Author Archives: Ed Thomas

This incident requires an explanation. Memo to Beeb: there are some attentive listeners out there. Enough to catch you out if you behave just as you like.

Then, this is also an important testimony from Jeff Randall : ‘On the whole, they treated business as if it was a criminal activity’

Of course, his arrival made some impact, but if that’s so, then what about the impact of a whole news channel via the Al Jazeera link-up, which continues to develop according to USS Neverdock?

Which should be borne in mind when people like Clive Davis make points like this one.– about John Simpson and the ‘resistance’.

Not that I disparage Iranian democracy of course, it just seems that there’s a niche in the market left by certain mainstream broadcasters.

But today the BBC have held the frontpage for Ahmadinejad to proclaim that ‘Iran ‘does not need nuclear arms’

What this is is full-on propaganda from the terrorist-in-chief. What Iran doesn’t need, of course, is nuclear energy. As VDH comments aptly:

‘Any country that burns off some of its natural gas at the wellhead while claiming that it needs nuclear power for domestic energy is simply lying.’

So given that this is obviously an inversion of reality by the Islamofascist, that Iran doesn’t need nukes (by implication needing nuclear fuel instead), why do the BBC broadcast it as though it were a real newsworthy statement? I’ll leave you to supply the reasoning on that one. I just think the BBC are on the other side.

The sanitisation and idealisation of the religion of Islam proceeds apace at the Beeb. It must- as this culture is being more and more forcefully advocated by its adherents, so it requires greater and greater efforts to retain management of the news in a way that the Beeb feels is responsible.

After writing this post originally, I heard of the terrible stampede at this year’s Hajj. I am naturally sorry for the people involved, but it only really highlights the terrible realities that the BBC is ignoring in the general course of things.

Lets look at what that means. No mention on the BBC of the appalling carnage of this incident of slaughter and sadistic chaos. Reuters filed this under ‘oddly enough’ when I think ‘sadly predictable’ would have been more accurate. Also no mention of this incident (on European soil too), where some modern day reality came into contact with medievalism. This is not any cull we’re talking about, such as fox-hunting facilitates, but sacrifice- blood for some mystical quality of blood’s sake.

Instead, from the BBC we had a picture sequence of a mass-slaughter fair which doesn’t even include any notion of during or after the slaughter. I am not sure ‘livestock fair’ was the appropriate term to use to describe it, myself. No wonder the animal rights people in the UK are naive, when their Auntie shields them from the big wide world.

As the Wall Street Journal recently observed: ‘Political correctness, for all its awfulness, is an effort to save souls through language.’ But not animals, obviously, lest the Islamic audience be offended.

Second example: the Hajj. The BBC’s coverage is, save the unavoidable reporting of the annual Islamic Hillsborough-style event which is a tradition for this time of the year, utterly nicey-nicey (this sentence written pre-stampede btw). The boy scout article I linked earlier is a good example, but the BBC are pleased to report organisational glitches, safety measures etc..

Yet what about these Iranians in Mecca? Not so nicey-nicey, eh? Somehow the BBC manage to make a sacrifice and omit the death to America, infidel-hand chopping rhetoric from their coverage.

I am not saying that what I’m outlining is not a dilemma for broadcasters, but what I am saying is that the BBC’s chosen output is not news, but cultural sensitivity, aka pandering. The fact that they have decided a priori on ideological grounds that Muslims are to be protected from criticism is their problem.

Something about the picture in this article reminds me of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s the utopianism I think.

So, as multiculturalism (and lifestyle choice) becomes religion, religion becomes problematic, though, as Ritter points out, Sir Iqbal and Mr Jones get different treatment.

And no, it’s not just the media treating the two cases differently. There’s no mention of Mr Plod actually knocking on Sir Iqqy’s door.

(I’ve changed the date on this post to reflect the transition from first saving to final form)

I think I was a scout for two weeks, though I can’t remember exactly. I had been promised it would be way different from the hateful cubs pack I was a member of, but it was sufficiently like it to bring out a nervous reaction that saw me resolutely glued to the sofa and the tv as though to a floating fragment from a shipwreck, instead of venturing to a draughty village hall miles from my home (those horrible chairs you had to help shift; the miserable knots, the cooking classes- and they were some of the better things).

So I’m not a great fan really. The best part for me was the oath I took, and they’ve changed that since for some strange reason. Obviously oaths aint what they used to be. I think I kept mine by leaving after 2 weeks.

Anyhow, that’s not the point.

Anthony Browne recently published a forthright document concerning Political Correctness in Britain and abroad. It’s well worth reading, and during the course of his argument he has a go at the BBC.

However one non-BBC related quote (among the many) struck me for its relevance to the kind of thing the BBC is quite absurdly satisfied with

‘The New york Times’ culture correspondent, Richard Bernstein… was… concerned about how PC tried to overturn the dominant culture and power structures.’

because I had just been reading this BBC article supplied by Rob in the comments.

Thinking people ought to agree that this is fascinating. It is fascinating when an all but explicitly Christian and anglospherical youth movement, aimed at fostering the virtues to underpin the British dream, not only backs away from that project but does a volte face: expressly embracing and fostering what was (in Baden Powell’s day) seen as a regressive and primitive culture of idolatry. It’s fascinating and it’s news. There is of course an argument that it is still a regressive and primitive culture (of idolatry) (- this bracketted part is a little-sought specification for the argument in 06)

However the BBC doesn’t treat it like that- that is to say, doesn’t think anything remotely like those concerns, even watered down, need be addressed; doesn’t set the context in which the oath has been broken into a smorgasbord of options; doesn’t note the clear revolutionary angle. Only sees it as a positive news story about Islam and the West cohabiting. But it is revolutionary, however some well-meaning people might see it as a natural outflow of our generous cultural eclecticism and assimilation.

That’s PC for you.

(of course, whether or not Baden Powell’s creation was one of history’s really good thingsis open to question. The fact is that people relied on it to produce a certain calibre in young people.)

So the BBC, itching to say some really nasty things about George Bush’s Iraq ‘adventure’ and Saddam’s trial, daren’t say it themselves but instead outsource the job to one of our admirable academic fraternity.

Imagine though: would the BBC even consider the same approach to calling Saddam an evil and criminal dictator, in the circumstances? I think not; they would never allow it to be said, let alone themselves say such a thing.

Yet here the reassuringly educated-sounding tranzi-commentator (whose job naturally depends on convincing people of the benefits of international legal procedures) says, quite brazenly, ‘Regardless of specific American influences, though, the whole trial is tainted in some eyes by the illegality of the initial invasion.’

Don’t the Beeb geddit; ever? That’s Saddam’s argument in a nutshell, and the Beeb are making it for him via this academic cipher. Just to underscore this point, it isn’t, in this article’s view, that some people think the Iraq invasion was illegal, it’s that because the Iraq war was illegal some people think the trial is tainted. If it really were they’d be right to, because illegality implies that the status quo ante was more just than the status quo post invasion, ergo Saddam’s innocent in this court at this time. As I said, Saddam’s argument: and the BBC is broadcasting it.

Reading this article at BBConline one has to try to follow the tortuous logic of a journalist trying to justify after the event the BBC’s skewed approach to the news, in this case to ‘Questions of Murder’. As Dumbjon points out, the notion of challenging authority doesn’t apply when the BBC agrees with that authority- when, for example, the race-based news quota method is applied.

Anthony Walker died, and that’s sad, and I have a different feeling about what priorities should be employed concerning such cases from the floundering BBC journalist who drew the short straw of attempting a Beeb apologia. I feel that all cause celebre murder cases should be left to the few gutter press publications who can really thrive on them. There should be no Danielle Jones, no little Rorys, no Holly and Jessicas etc- and no Anthony Walkers- on the BBC, and thus less likely to be such a style of journalism in the rest of the media. Instead there should be some dedicated continuous coverage of murder cases on a daily basis- complete with court records, legal diaries, verdict analysis etc (I suspect this would really be the reintroduction of certain features of coverage which have been dropped over the years). If the BBC want their moral leadership role (which they pride themselves on in bringing ‘social value’ to the British people) to count for them in the debate over their future, that’s what they should do.

And meanwhile, they might consider fitting this kind of information somewhere into their grand moral compass:

‘these murders need to be set out one by one, in all their horror, describing their nature and affirming that which is too often forgotten: Saddam was one of the worst tyrants in history and it was urgent to rid the Iraqi people of him.’

about BBC editorialising within news items (a habit I often notice and fail to raise consistently owing largely to time constraints). Having reported that Mr Green had been cleared of ‘inciting hatred against homosexuals’, the BBC went on to say ‘He has shown little regret for his comments when addressing the media. He has also said his comments referred to a homosexual lifestyle, rather than individuals.’

Remind me, what was the definition of ‘acquittal’ once again?

The Beeb’s rather lavish and more precise coverage of the Roman Catholic Church’s latest pronouncement concerning homosexuality is something I wrapped into a post about the BBC’s science at my own personal weblog. Please ignore my apparent plug unless this topic interests you enough to follow.

Imagine if the BBC created a page entitled The Struggle Against Aids. Imagine if then they included copious stories about linkages between Aids and homosexuality. Imagine if then they took an opportunity to frame a story about rising Aids cases alongside one about indecent and criminal homosexual behaviour, and alongside someone influential’s unmediated and copiously quoted opinion that Aids was linked to homosexual bad behavour. Well, that’s just imagination, isn’t it?

But in the case of Iraq this morning we had this, this and this. Deaths. Abuse. Calls for the US to leave Iraq. Where’s the link between them? What warrants them being interwoven as a headline block? Nothing in particular, unless you’re prejudiced. Stinking biased. An information fascist. That kind of thing.

continues with John Simpson’s thesis that the Jordanian bombing proves the Iraq war was wrong!!, and with this pictureof a suicide-dressed kiddy above a caption which says:

‘Palestinian children learn at a young age about the struggle for freedom. To some, the Palestinian martyrs are heroes. Here a child poses for a photograph at a rally organised by militants.’

This from a series about the making of a film about suicide murderers (not sure if it was billed that way, exactly). One to add to the list for Natalie’s post below. (hat tip LGF)