Author Archives: Kerry B

How does the BBC portray him? The usual patterns quickly surface.

1) Sneer at his faith. So, being a serious Christian makes one illegitimate to govern? The whole article is shot through with this kind of anti-christian bias. Former NY Times reporter, now conservative pundit, Cliff May reports on his recent BBC interview re Ashcroft:

But the TV interviewer essentially took the position that perhaps Mr. May is correct to claim that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, and maybe John Ashcroft had something to do with that (or it could be an odd coincidence, hard to say, sticky wicket and all that), and maybe it’s true, as you assert, Mr. May, that violent crime is down to a 30-year low.

But, Mr. May, it’s also true, is it not, sir, that John Ashcroft has been known to conduct prayer breakfasts?

Yes, yes, yes! I confess! It’s true! It’s all true! Oh, the scandal! The horror! The shame!

Christians, who needs ’em?

2) Repeat unsubtantiated rumour. I refer to the bogus ‘naked statues’ story which flew around the MSM and has now become urban legend. Leave it to the BBC to resort to this kind of pettiness.

3) Overlook principled behaviour and imply illegitimacy.

The BBC states: Mr Ashcroft was chosen by Mr Bush after failing to win re-election as US senator for Missouri in November 2000. That was despite the fact that his opponent, Governor Mel Carnahan, had died in a plane crash three weeks earlier. Mr Carnahan’s widow, Jean, accepted appointment to the Senate in her husband’s place.

At face value, the people of Missouri elected a dead man over Ashcroft. Ashcroft suspended campaigning for the final week of the election and a last-minute Democratic ‘sympathy vote’ plan took effect. And don’t forget Ashcroft’s refusal to dispute the election in the face of strong vote fraud evidence and late poll closings in Saint Louis. Mr Ashcroft ran the gauntlet of Senate confirmation in a hostile atmosphere on Capitol Hill and was approved. The reporter stacks the deck in failing to report the whole story. It’s all too familiar a pattern.

4) Impugn his motives and good faith efforts to do his job. Michelle Malkin answers this one as well as I’ve seen: He was the most underappreciated, most maligned, most ridiculed, and most demonized member of the Bush cabinet. He endured a brutal, vicious nomination process. After 9/11, he was damned for doing his job too aggressively, and damned for not doing his job aggressively enough. He withstood the secular Left’s assaults on his deeply-held faith, and devoted himself to his tasks to the point of exhaustion. In short, he bore all of the blame for the War on Terror’s shortcomings, won little credit for its successes, and earned undeserved and largely uninformed scorn on both sides of the aisle. It will be the same way for whomever replaces him. God bless Mr. Ashcroft. And God help his replacement.

The BBC just doesn’t get it. Will they ever?

UPDATE: Just noticed this piece de-bunking the NY Times treatment of Ashcroft. I think the shoe fits the Beeb perfectly.

“U.S. Inspires World With Attempt at Democratic Election”–headline, the Onion, Nov. 3

“U.S. Vote ‘Mostly Free and Fair’ “–headline, BBC Web site, Nov. 5

(Shamelessly lifted from James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today)

to joke about assasinating Bush. This clip gets to ‘kill Bush’ stuff about 3 minutes into the broadcast. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Norm couldn’t help but notice. (via Instapundit)

UPDATE: (8 Nov) Barbara Plett’s tears continue to draw attention and remind the public of previous BBC bias. (via Drudge)

Trash your country and live. Now I get it…the BBC is only trying to survive.

NEW YORK — BBC World Service and Global News director Richard Sambrook on Tuesday took the U.S. news nets to task on their own turf for “wrapping themselves in the flag” and not asking the tough questions about the Bush administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Sambrook, speaking at Columbia U.’s Graduate School of Journalism, warned that such perceived partisanship of the news media may be playing a part in exposing journalists covering Iraq and other trouble spots around the globe to danger. “Journalists are now at a greater risk than they have ever been before. Where once their neutrality was widely recognized and respected, today they are targeted and sought out, seen as high-profile representatives of their countries or cultures,” Sambrook said.

Question for Richard: Why, then, didn’t it go well for your reporter in Saudi?

(via Drudge)

will provide election commentary for BBC World with a special Question Time. What a shock. (via OpinionJournal)

UPDATE: The panel will have (from left to right by my reckoning) Michael Moore, Sidney Blumenthal, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, David Frum, Richard Littlejohn. As an ACLU official in one of the most disputed pieces of elctoral real estate in Florida, Rodriguez-Taseff can probably be trusted to keep to the ‘Bush-stole-the-election’ script.

UPDATE post-Question Time: I managed to watch it via the web and found it to be fairly moderated. This is where the Beeb had a less obliging audience for fielding its questions. If anything, the audience was more supportive of Bush than Kerry and quite ready to give Moore the jeers he richly deserves. For his part, Moore did not disappoint with his usual joker persona, his unserious demeanor, his unsubstantiated and baseless allegations combined with a thinly disguised contempt for his fellow countrymen (Brits are much more intelligent,etc.). He really was an easy target for Frum, Littlejohn and the audience. Blumenthal had to be challenged to stick to the question and came off (in my biased opinion) looking a bit off balance. He was roundly booed at least once. Rodriguez-Taseff was pretty even-handed in pronouncing ‘a plague on [the politicians] houses’ for failing to reform the voting system. Littlejohn did a decent job of bringing a British Conservative perspective to the debate. My concerns about the BBC’s use of Moore were unfounded. He has become a self-discrediting propagandist if ever there was one, good for the villain’s role, hissing and dissing.

are doing it again in Texas and the Democrats are not amused. (Gerrymandering, that is.) One could be forgiven for thinking the gerrymander is owned by the Republican Party. The careful reader will discover that there is usually a “payback” on the part of Republicans for Democrat-favored gerrymandering or vice versa. If the Beeb really wants to do justice to this topic, let them look at how the GOP and Dems have collaborated in California, where it’s all quite predictable. Or, just have Michael Barone explain it.

. I met Rick Leatherwood last week. He is the real deal. Here’s his take on what passes for reporting in Iraq.

Iraq: The Media is Misleading the World

By Rick Leatherwood

As the director of a development agency rebuilding schools in Iraq for the last year, I have found the situation there both intriguing and revealing. During this time, my wife and I have often visited with Iraqi friends, who have told us the hooded terrorists that CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera were interviewing and passing off to the world as representing the sentiments of the Iraqi people, were not from Iraq at all, but from Yemen, Egypt, Saudi, or somewhere else outside the country, but were definitely not from Iraq. How do they know? They know the same way we know if someone is from Boston or Texas. Accents: Yet CNN and the BBC make these international terrorists appear to represent the will of the Iraqi people. Nothing could be further from the truth. As we saw it from having lived in Iraq for over a year, the truth is the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are very grateful to the United States for liberating them.

Incredibly, we find very few people here in the U.S. who have heard about the various kinds of town hall meetings and village meetings that have taken place across Iraq preparing the Iraqi people to take over their own country. These meetings have been carried out by the U.S. military and civilians of the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, under Paul Bremer. I have watched these dedicated Americans from the Military and State Department work tirelessly teaching the Iraqis about democracy, how to select a candidate, what to look for in a candidate, how to have an election, etc. As a result elections are about to take place in Iraq! Why has this work gone un-reported.

This war in Iraq might have been over 10 months ago if those trying to bring freedom to Iraq had not had to overcome the efforts of the media as well as the terrorists. As it is, the media has encouraged the insurgents and has undermined the Coalition at every turn. You may recall how quickly the media called the Coalition forces “occupiers” instead of “liberators” which could only embolden the terrorists. And you may remember when President Bush went to Iraq last Thanksgiving. Everyone in Iraq was excited. Did the media share this excitement? Hardly. They derided the President as “grandstanding.” Why didn’t they tell the truth? As one who was there I can tell you, not only was the U.S. Military encouraged, but also the Iraqi people were thrilled that President Bush had come to their country. And yet the media mocked.

How about the capture of Saddam Hussein? Did the media rejoice? Just the opposite. They were completely frustrated. This did not fit into their plans of prolonging the war. Nor did eliminating Saddam’s two sons whom everyone we have met in Iraq hated. The media has done nothing to encourage the Iraqi people. Nothing to try to help them to take ownership and responsibility for their country, but have done everything they could to extend the war. As a result thousands of Iraqi and American troops and civilians have died who did not have to die. Obviously the United States has been doing everything it could to bring the violence in Iraq to an end, but sadly the media it seems has done everything it could to keep it going. Here lies a tragedy of which the world should know.

A year ago a British scientist who was at the center of the controversy about Iraq being able to deliver WMD in 45 minutes committed suicide, causing a huge investigation into his death known as the Lord Hutton Inquiry. For the three weeks leading up to the verdict, CNN and the BBC built the story up on air and on their websites that this would be the most difficult week in the life of Tony Blair. But when Lord Hutton and his committee gave their report, their findings were just the opposite of what the media was expecting as the committee totally exonerated the British government of any wrong doing and found the BBC guilty of having misled the nation. Two hours later, with no explanation given, the story was not on BBC’s or CNN’s web-sites. It was no longer news.

Recently I met with a reporter at Applebee’s restaurant. As we started the interview I decided that rather than tell her what I was doing, I would just show her, so I stood up as I had done many other times in the last month and asked for the diner’s attention. When the people heard that I had been in Iraq the restaurant grew quiet, but a minute later broke into applause at the truth about Iraq I had brought them. As you can imagine the ensuing interview was quite animated and for the next hour diners dropped by with words of appreciation for what I had said.

In the course of our conversation something happened that should give us all hope, and a little more insight into what is the truth about the situation in Iraq. I told the reporter, “The most interesting thing that I have found is that everywhere I go and speak, people come up and say their cousin in Iraq (or whoever they might know in Iraq) is telling them the same thing that I am telling them.” Two minutes later a woman came over to our table and said, “You know my cousin in Iraq . . .” The interview appeared on the front page of the paper the next day. Take heart. The truth will set you free.

Rick Leatherwood is the director of Kairos Relief and Development Inc. He can be contacted at Leatherwood AT pmbx DOT net

B-BBC commenter, Susan, notices the friendly demeanor of our Beeb toward Mr Rumsfeld now that he seems to have strayed from the fold of Bush and Co. Unfortunately, Don has issued a clarification to what appears to have been a very mistaken inference. For a while there, he was singing their tune, and the BBC was feelin’ groovy. I hope this doesn’t ruin the day for Jonathan Marcus now that his theorizing is in vain. Paul Reynold’s ‘analysis‘ will need to be re-written (or deleted) if not stealth-edited.

(Hat tip: The Corner)

(Henry V 3.7.102, Constable to Orleans). Norm Geras finds John Pilger in discovery of a new friend for Tony and George. Unbelievable!