Author Archives: David Preiser (USA)

Anti-Semitism Discovered In the Muslim Community: Shocker!

By | | , , , , , , ,
56 Comments

Douglas Murray’s blog post in the Spectator caught my eye yesterday, in which he points out a must-read article in the HuffingtonPost by Mehdi Hasan. No, really:

The Sorry Truth Is That the Virus of Anti-Semitism Has Infected the British Muslim Community

Hasan felt compelled for some reason to speak out against Lord Ahmed’s rant about how a Jewish conspiracy caused his conviction for killing someone while driving and texting at the same time.

To claim that your jail sentence for dangerous driving is the result of a Jewish plot is bigoted and stupid. The peer has since been suspended from the Labour Party and forced to stand down as a trustee of the Joseph Interfaith Foundation. I’m not sure how many “Jewish friends” he has left – if, that is, he had any to begin with.

Full disclosure: I know Lord Ahmed and have defended him in the past. In 2007, he flew out to Sudan to help free the schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons from the clutches of the odious Islamist regime in Khartoum. In 2009, an Appeal Court judge noted how the peer had “risked his life trying to flag down other vehicles to stop them colliding with… his car”. He is not a latter-day Goebbels. But herein lies the problem. There are thousands of Lord Ahmeds out there: mild-mannered and well-integrated British Muslims who nevertheless harbour deeply anti-Semitic views.

No kidding.

The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the on-going Israel-Palestine conflict hasn’t helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East. How else to explain why British Pakistanis are so often the most ardent advocates of anti-Semitic conspiracies, even though there are so few Jews living in Pakistan?

The fact that a visceral hatred of Jews and conspiracy-mongering is rife within the Mohammedan communities around the world is old news to people here, and surely it’s not a stunning revelation to Hasan, either. The real question is, what will the BBC do about this?

To be honest, I’ve always been reluctant to write a column such as this. To accuse my fellow Muslims of being soft on the scourge of anti-Semitism isn’t easy; I feel as if I am ‘dobbing in’ the community, telling tales to the non-Muslim teacher. Nor do I particularly want to assist the English Defence League in its relentless campaign to demonise all Muslims, everywhere, as extremists and bigots.

We aren’t. And we’re not all anti-Semites. But, as a community, we do have a ‘Jewish problem’. There is no point pretending otherwise.

So it’s not news to Hasan after all. He’s been aware of it for a very long time. How about the BBC? We all remember how they leapt to support Baroness Warsi when she lamented that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner table test” in Britain. They made sure to do a Have Your Say on it. The World Service audience got their own Have Your Say, asking who was responsible for Islamophobia. I don’t need to reel out a laundry list of all the news reports, radio shows, and drama programming the BBC has produced in the last few years trying to encourage people to accept Islam, and even welcome it. More recently, in keeping with the BBC’s remit to foster social cohesion, they promoted the national “Wear a Hijab Day”, to encourage girls of all races and religions to spend the day embracing this aspect of Mohammedan culture, to learn how “the other” lives and so bring communities closer together. Some of us joked at the time that we wouldn’t be holding our breath for the BBC to do a “Wear a Yarmulke” day. But now it seems like this would be the perfect opportunity for them to use the special, unique powers and influence of the BBC to take a stand against the anti-Jewish sentiment that has equally passed the dinner table test in Britain. And it’s not just at the dinner parties Mehdi Hasan goes to, either.

Hasan seems to be aware that the Palestinian situation is not necessarily the sole reason for the hatred of Jews amongst his co-religionists. He may not know just how far back it goes (before the creation of Israel, in fact), and one has to equally wonder if anyone at the BBC shares his awareness. Only time will tell. I don’t think Hasan’s purpose here is to delve into the history of anti-Semitism in the Muslim World or anything like that, so there’s no problem with him not going into it. However, the BBC does do history and background, when it suits them, so there’s no excuse for them not to get into it in detail.

If the BBC doesn’t respond to this with even a fraction of the energy with which they’ve attacked the problem of Islamophobia, it will be a clear failure of their Charter-bound duty. Whether or not it’s evidence of a similar epidemic of anti-Jewish sentiment at the BBC remains to be seen.

Kim Ghattas Book Reveals Personal Misgivings About US Power

By | | , , , , , , , , ,
8 Comments

The BBC’s State Department correspondent, Kim Ghattas, has a new book out about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. A review of it is in the Murdoch-owned (but not tarnished by it) Wall Street Journal, written by their assistant books editor, Sohrab Ahmari. Ahmari came to the WSJ with a legal background, and has co-edited a book of essays from Middle Eastern dissidents entitled “Arab Spring Dreams”. So, much like Ms. Ghattas, he’s sympathetic to the plight of Arabs living under lousy rulers, although he clearly comes from a different direction than Ghattas.

Nowhere Left to Fly To

Hillary Clinton circled the globe 40 times in four years as secretary of state. But what did all this on-the-go diplomacy accomplish?

Clearly Ahmari comes with a not-very-positive perspective on Clinton’s accomplishments as Sec. of State, and was looking for something in Ghattas’ book. But my concern here is what his review says about Ghattas, and what she says about herself.

The material has world-historical heft, yet the treatment rarely carries weight.

Not a good start.

Ghattas clearly enjoys the access that her job entails and deems no detail of life in the State Department press corps too insignificant to share. There are seemingly endless anecdotes about the “chewy chocolate chip cookies” at the air bases that service the secretary of state’s plane; the chicken-salad dinners aboard the plane; the press packets handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing; the “Bulgari hand fresheners” inside the Saudi king’s tent. Did you know that one time Mrs. Clinton’s plane almost took off without “Arshad Mohammed from Reuters, who had overslept”?

Unfortunately rather shallow, it seems, and more about Ghattas’ job than about Clinton’s. But this comes as no surprise at all to those who have been watching her output for the BBC since 2008. Ghattas never hesitated to gush over Michelle Obama’s dresses or fawn over other superficial things. But that’s not the important bit. It begins here:

Ms. Ghattas adds to this banal reportage her reflections on the meaning and purpose of America’s superpower status.

As a globetrotting, experienced professional journalist, her insights here might be of value, no? Well….

The author, who is of Dutch-Lebanese origin and who grew up in Beirut in the 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war, says that she wrote the book in part to “come to terms with my personal misgivings about American power.”

Personal misgivings?

Her pro-Western family was dismayed when, in 1984, the Reagan administration, having resolved to stop Lebanon’s sectarian bloodletting, withdrew American forces in the wake of Hezbollah’s terror campaign against peacekeepers. Her own political awakening came as a teenager in 1990, when President George H.W. Bush greenlighted Syrian domination of Lebanon in return for Hafez al-Assad’s participation in the first Gulf War against Iraq.

In other words, the BBC chose somebody with a personal grudge against the very country she’s supposed to report on impartially. Just like they keep Jeremy Bowen, who has a personal grudge against Israel, as their Middle East editor, and sent someone full of hope and enthusiasm and the starry-eyed wonder of a small child to become the North America editor – Mark Mardell – to report on their beloved Obamessiah (even the jaded pros at DigitalSpy saw his worship for what it was early on). Or just like how they hired an Obamessiah campaigner to produce digital media material and other reports on the US, based in part on the strength of the video he made about his cross-country trip to get the vote out for Him (Matt Danzico, who continued to run a website for a while to “keep tabs” on the President from a Left-wing perspective, while working for the BBC). Or how they have an extreme Left-wing ideologue as the economics editor for Newsnight. Or, well, you get the idea.

Is Ghattas entitled to her opinion? Of course. Are her concerns about how the US uses its power valid? Irrelevant, even if these are issues genuinely worth examining and debating, because it clearly affects how she approaches her job either way. Is it right to have someone who is wrestling with what is really a personal animosity towards a country as the reporter for that country’s foreign policy activities? No.

Before any defenders of the indefensible get itchy fingers and start telling me I just want somebody who is partisan the other way, and will report only things I want to hear, let me just say that I actually want someone who does not come in with a connection or visceral bias one way or the other. Surely there must be someone the BBC could have brought in that doesn’t have such a deep personal issue like this.

The WSJ review also wonders about Ghattas’ usefulness, but from a different angle.

The lesson of these experiences—that America’s friends pay a steep price when the indispensable nation fails to engage morally—isn’t lost on Ms. Ghattas.

I bet it isn’t. All the  more reason why somebody with such an intimate issue shouldn’t be given the job.

Yet it rarely impels her to question Mrs. Clinton’s lukewarm, often cynical, responses to the plight of dissidents and democrats from Iran to Russia to East Asia.

Yes, Ahmari is not a fan of Hillary, and was hoping for at least some criticism of her performance from a supposedly impartial, highly-experienced professional journalist.

Ms. Ghattas takes it for granted that “the world had become allergic to U.S. leadership by the end of the Bush administration” and that, therefore, Mrs. Clinton’s job was to “restore America’s lost face in the world.” Such assumptions lead her to frame age-old wisdom as the revolutionary innovations of the Obama administration. “In the twenty-first century America could no longer walk into a room and make demands; it had to build connections first,” she writes at one point—as if the notion would have shocked, say, Dean Acheson or Thomas Jefferson.

And there you have it. Ghattas came to the job with negative opinions. So even somebody on Ghattas’ side about how the US had negatively affected her fellow Arabs sees the blind worship of The Obamessiah for what it is.

Yet Ghattas has been the voice the BBC expects you to trust most about US foreign policy. Your license fee hard at work, paying people with personal grudges and emotion-based opinions to tell you what’s going on in the world.

 

 

The BBC’s Little White Lie For Palestinians

By | | , , , ,
25 Comments

On the heels of Turkish PM Erdogan’s remark that Zionism is a crime against humanity, the BBC felt the need to briefly explain what Zionism is.

Zionism is an ideology or movement that asserts that the Jewish people have a right to a national home or state in what was the Biblical “Land of Israel”. There is no consensus among Zionists where the borders of the state should be. For Palestinians, the success of Zionism has meant the frustration of their national aspirations and life under occupation.

Except for one thing: there was no such thing as Palestinians or their national aspirations until after the Arabs failed twice to destroy Israel. Only then was there any movement to create the concept of Palestinians and a national identity, leading to the founding of the PLO in 1964. Only after Israel occupied territory ceded by Jordan and Egypt after yet another failed war to destroy the Jews was there even a concept of Palestinian territory. Until then, Israel’s enemies saw them as Jewish usurpers in Muslim Arab land, full stop. There was no such thing as Palestinian nationalism. Rather, the identity group was encouraged as a buffer and cannon fodder for the Arabs’ continued war against the Jews. As always, the BBC rewrites history so that 1967 is Year Zero. There was no “occupation” before that, unless one feels that the entire State of Israel has been an occupying force since 1948. That’s the impression given by this BBC article, though.

For other examples of this kind of BBC revisionism, see here, here, and here.

There was no movement for a Palestinian homeland when it was part of Jordan, or under the British Mandate, or under the Ottoman Empire or anything else. It’s a modern concept, created long after the creation of Israel. Of course, by “the success of Zionism”, one assumes that the BBC journalist who wrote this means that Israel hasn’t been destroyed yet. After all, the Palestinians’ true goal is not self-governance in Gaza and the West Bank (which they already have), but the removal of the Zionist Entity entirely. Every once and a while, the BBC admits this, but for some reason fail to mention it here. Nor do they ever mention that a Palestinian State will be Judenrein. If, hypothetically, there was a sort-of contiguous Palestinian State existing side-by-side with the Jewish State, does anyone seriously believe the Palestinians and the Arabs (and Iranians) would accept that the occupation of Arab/Muslim land had ended? Of course not. The very existence of Israel is the “success of Zionism”. That’s what the Beeboid meant here. The only logical conclusion is that, so long as Israel exists, Palestinian national aspirations will remain stunted.

(UPDATE: On further reflection, I’m now wondering if perhaps by “the success of Zionism”, the Beeboid meant not merely maintaining Israel’s existence but the conquest/occupation of Arab land. That’s more Palestinian/anti-Israel propaganda, as if 1967 was all about Israeli conquest and precious little to do with the attempts to destroy it. Can someone else find a better explanation? Or is this code for the evil Settlements?)

Whatever one thinks about the right of people who now call themselves Palestinians to their own self-governed territory, or the Jews’ right for same, the BBC is spreading a false version of history. This goes beyond mere criticism of Israel and strays into demonization territory. It’s impossible to have an honest discussion of the situation when the BBC taints the scene in this way.

Please don’t anyone try to start arguing about whether or not Israel is right or wrong, or give me any BS about how I think Israel can do no wrong or any other nonsense. This is about the BBC distorting reality in way that favors one side and demonizes the other.

 

 

Mardell Tells A White House Lie

By | | , , , , , , , , , ,
32 Comments

Yes, I say “lie”. Mark Mardell is lying. I say he’s lying and not merely reporting something when he’s misinformed, or making a claim based on false information for which he’s not responsible. I’m saying Mardell is lying because he knows what he’s saying is not true.

The BBC’s US President editor continues pushing the White House talking points about the “Sequester” budget cuts on Today, and here’s a link to the printed version.

Sequester budget cuts: America’s grim fairy tale

It’s more or less the same biased stuff he produced the other day, which I wrote about here. This time, though, instead of avoiding telling you who really came up with the Sequester plan, Mardell just openly lies about it.

Many Republicans say the idea for the “sequester” budget cuts was President Obama’s in the first place. The White House rejects that.

Whoever came up with the idea, the 2011 law meant failure to agree would cut both cherished Democratic programmes that helped the poor and defence spending beloved of Republicans.

There’s even a bit of bias in the last line there, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, to expose the lie.

It’s not just Republicans saying it. By phrasing it that way, Mardell leads you to believe that it’s a matter of opinion. In fact, as I showed in my previous post on Mardell’s spin, the White House has admitted that it was the President’s offer. I’ll just reprint the quote from CNBC (not Fox News, not Breitbart) about it, to save defenders of the indefensible the pain of having to read another post of mine:

Woodward documents in his 2012 book The Price of Politics that team Obama first proposed the idea of the sequester. Expanding on his work in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed, he noted—as he has before—that both President Obama and his would-be Treasury Secretary Jack Lew lied on the campaign trail by saying the sequester originated with House Republicans. The White House has now ceded that fact.

“Fact”. Not good enough for you? Forbes says it was His idea. The Washington Post, which Mardell reads regularly, gives His claim Four Pinocchios, and provides evidence to back up the fact that it was His idea. Even Politifact rates the President’s claim that the cuts was Congress’s idea as “mostly false”.  Politico, which Mardell reads regularly, almost admitted it, but they couldn’t quite bring themselves to hurt Him and so framed it in an amusingly contorted bit of spin that would make Helen Boaden proud:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to give Obama the authority…

Then there’s this bit from a different Washington Post article (not Fox News, not Breitbart):

Last year, the House passed two bills that would have stopped the sequester and replaced some of the spending cuts with others. But the White House said the magnitude of the cuts was unacceptable and would imperil critical government programs.

Anyone who gets their information on US issues from the BBC will be very aware of which Party runs the House. The President could have prevented this, but chose not to. Curiously, Mardell chose not to tell you about it.

If none of this is good enough for you, here’s White House spokesman Jay Carney, personal friend of BBC Washington correspondent and anchor of BBC World News America Katty Kay, saying, “the sequester was one of the ideas yes put forward, yes, by the president’s team.”

In other words, Mardell knows exactly who started this, exactly whose idea the sequestered cuts are, and exactly what he’s doing when he misleads you. Blame must always be shifted from The Obamessiah. Trapped in a world He never made, it’s not His fault, you see.

Almost forgot about the bias in that sentence about which cuts supposedly hurt whom. Consider the pantomime caricatures Mardell uses: the Democrats want to help the poor, while it’s the war machine that’s so beloved by the Republicans. Can you tell where you’re meant to boo and hiss, and where you’re meant to cheer? I guess that makes Mardell the pantomime dame, although that’s probably an insult to the integrity of pantomime dames everywhere.

In case you didn’t come away from all this “journalism” with the idea that the cuts supposedly forced on Him by evil Republicans would be a catastrophe for the country (another White House talking point which is going to turn out not so true) and, by extension, the UK and the world (which is why it gets promoted on Today), the BBC’s US President editor ends with this bit of dramatic prose:

There is seemingly no end to this toxic tale of cruel dismemberment and government by crisis.

Emotive terms, value judgment, full stop. Notice whom he’s criticizing, and who gets a free pass. This is an editorial, an opinion piece, not journalism. Don’t trust him or the BBC on US issues.This is your license fee hard at work.

PS: I realize most people here don’t really care much about the US or much foreign stuff at all, and are mostly – and quite rightly – concerned with the BBC’s bias on domestic issues. All I can say is that you should be concerned that the BBC spreads poison elsewhere at your expense, and that they’ve clearly gone far beyond their remit of providing public service broadcasting and are actually dedicated to expanding the BBC’s tentacles across the globe purely because they can. The BBC exists now for itself, and not for you. It’s also a relentless drive for more revenue, something else that’s not supposed to be part of the BBC’s reason for existence. The BBC does this stuff in your name, and the BBC bias is everywhere, across the spectrum of broadcasting, all over the world.

BBC Spins For The White House Again

By | | , , , , , , , ,
12 Comments

I’m sure by now everyone knows about the looming swinging budget cuts that will happen automatically if no new budget deal is reached between the Republicans and the President. This is known as the “sequester”, and is the result of them kicking the can down the road a while back.

The BBC reports that the President doesn’t want this to happen, thinks it’s a bad idea, and has called on Democrat Governors to try and influence the elected Representatives and/or Senators in their States to cave compromise.

He warned the $85bn (£56bn) cuts would put thousands of teachers out of work and bring economic uncertainty.

The president has called on Congress to pass revenue rises and narrow budget cuts to avoid the automatic reductions.

The Democratic president will travel to Virginia on Tuesday to discuss the cuts’ impact on the defence industry.

“These cuts do not have to happen,” Mr Obama told a bipartisan assembly of governors at the White House on Monday. “Congress can turn them off any time with just a little bit of compromise.”

“Revenue rises”. Typical partisan language there. The Republicans refer to it as “tax rises”, of course, and the BBC uses instead the Left-wing terminology. Is the President offering to compromise as well? Don’t be silly. He doesn’t, and shouldn’t have to. According to Mark Mardell, when Congress is controlled by Democrats who don’t need to negotiate with Republicans to pass His plans, it’s a Golden Age.

Unsurprisingly, there’s another point of view that these cuts won’t really do much damage at all. In fact, spending will actually continue to rise and rise. The “cuts” just mean that the spending will rise slightly less than it would have otherwise. Does that sound familiar? Even Forbes admits this. Equally unsurprising is the fact that, not only does the BBC refuse to acknowledge this, but they even manage to quote a cuddly Republican, Sen. McCain, who says he doesn’t totally blame the President and is hoping for a compromise to protect the defense industry.

The BBC dutifully informs you that both sides of the aisle will try to blame each other. So, whose fault is this, really? The BBC reports it this way:

The budget cuts, known in Washington DC as the sequester, were devised in 2011 as an intentionally painful cudgel to encourage Democrats and Republicans in Congress to strike a deal to reduce the US budget deficit.

Note the passive voice, as if the cuts materialized out of thin air during some bi-partisan discussions. In actual fact, it was the President’s idea. He and the White House have been lying about it, and the BBC plays along like the good little propaganda organ it is.

Even the sainted Bob Woodward says so.

Woodward documents in his 2012 book The Price of Politics that team Obama first proposed the idea of the sequester. Expanding on his work in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed, he noted—as he has before—that both President Obama and his would-be Treasury Secretary Jack Lew lied on the campaign trail by saying the sequester originated with House Republicans. The White House has now ceded that fact.

The BBC doesn’t want you to know this, so they spin for the White House and deliberately mislead you. Defenders of the indefensible cannot impugn Woodward here. After all, not only is the above not from Fox News or Breitbart, but a previous book on the President by Woodward was lauded by the former BBC Washington correspondent and anchor of BBC World News America, Matt Frei. A diehard Obamessiah worshiper himself, Frei’s only concern then was that all the fascinating issues in the book might get in the way of the reader appreciating “the nuance of his finely-tuned brain”.

The cuts probably won’t be a big deal at all, and in fact will be considered a good start in some circles. The possibility of this is so great that Democrats and their lobbyists are worried about what might happen if there is no disaster. That’s in the Washington Post, not Fox News, not Breitbart. So the President has to do as much fear-mongering as possible, and work behind the scenes (i.e. get the Democrat Governors to do political cuts in the manner of Labour councils in Britain) to ensure as bad an outcome as possible. Is the BBC providing any analysis from this angle? Of course not. He can do no wrong. It’s not His fault, you see. And in any case, cutting government spending is a sin.

Your license fee hard at work, providing a propaganda outlet for the leader of a foreign country.

Spinning For Syria

By | | , , , , , ,
32 Comments

Typical BBC spinning history to make Israel look like the villain in this Q&A article about the recent Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah weapons and a related facility in Syria. The only real background context to the conflict you get is this:

Syria and Israel have been technically in a state of war since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The main grievance is over Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967. Syria has been demanding the area back as part of any peace deal. But the border area has been quiet and Damascus has never retaliated to Israeli attacks.

Let’s just break this propaganda down line by line.

Syria and Israel have been technically in a state of war since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Well, that’s “accurate”, anyway. Any reason why Syria would be at war with Israel since then, BBC?

The main grievance is over Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967.

Oh. So let’s just forget about why Syria would be at war with Israel since 1948. As always, the BBC rewrites history so that 1967 is Year Zero. And Israel now becomes the villain of the piece over its “occupation”. Why is Israel there, BBC? Why did it happen, BBC? Without this important bit of background info, Israel is made to look like the aggressor. It’s a main grievance now, sure. But it’s “a” main grievance, not “the” main grievance, which is key. I’m pretty sure an astute News Online editor carefully chose the indefinite article there, which is nice. But it doesn’t make up for the lack of context.

Syria has been demanding the area back as part of any peace deal.

Has it now? That’s nice, but pretty pointless in the face of Syria’s real goal of eliminating Israel, which has been censored here. Since you aren’t told why Israel is “occupying” the Golan, this line lends support to making Israel appear as the villain, full stop. Oh, if only those vile Jews would hand back land they stole, all would be well, eh? That sounds familiar, somehow. Yes, the article itself makes no bones about Syria arming Hezbollah, but at no point are we told why or given any other context in which to view this. Of course, even that bit of honesty is watered down a bit by it all being qualified as “Israel believes”, etc. No other authority we can appeal to has an opinion, BBC? I guess we can’t go to the US for confirmation because, as Katty Kay told us, they’re under pressure from the Jewish Lobby.

But the border area has been quiet and Damascus has never retaliated to Israeli attacks.

Other than arming Hezbollah in a couple of different wars against Israel – and obviously continuing to arm them now – and trying to control Lebanon and doing everything it possibly can to aid violence against Israel, yeah, Syria has never retaliated. Sure, the Syrian military has never officially done anything overtly, but please, let’s not pretend that Syria is always doing the good Christian thing of turning the other cheek. Even something as simple as “Damascus has never officially retaliated” would have helped immensely. Plus, anyone already sympathetic to Syria – or just already anti-Israel – will read the bits about Syria being unable to deal with Israel directly due to their own internal problems will see only Israeli aggression, adding fuel to what any observer of comments on BBC output will know is an already raging fire of anti-Jewish sentiment in their readers.

We’re also told further down that Hezbollah and Israel both expect another war between them, only adding to the long-term BBC Narrative that Hezbollah is a legitimate defense force against Israeli aggression. The takeaway impression is that Israel is the villain, full stop. This goes beyond criticizing Israel and strays into demonization.

 

 

Playing Games With Guns

By | | , , ,
30 Comments

The BBC rushed to report the other day about the newly-released video game from the NRA, which encourages children to learn about target shooting.

National Rifle Association launches shooting game for mobiles

One can tell the perspective of the Beeboid who wrote this up right away from the opening lines. They tell you that the game has been approved for children as young as four right up front, as opposed to mentioning it later on after explaining what the game actually is, and the NRA’s goals for it, figuring this provides maximum shock value. It’s more important, apparently, than the fact that the NRA joined the chorus of those condemning violent video games. Which the BBC censored from the report even though they spent nearly half of it discussing the issue of violent video games. It’s the whole reason the NRA created the game in the first place. I mean, the BBC could have at least used this as an opportunity for an irony alert, right?

Oh, and this isn’t actually a new game rushed out in response to the tragedy of Sandy Hook, either. This is only a mobile/tablet app game, and is basically another version of a game the NRA put out for consoles and PC in 2006. I won’t say the BBC censored this information because I’m pretty sure they didn’t even know about it, and didn’t bother to do any research other than reading the Left-wing blogs and news reports where they usually get their ideas on how to report US issues.

The promotional blurb for the original game pretty much sums up the NRA’s reasoning for the new version:

Join the National Rifle Association for a different take on the first-person shooter. Members of the NRA gun club will wield more than 100 firearms, ranging from consumer guns to specialty and military firearms. But the difference is they’ll use ’em without any blood or violence.

The BBC left out the part where the whole point of this is to separate violence and killing from learning respect for the tools. That’s because the BBC sees this as a horrible brainwashing technique to encourage children to love guns. Two different perspectives, you say? Well, yes. That’s the point. The BBC is reporting from one perspective, and doesn’t allow other viewpoints to interfere with their angle. They even leave out key context which may distract from the story they want to tell. The fact that I don’t like the perspective they’re reporting is beside the point if they don’t provide balance. I want them to feature both sides, not just one. It’s a point lost on defenders of the indefensible (or they simply refuse to accept it), but I’m stating it nevertheless.

Interesting side note: the original game was rated “E-10” (everyone over age 10) by the industry’s rating board, while the current game was given the “4+” rating – by Apple. It’s an Apple app at the moment, not a regular video game release, so the ESRB isn’t involved. The BBC’s darling Apple says this is good for the kiddies, not the NRA. Instead of directing your hatred towards the NRA, you might instead want to condemn Apple for selling such a thing. The BBC doesn’t want to distract you from their agenda, though, so they leave out more key background context.

Personally, I don’t accept that games cause violence. There have been plenty of studies done over the years, and as a long-time gamer myself, I’ve never seen any evidence of it, either. Other than WWII games where there’s no choice, I prefer my violent video games to involve killing aliens, mutants, or zombies, but that’s just me. The NRA is just trying to find another excuse besides blaming guns for these mass murderers. But that doesn’t make it right for the BBC to censor key context, nor does it mean it’s okay for the BBC to report from only a single perspective. It may very well be mainstream British opinion on gun control, but then it’s biased reporting. If you want your opinion reflected in the BBC’s reporting, then fine. Just don’t claim the BBC is impartial and balanced.

Half the news brief is taken up with the defense of video games in general. One might interpret this as defending the NRA’s game. It’s really just part of the whole debate about government control over people’s behavior. VP Biden tried to put pressure on the video game industry, so the voices the BBC provides in defense of the industry concern that part of the story, and are not meant to be interpreted as the BBC providing a line of defense for the NRA’s game. In fact, the inclusion of the debate about violent video games can actually be seen as more evidence of opposition to it.

Both the original game and this new app are non-violent. No living thing is harmed, or even remotely threatened. It’s all target shooting – inanimate objects. The whole deal of violent video games is about actual physical violence against other living (or undead) things, not sterile target practice. I mean, as far as I can tell, the NRA game doesn’t even have human-shaped targets like some real-life ranges do. It’s no more violent than the archery target-shooting game in the Wii Sports package that little kids play. By following the brief, not quite whole, story of the game’s release with the noise about violent video games, the BBC is framing the game in the context of violence. The Beeboid who wrote this up sees it as violence. Again, that’s a perspective informed by their personal opinion on guns.

This is just one in a series of BBC reports on the gun control issue, and the bias is only going to get worse from here.