The BBC has perhaps lost its way.   Listening to Nicky Campbell this morning I couldn’t help thinking that the old fashioned virtues of respect, courage, integrity, moderation, justice, wisdom, loyalty, dignity, honour, striving for excellence, humility and sincerity all seemed in somewhat short supply at the BBC in these modern times.

Courage for instance…the BBC lacked the courage to just refuse to play the ‘Ding dong’ song when it has stopped many other less offensive things from being broadcast….the BBC didn’t have the backbone to take a moral stance and ban it outright but surrendered its principles to political pressure from the anti-Thatcher lobby.

As The National Broadcaster with a uniquely privileged position and  high expectations demanded of it, the BBC falls short again and again.  The death of Mrs Thatcher has highlighted those failings quite starkly.

Within minutes of her death being announced the BBC was already tearing into her reputation telling us that she was incredibly divisive and that there would be celebrations over her death.

Now today on her funeral the BBC doesn’t seem able to rein itself in and maintain a proper respect on such an occasion.  They could have restricted themselves to a dignified reporting of the funeral but instead they filled the hours with arguments, snide comments and jokes about her legacy…things about which they have been talking all week and will be talking about for years to come.

As I said I think the BBC has lost its way and forgotten, or doesn’t think it necessary, how to treat some subjects with a degree of respect and dignity that in previous eras would have been expected.

I have no doubt that on the death of Nelson Mandela, whom David Miliband called a terrorist,  the BBC will suddenly remember how to act in a fit and proper manner and its presentation will be far more reverential and dignified than the approach it has taken for Mrs Thatcher’s death and funeral.

John Sweeney spends 8 days undercover in North Korea.

BBC News head of programmes Ceri Thomas said: “This is an important piece of public interest journalism.” Asked whether that justified putting student lives at risk, he replied: “We think it does.” 

So what exactly was the public interest that merited the James Bond approach?

We are informed that North Korea has been indulging in a great deal of sabre rattling rhetoric of late.

The BBC, in the shape of John Sweeney, seeks to find out if North Korea intends to go to war or is that mere rhetoric,  just flag waving bravado from a new leader?

So what did we learn from the actual visit?

That North Korea has few, if any shops, no advertising, no freedom of religion and you can’t walk where you like….all summed up with a shocking illustration of North Korean barbarity…a barbed wire fence around a field.   But you can get a phone signal leaking over the border from South Korea.

When declaring North Korea was in fact a Neo Nazi state Sweeny gave as evidence the fact that a picture of Lenin and one of Marx had disappeared from a public square….but the camera kept out of view the massive hammer and sickle emblem on top of the building so prominent in previous shots.

And that war?  Erm…well…no politicians, no statesmen, no diplomats from North Korea wanted to be interviewed so Sweeney asked his young female tour guide what she thought….it’s all America’s fault…we might have a war, we might not.

To make up for the lack of enlightening footage from North Korea Sweeney interviewed Western experts on the area, defectors living in South Korea…and a Youtube clip of a North Korean gulag.

I believe I could have made the same report from the comfort of my home using the phone and the internet….and a trip oop North to the wastelands of Northern England laid bare by Thatcherite government policies.

An utter waste of half an hour of my time watching Panorama, a waste of BBC funds paying for Sweeney’s 8 day swannee and a stupid risk to take with the accompanying students who had everything to lose and nothing to gain.

They might have ended up with a few days of rigorous interrogation and a couple of months in a North Korean chokey..but Sweeney had nothing to lose….if he doesn’t get discovered he gets his film (such as it is)…if found out and thrown in jail for a couple of years say..the BBC wll still support him and pay his wages…and when he gets out he will have an even better story…and have lost a bit of weight…so all good for him.

I haven’t looked but I can imagine anyone of those students has a better tale to tell on Facebook than Sweeney has come up with.

Still, he’s the professional, he knows what he’s doing.

An important piece of public interest journalism?

Nah, self indulgent tosh.

Gordon Carera in the US was more balanced than the team in the Today studio (8:13)…mentioning the ‘dark skinned’ suspect and that a Saudi Student was being sought.

However other conclusions have already been drawn.

After the wise words of Rick Nelson, from US Homeland Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Evan Davis said ‘Everything points to keeping calm, play it slowly, be accurate and don’t jump to conclusions.’

All very good advice.

All that went out the window  suddenly when Davis carried on….

‘After all the words of Mr Nelson there warning us to be cautious, looking at this all the evidence points towards domestic terrorism rather than a Middle Eastern related event.‘

He later goes onto say that most significant in the speculation is the unhappy anniversaries of several other events, such as the Waco Siege…which may tilt you towards concluding this was domestic terror rather than imported.

Even Sherlock Holmes had to leave the comfort of 221B Baker Street to investigate crimes….Davis goes one better and does it sat on his backside in the Today studio and all without spilling his latte.

Now that’s all fine…it could well be ‘domestic’ but the point is that Davis has already assigned blame on the most spurious of grounds…and isn’t prepared to go down the road of blaming the ‘jihadists’ in a similarly outright fashion based on similarly tenuous evidence.

Here’s another ‘conspiracy theory’  for the BBC:

The Boston Marathon’s Final Mile Was Dedicated to Newtown Victims

“In the first twenty miles we’re honoring the twenty Sandy Hook first graders,” Laura Nowacki, a spokesperson for Newtown Strong, explained to WBUR Boston. “When we crest Heartbreak Hill, and we’re coming back towards Boston, we run the final six for our six fallen educators, including their lives, to protect our children.” 

There was a 26-second moment of silence for the victims before the race started. 

Update, 4:07 p.m. Eastern: Newtown families were reportedly seated in the VIP section right by where the explosions went off. There’s no word whether they are among the 23 injured and two dead from the explosions.

That just shows how easy it is to speculate and draw conclusions from just about any supposed link.

Not something you’d expect though from the BBC…..blaming the ‘Right’ seems more like wishful thinking by the Today team than anything else.

If you are looking for patterns for ‘evidence’ of the BBC’s propensity to downplay Islamic terror then look no further than  Mark Mardell’s abysmal downplaying of the role of religion in the murders by Major Nidal Hasan:

‘Senseless Tragedy’

The crux was this: who was responsible?

Was this the work of a lone madman? Or of a terrorist? Or of several terrorists?

The truth is of course cloudy. The alleged murderer was clearly a Muslim, but there is very little to suggest that he adhered to a hard-line interpretation of his religion or that he had political or religious motives.

He may or may not have posted something on the internet defending suicide bombers. But he also appears to have been traumatised by the idea of being sent to a combat zone.

We search for certainty and for answers. Some will go down blind alleys: reports of his “religious attire”, for example, may turn out to be a red herring.

For some, nothing less than a conspiracy will do as an explanation. On the website of a respected newspaper, I see one poster has blamed Barack Obama, whom he calls “that Marxist thug”. It’s not that it’s hard to follow the logic; it’s that there isn’t any.

Still, searching for patterns and for answers is part of what it is to be human. I loathe cliche, but perhaps, for once, this is a “senseless tragedy”, devoid of deeper meaning.

I posted earlier how the Authorities swiftly move in to manage the Public’s perceptions of an event and thence its reaction….and how the BBC obliges them by ‘managing’ its news output.

The horrific attack on the Boston Marathon is an example of this in operation.  Here it is the US government but there are certain elements to the situation that make the BBC want to control your idea of events, even those in the US.

As usual it is intended to damp down speculation that it might be an Islamic terrorist attack….but to do this they quite readily point the finger at ‘domestic’ causes…and narrow it down to the Republicans.  Of course you might want to rein in that speculation when you think that the  Administration is Democratic and maybe all too ready and willing to blame their opponents…with the pro Obama/Democrats BBC eager to help them.

The Democrats are in power and the President is black….the BBC look to defend the Democrats at all costs.  The immediate thought in most people’s mind would be that this is probably an ‘Islamic’ terrorist attack.  The BBC and government don’t want that link made and work hard to disassociate Islam from terrorism in your mind…whether at home or abroad….remember the BBC telling us that the Muslim Brotherhood is a ‘moderate’ organisation.

The Today programme repeatedly said it had no idea who was to  blame for the bomb blasts.

However….they then went on to list other violent mass attacks in the US that took place ‘this week in history’.  Apparently it is the ‘chosen’ week for ‘domestic’ attacks for those with a grudge against the State….or so the BBC tell us.

Evan Davis decided that the evidence was pointing towards a ‘domestic’ attack and not an, er, ‘international’ or ‘imported’ attack…not sure what that evidence was…other than similar events happening previously in this week…but you could look at terrorism throughout the year in the US and find lots of events occuring in other ‘weeks’ and make that significant. 

The Waco Siege actually began in February…and the World Trade Centre bombing, by Muslims, was also in February…so what do the BBC conclude from that?

Justin Webb, whilst not mentioning Islam at all, started to lay the blame at the door of the Republican Party…politics being so ‘divided’ in the US…you know that terrible thing where some people have one idea on how to run the country and others have their own idea…not allowed in Webbs world…we must all side with the Democrats.

Webb blamed the Republicans for the divisions….apparently the Democrats are always willing to compromise, and have the right ideas anyway…..it is the disagreeable Republicans that spoil things and cause division and argument.

Webb, the Webb who has a poster of Obama on his study wall, also went on to say that the Republicans hate Obama….is he suggesting it is because Obama is black?  .

I think he was.

So there you have it.  Whilst there is no evidence, other than several reports that a Saudi national was in custody and of a home being searched already, the Today programme has firmly pinpointed the real culprits…..the Republican Party/Tea Party extremists who have stirred up anti-Obama hatred and incited ‘domestic’ acts of terrorism.

But as they say…nobody knows who carried out the bombing yet.

But it was the Republican Party fanatics.

Wikipedia lists terrorist attacks in the USA….amongst many attacks, often by Left Wing terrorists, even some Jews, there is the Leftist anarcho environmentalist ‘Unabomber’ who was also active  days after the Oklahoma City bombing…the BBC don’t mention him.

But he had something interesting to say about the government attempts to manipulate perceptions of why he carried out his terrorist acts….just as here in the UK Muslim bombers are labelled criminals or insane, anything but ‘Muslim’, the Unabomber was similarly diagnosed….as he says for ‘political’ reasons……

Kaczynski recalls two prison psychologists, Dr. James Watterson and Dr. Michael Morrison, who visited him almost every day for a period of four years, who told him that they saw no indication that he suffered from any such serious mental illness, and that the diagnosis of his being paranoid schizophrenic was “ridiculous” and a “political diagnosis.”

 The similar diagnosis for Muslim bombers is clearly meant to diassociate Islam as the inspiration…and note the BBC have also used  the same technique to attackand discredit climate sceptics.

I am off to Hong Kong and then to Australia on Tuesday so blogging will be MUCH less frequent for the rest of this month. I hope the other B-BBC writers will keep you entertained but I will be travelling for next 24 hours.

BBC reporting a horrendous terrorist attack in Boston. This is breaking news and it will be interesting to see how the BBC covers it as I suspect this is a Jihad attack.

North Korea seems to have jammed Panorama on the iPlayer so here’s another open thread to play with…fill it before Kim Jong Un nukes the BBC and it is no more…..

One for the diary…this Wednesday the BBC shows:

Israel: Facing The Future

John Ware journeys to Israel for a fresh look at how it has responded to the changes sweeping the region in the wake of the Arab Spring. He meets Israelis from all walks of life to go beyond the news clichés and analyse what is next for the world’s only Jewish state as both the religious and the secular battle over its future.　

Before that you might want to watch ‘Frank Gardner’s Return to Saudi Arabia.’

In Britain we are force fed multi-culturalism and it is frowned upon if you do not display the appropriate level of appreciation for the imported cultures and values. The BBC naturally celebrates mass immigration and the diversity it brings along with the cosmopolitan delights of London, and Salford.

Curious that in other circumstances, in other countries, the BBC is less than enthusiastic about importing foreign cultures, especially ‘Western‘ culture, or at least is willing to examine the consequences and question the supposed benefits.　

In a programme about Qatar (not available anymore) the BBC’s Razia Iqbal questioned the wisdom of importing Western values, such as democracy, and culture such as ‘philharmonic orchestras’….suggesting they dilute and ‘pollute’ Qatari society.

In a more recent programme (as above) BBC security correspondent, Frank Gardner, revisits Saudi Arabia where he had been shot and his colleague killed in 2004.

The programme concentrated on reforms and cultural adaptations to modern life within Saudi Arabia measuring the impact of the Arab Spring, modern expectations of the youth, many of whom are unemployed, whilst also coping with the demands of a strict, religious society…it isn’t particularly enlightening, all of it having been aired many times before but a few things were of note…not things about Saudi Arabia itself but the contrast in what the BBC will report on home turf and when playing away. Away from home they seem to throw caution to the wind and PC considerations get cast aside. Gardner reveals a far more realistic image of Islam and the effects of immigration upon a resident population.

The first thing Gardner says that is of note is his description of Wahhabism….the Saudi strain of Islam.

He says it is ‘A very pure version of Islam’.

Why is that important? There can be only one version of Islam. No other ‘interpretations’, no sects, no cults, no splitters, and definitely no reforms.

Wahhabism must be the closest form of Islam to that adhered to by Muhammed…it must be the ‘Fundamental’ Religion. If so you cannot be considered a Muslim unless you follow it….no sects or cults being allowed in Islam.

Wahhabism is an extreme ideology judged by modern secular values. It is to coin a phrase ‘Medieval’ in concept and therefore the import of such a culture to secular or Christian societies must raise some very serious questions.

It’s not just me that says that, the government say it in its own  ‘Prevent Strategy’ programme:

“…at the root of this Prevent strategy is the basic assertion that extremism breeds terrorism; and that extremism is the vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”

There is a great deal in the Koran that is ‘ opposed to fundamental British values’.

Raises a few questions doesn’t it? Not for the likes of the BBC which refuses steadfastly to scrutinize Islam in the same rigorous way it does Christianity…..which is odd….as Christianity is the ’native’ religion that has gone through its own ’Medieval’ phase and adapted and learnt to coexist in harmony with a modern, democratic, Parliamentary society….gay marriage and women bishops aside perhaps.　

So that is one interesting comment from this programme…the very pure strain of Islam is the fundamentalist, ‘extreme’ version.

We also learn that Shia Muslims are not considered Muslims by Sunni Muslims…well we don’t learn that here…Gardner doesn’t mention that important fact for some reason.

But we do learn that there is conflict between Shia communities already in Saudi Arabia and incoming Sunnis from Yemen.　

Shia’s in Najran are concerned about the influx of Sunni foreigners….they threaten the local society socially, culturally and politically and raise security concerns locally as the Sunnis ‘dilute’ the Shia population.

Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country and it is believed the ruling regime is ‘importing’ these Sunnis from Yemen to deliberately undermine the Shia majority in that particular area.

Saudi Arabia wants to eliminate areas of the country where populations with minority culture and differing religion can grow into a local majority society with opposing values to that of the mainstream culture. They do that by ‘engineering’ the population mix, importing ‘desirable’ people to counterbalance any likely opposition.

Sound familiar? In Britain the Labour Party carried out a similar programme intended to ”dilute’ the hideous whiteness of Britain…..a programme that was ignored and hidden by the BBC…. but in Saudi Arabia they are asking questions.

Gardner says there is a troubling aspect to the tribalism in Saudi Arabia where the Regime is Sunni and is keen on unity and wary of regional fractures, but sectarian tensions are rising.

There is a latent fear that if the glue (of society) comes unstuck the whole place will disintegrate into warring tribes.

The Saudis fear a destabilising alliance between the Shia population and Iran…along with restless reformers, angry conservatives and frustrated minorities, all competing forces being juggled by the House of Saud and which threaten uncomfortable periods ahead.　

Read all that again and it would be easy to fit that description to Britain today….replace Iran with Saudi Arabia and its deployment of its vast wealth  in order to further the advance and influence of Islam in this country and the picture becomes clearer.

So are we also ‘threatened by uncomfortable periods ahead’ as Gardner predicts for Saudi Arabia?

The same people that would fight to the death the appearance of a McDonalds or  a Tesco Express on their street would look on with approval and pleasure at the opening of a Mosque.

They oppose American corporate ‘imperialism’ but the advance of a ‘medieval’ ideology presents them with no problems.

Funny old world.

Perhaps the BBC could ask the same questions about the effects of mass immigration here and consequent importation of alien values and cultures along with the subversive influence of the Saudis, amongst others…with the same realism and honest vision that reveals the harsh facts about a ‘tribal’ Saudi Arabia…a tribalism that is becoming ever more apparent in Britain as we build more and more ethnic ghettoes shut off from the rest of society.

Right or wrong, good or bad….the consequences should be discussed and people allowed to have their say without being shouted down as racist or islamophobic.

Update: An unfortunate coincidence as the land that gave us McDonalds comes under attack with a bomb/bombs at the Boston marathon with 12 dead and 50 injured…the New York Times says there is a suspect in custody….but there is no confirmation yet….he is a Saudi national…but of course no one should jump to conclusions.

….move house.

It might be a bit extreme but beats not paying the license fee as a statement.

BBC World Service fan ‘plagued neighbours’ by playing Radio 4 non-stop

A BBC World Service fan “plagued” his neighbours to the point of moving house by playing Radio 4 non-stop.

 The court was told Thomas became increasingly aggressive towards the family – and at one point threw a garden ornament through their car window.

On another occasion Thomas sat on the bonnet of Mrs Dunlop’s car – stopping her from exiting her driveway.

Thomas had already been sentenced to an interim ASBO meaning he must not cause anyone, including the Dunlops, harassment, alarm or distress.

But while the interim ASBO was in place Thomas breached it on four occasions by playing loud music in anti social hours.

You could look at it another way, judging by the offender’s behaviour…and suggest listening to Radio 4 all day drives you mad.

This may have been mentioned in the comments somewhere but I think it is so extraordinary that it merits a wider audience….

This is John Sweeney trying to defend his actions (and failing):

North Korea is….‘A state that is more like Hitler’s Germany than any other state in the world, It is extraordinarily scary, dark and evil….. We maintain all of the students were aware of the risk.’

Here is the official voice of the BBC:

Defending the decision, BBC News head of programmes Ceri Thomas said: “This is an important piece of public interest journalism.” Asked whether that justified putting student lives at risk, he replied: “We think it does.”

Isn’t that just mindboggling?  A state so evil it is like Hitler’s Germany…and they think a news story is worth putting, not just journalist’s lives at risk but students also.

Sweeney said they were aware of the risk…I would dispute that….anyone who knows human nature will know that they will have been excited to be going on the trip, they wouldn’t want to miss it, they are young and blase, possibly even slightly gung ho and caught up in the ‘romance and adventure’ of being part of an ‘undercover operation’.

They will probably have dismissed and ignored the reality of the risks and agreed to participate.

I would suggest that John Sweeney took advantage of human nature and knowingly put those students at risk for his own ends….the students had nothing to gain but everything to lose.

 We already knew a fair amount about what goes on in North Korea, a lot from the ‘horse’s mouth’ so to speak…from actual Korean defectors.

So you might ask what was so important that John Sweeney thought he could learn himself that was worth putting other lives at risk.

No doubt many people will be watching Panorama tonight with interest to see if Sweeney has dug up any new and significant discoveries to merit the risks….or was it just a journalsitic vanity project…’something big’ that would look good on the CV of an intrepid investigative reporter?

Remember, as comments on the previous post have mentioned, this is a BBC that tackles Big Business for ‘exploiting’ the young…only recently reporting on the ‘plight’ of unpaid interns…and not forgetting how the BBC blasted G4S during the Olympics because some employees had to wait under a bridge for a couple of hours before being picked up.

As for Sweeney determinedly labelling North Korea a ‘Nazi’ state, well can’t argue with that….as there is little difference between Communism and Nazism..both being based on socialism.