evening news featured ‘violent Britain’ with reports on recent murders.
BBC leads with govt propaganda from Milliband about democracy.
Do any BBC staffers feel guilt or shame about what a once fine broadcaster has become?
Benazir Bhutto’s last testament
BBC NEWS SILENT ABOUT THIS AS WELL – The baby bomb
Sometime after 11pm I saw a man holding up a baby dressed in the colours of my party, the PPP. He gesticulated repeatedly to me to take the baby, which was about one or two years old. I gesticulated to the crowd to make way for him. But when the crowd parted, the man would not come forward. Instead he tried to hand the baby to someone in the crowd. Worried that the baby would fall and be trampled upon or be lost, I gesticulated no, you bring the baby to me.
I now know what happened to the baby. Agha Siraj Durrani, a PPP parliamentarian, was watching the access to my truck. When the man tried to hand the baby up, Agha Siraj told him to get lost. The man then went to a police vehicle to the left of the truck, which also refused to take the baby. The man moved to the police vehicle in front of the first. Awoman PPP councillor, Rukhsana Faisal Boloch, was on this vehicle, as was a cameraman.
As the man tried to hand the baby to the second police vehicle, the first police vehicle warned: “Don’t take the baby, don’t take the baby, don’t let the baby up on the truck.”
Both these police vehicles were exactly parallel to where I was sitting inside the truck. As the man scuffled with the police to hand the baby over, the first explosion took place. Everyone in that police van was killed, as were those around it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3294410.ece
Two things from the previous general thread sounded wrong to these American ears:
bypass them [BBC]. Disregard them completely. Shut them out.
…agree this is usually appropriate for the beeb apparatchiks who appear here; ‘engaging them in debate’ is no way to turn around the BBC’s great big boat. Also, there’s no evidence any beeboid on this blog has any executive power, much less any transferable talent or hope of a cosy future in the real world ‘outside’. So ignore them and watch them wither.
But that won’t do for the BBC itself. There’s plenty of evidence the BBC can’t be mended, indeed doesn’t want to be, and no prospect of durable movement in the direction of reform. Maybe a little tactical retreat here and there, ‘withdrawing the knife’ in Lenin’s image, but that’s it, since the massive inertia in British society can be relied upon to guarantee the outcome — the quick return to business-as-usual for the nomenklatura. The BBC won’t agree to lasting change, let alone vote itself out of existence.
Keep faxing, phoning, and protesting to all who will listen.
…and then shuffle off and put the kettle on and have a ginger biscuit? No, it’ll take a lot more work. Your farmers and lorry drivers have plenty of bottle, and have shown the right stuff in the past. It’s also likely that disgust in the ranks, in both your police and military, is rising to the boil. My own sense of your national mood — half my time in the last fifteen years has been in the UK — is that the simmering fury of good people will inevitably find expression, certainly enough to take on a corrupt and entrenched Establishment that won’t go gently into the good night.
As Sam says in the Geordie Bible, Ya divnt wanit jostled, ya wanit shifted a-together.
The path you take, of course, is up to you, as in any democracy. But the rot runs deep; letters-to-the-editor, the last refuge of an enervated middle-class, won’t do it.
I’m an atheist and I was just wondering why the BBC uses “the Prophet Mohammed” when refering to the founder of the islamic faith. It is not my prophet.
Why not just “the islamic prophet”.
They do not refer to jesus as “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
What is up with that? I would really like to know?
“certainly enough to take on a corrupt and entrenched Establishment that won’t go gently into the good night. ”
Oh,I’m sure they will,if the right approach is taken.We have plenty of new examples.
(From the Today thread ref.
John Reith | 12.02.08 – 10:48 am
John Reith
The programme I DO like to tune into is Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics and This Week is just about the only political satire that can actually be funny (as well as informative and intelligent). So tell me why BBC management does everything it can to sabotage these programmes? Award winning – highly respected – yet the BBC whisks them off air every time Westminster is in recess – as if politics suddenly stops. They don’t do that for the Westminster Hour or any of the other political shows of the week on radio or telly. Only the DP and This Week gets singled out for this treatment. It seems to me that BBC top brass are desperately trying to bring down the ratings so they can axe the shows. And all because Andrew Neil doesn’t fall (on his own assessment) within what the beeb regards as the “politically acceptable” spectrum. OK – it goes without saying that you will tell me I am wrong. But what is your explanation for the shabby treatment of Andrew Neil and his programmes?
OK – it goes without saying that you will tell me I am wrong. But what is your explanation for the shabby treatment of Andrew Neil and his programmes?
Oscar | 12.02.08 – 10:17 pm | #
Maybe Sarah Jane and BJ would also like to have a go at answering this.
Having Just Watched the latest showing of the BBC2s flagship science program Horizon, titled “How To make Better Decisions” all I can say is it has succeeded. It helped me to decide not to bother wasting 50 minutes of my life watching it again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/index.shtml
Within a lot woolly disconnected stuff that basically said you should think a bit before you decide on anything; it embedded an uncritical segment with a guy who basically said that we all have a latent ability to predict the future.
I guess this is the new policy of the BBC, hoping to soften your brain up for the lameness of the science news reporting that followed later.
It highlighted the latest government report that said we all going to fry because of global warming at some unspecified future time in some non-specific way that was hand-wavingly illustrated by showing pictures of mosquitoes and heatstroked elderly French people.
It then neatly segued into a report of Kens new tax on SUVs that will save the earth.
It is getting beyond a joke.
Red Ken’s new tax on SUVs will achieve absolute nothing other than raise around £50 million in tax. 7,500 tonnes of CO2 reduced according to the C4 report on the 7 o’clock news, which will have approximately ZERO impact on reducing climate change (assuming it is really happening for a second). This Red Ken initiative is all about giving “chelsea tractor” drivers a good kicking, which he is much more interested in doing. An envy tax, no more, no less.
I look forward to seeing this argument put forward on the BBC… In the name of balance.
With regards to Horizon: It’s been dumbed down for “chavs”. I commented on the programme a couple of weeks ago that the story about matter and space time was turned into a “boys road trip” with some grinning fool.
Why can’t the BBC make good science programmes anymore? The BBC seems to “Chavify” everything it does.
Talk about Stereotypes as well. Intelligent men “who can’t get dates” and women obsessed with shoes.
Hold the front page – political gesture worthy of top billing on Views Online:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7241965.stm
Could it be so because Beeboids agree with it?
Newsnight: Big debate about the economy, but anyone notice who was missing? There was a Tory and a lib Dem, but no McLabour, unless that dopey cow Stephanie Flanders was representing McLabour?
Why is the BBC not hammering at the door of 10 & 11 downing Street?
Could you imagine if the Tories were in power now, the BBC would be in overdrive?
BBC – right up to date with sci/tech.
..well…one day late anyway. I’ll get my news else where.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7238986.stm
Just a heads up here: The Grauniad is running a story about Carbon emissions from shipping. Oh dear looks like ships give out more CO2 emissions that first thought.
Well no doubt Mr Harriden will be going on about it. However, this has been well known for a long time. I’ve posted this link before, but just scroll down to the article on shipping. This article is quite old.
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/transport.htm
But when the BBC were spouting bollocks about aviation people like me were pointing out that shipping is and will pollute even more.
But of course it’s far more trendy to set up a “CO2 camp” ouside Heathrow airport. It reminds thick Beeboids of the days when the women who now work at the BBC would take their girlfriends to Greenham Common. Ah the days of girl power.
Can we get an apology off the Aussie’s for inflicting Neighbours on us for 25 years?
@Martin
I hope this isn’t considered as chit-chat 🙂 But I remembered that Horizon show with Brian Cox, it was pretty lame. They even included a time wasting “cute” scene of him in a diner fluffing his lines while trying to explain to his camera crew a feature of relativity that even I (from a book?) could have pre-planned to get right first time to get the ball rolling quicker. And it had a strange scene with him interacting with the guys at the US military at the headquarters that controlled the GPS satellite system, that had a annoying smirking un-informative quality.
But this latest Horizon really gave the impression that Telepathy has some merit, without a word of critcicism except showing an American Top Gun pilot saying he doesn’t believe in predictions he relies on training and instinct so Hmmm. That’s where it finally lost my respect.
The Ten O’Clock news today was the global warming show, I guess when there is no news, then the default position is to run home to mama and dig up any and all global warming enviro-disaster stories
Martin,
“With regards to Horizon: It’s been dumbed down for “chavs”.”
Sorry,but it is “dumbed down for Beedoids”.Don’t forget, except for Greggers they all have arts degrees.
These types sit round in a healing circle if they get a flat battery.
Put them down in somewhere wild and inhospitable,Salford say,and they will all starve to death looking for a Starbucks.
Re Horizon: Yes I suppose it’s the Beeboids dumbing it down. They don’t see serious Science as “interesting”
There’s a joke in the Astronomy world that every Horizon that has Space as a subject these days has to have something crashing into the Earth or big explosions.
Science on the BBC is at an all time low. Funny that the BBC has a regular religious slot on a Sunday, but doesn’t offer one for science.
The Sky at Night is a little ray of light I guess but 20 minutes every month isn’t much is it?
You only have to look at the way the BBC goes on about Carbon. I bet if you asked the average Joe in the street they’d think Carbon was a poison and not an important building block of life.
Engineering gets an even worse deal from the BBC than Science does. I don’t know if anyone watched the series about the refurbishment of St Pancras, but I was so disappointed that very little mention was made of the engineering side, instead they seemed to just follow some woman around for several months who did nothing but moan at contractors. Not very informative BBC.
The BBC, state censorship of the news and half the story.
Arab TV broadcasters face curbs
Arab countries have agreed to allow punishment of satellite channels deemed to have offended Arab leaders or national or religious symbols. At a meeting in Cairo called by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a charter was adopted allowing authorities to withdraw permits from offending channels. The only country to refuse to endorse the charter was Qatar, the home of leading satellite station al-Jazeera. Correspondents say the satellite channels have thrived on controversy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7241723.stm
Strange how in a story about state censorship of the news the BBC omits the word ‘Censorship’. You know just like they do when they report from Gaza, Southern Lebanon, Iran and Iraq under Saddam when they were forced to have a political/religious/terrorist overseer present at all times. Now just think if say the British forbade the IRA from speaking on TV how the BBC would report such a thing, or even if they were to report from a British front line during 1991 or even 2003 in Iraq. Would the BBC inform you they had been censored? Yet for some strange reason they don’t bother here. I wonder why?
The BBC, state censorship of the news and half the story.
The BBC, the Ukraine and half the story.
Russia in Ukraine missile threat
Russia has said it may target its missiles at Ukraine if its neighbour joins Nato and accepts the deployment of the US missile defence shield.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7241470.stm
The above along with this story about Sevastopol from the BBC;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7239206.stm
Paints the impression that Russia is rightly fearful of NATO (read the US) belligerence. That the Ukraine should really stand with Russia and that 20,000 people depend on the Russians for work. But does the BBC really give a reason for just why the Russians don’t want to leave the port of Sevastopol just yet?
Well for a start, they would lose the only Deep Sea port in the region seen as the sea of Anzov is around 13 metres in depth.
http://www.aboutromania.com/BlackSeaMap.gif
In other words they would lose one of their 3 fleets. Which explains why the Russians have started to build a new home for the Black sea fleet at Novorossiysk. However a lot of the infrastructure that is available to the Russians at Sevastopol would be lost. Such as the skills needed to build new Aircraft carriers. In 2005 the Russians said they would build 4 new carriers however only one Russian/Ukrainian port has the skills needed in which to do so. With no keel laid down as yet is it no wonder the Russians are trying to bully their neighbours into doing as they demand. And they wonder why those neighbours want to join NATO? Shame the BBC doesn’t report any of this. But then I assume that the BBC defence expert didn’t read Nov 2007 edition of Janes Navy international.(page 29/30)
The BBC, the Ukraine and half the story.
Buried inside the BBC Online news pages in the Europe section is the following story.
” ‘Danish cartoons ‘plotters’ held’
Danish police arrest three people over an alleged plot to attack a man who drew Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
Now is there anything more they can tell us about the ‘alleged plotters’?
“Intelligence agents said two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin had been arrested..”
I think I can fill in the blanks myself but is there any other aspect of these people that Britons might find especially interesting?
er..nope
There was no mention of this on the front page so what story is big enough for the BBC to lead with..?
“Australia apologises to Aborigines”
Thus, does gesture politics trump proper news values.
Martin,
There is a bit of a crisis at the moment in our universities as kids no longer want to study any of the sciences. The BBC probably has a role in this decline with its lack of factual science based programs and promotion of MMGW
why would kids want to study science when everything that happens is down to global warming
Why would you want to study science when its hard, you might fail, and all the jobs are in China?
No, far better to learn nothing of any use to anyone else whatsoever, which is a piece of proverbial piss, and get a job as an MP.
An A’level in lying, cheating, and working out an expense account to your advantage, is about as useful to the individual these days, as becoming a rocket scientist.
Failing that,
Achieving an A’level in watching East-Enders repeats all day, without going completely insane. Should now become the ordinary young persons primary ambition.
Failing that,
Gaining an A’level in applied suicide without making too much mess, is a must have.
The BBC inverts history again Anything foe the Blessed EU.
“Australia apologises to Aborigines”
Yeah “We’re real sorry we let Bystander in”.
Given the structural changes in the food commodity market, the long-term changes in the oil and gas industry, and now this • coal prices that seem set to go upwards from a record high base – and the BBC’s optimism looks more like dangerous complacency. Inflationary pressures are one thing but failure to recognise their effects, leading to a tardy response, is even more dangerous.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/02/black-gold.html
Woman on News 24 with short, blonde hair has just been talking about ‘Obama Republicans’ – a term which rather speaks for itself, and has been used a few times all over the media.
That in itself is not interesting, but what is interesting is how she described them as “a handful of articulate Republicans who have decided to switch over”. Because, of course, in BBC eyes, registered Republicans are knuckle-dragging, inbred yokels who would rather shag their cousin than read a book. Unless they decide to vote for the Democratic candidate, that is, in which case they are awesome.
atlas shrugged, you can actually study eastenders at uni
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/a17116/university-students-to-study-eastenders.html
“Australia apologises to Aborigines”
Thus, does gesture politics trump proper news values.
Barry Wood | 13.02.08 – 12:52 am |
I’m not sure I agree there. Australia and Britain still have many links including Commonwealth and shared head of state; a good proportion of the BBC audience have Australian relatives and arguably the first kidnapping of Aboriginal children occurred in 1869 when Australia was still a colony. That is, the British Government, morally if not necessarily legally, was accomplice to what is now agreed to be a major crime.
Whether the apology will stop with the gesture or lead to compensation is moot. But there is no doubt that this is a major ‘real’ story in Australia today. There may even be spill-overs to other former colonial nations, such as the UK.
While we’re about it, I want to see an apology from the Celts to the indigenous Britons, the Romans to the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons to the Romans, the Normans to the Anglo-Saxons… and what about those poor stone age men – you don’t see too many of them around here any more? Don’t THEY deserve an apology?
The European commission raided the UK headquarters of DSG…
It’s news everywhere, other than the BBC. I wonder why?
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article3359690.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/13/cndsg113.xml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/13/retail.dsginternationalbusiness
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=d&q=dsg&go=Search
I am in a slight state of shock this morning. I turned on the Toady programme and there was a piece about the missile attacks on Sderot that was a piece of relatively straight news reporting. I presume this will be “balanced” by a rabidly anti-Israeli piece, but until that is broadcast I am not as stressed by the Toady programme as normal.
BBC Breakfast Time news leads uncritically this morning with Brown’s latest Stalinist hot air decree, that every child should have five hours of culture a week.
There’s a brief mention of headmasters saying that the targets are totally unrealistic – but most of the report simply accepts that this is a brilliant idea from Comrade Brown.
Why don’t BBC reporters deal instead with real education-related issues instead of accepting government spin?
Serious matters such as the rottenness of inner city schools, the Marxist ideology and global warming claptrap that is systematically rammed down the throats of our kids, and the decline in literacy and teaching of history? Not a chance.
The BBC: slavish followers of the government agenda.
This morning on Today, the BBC reported about the crisis of staffing in our curry houses, claiming that more immigration was required to fill the gap.
Apparently attempts to fill the shortfall with East Europeans had failed, because of their “lack of cultural sensitivity”.
Would it not be more accurate to say that it’s down to “a lack of Islamic tolerance”? After all, it’s not as though one can do anything illegal at work. Perhaps it’s a reference to the fact that East Europeans like a bacon sarnie and a few beers outside work hours?
But the BBC, strangely, feel the need to isolate East Europeans as the guilty party, “lacking in sensitivity”.
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/fds/hi/business/market_data/currency/default.stm
In the list for Europe/Africa/Middle East there are a few notable absences in europe. Poland, Czech rep, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovkia, Slovenia. And they all have one thing in common – they are all EU countries who still use their own currencies.
Maybe they aren’t the biggest tourist destinations, but if budget airlines can be bothered to fly to them, surely the BBC can find a few more lines on a page to report their exchange rates.
But, by not listing these currencies it does give the effect of making the Euro look much more dominant than it really is.
I guess the many poles in the UK must get their exchange rate data elswhere…
Hugh Oxford mentioned the item about East Europeans not working in curry houses because of “cultural sensitivities”.
It is a good example of how the beeb’s PC Coding is causing them to fall down on the most basic job – report the news in a way that people can understand.
Another example came a short while later while discussing the selling of drink to teenagers. This mainly happens from corner shops but the interviewer was keen to talk about supermarkets, parents and the ACPO man was talking about the cheap price.
At no time was the simple point made that most of these sales happen from corner shops.
Looks like those “cultural sensitivities” again, getting in the way of understanding the story.
Sorry if this has been posted before, but I thought this piece in the Guardian was interesting:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/10/bbc
Or to save you linking:
One small point seems to have gone missing in all the press and broadcast lathering about Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News. To read the reviews and listen to the radio discussions (on Today, for instance) you’d suppose that Davies’s rather florid denunciation of modern ‘churnalism’ and its PR dependencies only has Fleet Street in its sights. But ponder the background research (from Cardiff University) more closely.
What’s the biggest source of broadcast news? ‘Of the stories covered in our sample, 48 per cent originated in the same day’s newspapers… Because of the time-lag in press production, we would have expected broadcast news to influence press stories, yet the more common flow appears to be the other way round. News, in this sense, is less about immediacy than the filtering of information … the press provides a filtering function for broadcasters.’
And the supposed scourge of public relations? ‘The Today show and the World at One appear to be most prone to PR influence (with around 60 per cent of their stories containing active PR)… In this sample, ITV news would seem to be the least PR influenced’ (somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, given the BBC’s resources).’
Somewhat unsurprisingly, perhaps, you won’t have heard any of this on the Beeb. Maybe now it’s in print here, they could pick it up and let viewers and listeners in on the secret.
Yes I see the pathetic BBC (in particular) are spinning this Andy Burnham bollocks (that’s he that wera make up on TV to you and me)
This story broke last night and people really need to make up tihs McLabour spinning of the media.
McLabour break story at 11pm. Following morning McLabour come out in force to spin story on BBC
Meanwhile McLabour sneak out bad statistics or hide something going through Parliament and the media ignores it.
Bit like throwing a guard dog a nice piece of meat to chew on whilst the burglars steal what they want.
You have ot admire McBean and McLabour for the way they do this.
Er I noticed on the BBC news website that they’ve mentioned that the Danes have reprinted the Prophed Mohammad pictures again.
Interesting comment at the end.
“…The cartoons were later reprinted by more than 50 newspapers, triggering a wave of protests in parts of the Muslim world.
The demonstrations culminated a year ago with the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus and Beirut and dozens of deaths in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan…”
Hmm. Anyone notice which Country doesn’t get mentioned as having protests?
Yep us. Did I imagine all those “behead those that insult the Prophet” protesters in London then?
and of course the BBC failed to mention no one hear actually printed them.
Nice tolerant Islam. NOT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7242258.stm
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/danish_cartoon_protest.jpg
I continue to be offended by the BBC’s insistence on use of the word ‘Prophet’. Firstly, the use of the Prophet prefix, and secondly in headlines they are now just using ‘Prophet’, where any normal non-Marxist news organisation would write ‘Muhammad’.
Witness on news.bbc.co.uk at the moment, at top left:
OTHER TOP STORIES
Obama wins three primaries
Australia apologises to Aborigines
Mental health nurses face attacks
Danish Prophet cartoon reprinted
Hello???? ‘Prophet cartoon’? Is this some alternate Sharia world we are living in? Or BBC Britain. It is ‘Danish Muhammad cartoon reprinted’. Only Islamic toadies would refer to it as ‘Prophet cartoon’.
Even Wikipedia manages to call their article “Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy”.
Ah I see that McLabour have tried to sneek out the loss of 600 jobs at a Royal Navy base.
You see, Andy Burnham come on to set the chattering classes off then McLabour release the bad news which will be ignored by the BBC.
Notice yesterday the mess the economy is in was ignored for the most part by the BBC (excpet Newsnight, but even they couldn’t get a Mcpuppet to come on)
From HonestReportingUK
A BBC response to a viewer complaint, who wanted to know why the BBC never mention Palestinians as aggressors, preferring descriptions like “Rocket injures dozens in Israel”, while Israel is always treated as the aggressor with headlines like “Israeli raids kill nine in Gaza”.
The BBC’s typically lame and bureaucratic response:
Please understand that we try to use neutral language in all our reporting, headlines included. Our writers, sub-editors and editors are required to write headlines that are between 31 and 33 characters long, including spaces, to fit in a Ceefax (teletext) template. It means that some long words, such as Palestinian, are often avoided to get more germane information into a headline. Neither of the suggestions you make (25 and 51 characters respectively) would fit the template.
I don’t understand why web site headlines should conform to archaic Ceefax constraints in this day and age.
Palestinian is a long word, eating up a third of the allowable characters. How very convenient. Why not abbreviate it?
‘militant’ is shorter than ‘terrorist’ by one measly character, but has the same number of characters as ‘murderer’ so why not use that, given that it’s usually more accurate?
Whats wrong with
“Palestinians kill Israelis”
“Palestiaians bomb Israelis”
“Palestinian terrorist killed”
“Palestinian civilians killed”
Or, vice versa, if need be:
“Israelis kill Palestians”
“Israelis bomb Palestians”
“Israeli terrorist killed”
“Israeli civilians killed”
BBC: Danish Prophet cartoon reprinted
What Danish Prophet?
and what about those poor stone age men – you don’t see too many of them around here any more? Don’t THEY deserve an apology?
bob | 13.02.08 – 8:05 am
That is precisely the point!
The policy of kidnapping Aboriginal children and and sending them to institutions and orphanages, hence stolen generations only officially stopped in 1969. Unlike the groups you mentioned there are still ‘child’ survivors and possibly ‘parent’ survivors to be personally apologised to.
You are also not comparing like-to-like. The apology was not for displacement of indigenous people by Europeans. The policy was for the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait children by force from their parent. It was only in 1997 that the report was tabled in Federal Parliament.
If you are looking to analogies I suggest you consider Germany’s apologies to Jews, Gypsies and others for the atrocities of the Nazis or the still to be given (or even acknowledged) apology of the Turks for the Ottoman slaughter of the Armenians, as more appropriate to the Australian situation.
I think an apology is in some way required and would be nice.
But it would be nice if at the same time a thanks for the wonderful things that the Australian nation has given to the native populations would also be nice.
This after all is how piece and harmony between people is created, not war and division.
Which is exactly what the world would have right now if the people that run the place wanted such a thing.
This is not a right left issue, because the powers that be are both capitalists and socialists at the same time, in short FASCISTS.
They all especially national and pan-nation governments have a truly massive interest in disharmony just about everywhere, except in their own families and possibly even there.