Police say the number of republican dissidents trying to wreck the Northern Ireland peace process is about 300.
Not that I’m surprised or anything, but you can tell when the BBC are really “behind” a certain news narrative because the quotemarks go out the “window”.
Beeboids have been busy trying to cover up the inconvenient riot that this “tiny” group was able to organise at short notice when a suspect was arrested.
I am open to correction, but I always heard that the Provisional IRA only ever had about 400 terrorists on “active service”. So the “tiny” force is around 75% of the size of the Provos, can call people out on to the streets, have supportive graffiti across Northern Ireland and have football crowds chanting support for the killing of soldiers.
And the BBC is complicit in trying to pretend everything is alright.
The theoretical underpinning of beeboid punctuation gets ever more complex.
On this occasion it seems the word ‘tiny’ appears in quotation marks because it is a word the person being quoted didn’t use.
He appears to have said ‘about 300’ and the ‘tiny’ is a beeboid paraphrase of that.
An interesting reversal of the usual convention of putting between quotation marks the words the speaker did actually use.
Tom I had not noticed that Hugh Ode did not say “tiny”, it is BBC editorialising.
In what strangge world is 300 people a “tiny” group.
I found this interesting
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090310.wcoirish11/BNStory/specialComment/home
Don’t forget the threat from Islam is ‘tiny’.
could it be that the BBC are using the word ‘tiny’ to reassure people, rather than saying ‘theres millions of terrorists out there trying to kill you all’. What could would that do for public panic or fear? Naturally the BBC do editorialise in favour of the peace process, and want to emphasise that while there is a threat from dissident Republicans, it is only coming from a small group, and is not representative of the republcian parties nor population as a whole.
Don’t worry the proles, not yet anyway – that’s OK then.
“could it be that the BBC are using the word ‘tiny’ to reassure people…”
Of course! And there we were thinking that the BBC News’ mission was all about reporting the news.
‘Editorialising’ to calm the masses is a much better role for them and their millions.
“Naturally the BBC do editorialise in favour of the peace process”
= biased bbc
This is absolutely not the same as saying terrorism is bad.
Propaganda reassures
News organisations report
BBC reassures therefore BBC is in the propaganda business and is not a news organisation.
Thank you Gus, game over! (you are a BBC staffer are you not?)
you’ve never heard of media responsibility?
media do not just report. a key role of the media is it’s responsibility in reporting.
How do they know the number? Maybe they’ve talked to them all?
The media role is not to ‘report responsibly’ in a mood control kind of way! It should be, however, to avoid reporting irresponsibly – not the same thing. And the BBC’s reporting frequently strays into irresponsible mode.
The Yorkshire Ripper was a “tiny” proportion of lorry drivers, so you needn’t trouble your selves about anything, move along, nothing to see….
Was this ever about percentages? FGS what kind of news management is this?!
Quotation marks? Aw come on Ed…
Ignorance is strength, eh Gus?
The BBC decides it is responsible to keep the small people quiet and reassured.
Are you serioulsy passing off spreading propaganda as “media responsibility”
I think the beeb is fundamentally left-wing (if that label even means anything anymore) and this is the best example of bias that you can find?? Jesus…. No wonder people think this is a crack-pot website. The placement of quotation marks????? Really??? As bias???
There’s only 300 of these naughty persons, so we ought to be able to ignore the BBC’s false attribution of ‘tiny’. Paraphrase quotes and attribution quotes all look alike to me, yeah.
Andrew Marr tosses the softest of grapefruits at Orde, who just can’t emphasize enough that these IRA dissidents are totally marginalized. Of course, if they’re so “marginalized and disenfranchised” from society at large, why has he been warning everybody for a year that the trouble with IRA dissidents is “increasing”? I’m sure Marr didn’t even notice the contradiction. Like a talk show host setting up his celebrity guest for a pre-arranged anecdote, Marr even sets Orde up to claim that he saw this coming. And then allows Orde to claim both that he was right that the problem was increasing, and that he was keeping a watchful eye on the baddies. All these little disenfranchised and marginalized groups are monitored and/or infiltrated, according to Sir Hugh, but obviously not enough to prevent a coordinated weekend of murder. Marr doesn’t notice that, either.
Best of all, judging from the News Online recap, it looks like there’s a 3:1 arrest-to-murder victim ratio. All Sir Hugh and his boys have to do is continue to keep an eye on them, just like he claims he has been doing. They arrested all these people very quickly, even found a murder weapon, so they’re doing it right. Prevention obviously isn’t the point of all that monitoring and infiltration: it’s considered successful because they arrest a few people afterwards. Following this logic, if the IRA dissidents just kill 96 more people, Orde will end up arresting the rest of them and the problem will be over. Or, at least, that’s the impression Marr allows Orde to give.
Since the overall population of NI is about 1.7 million people, the BBC can then report the number of deaths as ‘tiny’.
Rich | 16.03.09 – 12:56 am |
I think your the crackpot. Quotation marks are used to quote someone – if they do not then they should not be used – putting words into other peoples mouths to fit an agenda is bias.
OK – so where’s the bias? A police offficer says somehthing related to recent attrocities – the BBC reports it. Where’s the bias? I accept that quotaton marks could have been used, but apart from grammatical consistecy, how is that bias????
it isn’t bias – theyre just grabbing at straws. its a lame attempt to pin every story they don’t like on the BBC as if it is some kind of left wing bogeyman.
as if it is some kind of left wing bogeyman.
Gus Haynes | 16.03.09 – 2:11 am |
Erm, yes. I would go further than that, Troll.
Gosh- you’re a one! Try substituting
“the number of dissidents trying to wreck peace in Iraq is about 3000, US officials say”
Anyway, “dissidents”? !Language torture alert! Call the UN!
To “wreck peace”? No value judgement there then, is there?
If it were loyalist terrorists that had committed similar atrocities I doubt that the BBC would hesitate to tar the entire loyalist population with the actions of the few. They can’t bend over backwards enough for the republicans.
Rich | 16.03.09 – 1:26 am
OK – so where’s the bias? A police officer says somehthing related to recent atrocities – the BBC reports it. Where’s the bias?
No, pay attention Rich.
The police officer said something.
The BBC then paraphrased what he said to change it from a fact to a value judgment.
They then put quote marks around the value judgment so as to give the impression that this was what the police officer had said.
I don’t if it’s bias, but it’s sure as hell falsification.
Since the falsification just happens to serve what is a known line in the BBC agenda, it’s surely not too much of a stretch to call it bias?
nrg | 15.03.09 – 7:49 pm |
In what strangge world is 300 people a “tiny” group.
One in which the population in question is just under 2 million perhaps?
Gus & Others
‘Tiny’ is an appropriate description of their numbers but, sadly, not of their influence. It only takes one man to pull a trigger after all.
It is this sort of language that reflects the underlying balance, or rather lack of it, in their reporting on Ulster.
The BBC hires people with high intelligence and an, often, excellent grasp of English. In skilled hands you can say a lot with a few well chosen words. This is why the BBC has to be very careful with the language it uses – not because it upsets a few foamers but because it conveys meanings beyond the words used.
I see the defenders of the indefensible are now encouraging each other. The BBC did far more than “report a story”. They abetted Sir Hugh Orde in telling his.
Andrew Marr not only allowed Sir Hugh to have his cake and eat it, but actually set him up to vindicate himself with his false logic. The only appearance of a critical question was actually a softball to set Orde up to claim that he and his team were on top of things. Marr said that outside of NI people were more concerned with “Islamists and all that”, dismissing those criticisms so that Orde wouldn’t have to, and could claim his priorities were in the right place. It was a set-up.
Marr didn’t ask why, if – as Orde claimed – all those “marginalized and disenfranchised” IRA dissidents were heavily monitored and the groups infiltrated, was there no warning about this? Instead, he said something like, “You warned us about an increasing problem, didn’t you?” Total distraction from the real point, and a gaping open goal for Orde to claim that he was right and totally on top of things. Arrests afterwards are the mark of a successful monitoring and infiltration program? Not warning and/or prevention of a coordinated weekend of murder? Marr not only let that slide, but encouraged Orde’s claims.
I was was asked more intelligent, challenging questions last month by a nineteen year-old girl from the New York University student newspaper at a “Tea Party” protest at City Hall.
The use of ‘Tiny’ by the BBC is utterly disingenuous and misleading. 300 is an absolutely small number, but then there are only 30 people in the cabinet – that too is a tiny number but they have (unfortunately) huge influence. 300 armed maniacs drunk on power and self importance and with the glamour of their mythology to justify (to themselves) their heinous behaviour ARE a real problem. My father told me a joke to illustrate this sort of problems with massaged statistics.
Two Bengal Tigers were walking down Oxford street one Saturday afternoon. One said to the other
“I always thought Oxford street was supposed to be busy….” The point is the ‘tiny’ number of two tigers on the lose would bring London to a halt
Hey remember the ‘tiny’ number of terrorists who hijacked some planes and flew them into two towers in New York? Thank god there were only 19 of them, if there had been more they might have hurt some people. Terrorists come in all quantities. One can be enough to cause unimaginable destruction.
About 400 more people died at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected, the Healthcare Commission said.
Out of the whole UK population surely this is a “tiny” number. So shouldn’t this para run:
“A tiny number of people died at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected, the Healthcare Commission said.”