BBC World Service journalist Naziru Mikail:
Whenever I see Netanyahu I remember what happened to ex-PM Sharon! There's GOD wooo! #Gaza #Israel
— Naziru Mikail (@nazirumikailu) July 20, 2014
(Ariel Sharon died after 8 years in a coma following a stroke)
It’s OK, though, because his Twitter profle says: “Views here are personal!” He does like to use an exclamation mark!
Update. The same BBC journalist was impressed by a ludicrous claim of “reversion” to Islam (exclamation mark!):
Video: Jewish man reverts to Islam live on air for Gaza!
http://t.co/QLYFiXUu2i #GazaUnderAttack #SavePalestine
— Naziru Mikail (@nazirumikailu) July 19, 2014
Where does the BBC find its employees?
The BBC’s impartiality charter can be chucked out of the window for all it’s worth. I’m sorry, but there’s no way one can entirely disassociate their personal and political views from their place of work…. and the very nature of journalism is defined by massive egos, extroversion and having a high regard for one’s own opinions. The BC is full with opinionated and politically motivated metro-trendies who regularly let slip their shallow facade of objectiveness.
This was exemplified this morning when I caught some middle-class mouthy news presenter on Sky trying to grill a very polite and articulate Israeli military official; you could tell immediately that she had no intention of listening to the man or his reasoning. She had already made up her own narrative and was more concerned about the sound of her own voice rather than what this gentleman had to say.
* Sorry, I meant the BBC not ‘Sky’.
News from Ninevah
It would seem that, this morning, for the first time in more than eighteen centuries, there are no Christians in Mosul, Iraq.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2014/07/20/news-from-ninevah/
Please read, and pray for these Christians, and also for us.
In its Charter Agreement the BBC states that one of its aims is “to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality”. Epic fail.
Replace New York Times with BBC
Something important is missing from the New York Times’s coverage of the war in Gaza: photographs of terrorist attacks on Israel, and pictures of Hamas fighters, tunnels, weaponry, and use of human shields.
It appears the Times is silently but happily complying with a Hamas demand that the only pictures from Gaza are of civilians and never of fighters. The most influential news organization in the world is thus manufacturing an utterly false portrait of the battle—precisely the portrait that Hamas finds most helpful: embattled, victimized Gaza civilians under attack by a cruel Israeli military.
A review of the Times’s photography in Gaza reveals a stark contrast in how the two sides are portrayed. Nearly every picture from Israel depicts tanks, soldiers, or attack helicopters. And every picture of Gaza depicts either bloodied civilians, destroyed buildings, overflowing hospitals, or other images of civilian anguish. It is as one-sided and misleading a depiction of the Gaza battle as one can imagine.
Today’s Times photo essay contains seven images: three of Gaza civilians in distress; one of a smoke plume rising over Gaza; and three of the IDF, including tanks and attack helicopters. The message is simple and clear: the IDF is attacking Gaza and harming Palestinian civilians. There are no images of Israelis under rocket attack, no images of grieving Israeli families and damaged Israeli buildings, no images of Hamas fighters or rocket attacks on Israel, no images of the RPG’s and machine guns recovered from attempted Hamas tunnel infiltrations into Israel.
Another report yesterday was accompanied by a single image: that of a dead child in a Gaza hospital.
A second report yesterday, ostensibly about Hamas tunnel attacks on Israel, bizarrely contained not a single picture related to those attacks. The three pictures it contained presented the same one-sided narrative of Israelis as attackers, Palestinians as victims. One picture showed an IDF artillery gun firing into Gaza; a second showed Palestinian mourners at a funeral; a third showed Palestinians waiting in line for food rations.
Indeed, a check of the Twitter feed of the Times’s photographer in Gaza shows not a single image that portrays Hamas in a negative light. It’s nothing but civilian victims of the IDF.
Likewise, the Twitter feed of Anne Barnard, the Beirut bureau chief for the Times currently “reporting” from Gaza, is almost entirely devoted to one thing: anecdotes, pictures, and stories about civilian casualties. Perusing her feed, one would think there are simply no terrorists in Gaza who started this war, who are perpetuating it, who are intentionally attacking Israel from neighborhoods and apartment buildings and thereby guaranteeing the very civilian casualties Barnard appears so heartbroken over.
Maybe all of this is an illustration of just how biased against Israel the Times has become—so biased that Times photographers and editors are simply blind to any image that doesn’t conform to their view of the war.
Or maybe, in the interest of the safety and access of their journalists, the Times is complying with Hamas instructions. As reported by MEMRI, Hamas published media guidelines instructing Gazans to always refer to the dead as “innocent civilians” and to never post pictures of terrorists on social media. Hamas is currently preventing foreign journalists from leaving the Strip, in effect holding them hostage. These journalists must be terrified—and they also must know that the best way to ensure their safety is to never run afoul of the terrorists in whose hands their fates lie.
It would appear that Hamas’s media instructions have been heard loud and clear at the New York Times, and the response is obedience. But the Times also isn’t bothering to inform its readers that the images they’re seeing of Gaza are only the ones Hamas wants them to see. It’s time for the Times to tell its readers exactly why they are being presented with such a distorted picture of this war.
“silently but happily complying with a Hamas demand that the only pictures from Gaza are of civilians and never of fighters.”
—-
It’s erring on the bizarre.
Like a real remake of Assault on Precinct 13.
It’s clear there are casualties on both sides, but those of Hamas seem never to be illustrated by someone who very possibly was firing at the Israelis as opposed to acting as human body armour for them. And just how are the IDF sustaining losses from… No one?
If reporters can’t report freely in zone they shouldn’t be there.
These BBC ‘journalists’ are perfectly happy to be there playing the Hamas propaganda game. They are literally the propaganda mouthpiece of genocidal anti-semites.
Certainly there are compromises.
But the level of embedding is a concern.
Beyond the empathy or reluctance to relinquish prime Pulitzer territory to those happier to make concessions for location, the failures of logic by these supposedly seasoned war reporters are bizarre.
Yesterday a bunch who had deliberately headed by choice to the heart of a war zone were wailing that their hotel was being surrounded by explosions. Then got busy blocking those pointing out that they were still reporting because said hotel wasn’t being hit. And others asking if they’d popped down to the cellars to see what may be stored there.
Imagine the scene a few decades back.. ‘My guide Hiroshi tells me they Americans are raping and killing children in Okinawa, and points out to me another lone B-29 high overhead. They’d better not spill my green tea or I’ll really get the poison pen out…’
Low hanging fruit for the BBC to pick. Journalists who tick all the right boxes.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t BBC fired people for expressing their own views in conversations? Would they still have jobs if they said the statement I’m about to make represents my views?
If he said something like that about Obama, I’ll bet notice might be taken and his “view” would not get a pass from the BBC.
“hasn’t BBC fired people for expressing their own views in conversations? Would they still have jobs if they said the statement I’m about to make represents my views?”
—-
Good questions.
First worth an FoI.
Second via CECUTT.
The replies (which won’t be answers) will be a hoot.
Does anyone maintain DavidP’s open archive of these clear examples of BBC double standards?
Also be interesting to see if any from the sarc side of the Farce can be teased to this thread, as they often get quite exercised by associations and failures to condemn.
So, a BBC commentator can quite literally wish a lingering death on a premier of a foreign country, with no thoughts of apologising or retracting that wish, but if someone makes an unguarded comment which is taken to be racist towards a black person by Jo “You can’t be racist to white people’ Brand – but who then apologises…..then it’s OK to sack them ?
Move along now, no double standards here
I’ve emailed the BBC, as well as the Daily Mail and Telegraph.
There is no one in charge of the BBC- where the hell is our ‘Prime’ Minister ?
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/07/londons-pro-palestine-rally-was-a-disgusting-anti-semitic-spectacle/
As bad as the individual presenters are, I still detect a certain amount of change at the editorial level.
After a few bad slips at the beginning of the conflagration, the front page of the Beeb website is now quite balanced.
I get the impression that someone at the BBC has woken up.
I come from a little village in IsraelA nameless village, apparently. That’s a British accent not an Isreali one. Not even close. ‘The Jewish man’ sounds exactly like the British citizens who make Jihad to Syria. Perhaps someone with more familiarity to British accents could locate it more exactly?
Also WTF his name is Solomon. I don’t know a single British or Commonwealth Jew with that as a first name. Names come in and out of fashion and Solomon is definitely one of the outs. If he was an Israeli his name would be the Hebrew original – Shlomo.
I realise neither of this clues is conclusive but I’ll bet any sum that he didn’t have to swear allegiance to Allah because he was already a Muslim.
If Naziru Mikail didn’t pick that what sort of a journalist is he?
An additional point the appeal claims to be providing food for Gaza. How? Israel and Egypt control all entrances and everything must pass through them.
Thought that the following piece would be of interest to you if not the BBC..
Colonel Richard Kemp :
Israel´s war in Gaza the cleanest in history of war
The IDF does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel has to fight by the law. But Hamas terrorist do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy’s main weaknesses.
This is the view of Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp. On the 18th of June he addressed The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs Joint International Conference. The topic was: Hamas, the Gaza war and accountability under International law.
This is what Colonel Camp said:
1. The battlefield – in any kind of war – is a place of confusion and chaos, of fast-moving action. In the type of conflict that the Israeli Defense Forces recently fought in Gaza and in Lebanon, and Britain and America fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, these age-old confusions and complexities are made one hundred times worse by the fighting policies and techniques of the enemy.
2. Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy’s main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law.
3. Civilians and their property are routinely exploited by these groups, in deliberate and flagrant violation of international laws or reasonable norms of civilized behaviour. Protected buildings, mosques, schools, and hospitals are used as strongholds. Legal and proportional responses by a Western army will be deliberately exploited and manipulated in order to produce international outcry and condemnation.
4. Hamas’ military capability is deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also order, force when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians.
5. And Hamas, like Hizbullah, is also highly expert at driving the media agenda. They will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.
6. When possible the IDF gave at least four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight.
7. Many attack helicopter missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability are cancelled if there is too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, even though delivering aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is to the military tactician normally quite unthinkable.
Fighting for freedom and liberty against the forces of evil and darkness
8. By taking these actions the IDF does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare
Netenyahu…. Israel uses its missiles to protect citizens, whereas Hamas uses citizens to protect its missiles.
That whole piece deserves wider broadcast.
“5. And Hamas, like Hizbullah, is also highly expert at driving the media agenda.”
Not much of a drive if some media are well ahead of you.
With the BBC that means big on the propaganda and censorship when required.
Meaning this piece will struggle to be broadcast via the world’s least trustworthy media monopoly.
Funny how our occasional defenders of the indefensible – the likes of Danny Howard and The Turtle’s Neck spring to mind – are never around to put up a case for these and other tweets (and there have been many) which reveal the mindsets of BBC journos in all their hideously left-liberal biased glory.
‘Whenever I see Naziru Mikail I remember what happened to ex-PM Mandela! There’s GOD wooo!’