Author Archives: Ed Thomas

: Trevor Asserson and Cassie Williams of BBCWatch have produced a study of BBC documentary coverage of Israel entitled ‘The Documentary Campaign 2000-2004’. Norm Geras has read it and summarises. (Via Glenn, who is not surprised by their findings).

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Going back to what Natalie was saying about ‘scare-quotes’…

I noticed Drudge and the BBC with the same story of the discovery of some of GWB’s military service payroll records. Drudge reported it it “Bush ‘destroyed’ Military records found”. The BBC reported it “Bush 1972 payroll records ‘found'”.

Drudge was right, the BBC (typically) wrong- and suggestive. You see, what is called into question by the finding of these records? Obviously it is the original statement that they were destroyed- that statement now looks a bit fishy, and we are free to speculate. What is not open to doubt is that they have, after whatever fashon, been found.

What these scare-quotes do is suggest that the Bush campaign have somehow been hiding them all the long, just waiting for the right moment to reveal them. It’s an act of interpretation that radically restricts my freedom to interpret- precisely because it’s not *true* and the only application must be ironic.

I wrote to the BBC earlier on and said I had one word in response to their choice to showcase this story (and I spared them the detail but I suppose I really meant ‘in that manner’):Berger. The story of Sandy Berger, pants-stuffing or sock-stuffing, whichever or both, the evidence of his failings, was of course nowhere to be seen by this time, but I have to say I am more suspicious of the BBC’s choice to highlight this Bush story in the light of the Berger controversy than I am entertaining of the idea that Bush (or Rove) incubated these documents until the media was ripe to hatch them (they are not consequential anyway- so what’s the point? Do tell if you know). Thus, for me, is the BBC politicised and untrustworthy.

And, in case that seems an overreaction, this is how the Democrats responded:

‘The supposed discovery of these records on Friday afternoon, as reporters converge on Boston to cover the Democratic National Convention, is highly questionable…’

It’s blatantly obvious the BBC are shilling for the Dems.

, heh- Instapundit and friends clean up the BBC over a falsehood followed by a stealth edit: it’s what happens when you have 100,000 potential fact-checking assistants passing by daily.

As for the BBC story about French intransigence over UN sanctions against Sudan, the change is dramatic:

‘It’s now: “France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, it also has significant oil interests in Sudan.”

It was: “France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq, and as in Iraq the US also has significant oil interests in Sudan.”’

-according to one of Glenn’s several emailed sources.

Damian Fowler’s report on the continuing controversy over Fahrenheit 9/11, you are led to believe some shifting of tectonic plates has occurred in US politics. No, this is not just Michael Moore going for a walk, it’s a real ‘liberal’ (liberal as in MoveOn.org) awakening in the US.

The introduction is a classic bit of emotionalism, depicting the awakening in tears of a former US marine whose twin brother was killed in Iraq:

‘Ivan Medina fought back tears during a recent screening of Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.’

Fowler continues,

‘Mr Medina was joined by other military family members who shared his outrage. Until recently, voices such as these – not typical die-hard liberals – have been less than conspicuous in challenging the government.’

Well, it all depends on your definition of ‘recently‘, or even ‘conspicuous‘- because Mr Medina’s story has been featured in the media since March and was featured on the Larry King show on CNN in April, where he said

‘this was another plan from the president to win reelection and show and try to get his popularity back up when the truth is, we were not needed in Iraq… My brother and I never supported the war’.

So, not quite such a Damascene conversion after all, and certainly not the result of Fahrenheit 9/11- but why let that spoil a good story?

, says Charles at LGF (check out some of the informed comments too). I think he means that with respect to the BBC’s journalistic reputation, to be caught reporting that the Jordanian people ‘are largely of Palestinian origin’ is demonstrably to be caught trying to turn the truth on its head:

‘However, the Jordanian people, who are largely of Palestinian origin, are strongly opposed to Washington’s policy in the region, particularly in Iraq and Israel. ‘

Still, I am sure such a ‘potted history’ would please the Glasgow Media Group [update: post edited- I was confused by the stealth editors at the BBC, who changed ‘largely’ to ‘many of whom’ in a subsequent version. You can see what someone was trying to imply in the original though].

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Moore can rely on them not to point out that the reaction or ‘backlash‘ against his Fahrenheit 9/11 film goes far beyond Republican loyalists. To name but three Democrat-oriented media figures commonly accessed on the internet- Roger Simon, Jeff Jarvis and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t know about Hitchens and Simon, but Jarvis doesn’t plan on voting for Bush- yet he flays Moore’s film; absolutely flays it.

Simon, a novelist, liberal on just about everything bar Islamofascism, says ‘What bothers is me is that the public is going to swallow this kind of propaganda which, although it is miles below Riefenstahl aesthetically, is nearly her equal in factual distortion’

Reasonable concerns, I’d have thought, from people with liberal credentials, yet the Beeb prefer to say that it’s only Republicans or ‘supporters of President George Bush’ who have ‘few kind words’ to say about Moore. The worst judgement they can find to quote from a liberal source is that Moore’s argument is ‘imperfect‘. The worst technical critique point that Moore sometimes ‘relies on Leni Riefenstahl-style sensationalism’. So, imperfect in argument and sometimes sensationalistic? Sounds like the National Front describing Mein Kampf.

Another interesting fact about the BBC’s reporting here are the quotes they leave out from the sources they use. For instance, A.O. Scott, the Washington Times critic mentioned by the Beeb praising Moore lavishly (and also featuring in Moore’s commercials for the film), also described Fahrenheit 9/11 as ‘an angry polemic’… ‘rashly overstated’ among other unflattering terms. The website Moorelies reviews the reviews and concludes ‘with Fahrenheit 9/11, even the.. ardent fans of Moore’s message are coming to consensus that the methods he employs are to be mistrusted- at best.’ – which is roughly the opposite perspective offered by the Beeb report, where the critics are the partisan ones, not the admirers, and suspect techniques are a glitch in an otherwise top hole film.

(ps. I have a slightly more speculative post on this at my blog if you’re interested)

Update: ABC ask a few tricky questions of Michael Moore (via A.S. ); Jeff Jarvis appears on CNN to discuss Fahrenheit 9/11.

The Beeb’s tribute sours (further).

Tom Carver, familiar to viewers of NewsNight, has a supercillious air about him. There’s a sneer never far from his upper lip. Check out this combination of suggestion and anti-Bush sarcasm in an article which manages to insult former president Reagan as ‘illusory or insubstantial’, while dismissing Bush as nowhere near his equal (what, less even than ‘illusory’?):
‘The president’s biggest problem is that he is no Ronald Reagan, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s famous put-down of Dan Quayle.

Can you imagine a website with George Bush’s top 10 speeches?

Though denounced at the time as inflammatory, Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” remains an undeniably influential phrase, whilst George Bush’s “axis of evil” already seems like a cheap rip-off with no coherent logic.

There are more references to Reagan’s phrase than those of Mr Bush on his own website.’

Well, I can imagine such a website, I don’t equate GWB with Dan Quayle, I do consider Bush’s “axis of evil” phrase to have been necessary and resonant, I don’t think it was a ‘cheap rip-off with no coherent logic’, and, finally, I don’t expect a speech made in the last couple of years at the beginning of a conflict to appeal the way one made twenty years earlier does with the benefit of glorious hindsight. Why I should pay for this alienating garbage?

(Further to Kerry’s post) Caroline Hawley has one of her fact-lite, mood-heavy pieces in which she reasserts the likelihood of US foul play (but it’s buried at BBC In Depth, and no mention of kiddies because that piece of propaganda has been, er, exploded). This after Gen Kimmitt releases even more convincing evidence that the target was correctly identified and successfully destroyed.

Kimmitt says “The more that we look at intelligence, more we dig in, more we are persuaded no wedding,” . Oh dear- obviously it’s time to get that head deeper into the sand at the BBC.

The Outstanding Melanie Phillips.

I’m only quoting the culminating argument of this piece, so I advise everyone to read the rest (Melanie’s an avid Today Programme listener):
‘What all this shows is that the BBC has become far more than a redoubt of Guardian and Independent values; far more than a journalistic disgrace; far more than betrayal of the concept of public service broadcasting. It has become nothing short of a national menace, an enemy of this country’s interests and a fifth column in time of war. There is no doubt in my mind that a major reason why otherwise sane and sensible Britons have totally lost touch with reality, believe the US and Israel are the source of all evil while people who play football with the heads of Jews are the victims of injustice, and are on the way to pressurising the British government to pull out of Iraq, denounce America and thus hand victory to religious fascism, is because of the influence of the BBC, our secular church. And because of its immense global prestige and the fact that it is trusted to tell the truth, the BBC is now helping poison the discourse of the world.‘

BBBC Reader Andrew has been scrutinising some BBC coverage, and via E-mail it’s here for your interest:

BBC News Online published an article on Friday 23rd headlined US concern over war dead photos about the controversy in the US over the publication of photos of flag-draped coffins on the web – the photos were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, contrary to the wishes of the US Government.

There are two troubling aspects to the BBC’s coverage of this story:

1) The publication of the photos on the web has aroused further controversy – it turns out that a good number of the images on the site the BBC links to are actually those of the remains of NASA astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia accident – the reason for this is that the FoI Act request was for all such photos from 01FEB2003 to the present – the Columbia accident occurred on 01FEB2003. More than four days after this significant additional information has appeared across the web and wire services, the BBC story has still not been updated to record this fact. (Link)

2) More troublingly, the bottom third of the story, under the heading ‘War President’, covers the publication of a ‘mosaic’ of President Bush “composed from photos of US service men and women killed in Iraq”. The BBC states that the image is by “an anti-war activist” and that it is published on his web site American Leftist.

What the BBC doesn’t tell us, its compulsory customers, is that the image was first published on April 4th (scroll up one line). It’s not news – it’s more than three weeks old. It’s a satirical political image that some lefty BBC hack has tacked on to the end of a vaguely related news item, under the guise of news, because it looks good and is in line with their Guardianista sympathies (i.e. anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war). Moreover, reading the website of the image author and the comments of others, it seems that the photos are of coalition dead, not just US dead, that a number of the photos are repeated several times over and that there is even doubt over whether or not they are all actually dead.

All of this dodginess aside, making an image like this is not difficult with modern software – it’s basically an image imposed over a montage of smaller images, changing the colour tones of the smaller images to reflect the larger image – so it doesn’t even qualify as news on the grounds of artistic merit. And if anyone from the BBC cares to suggest it does, can we respectfully request the inclusion of similar ‘satirical montages’ to complement other news items – here are a few suggestions for starters:

– Moqtada Sadr – composed of dead coalition soldiers;

– Sheik Yassin – composed of victims of suicide bombings;

– Martin McGuinness – composed of victims of the IRA;

– George Galloway – composed of victims of Saddam’s reqime;

– Tony Blair – composed of victims of NHS waiting lists;

and so on, depending on one’s political whim. It’s not difficult to come up with these wheezes. And it’s not news, except on the BBC, paid for through a compulsory television tax. Remember, it’s not your BBC, it’s their BBC!