Whilst the BBC wouldn’t suppress ‘Jerry Springer’ after tens of thousands of complaints it does censor, off its own back, a play on the grounds that it might suggest that the beliefs and values of the Muslim Community are offensive…to the Muslim Comunity.
George R in the comments highlights this from the Independent:
‘A leading playwright has accused the BBC of an “extraordinary” act of censorship after the corporation told her to cut key lines from a drama about “honour killings” which will be broadcast by Radio 4 this week.
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti wrote an episode for Radio 4’s DCI Stone series, which will be broadcast in the Afternoon Drama slot.
Bhatti’s episode, called Heart Of Darkness, tells the story of an investigation into the killing of a 16 year-old Asian girl, whose dumped body is found after being stabbed to death.
When it emerges that the girl was a victim of an “honour killing”, DCI Stone is told by his bosses is to treat the case “sensitively” because of her Muslim heritage.
“A week before recording I got an email from the producer saying the BBC compliance department had asked them to take lines out.
Then another line is cut:
“At the end, a character says: ‘There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right.’
The compliance department came back and said ‘we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings.’
“It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.
“Unbelievably, what the compliance department said was if you can find a factual example of community pressure leading to an honour killing, you can have the line. But it’s a drama, a story.
“It’s a crucial part of that story.”
A Radio 4 spokesman said: “This is a hard-hitting drama about the realities of honour killing in Britain. A single line in the script could be taken to infer that the pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing.”
‘…pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes…’
Is that not the whole concept behind ‘Honour killings’? That they are committed because the family believes that in the eyes of the ‘community’ a family member has acted dishonourably and brought shame on the family…and the community.
They arise from not just Arab and Muslim traditions and beliefs but in this case this is a play supposedly based on real speech patterns about a Muslim girl….no one would say ‘So much pressure on our community…oh, and the Sikhs, Hindus, and a few fanatical Christians, possibly the odd atheist community as well, to look and behave right’.
A white girl was recently beaten up by her family for going out with a black man….’A couple were jailed yesterday for a brutal attack on the daughter they felt had shamed them by dating a black man‘…..the BBC would have no trouble at all in a play that suggested that the family attacked her because they believed that the rest of the ‘white community’ would think this was a ‘disgrace’ to the White Race. The BBC are more than happy to use language that equates being white with being racist….remember their reaction to Jade Goody in ‘Big Brother’….BBC presenter after BBC presenter told us that she showed the ‘real truth’ about White British attitude to black or brown skinned people…..the unthinking and ignorant BBC finger pointers not even realising Goody’s father was ‘black’.
The BBC spent a week pouring over this insignificant spat of ill- temper whilst it ignored the other C4 programme on that same week that revealed genuine racism and violent intentions of some Muslims in Dispatche’s ‘Undercover Mosque’…..‘an ideology of bigotry and intolerance’.…a message being spread throughout Britain by British Mosques.
Honour killings are a reaction often to behaviour that is seen to go against that of the Community…dressing or ‘behaving’ too Western for example. Not behaving ‘Muslim’ in other words.
It maybe that not everyone in that community agrees with the concept, maybe not the majority…but there can be no doubt it stems from the cultural attitudes within that community, often predicated upon the ‘value’ placed on women by that culture….In the case of Muslim communities a value prescribed by the Koran which places women at a lower level of society and worth than men, which has consequences.
‘The lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says, “The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions.”
Tahira Shaid Khan, a professor of women’s issues at Aga Khan University blames it on attitudes (across different classes, ethnic and religious groups) that view women as property with no rights of their own as the motivation for honor killings. Khan also argues that this view results in violence against women and their being turned “into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold.”
The 2009 European Parliamentary Assembly noted in their Resolution 1681 the dire need to address honor crimes. The resolution stated that: “On so-called ‘honor crimes,’ the Parliamentary Assembly notes that the problem, far from diminishing, has worsened, including in Europe. It mainly affects women, who are its most frequent victims, both in Europe and the rest of the world, especially in patriarchal and fundamentalist communities and societies. For this reason, it asked the Council of Europe member states to ‘draw up and put into effect national action plans to combat violence against women, including violence committed in the name of so-called ‘honor,’ if they have not already done so.” ‘
The BBC by hiding the issue, the source of the problem, turns what is a ‘protest’ play that highlights the social and cultural pressures that drive honour killings into mere entertainment, voyeurism…with no genuine take on why these killings happen.
The BBC brushes deaths, the causes of those deaths, under the carpet….but is happy to use them for the viewing Public’s edification and pleasurable enjoyment anyway.
The BBC, however, never has any problem finding fault with Christianity and its followers. It openly shouts its views.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/01/bbc-cuts-lines-from-honor-killing-drama-in-order-to-avoid-offending-muslims.html
maybe al bbc will be glad for their increase in exposure
then again … 😀
‘Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide’
Yet, in the spirit of ‘BBCalance’, it appears only logical to some that any theatrical presentation on this phenomenon should steer well clear of this ethic group in any portrayal.
That suggests to me that a wee dram of Kool Aid has been sipped in the BBC canteen again.
It’s incredible, isn’t it? A Muslim can rape a 13-year-old, blow everything up, impose genital mutilation on young children, call for the death of gays and ‘infidels’, aggressively protest outside our churches, openly and vociferously call for the fall of western civilization, beat children in their revolting Madrasa schools, they can come here and claim benefits whilst preaching foul jihad, burn our poppies and spit at our troops and YET the middle/upper class lefty arts and crafts brigade types apotheosize them as if they were the chosen people. Cowardice? Stupidity? Brainwashing? Perhaps all three!
PS I felt sorry for D. Vance on Sunday’s ‘Big’ Questions surrounded as he was by these silly infantile lefty women Muslim converts… For me, they completely epitomized the annoying middle class, lefty attention-seeking woman who loathe both themselves and their culture.
Funny how the BBC’s ‘compliance department’ seem to have gone through this drama with a fine tooth comb – in other words censoring it line by line.
Meanwhile leftwing ideas spout out willy nilly in BBC dramas – but that is always termed ‘artistic freedom’.
I have suggested elsewhere that the outrage in the artistic community will be massive.. or.. maybe not.
He who controls the chequie, controls the opinions, eh, Mr. Hislop?
But for sure we seem to be headed to an era when the Compliance Department (only a moniker a Borg Irony Free Zone could conjure) actually writes the scripts in future, and a few luvvies from drama are drafted in at the end to try and knock the script into some sort of coherent entertainment.
It has been done before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_(1943_film)
Didn’t end well for most involved.
Anyway, history, as with well-structured drama, has much to teach us. Well, some, anyway.
More seriously, as pointed out in the piece, the BBC seems to have become complicit in retaining the less savoury aspects, for ratings one presumes, but in removing the context has managed to apply naked agenda to render it darker and more dangerous.
Should a national broadcaster really be actively complicit in stirring such tensions and divisions further?
Supplementary.
‘Telegraph’:-
“BBC ‘censored’ play about honour killings”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9836144/BBC-censored-play-about-honour-killings.html
What’s interesting is that this ‘allegation’ is not from the BBC’s favoured sources… ‘people who say’, but the author.
‘Bhatti said: “A week before recording I got an email from the producer saying the BBC compliance department had asked them to take lines out.
“It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.”
Not sure about the culture being driven by fear, if within the BBC. Something much less human, and sympathetic, maybe.
‘“Unbelievably, what the compliance department said was if you can find a factual example of community pressure leading to an honour killing, you can have the line.’
I remain keen on precedent as the BBC sees it.
It will be interesting to see what parallels there may be in its dramatic output to date where what has been portrayed has first occurred factually.
From certain Spooks episodes to such as Dr. Who especially, I’ll look forward to them explaining the unique differences.
‘“A single line in the script could be taken to infer …. misrepresenting majority … attitudes … asked to amend this line in the normal editorial process of script development.”
The red pen is mightier than any satire or irony, especially in anonymous hands.
One looks forward to how BBC Compliance demands of now dead authors revisions to their classic works. And BBC ‘spokespersons’ dig deeper holes to explain it all away.
‘Oi… Shakespeare… that Othello… change it… now! We see Iago more as Spencer Tracy in ‘Look Who’s Coing To Dinner’, to encourage inclusivity’
i note that after r bacon, spending time advertising, and reviewing – new programme “make me a muslim” apparently bbc s latest attempt to sanitise, its favourite ideology, and programme younger and impressionable viewers to its agenda. on the the afternoon show yesterday.
well, islams best sponsor, “panto” nikki campbell, does the same this morning with interviews added, he gushes about islams “design for life”,(good) – western life, (bad), having the freedom to do what you would like,(bad), if you go out at weekends,(bad) etc etc.
more of the same shameful mission creep” from al bbc, to programme our young, impressionable minds into believing
that islam, despite the ENORMOUS FACT BASE TO THE CONTRARY, is benign, doesn t have an agenda to destroy any society non islamic, isn t racist/supremacist, doesn t treat other ethnic/sexual minorities, and women, with derision and discrimination, is willing to threat, commit violence to, even murder anyone who disagrees with it, (the more public/the more threat) … yep! people the HARD FACTS … remember them, that plainly show islam as the most dangerous ideology on the planet.
but, don t expect to see that on “make me a muslim”, or the little aspect of what could happen should you leave 😀
bbc beneath contempt.
Perhaps in this new programme they are going to include an item that illustrates how a young down’s syndrome girl is hounded and threatened with death due to some arsehole imam claiming she desecrated a book?
No thought not. That would be those moderates again huh?
Get your sick-bag, or preferably a bucket, ready if you’re going to listen to http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9742000/9742790.stm, the bBBC’s attempt six months ago to cover up the ‘honour killing’ of Shafilea Ahmed by her father and mother.
What is this ‘Honour Killing’ that everyone is going on about? Is it some sort of BBC euphemism for mysoginistic-based tribal murder? Couldn’t the government just legalise it, then it wouldn’t be a problem?
Black is the new White, doubleplusgood:
“Maintaining trust with our audiences is of vital importance to the BBC. Our key core values are impartiality, accuracy, fairness and editorial integrity and the licence fee payer expects our output to embody those values. Ensuring those values are not ignored or reflected inadequately is, in essence, what compliance is about”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/compliance-and-policy/what-do-i-need-to-do.shtml
Following its own policies, the BBC Compliance Department should have insisted those line be written in, not taken out.
This is not “compliance” it is social engineering and promotion of social cohesion, alienating further the native population from these abhorent daughter-killers, undermining still further our trust in the bBC.
Meanwhile the bBBC continues with its favourite soap, EastEnders, stereotyping white chavs as resorting to violence, and occasional murders, as the response to any slight disagreement.
Oops! Perhaps it is true to life after all. Today’s news.
The brother of former EastEnders actress Gemma McCluskie has been found guilty of her murder and told he will serve at least 20 years in jail.
The writer’s name, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, suggests to me that she is Sikh. Now I’ve read of many cases both here and in Canada/US about honour killings in Sikh communities. Sikhs are also fiercely guarding their daughters and women and forbid them to marry outside their community. My point is, she could have just as easily made the victim of honour killing in her story to be a Sikh, and being a Sikh herself, she would have helped bring this appalling thing happening in her own community to light.
Hmm well yes she is Sikh and she has been attacked and threatened by that community in the UK during December 2004 when her play Behzti (Dishonour) ran for a week and was pulled after death threats the play was about a rape in a Sikh place of worship !
She goes after religious hypocrisy and I salute her for her bravery in that an the fact the play is about Muslims changes nothing if we can have a Muslim controlling all other faiths out put through the BBC then she can write about them and about that community’s legacy of honour killing in the UK !
‘she could have just as easily made the victim of honour killing in her story to be a Sikh’
She could, but again we are in areas of precedent.
Are you saying that the writers of Spooks’ episodes evidently restricted themselves to their own community when penning the foes in their narratives?
And I was not aware Russell T. Davies was actually one of the Islington Daleks.
Compliance Department.
Says it all.
This will be the not so thin end of the wedge!
Agree entirely.
Sometimes language like this becomes all-too-familiar-but just how creepy is a “Compliance Department”?
Surely the BBCs kindred spirits in East Berlin, Peking(!), Pyongyang and Moscow would have purred at the BBC “getting with their programmes”-long after the events in some cases.
Forever 1968 eh?
Oh-heard Salman Rushdie putting his two cents worth in, regarding those awful Indian rape attacks of late.
No problem with that-but all that he said applied even more to Indias neighbours…places which Rushdie has even more reason to fear than a Delhi schoolgirl out after dark.
Ah, but not a hint of that “I word”…not even those M People that commit atrocities against women-wives and daughters as much as others….far easier to slag off India than to ” prejudge” their neighbours…begins with P if the BBC care to check…as if!
Salman Rushdie criticises Indian government’s handling of Delhi gang rape . BBC
yes muted is getting regular for him isn t it
just goes to show, threat/violence works eh!
…
mind you laughably, the unintentional comedians of islam never fail to put both feet
in it 😀 …
as they challenge him to a national debate on the ahem … “religion of peace” in wait for it … MUMBAI !
you couldn t make it up 😀
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Muslim-scholars-challenge-Rushdie-to-debate-on-Islam/articleshow/18213775.cms
ps
mind you you couldn t put it past those deceitful bastards to use it as a pretext to try and murder him, and … anyway how mind numbing to have to listen to someone
who thinks the koran? makes you educated?
(shakes head).
You couldn’t possibly refer to Pakistan could you?
John Humphreys should interview both parents in his usual agressive manner. It would be more interesting than roasting a conservative wimp.
Compliance Department.
Compliance with what precisely? Is there some new secret BBC Charter. Some mysterious agenda to be adhered to? Surely no, not at our BBC.
It would be interesting to know exactly what program makers are required to comply with.
How could you find out?
That’s sn interesting question Stewart. Just HOW can we establish the criteria used by the compliance unit? I haven’t seen any of thr vultures denying it’s purpose or even existence yet.
Need to find out!
Click to access editorial_controls_compliance.pdf
This link doesnt andwer it, but the conclusions reached in part 5 had me rolling around laughing!
Frankly, a small Herbert Lomesque tic was twitching from the first sentence..
‘BBC management and staff have been energetic about putting
right the wrongs of the past’
That would be when it was all ‘ a different time’ then?
Back in the days of McAlpine and 28Gate, where all concerned had a nice break on full pay, got to retire early on double or back now in the saddle again when it blew over, like Hugs?
Censorship: the one thing the BBC knows better than anyone else how to do. We see it across the breadth of the Corporation’s output, from drama to documentary to current affairs to comedy. It’s endemic, institutionalized even. In fact, it’s now so rife in current affairs that watching the nightly ‘six’ is more an exercise in surrealist prose than an even remotely honest reporting of national and world events.
It’s become a bit of past-time to try and substitute or guess the actual words and meanings hidden behind the BBC headlines – stories which dutiful reporter drones have clearly run through the ‘Hugs’ Boaden Newspeak Machine prior to broadcast.
And yet these delusional muppets persist in believing themselves the very models of journalistic ‘integrity’. Well, I suppose even Pravda’s finest imagined themselves doing an honest day’s reporting.
So instead of presenting what the BBC claims is the false impression that the wider Mohammedan community condones honor killings, they demand that the writer presents the false impression that this honor killing is a lone, isolated incident with no wider implications, existing in a vacuum. Nice one, Beeboids. Will Self hasn’t even taken over yet and they’re already making own goals.
Defenders of the indefensible: Little Englanders! Hate speech! ZZZZZzzzzzzzz
The BBC: ‘Them WhAt Tolerate (the intolerant)’ or ‘TWATs’.
….or Those Who Are Tolerating Sharia … TWATS
On the plus side, this does at least kind of ‘honour kill’ the Cherry Vulture line that the BBC does not have any kind of ‘editorial line’ and it’s just a huge coincidence that every show takes exactly the same line on everything.
They should watch the video of Nonie Darwish talking about the Egyptian attitude, and the attitude of the imams in the Middle East, towards honour killing – I doubt if British Muslims differ significantly:
( start 5 mins in for the people’s reaction to the sight of girls’ bodies floating down the Nile and the complete absence of any condemnation of honour killings by any imam that she has ever come across)
Can’t wait for the panorama special on this. I’m confident it’s already being planned, even as I write!
Correction: “already being … pulled, even as you write!”
I’m sure the BBC is working on the line that the Muslim families that commit “honour” killings are conservative ones, i.e. ones that do things the traditional way. Once they get that line fixed in their heads they will keep stressing the word “conservative” until people listening will understand it as “Conservative”. Job done.
Judging by the prevalence of honour killings among Muslim families, it is fair to assume that there must be a background of what is deemed unacceptable behaviour in their society that contributes to it.
Why should it be ignored? That simply makes our society complicit in promoting it – by omission.
This is besides the fact that a play is a creative medium, a work of fiction designed to make the observer think or be entertained.
It is the fact that the BBC is so worried about what might be the reaction from Muslims that prevents any possibility to properly integrate.
Last year I recall an episode of the DCI Stone drama where a group of “white racists” were attacking and murdering ethnic minorities. I mean it’s a daily occurence, isn’t it? At about the same time they had a play on Radio 4 with a vile “white supremacist” planting bombs and murdering minorities. Now I know these things have happened, but not nearly as regularly as these despicable honour killings. If you took these BBC dramas seriously you would think every city is awash with white psycopaths intent on killing blacks and Muslims, and most minorities are high flying lawyers, heart surgeons and judges.
It’s a politically correct fantasy.
Who can forget the episode of the execrable show “Bonekickers” which featured a Christian fundamentalist beheading a peaceful Muslim? I’m sure the Compliance Unit were satisfied with the many times this has happened in real life.
Sadly true. A recent news item on concerns that 100,000 benefit-seeking Romanians and Bulgarians will descend on Britain, the item cut a way to an interview with … wait for it .. a Romanian NHS hospital doctor, all dressed in theatre greens to underline the message.
So little Englanders, you have nothing to fear. 100,000 doctors are on their way. I mean the bBC tells you so. They wouldn’t lie to you, would they?
Silence from defenders of the indefensible, as usual on these things. Somebody make a typo already so they can swoop in and feel good about themselves.
Call it as it is .Censorship.
No counter argument has any validity. The play has been censored and the writer should withold, if she can do so legally, consent to broadcast.
If anyone now doubts the BBC has lost it’s way completely then this incident should be enough to convince them,
A trivial organisation with trivial peiople talking to themselves.