Author Archives: Ed Thomas

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

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Blunting the Impact

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The Guardian reports on how “The Labour MP Mohammed Sarwar is to leave parliament after receiving death threats from people linked to a gang of racist murderers”

The Guardian also reports:

“The multimillionaire MP used connections in Pakistan to help arrange the extradition of Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq to the UK, where they were jailed for life for their part in the kidnap, torture and murder of the teenager Kriss Donald in 2004.

The trio, part of a violent Glasgow gang, fled to Pakistan after the crime but were returned after 18 months of negotiations between the Pakistani and British governments, assisted by Mr Sarwar.

“Life is not the same, to be honest with you, since I brought them back. I was subjected to threats,” Mr Sarwar told the newspaper.

“I was told they wanted to punish my family and make a horrible example of my son – they would do to him what they did to Kriss Donald.

“I received threats to my life, to murder my sons, to murder my grandchildren.”

The BBC reports:

“The toll of political office appears to have been a high one. His family have faced a flurry of threats over the years from every hue of far-right group.”

Mmmm. Over the years… every hue… far right…. What makes me think the BBC are trying to deflect from the reality of the situation? The report linked above is a terrible example of BBC journalism actually- badly written, rambling, and evasive, combining some spurious hard news value with the feel of a political obituary.

The writer, Stephen Stewart, announces “Mohammed Sarwar may be bowing out of the murky world of public service…”

Excuse me? The murky world of public service? Maybe in Glasgow. Maybe in Pakistani “welfare activities”, but as a general comment?

One final snarky point, Mr Stephens seems to think that Govan is “dusty”. Ah yes, the dry and dusty NW of Scotland, I remember it well!

The BBC also reports: “The father-of-four, Britain’s first Muslim MP, said he had received death threats over the Kriss Donald murder.

But he denied the threats or his son’s conviction for money laundering had anything to do with his decision to move on.”

This is rather different to the Guardian account, which draws much more substantially on Sarwar’s actual words. Strikes me Aunty’s pulling her usual knitted woolen jumper over the eyes, for whatever reasons.

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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

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Fairly Unbalanced

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Two links for you. One of them supports the continued existence of the BBC, one of them, er, does not. Both agree the BBC is biased.

Devil’s Kitchen pursues the line that it might be biased, but it’s quality bias. No adverts to interrupt the tone, and anyway, we can always complain! Yeah, must try that…

The pseudonymous poster of this video, though, takes the Daily Mail slam to the BBC. (thanks to Ultraviolets in the comments, who noticed it very promptly :-)).

Personally I recommend the comments to the DK post, where all the salient points about licence fee coercion, a poll tax for television, concerns about one way ideological traffic, are raised. My own view (aside from agreeing with the poll tax point) is that the fact that Britain has had a lively media that we can take some pride in is a historical legacy, but that the entrenchment of the BBC was a wrong turn which has progressively eroded the responsibility and freedom of the press, and is doing so more insidiously as the years go by. Whatever your pleasures in viewing, you could find them without the BBC.

Exit questions for the Beeboids: why do so many newspapers spend so much time talking about the BBC? Why did a news organisation become the news?

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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

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Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

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The moral murk

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From the pathetic (see below post) to the poignant. Joseph Loconte notes the frenzied way in which the BBC is campaigning for the release of its journalist Alan Johnston.

Naturally one feels a little of their desperation; we’ve seen far too many atrocities and needless deaths over recent years in the name of Islam and the Palestinians.

Quite whether almost daily Johnston-centred updates, pleas and reports from the BBC is a good use of telly-taxpayers money is a question almost indecent to mention, yet inevitable because the BBC is a state-sponsored organisation. One wouldn’t wish to be brought into it, but where one’s wallet is compelled, one is drawn afterwards.

There is also the question of the BBC’s closeness to Government, as HMG seeks to draw near and reason with Abu Qatada, a radical (terror enabler) believed to have close links to Al Qaeda, believed to have influence in the group holding Johnston. To what extent the BBC is using its influence to manoeuvre the Foreign Office- which funds the BBC world service – is as unclear as ever.

Loconte zeroes in on the words of Mark Thompson, BBC DG:

“Alan…is a brave, dedicated and humane journalist who was deeply committed to reporting events in Gaza to the wider world,”…“The people of Gaza are ill-served by kidnappings of this nature.” (highlight mine)

Loconte points out the strangeness of saying “kidnappings of this nature”, which implies that some kidnappings might be justified. Certainly such a distinction is in keeping with BBC moral equivocations over terrorism. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, just as any of your nuanced imams might say.

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Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

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Coincidence?

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Mr Blair’s visit to Iraq coincided with an interview in which former US President Jimmy Carter criticised the UK prime minister for his “blind” support of the war in Iraq.” report

Making the News

I’m not talking about the BBC reporting big events which “make the news”, but actually manufacturing it.

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It’s one of the curses of our time that the big media, with none bigger than the Beeb, get to summon politicians almost at will. They do so especially to suit their own agendas, and their agendas are often quite extensive.

Recently two politicians interviewed separately by the Beeb were John Bolton and Jimmy Carter. The contrast in interviews was stark [and I notice that Richard North has noticed this too]. On the one hand, John Humphries on the Today programme gave Bolton the hardest time imaginable (superbly documented by Richard North at EURef blog). Fortunately Bolton in the end made Humphries look precisely what he is- an emotional, empty-headed leftist wind-bag. His attempt to force Bolton to backtrack in his support for the Iraq invasion (yes, still hearking back!) floundered amusingly as Humphries’ intent and line of questioning was exposed.

So that left the BBC with Jimmy. Needless to say, there was an eery calm as the BBC journalist waited to receive Jimmy’s words of wisdom, however contentious they might appear to someone who doesn’t see Iraq as the innate disaster it appeared through the lens of Bush House. They then created a webpage so that everyone visiting BBCOnline would get to read and hear too. A commenter to ATW (which drew my attention to it), pointed out that the article was more than slightly charitable to Carter’s record:


“In 1976, Mr Carter unseated the incumbent Gerald Ford to become the 39th US president, serving until 1981.”

Yeah, no mention of that nasty acting fellow who beat Carter soundly, or, I would add, Carter’s crowning accomplishment, the Iran hostage crisis.

One point about Carter’s comments: is a man really a friend of this country who would attempt to make Britain co-equal in responsibility for a supposed cause of terrorism, the Iraq war. Does Carter care about the relative vulnerability of the UK to terrorist attack, when he makes Osama’s talking points up for him? Does the BBC? Or do they just always see the cheap political points sitting temptingly in front of them, and to hell with the ordinary people?

It does seem quite likely that there is a cause the BBC has in mind in raising these tired points at this political moment- Blair is leaving, and the BBC would very much like Uncle Gordon to give them the gift of an ultimate moral victory for transnational correctness by admitting in proper fashion that they were right all the long by getting our soldiers well and truly out of there.

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