One of the major problems with the BBC’s reporting of the ‘Trojan Horse’ story has been the failure to provide historical context, a lack of reference material that allows you to judge current events and put them in perspective, the lack of crucial information about people, their actions and beliefs, and finally a lack of a coherent analysis that ties all that together to bring the audience a genuine and informative picture of events….one look at Panorama’s film about Islamic extremism in schools in 2010 would have confirmed a lot about the Trojan Horse allegations and answered questions about whether or not Gove knew about, and was tackling, extremism in schools….which you might suspect is why the BBC seemed to have ‘forgotten’ that past film of theirs and not used it to judge events now.
Today though at least one BBC journalist showed what can be done, how it should be done, giving a clear, unprejudiced analysis of events leading up to a current political storm in a teacup.
The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, claimed Michael Gove had previously rejected the idea of snap inspections of schools.
The BBC were revving up to make this a big story, it leading the news bulletins…but John Mannell on World at One (10 mins 50 sec) scotched that attempt by digging back through the archives and coming up with material and an analysis that suggests Gove is, once again, innocent of the charges laid against him.
All good stuff, clearly and simply presented.
However Emily Maitliss undoes the good work and manages to mangle the story by doing the usual BBC thing of adding in her own opinions and suggestive words and phrases that have little bearing on the truth and seems to relish sprinkling a little vitriol and doubt over things.
Personally I’d prefer the unadorned truth as provided by John Mannell.
Mateless finishes up with “Over to you, to decide who’s telling the truth.”
Clearly not you Emily.
From Guido it looks like Maitliss earlier jumped the gun and made a complete fool of herself with her twittering
“This is killer interview. Lands gove in very sticky position if true #newsnight”
http://order-order.com/2014/06/10/ofsted-jihad-wimpy-wilshaw-u-turns-on-inspections-claim/
3:44 PM – 9 Jun 2014
Katz was RT’ing like fury too and stemmed his usually heated replies when it was clear few thought he or his pet hire were handling objectivity remits too well.
Sadly this thread seems to have been already hijacked by the imploding Agent S and others determined not to go anywhere near the actual point to try and derail things.
And when nailed, they never answer. So no point engaging.
Mr. Anderson has a point.
Wow. What a large glass house Alan the Liar is throwing stones from these days.
Any chance of getting that cat flap sealed for this site?
Scott is spraying again, and to no discernible purpose.
Just his usual ad hominem. Ignore it.
Ad hominem? Hardly. My comment is based on Alan’s habitual and deliberate misrepresentations of articles and comments, twisting them into saying something they didn’t originally mean so that his prejudices can be reinforced.
When I pointed this out on Sunday – and when I reiterated it yesterday after Alan used exactly the same out-of-context quote, twice suggesting an article said the opposite of what it actually said – Biased BBC commenters laid into me on a personal level.
And yet I’m the one habitually accused of “ad hominem” attacks. As usual, Biased BBC commenters show that they think they can get away with any sort of bad behaviour themselves, while accusing others of trolling or ad hom attacks when they are fairly and rightly challenged.
If you’re going to try and take the moral high ground, at least show some indication that you’re going to hold everybody to the same standards. If you ignore Biased BBC’s worst behaviour because the culprits’ comments reinforce your own prejudices, you lose any right you thought you may have to sit in judgement.
Quisling Scott, if a liar is someone who refuses to answer a question then answer this.
You tweeted that you found the Time Square bomber ‘kinda hot’, but I bet you would not have tweeted that you found Anders Brevik ‘kinda hot’. This is because in the world you move by showing a sexual preference for a Muslim terrorist is seen as ‘edgy’ and acceptable, whilst showing such sympathy through sexual preferences is not acceptable – in your world – for a white terrorist.
Or is it in your case ‘more complicated that that’.
So, “Kyoto”, you bring up a years-old tweet as a means of avoiding Alan’s lies. Go you.
This is because…
Well you’ve apparently made up your mind what I think and why. Despite showing no evidence that what you think has any basis in fact.
I guess Alan’s not the only one who relies on fiction to bolster his own bigotry.
Quisling Scott,
So you admit that tweeting you found the muslim Time Square bomber ‘kinda hot’ was a way demonstrating your personal sympathy to your friends for his political cause.
Any half-decent troll would be ashamed to admit he has the hots for a terrorist bomber.
I know you rightly point out we should not feed the troll. I hear trolls like sticky buns, but you’d say don’t feed the troll even a sticky bun?
So you admit…
What you’re saying seems to be “I’m not going to read what you write, I’m just going to make up what you’ve said.” Otherwise known as “the Alan guide to justifying a pisspoor argument”.
So tell me, why should I bother articulating anything if a pseudonymous idiot is just going to ignore it anyway?
Don’t feed the under-employed troll
Poor “John”. Do you not think that all the time you’ve taken repeating your mantra over and over again might be better utilised explaining why you ignore the appalling behaviour of others?
Or are you content to be seen as a dumb hypocrite?
Quisling Scott, ‘What you’re saying is …’ are you reading my mind. I thought Quisling Scott has invoked a strong prohibition against such a possibility.
Apolagies for feeding the troll with a sticky bun.
Don’t feed the troll. He’s an attention seeker, ignore him and he’ll disappear.
Bless. Thanks for proving my point – Biased BBC’s commenters think that calling somebody a “troll” will help them avoid their own community’s bad behaviour.
What a sad state of affairs – all these anonymous commenters who will fling out abuse from the perceived safety of one or more made-up names, but are too scared (too juvenile? too inept?) to admit that their most frequent poster is a liar.
Keep ignoring the attention-seeking troll
Don’t feed the tiresome attention-seeking troll
“One of the major problems with the BBC’s reporting of the ‘Trojan Horse’ story has been the failure to provide historical context, a lack of reference material that allows you to judge current events and put them in perspective, ………..”
“The BBC were revving up to make this a big story, it leading the news bulletins…but John Mannell on World at One (10 mins 50 sec) scotched that attempt by digging back through the archives………..”
Does quote 2 from Alan’s article not refute his initial assertion?
“However Emily Maitliss undoes the good work and manages to mangle the story by doing the usual BBC thing of adding in her own opinions and suggestive words and phrases that have little bearing on the truth and seems to relish sprinkling a little vitriol and doubt over things.”
Where in the article cited does she “add her own opinions”, use “suggestive words” and “relish sprinkling a little vitriol”?
If she had would Alan not have quoted her in his post?
The final paragraphs are clearly Maitlis’s own construct and her ‘interpretation is puzzlingly at odds with the facts as she presented them in the first half of her appallingly written piece.
Consider, also her tweet: ‘This is killer interview. Lands gove in very sticky position if true’
Once again she’s giving HER opinion and not necessarily true. I had the fortune of seeing Wilshaw’s interview on ITV – very different in its tone and quite supportive of Gove.
It seems to me that Maitlis couldn’t resist the temptation to have a go.
You may be comfortable with her journalism – that’s your prerogative. But I no longer trust her.
“The final paragraphs are clearly Maitlis’s own construct …………”
Does that include these paragraphs which make up he bulk of the text from the final 9 and clearly include quotes from Ofsted?
By mid-afternoon, a press release from the Department for Education had emerged stating the chief inspector “confirmed that the Education Secretary did not ask Ofsted to halt its plans for no-notice inspections in 2012”.
When I pressed Ofsted to understand if it was true, I was told it had agreed to the statement because it thought it was “pathetic to get into a tit-for-tat argument on something they were all now agreed on”.
Around lunchtime on Tuesday on BBC Radio, I think the one o’clock news on Radio Four was on at the time, a spokeswoman from the Dep.t. of Education was being interviewed. The interviewer threw out that the comment “Draining the Swamp”, amongst other similar kinds of terms were being bandied about with no indication of when, where or by whom the term was used, and then tried to get the person being interviewed to bog themselves down by keep returning to that alleged description of sorting out the problems in Birmingham.
The whole aim was obviously an attempt to ensnare the person into some sort of comment which could then be turned into an attack on the Government by giving the impression that the term was the Government’s view of Islam and of Muslims. fortunately the spokeswoman, who I gathered was a Muslim herself, was far too wise to fall for that particularly disgusting attempt to side-track the issue and turn it into an attack on the ‘Nasty Racist, Islamophobic Tory Government’ in order to sidestep having to discuss the real problem which is one about using the State Education System to promote a narrow version of extreme Islamic Fundamentalism.
Basically what happened was an obvious attempt to avoid the real issue by diverting the publics attention from that by sweeping it under the carpet and turning the problem round 180 degrees and make it a Problem in the Government rather than where the real problem lay, in an abuse of the State Education System in a way which is not generally acceptable in Britain.