Author Archives: DB

Hard not to laugh again

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“Are you selfish – or are we bad journalists?” asks the BBC’s Mark Sandell on the World Have Your Say blog. “Whatever we do, whatever debate we come up with, we can’t seem to interest you in the issue of climate change.”

What a shame, eh?

(A related item – last week on the Conan O’Brien show Al Gore stated that “the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees” [via John Derbyshire] . Do you think we might have heard a bit more about such an innumerate pronouncement if it had been made by a certain Republican VP candidate?)

(Update. The WHYS blog has bumped the original post – new link here.)

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Hitchens on Today

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Christopher Hitchens has had two fairly well publicised articles out during the past week. The first, from Newsweek, attacked Sarah Palin; the second more recent piece appeared in Slate and attacked “the host of damage-control commentators” who rushed to claim that religion was not a motivating factor in the Fort Hood killings.

No prizes for guessing which topic Hitchens was invited on the Today programme to discuss just before 7 this morning. Also, no surprise that Hitchens – well-known for his anti-Palin views – was the only person interviewed. I very much doubt that it even crossed the minds of the Today editors to seek the perspective of a commentator with a more sympathetic opinion of Palin. In the highly unlikely event that Hitchens had been asked on to discuss Fort Hood, I thinks it’s a near certainty that an opposing voice would’ve been heard.

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Hard not to laugh

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Heh:

A Russian icebreaker carrying over 100 tourists, scientists and journalists on a cruise around Antarctica was struggling to free itself from sea ice but was not in any danger, a shipping company said Tuesday… Russian news agencies said a BBC camera crew filming a documentary about the Antarctic was also on board.

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Organic Bias

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Here’s a publication we don’t hear much from on this blog – Farmers Guardian:

COUNTRYFILE, the BBC’s flagship rural programme, has been accused of a bias towards organic farming…
During the show Mr Craven interviewed a representative of the Organic Trade Board, a spokesman for leading organic brand Duchy Originals and the branding expert Marcel Knobil, who was given the task of coming up with a new marketing campaign to promote organic food scales.
However, the programme did not include any interviews with representatives from the non-organic food industry.

The chief exec of the Crop Protection Association has written to Sir Michael Lyons reminding the BBC “of its obligations to licence payers to remain impartial on all controversial issues.”

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Obama Season on BBC 2

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Last Sunday I blogged about the BBC’s decision not to show a documentary because it apparently failed to meet the “strict rules on objectivity”.

On Wednesday the BBC issued the following press release:

It’s one year since the inauguration of Barack Obama and BBC Two has the British premiere of a remarkable Storyville film, By The People: The Election of Barack Obama. Filmed by two young filmmakers who were given remarkable access to Obama’s election campaign, it has captured moments of extraordinary candour and intimacy. This film will be complemented by Simon Schama’s two-part film, Obama’s America, which considers the daunting challenges facing the president; and God Don’t Live Here Anymore?, in which theologian and writer Dr Robert Beckford journeys into heartland America to investigate the impact of Obama, both as a politician and a believer.

How objective can we expect that little lot to be?

From Hank Stuever’s review of “By The People” in the Washington Post:

HBO’s uplifting but stultifyingly naive, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama’s campaign and election…

At a recent VIP screening in Washington, the campaign’s advertising director joked that [filmmakers] Rice and Sams wound up in the way of all best shots of America’s Obama moments. The audience — made up mainly of political reporters who lived through the campaign, and some White House staff — laughed at that, mainly because, as almost everyone acknowledged, “By the People” is really just a very long commercial for Obama.

And here’s the Associated Press:

The documentary has a laudatory tone; after following Obama for two years both Rice and Sams said they voted for him. The film could leave Obama fans pining about potential yet unfulfilled and give opponents another example of the media fawning over the president.

On the day after Obama’s victory, the BBC’s Storyville editor Nick Fraser wrote the following on his blog at the Independent:

I have never seen anyone like Obama. Politicians do not have the wisdom or brass to address us in this way. So, in common with the rest of America and indeed the world I watched the events at Grant park, succumbing to the hope.

Little wonder a “stultifyingly naïve, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama’s campaign and election” appealed to him so much.

As for Schama and Beckford – the BBC covered the previous administration by commissioning aggressively anti-Bush films from the likes of Republican-hating activist Greg Palast. For analysis of the current administration it turns to a historian who is one of Obama’s biggest cheerleaders, and a theologian who has a poster of Malcolm X on his office wall at Birmingham University.

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Climate alert – hell freezes briefly

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Yesterday morning climate change sceptic Ian Plimer was interviewed on the Today programme. This stunning occurrence caused outrage among eco-activists. The Media Lens message board went nuclear wind turbine over the issue. Among the many who complained to the BBC was Green Party councillor Dr Rupert Read. The response he received from Today programme assistant editor Roger Hermiston included this admission:

We reflect the orthodoxy in the climate change debate, day in, day out, 300-365 days a year. Just every so often – and it is very rarely– we take a look at other opinions… And to talk about the “oxygen of publicity ” at 8.53 in the morning is, I would respectfully suggest, getting things a little out of proportion.

So even when they “very rarely” look at these other opinions, they do it well away from prime time. It’s not telling us anything we don’t know, but it’s nice to see it in writing.

Dr Read sent a follow-up email in which he stated pompously:

“I teach at the University of East Anglia, the world’s premier climate science institutions [sic]”

The email doesn’t mention his speciality, but his Wikipedia entry does:

Rupert Read is a Green Party of England and Wales politician, Reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia

Ian Plimer, on the other hand, is merely the Professor of Mining Geology in the Geology and Geophysics department of the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide. How dare the BBC interview him about the climate when there are philosophers on hand!

I note also the opening line of Read’s reply:

Dear Mr. Hermiston;
Thanks for writing back, and so swiftly.

Who else has ever received any kind of response from the Today programme, let alone a swift one?

Update. Via David Thompson, here’s a promo clip for a forthcoming edition of BBC World Service programme The Forum in which artist Antony Gormley “reflects the orthodoxy” (as Roger Hermiston might say):

Update 2. Rush Limbaugh has a new climate change related promo, too. Mmm mmm mmm. Heh heh heh.

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Re Motives

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Further to Natalie’s post, and with a tip of the hat to Deegee in the comments there, I think it’s worth having a couple of screen grabs to compare the subtle difference in the headlines, and the way concerns over political correctness suddenly vanish where a Jewish American immigrant is concerned (click pic to view) :

(Update – they’ve removed the quotes from the headline. Comparing the two I see the first draft was “US media report… not confirmed.” Fair enough in that case – my fault for not understanding the BBC’s often confusing conventions where quotes are concerned.)

Matt Frei has offered his take on the execution of John Allen Muhammad:

Despite the older man’s conversion to Islam, no-one really thought that the motive was religious, let alone that it was linked to the grievances of Islamic extremists…

When John Allen Muhammad died at 2111 on Tuesday evening, so did any chance of finding out what had really motivated him.

Frei doesn’t mention the decision by Muhammad’s family to suppress the release of his final letter:

In a statement read by the attorney representing the family of Muhammad, Charlene Paterson said, ‘this morning, the family would like to express remorse.”
She confirmed that the family is in possession of a letter, presumably from Muhammad, but said the contents of that letter would not be released.
“We have a letter. Right now we’re not prepared to disclose anything in that letter because it would be extremely inappropriate at this time.”
Paterson continued that, “the family is not comfortable disclosing any of the details in the letter at this time.”

There are of course a number of reasons why this letter could be “extremely inappropriate at this time”, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Muhammad shared certain, ahem, ideological views similar to those of the Fort Hood killer.

Frei’s observations could turn out to be a tad Mardellesque in their presumption. Indeed, as Laban pointed out, there’s more than a little evidence to suggest Frei could be wrong already.

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More Mardell

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Mark Mardell:

There has been a lot of debate, here and elsewhere, about whether politicians and the media have played down possible religious motives of the killer. The president did not: “No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favour. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice – in this world, and the next.”

I think there’s a “(me included)” missing after the word “media”. As for Obama’s words, George Stephanopoulos thinks they signify the President’s acceptance that this was indeed an Islamic terrorist act, while Andy McCarthy takes issue with the statement that “no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts”.

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