SCARY
Total dead: 1,166 (1,434)
Fighters: 710-870 (235)
Non-combatants: 295-460 (960)
Women: 49 (121)
Children under 16: 89 (288)
“SUE” COMPARES SCARE QUOTES “RATES”
I divided this “article” about discrepancies in “casualty” figures into two.
A = Putting Israel’s case.
B = Putting Palestinians’ case.
How, I thought, could this be? Having separated them, (by “scientifically scrupulous” method of scrutiny by “agenda-driven bigot” ) I noticed that A was sprinkled generously with scare quotes while B had only one set which related to directly reported speech.
I counted twelve sets of inverted commas altogether, a ratio of 11-1.
My survey.
Total words in article 630Representing Isr (Pali) = 304(249)
Total sets quotation marks = 12Isr /Pali quote marks = 11 (1)
Direct speech = 0 (1)
Reported / Indirect speech = 4 (0)*Gratuitous scare quotes = 7 (0)**
*”It is generally considered incorrect to use quotation marks for paraphrased speech where they may give the impression that the paraphrasing represents the actual words used.”
**”to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words.”
Palestinians are playing the victim card just like the islamist terrorists the world-over are playing the victim card. And gullible bleeding-heart Israel-haters just refuse to face the facts. So many folks conned by the BBC and it’s anti-israel bias.
“Israel says warning were given before any civilian area was targeted”
From the linked report directly under the pic. Surely our £multi-billion BBC can employ somebody with an understanding of simple grammar?
Israel ‘says’. The BBC has reported several times that Israel sent warnings. I wrote about this here.
It’s bad enough that BBC journos don’t do any preparation before reporting from the Middle East but it appears they don’t even read BBC reports.
Analysis of the way the ‘media’ manipulate the language to convey a message is taught in the first semester of the first year of any decent media/communication course. Given that so many BBC people come from media and communication studies (as do I) their constant manipulation of the language – as Sue has pointed out with the scare quotes – must be intentional not random.
COT – the Japan progs have been ace.
Who gives a toss about jews or pallies? There all pussies.
If only I could spell, seriously tho – when millions of Africans die each year horribly, why should we care if jews and pallies destroy each other – i like golf and they don’t have courses – i wish they’d shut the hell up.
The article looked fine to me.
I’m surprised that the BBC even bothers to constantly report on the middle east war nowadays.
Things have been pretty much exactly the same over there since the six day war of the late 1960s.
Although things WERE ignored by the western media in the early 1970s.
So we wound up with the Munich incident and various airliners getting blown up to publicise the islamic cause.
Damned if we don’t…damned if we do…tsk tsk tsk.
“So we wound up with the Munich incident and various airliners getting blown up to publicise the islamic cause”
Exactly – and who gives one sided stories of these attrocities? Publicity is what they seek and publicity is what they get. If the BBC and the left just called terrorism “terrorism” instead of treating terrorists as legitimate, then the chance of defeating them would be greater. All atocities, after the initial shock, are pawed over by the media like a soap opera – articles are then rewritten to lesser the evil by the BBC and rabid anti-western fanatics are fawned upon by the BBC to give their opinions.
Would the BBc tell the truth about their Hamas friends?
ady:
The article looked fine to me.
That’s why I analysed it. Because it looked ‘fine’ to the average reader. I imagine you’re more interested in dismantling whatever I say than considering it, but if you looked again and did what I did you would find that the only explanation for my findings, (scare quotes round all significant pro-Israel words, but none round any pro-Pali words) is bias by the author.
If you think that things have been pretty much exactly the same over there since the six day war you can’t have been concentrating.
By your own admission you regard the whole issue as a distant irritating fuss about wagga waggas and ugga buggas so why do you keep commenting at all?
I normally disagree with Sue on anti-Israeli bias but she’s completely on the ball with this one
The scare quotes thing to hide bias is at epidemic proportions, and not just on Israel.
Just how do they justify the scare quote of ‘wanted’ in the headline of this?
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7971624.stm
The genocidal racist scumbag is clearly wanted for war crimes.
In the body of the article it is repeated without scare quotes.
Utterly pathetic.
You might add the growing tendancy to speech quote single words like “problem” in this article.
The context is bound to be non existent for quoting a single word, it is just another way of doing the scare quotes.
We are not taken in by such tactics BBC. Stop it now.
Come on everyone. The BBC is “just reporting the news.”
It’s funny–the BBC reiterates the death toll from Gaza every chance it gets–appending it to just about every one of the dozens of articles even remotely associated with the conflict–but when it reports on the Arab Summit leaders’ backing of Sudan’s Bashir who is wanted for war crimes by the International Court in the Hague, ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7971624.stm ) does it even mention once the 200,000-300,000 killings he is accused of allowing to take place under his rule? No, not only does it make no mention of those numbers, it gives space to the defending statement of the summit, referring to “massacres in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon.”
Jason | 31.03.09 – 4:35 pm
Haha.
Or : Just “reporting” the news.
It is also noteworthy that while the Israeli description of the people that they were intending to kill – “terror operatives” – is awarded quote marks, the corresponding Palestinian description – fighters – does not get any quote marks. Then in the table comparing the two sets of figures, one of the two expressions is picked up to describe these people. No prizes for guessing which.
Good forensic analyses on this thread.
I’d say this is BBC bias “bang to rights”.
………….
It is bad enough having BBC Radio 4 as background listening. But a short trip last weekend to Turkey including the Gallipoli battlefields left me with access only to BBC World News TV. If anything – even more dire.
So I had a contrast between pride in the sheer sad bravery of the Brit and ANZAC troops over the 8 month disastrous Gallipoli campaign – and shame, there is no other word, about the “British” Broadcasting Corporation.
Is it me – are is the BBC getting even worse ?
Great analysis Sue. Stuff like this really ought to go in David Vance’s forthcoming book.
Sue, your words reminded me of something:
Although there were about 55 more words reporting Israel’s case, the article still seemed biased against it.
Glagow University produced a “study” purporting to show that the BBC and others favour Israel over the Palestinians. The main “evidence” for this is apparently the media devoting more time to Israeli spokespeople than Palestinian.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/badnews.htm
They also present some alleged quotes from anonymous young people to “prove” that they have been misled by TV news into adopting a pro-Israeli stance on the conflict. These quotes represent an extreme minority view at best and are fabrications at worst.
No time to fisk it now but it’s quite extraordinary that this crap can come out of a university in an “enlightened” Western country.
And they say higher education broadens the mind. I guess that would depend on the quality of the education. It also helps to have a mind of sorts to begin with.
God, I remember reading this article and thinking “Christ, they’ve actually put the Palestinian estimates in brackets. Even Biased BBC wouldn’t be able to spin this as anti-Israel. But then I forgot about Sue.
20% more words putting Israel’s case. Over eight times as many quotes from pro-Israeli sources. All your own statistics. Seriously, I can’t for the life of me work out how you managed to read that as anti-Israel bias.
Is 304:249 not a good enough ratio for you? Would 404:149 suit you better? Or maybe they could just go with 534:29, copy-paste in an IDF press-release and then take one token quote from a Hamasnik saying something eccentric and genocidal. Would that make you happy?
Alex, would you say you take as much care to misconstrue my posts as I take to compose them?
On a ratio of (?) to (?)
Then go back to forgetting all about me, please.
‘God’ and ‘Christ’ Alex, your conversion to Christianity is noted.
After all you wouldn’t just blaspheme and diss for nothing would you, that would be picking on a religious minority.
I’m sure you never throw ‘allah’ and ‘mohammed’ about and you would not expect your BBC masters to do so either.
So its a conversion, I wish you well in your new Christian life.
Sue:
You claimed the article “seemed biased against” Israel without really explaining how – quotes and so on. You didn’t really analyse the statistics, which worked against you rather, considering the BBC clearly sourced so much of its article from pro-Israeli sources. Though I have to say your method is a lot more scientific than most B-Beeboids.
Anonymous:
If I had converted to Christianity, I would probably make an effort to cut those particular linguistic tics out of my vocabulary. If you were serious, your detective skills need work, and I’d advise you to start by observing English speakers of all creeds dropping heavy objects on their feet. If you were joking, as I assume, I’d say your delivery was a little clumsy and the punchline a little laboured.