Author Archives: Kerry B

if you would just level with us, folks like Jeff Jarvis would have a lot more respect for you and the Beeb than at present.

Greg Dyke, chief chutzpah officer of the BBC, lashes out at U.S. TV news war coverage as he accepts a dubious award in New York:

“News organisations should be in the business of balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other. This is something which seemed to get lost in American reporting of the war,” said Mr Dyke.

He said only four out of 840 experts interviewed on US news outlets during the conflict opposed the war and the situation would not have been tolerated at the BBC.

“Telling people what they want to hear is not doing them any favours. It may not be comfortable to challenge governments or even popular opinion but it’s what we are here to do,” he said.

Yo, Doc, cure thyself!

What an incredibly blind/deaf/dumb comment to come from Baghdad Broadcasting, of all places. Balance? The BBC exhibits as much balance as Christopher Reeve on a tightrope. Telling people what they want to hear? That’s exactly what the BBC did and quite cynically, I might add. Experts? What experts? Name two. That is the kind of ridiculous faux stat I’d expect to hear from, oh, American talk radio, not the head of the vaunted BBC. And Greg, I have two words to remind you of: Andrew Gilligan.

Read it all.

(Via Instapundit)

if this will burn Paul Krugman’s bridges as a Beeb ‘expert’ or just burnish his credentials?

has a lot to say about BBC coverage of the protests and some kind words for B-BBC.

The Beeb showed this JFK documentary today on BBC World (satellite TV). For the most part it revisits the events of that day which many of us vividly remember. [For the record: I was in Miss Pruitt’s third grade class in Cooperative Elementary School, Spartanburg, SC, USA when the school PA system broke in with a frantic radio announcer delivering the tragic news.]

I found most of this programme informative if predictable. To its credit, mention is made of Kennedy’s weak civil rights record–yes, the Kennedys were a pretty segregated, class-concious bunch. Did it surprise me to have the final segment become a Bush-bashing exercise? Not really. (It’s the last segment called “How Is JFK Remembered?”) These students having learned of JFK (this legend of Camelot) at the knee of their baby-boomer parents have been force-fed the same formula the Beeb has been passing on to us. It was just too tempting for the Beeb producers to not let this wonderful backhanded comparison of Bush and JFK fly. What a gift. Unfortunately, one of the students did not realise how close Bush and JFK were in the tax-cutting department. (Do BBC producers know that Kennedy cut taxes and that Reagan and Bush have followed a similar policy?) Americans, a simple majority at least, are ever grateful that Bush has not said “now hand me your wallets.” What wisdom our student discussion group displays. What rich historical perspective they bring. If only the producer could have found a few favorable Bush-JFK comparisons, a little balance would have lent it credibility. Unfortunately, it is steeply slanted. Interviews of key players like McNamara, Sorenson (gratuitous anti-Bush comments aside) and Cronkite are a dime a dozen, so great is interest in all things Kennedy. After watching “Kennedy: Legend and Leader”, you might wish to read up on some of those less than legendary bits of the JFK story the Beeb left out. Here’s one by Christopher Hitchens. Maybe Hitchens is too harsh, but it’s ok to take in more than one perspective, even when one is dealing in legend, some of which are of greater importance than others.

on the lack of substantial British press coverage of President Bush’s visit (especially the BBC!).

It was fascinating, and frustrating, to see this story from the other side. What was most striking to me was the utter lack of substance in most coverage of the visit. The focus was almost exclusively on the security precautions attending the trip, which were pretty universally frowned upon, and the demonstrations against President Bush, which were hoped-for, salivated over, and covered with gusto. No one spoiled the mood by reminding readers that these were the same tired demonstrations (and largely the same tired demonstrators) who have greeted past American presidents. The BBC, for the most part, disdained to cover the visit at all. Few news outlets showed any interest in what President Bush had to say; few showed any interest in the great issues that framed the President’s visit. The attitude of the British press is, for the most part, similar to that of the Democratic Party: the war with the terrorists is a minor inconvenience that shouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of character assassination.

Observations by John ‘Hindrocket’ Hinderaker of Powerline.

UPDATE: Clive Davis explains why America is so misunderstood in Britain.

One of the great, unacknowledged lessons of the months since September 11, 2001, is that the British actually know next to nothing about the United States, its history and its institutions. Nor are they particularly knowledgeable when it comes to world affairs in general. They prefer to believe what Michael Moore tells them.

Read it all. Though Davis does not mention the role of the state sponsored broadcaster in this, is there any doubt that the Beeb is a major factor in this knowledge vacuum?

The Oil-For-Food scheme is now under Coalition control and if you’re Judy Swallow, that is not such a happy prospect. On tonight’s broadcast of “Newshour” she hectored the poor UN official who is now out of a job (so to speak) about how bad things are going to get now that the UN is not around to look after the Iraqis who’ve been receiving aid. The official makes very clear that nothing will really change, for the same staff will administer the programme as before. Judy isn’t sure the Coalition can manage it. I must say that she takes the prize as one of the most consistently anti-Bush Beebazoids on the World Service. Later on in the programme the topic was AIDS prevention and the terrible things George Bush was doing by urging sexual abstinence “just like Reagan did with his ‘just say no’ campaign against drugs.” While her assumption seems to be that Bush II is more philosophically informed by Reagan than by his father (about the only thing on which we agree), she takes a major speculative leap to conclude that “Reagan’s anti-drug programme encouraged more young people to take drugs because they became curious about what they were saying ‘no’ to.” I would like to see where she gets her data.

Next up are two experts to discuss the war against terror as “the new cold war”. Neither of these guys could be accused being even close to the center-left of the political spectrum. One lets fly a screed about the West using proxy wars to keep Islamic nations under western domination. This seems to be where she wants the discussion to head. The second expert (of the liberal Brookings Institution) notes that since the war in Iraq, more than half of the counter-terror resources were diverted to Iraq (and we all know that no terrorists are involved there, don’t we), leaving Afghanistan and other places around the world to languish. Judy seems to be happy with this assessment. Consistently you can expect negative slanting against the Bush administration. Judy Swallow then asserts that President Bush, by funding AIDS prevention programmes which promote sexual abstinence as an important way to avoid contracting the disease, is doing great harm to the world!

Finally, she interviews (interrogates?) an AIDS prevention expert from the USA. It is clear that Ms Swallow will settle for nothing less than to hear this expert admit that President Bush, as usual, is the source of all that is wrong in the world. Judy is not able to put words in her expert’s mouth. Strange, isn’t it, that she can remember a ‘failed’ anti-drug message touted by the Reagan administration but could not manage to mention that Mr Bush is the driving force behind the 15bn in AIDS-related funding for Africa. Ah well, Judy’s not into that kind of music.

Bias at point blank range as reported by former Bush speechwriter David Frum.

Before the three of us got to business, “Newsnight” broadcast an introductory video clip. It was that clip that was my perfect moment of news slanting.

(Thanks to commenter Barry Rab.)

It is now 5 [actually 6] days on and still no BBC coverage on what should be a major story alleging, as it does, a longstanding Saddam-Osama link. As for the press, the lockstep we see up ’til now is impressive. Where is the BBC on this? As Jack Shafer writes (for a non-Murdoch outlet by the way!):

Everybody knows how the press loves to herd itself into a snarling pack to chase the story of the day. But less noticed is the press’s propensity to half-close its lids, lick its paws, and contemplate its hairballs when confronted with events or revelations that contradict its prejudices….

Help me! Many a reporter has hitched a ride onto Page One with the leak of intelligence much rawer than the stuff in Feith’s memo. You can bet the farm that if a mainstream publication had gotten the Feith memo first, it would have used it immediately—perhaps as a hook to re-examine the ongoing war between the Pentagon and CIA about how to interpret intelligence. Likewise, you’d be wise to bet your wife’s farm that had a similar memo arguing no Saddam-Osama connection been leaked to the press, it would have generated 100 times the news interest as the Hayes story.

I write this not as a believer in the Saddam-Osama love child or as a non-believer. My mind remains open to argument and to data both raw and refined. Hayes’ piece piques my curiosity, and it should pique yours. If it’s true that Saddam and Osama’s people danced together—if just for an evening or two—that undermines the liberal critique that Bush rashly folded Iraq into his “war on terror.” And if it’s true, isn’t that a story? Or, conversely, if Feith’s shards of information direct us to the conclusion that his people stacked the intel to justify a bogus war, isn’t that a story, too? Where is the snooping, prying, nosy press that I’ve heard so much about?

Where is the BBC, supposed leader of this pack? Or is it just part of the herd after all? As James Taranto observes, the fact that the Intelligence Committee of the US Senate has asked for an investigation of the leak though the Defense Department has tried to discount it, ought to count for something.

UPDATE: Stephen Hayes now has a compelling response to the Defense Department’s attempts to knock this story down. What will it take to interest the BBC?

reported here. The BBC seems ever willing to indulge the loony left, be it Red Ken or “antiimperialista” “militants” raising funds for the Iraqi “resistance”. Via InstaPundit

to cover this.

UPDATE: It’s 19 November and still not a sniff from the Beeb on this. It’s as clear an example in recent memory of committing bias by omission. Conflicted? What’s to be conficted about if you just ignore it?