Monthly Archives: April 2011

CAMERA Captures BBC Bias

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This has already been linked to on the Open Thread, – H/T La Cumparsita – but it deserves further attention. I posted here on this programme “A Walk in the Park” at the time. It was so one-sided that I saw it as a recipe, cooked-up and formulaic.

What a contrast with Jane Corbin’s unique Mavi Marmara Panorama, which was more thoroughly researched, not unsympathetic to Israel’s point of view, and, unusually for the BBC, it included some context.
CAMERA’s meticulous debunking of both “A Walk in the Park” and the Editorial Standards Committee’s original response to their complaints disposes of potential accusations of using selective criteria to make that comparison. It also underlines very clearly why we are engaged in a constant battle against endemic anti Israel reporting, which frequently breeches BBC editorial guidelines.

CAMERA demolishes “A Walk in the Park” on so many counts, and highlights so many breeches of the BBC’s impartiality guidelines that we should insist on being treated to the BBC’s and Jane Corbin’s updated responses. Would she, like Judge Goldstone, say hindsight is a wonderful thing, or would the BBC close ranks and defend the programme in their usual way, namely shrugging off individual accusations with a nitpicking approach that avoids all cognisance of the general impression given. It’s as if doing that blinds them from recognising or admitting the overall slanting and bias their programmes exude.

I don’t see how they could possibly get away with that for a second time. What they should do is simply to show this video on a forthcoming Panorama. For balance.

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Backtrack Goes Without Saying

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I don’t know. You go away for a week, and all sorts of things happen behind your back. Sensational things such as Judge Goldstone’s OpEd in the Washington Post. “Sorry, I was a bit wrong!” he said. “Silly me. Wonderful thing, hindsight. We can’t all be perfect, can we?”

“That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.”

No, it doesn’t go without saying. It shouldn’t. It needs to be said.

“I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence
explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were
targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about
intentionality and war crimes.”

“Oops! Sorry! Oh well, it’s partly Israel’s fault for not co-operating with us.”

“we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants.”

“(So we just believed uncorroborated figures from Hamas.)”

”The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas”

“Oop! Sorry again. Oh well, you live and learn.”

“The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a
foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original
mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel.”

Skewed against Israel, eh? ‘It takes one to know one’ as the saying goes.

“Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.”

This judge fellow has remarkably high hopes it seems. He must be a jolly little chap, always looking on the bright side.

“…our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.“

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations.”

“Get me! So naïve! Silly old absurd little me.”

The BBC of course, so keen to absorb the Goldstone report and flourish it at the merest whiff of pro Israel odour, was unmoved. “Old Goldie must be having a senior moment,” they assume.

“Operation Cast Lead was launched in response to repeated rocket attacks on Israeli territory by militants in Gaza. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, as well as 13 Israelis.”

“We’re sticking with that, thanks all the same. That’s the one we know and love, and nothing’s gonna change our world.”

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30 YEARS AGO…

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Have to say how sickened I feel by the BBC this evening.

30 years ago, I was still at University. On this day, one of my best friend’s at Uni received the awful news his brother had been murdered. The IRA booby-trapped his car. He stood no chance. He was a police officer, a young RUC man. The IRA boasted they had killed him. He was 23.

Today, other Irish terrorists, most likely know to the IRA leadership (if not actually containing former IRA men) killed a police officer in Omagh. I note the BBC gives Gerry Adams response coverage very high priority in this report.

Adams organisation killed my friend’s brother. 30 years on – the BBC eulogise him. Nauseating – no wonder I loath them.

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BANG BANG

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BBC Moral Maze presenter and former newsreader Michael Buerk has reviewed Peter Sissons’ memoirs – When One Door Closes, in which he attacks the BBC with both barrels – for Standpoint magazine. It’s a delicious, grumpy read in which Mr Buerk makes it clear that he concurs that the BBC is stuffed full of right-on, Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, mostly incompetent lefties. My day was made by this par:

Sissons bowls over the other targets like a crusty old farmer shooting rabbits. Autocuties, “Elf ‘n’ Safety”, the Corporation’s now pathological aversion to risk of any kind, its culture of conformity, its vulnerability to political pressure, its uncritical love affair with environmentalism, the callow opinionising of some of its reporters, the flatulent masses of its middle management and, as he sees it, the BBC’s complete lack of leadership. Bang, bang, bang.

However, Mr Buerk qualifies this by contending that the Sissons attack on BBC management is not entirely fair. I don’t think it went far enough.

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EXTRACTING THE MICHAEL

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For me, the news that there might be a new and cheap source of fuel off the coasts of Britain is a major cause of celebration. North Sea oil generated billions of pounds in revenues and jacked up living standards for everyone in the land. Roger Harrabin, though, doesn’t give a stuff about that; in this piece about new moves to extract gas from the shale offshore from Blackpool, his only concern is to give a puff to an obscure (and no doubt highly delighted) local Green party zealot, who – in true Luddite fashion – tells us that we will all be engulfed with environmental poison if this nasty drilling goes ahead. As usual, there’s not a peep from anyone who can inform us about the potential benefits of the exercise, although Roger begrudingly tells us that the government wants the scheme to go ahead. That aside, it’s an open goal for Mr Harrabin to bellyache (again) about the perils of nuclear power and to allow his little green Hitler to claim that we are going to hell in a handcart:

Risks to human health; to ground water and drinking water; and to the environment due to the huge amounts of waste this produces and the huge amount of water it consumes. Also I think the impact of drilling rigs on the countryside will be totally unacceptable to the British people. I think this is something we’ll live to regret

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That’ll be the same Green party that is so relentlessly cheering the erection of thousands of wind turbines. Oh, and the green cause is so popular in the Blakpool area that it did not even contest the seat in 2010. But never mind, the irony is lost on Mr Harrabin – don’t let the facts get in the way of another greenie sermon. And compare his approach to Channel 4’s Siobhan Kennedy – to her, it’s striking gold in Blackpool.

h/tip george R.

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SAVAGERY EXCUSED…

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OK, I can’t let this pass. How on EARTH does the BBC get away with calling Afghanistanis a “deeply religious and deeply conservative” people when we witness atrocious events like those in Mazar-e-Sharif? The savagery, the dark ages barbarism, are outrageous and yet the BBC are doing everything to suggest that the “deeply religious” savages were virtually obligated to kill and decapitate the poor people involved because of “the burning of a Koran in a US church.” Blame Bush?

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