has said that the BBC is afraid to criticise Islam.
Discuss.
Andrew adds: The Telegraph article was based on an interview by Sarah Sands in the Daily Mail, Archbishop blames ‘chattering classes’ for collapse of Britain’s spiritual life, also well worth a read.
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.
Pulling back from the fray for a moment, allow me to highlight two new blogs. Besides the interest in BBC bias that caused the authors to comment here, both have also have an interest in – I was about to say “foreign” languages, but had I done so certain members of my family would have told me rather firmly that the tongue of the Britons was spoken in these islands long before the Angles or the Saxons came. Both have an interest in languages other than English, then.
… the oh so helpful BBC went further and explained that this wasn’t really so bad for whites because whites make up over 90% of the population, and racial minorities are still more likely to be victims of racist attacks than whites. That’s all right then, we have not yet upset the BBC weltanschauung. Move along, nothing more to see here. For the BBC, this was ENDEX.
Read the rest. He mentions that Dutch viewers (who nearly all speak English) can get BBC1 and BBC2 as standard, and most of the other BBC channels on digital. I hope he will post further on how the BBC’s output is received in Holland and Europe.
Here in Wales for instance there is a very strong Welsh language bias evident in the BBC that makes it difficult for monoglot English speakers to get jobs there even though the vast majority of its output is in English. In its actual broadcasting there is a faux, and clearly enforced, policy of over-pronunciating Welsh names and places that verges on parody.
This are clear political motivations at stake in this. Practically speaking it is NOT necessary to speak Welsh to do the huge majority of jobs in Wales. Realistically speaking it is not even a real necessity to speak Welsh at all in the workplace as there are no monoglot Welsh speakers left – all Welsh speakers are bilingual these days. Although I support the preservation of the language it should not be carried out through one of the worst aspects of political correctness – reverse discrimination.
Both these blogs mention the coming expansion of the BBC’s Arabic and Farsi services.
Nep Nederlander:
Is it perhaps that they are expanding their operations in the Middle East, and even Iran, and desire to be viewed kindly by the Islamist regimes which rule the region and control the purse strings?
Afagddu:
To gain some kind of persepective of its pandering to the Islamic World take a look at the interview with BBC Arabic TV’s News Director Salah Najm over at This Sceptred Isle.
Talking of which, this Little Green Footballs post says, citing a Google translation, that LGF was described as “an extreme right wing” site on the BBC’s Arabic service. I can think of a few commenters who probably speak Arabic – would anyone care to comment on the translation, or on the Arabic service generally? (I would also welcome views on the Farsi service.) LGF puts in one place many news stories about Jihadism. Quite a few of the comments there would and will get deleted by me if they show up here. But I don’t see what’s so “extreme right-wing” about the posts. Most of them are merely brief introductions to a link to a news story. Unless it’s extremist merely to keep such news stories coming in quick succession? Before 9/11 LGF was a mildly geeky blog mostly about cycling and software.
Ceefax, page 125 3/4 says (emphasis added):
The Senate seat in Connecticut went to Joe Lieberman who stood as an independent on an anti-war platform after losing the Democratic primary.
Wrong. Ned Lamont won in the Democratic primary because Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war was unpopular with the committed Democratic voters who make up the constituency for a Democratic primary. However with voters as a whole, the pro-war Lieberman was much more popular which is why even running as an independent he was able to defeat the official Democratic Party candidate, Lamont.
UPDATE: Ah, I see the equivalent story on the website has half a clue:
The Senate seat in Connecticut has gone to Joe Lieberman, who stood as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont amid strong anti-war feeling. He has said he will align himself with the Democrats.
“Amid strong anti-war feeling”: what a masterpiece of ambiguity. This does better than the Ceefax story in that it is not flat-out wrong. However a reader who did not already know the story would have to work very hard to deduce that Lamont was the anti-war one and Lieberman the pro-war one.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ceefax now has a longer and more accurate explanation. However commenter “pounce” preserved an image of the original.
Commenter “pounce” pointed out this story:
Government hails Saddam verdict
The UK government has welcomed the conviction by a Baghdad court of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.
In the story we hear the views of Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, Home Secretary John Reid, Anas Altikriti, spokesman of the British Muslim Initiative, Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
The headline does not accurately describe the story, as it covers the reactions to Saddam’s sentence expressed by the opposition parties as well as the reaction of the government, but one gets the general point: it is the reaction of Parliament. However Anas Altikriti and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari were not elected by anyone. While their reaction is certainly newsworthy, it shows the BBC’s communalist mindset that these unelected representatives – whose claim to “represent” even people of their own faith is far from universally acknowledged – are interspersed between the elected leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Scottish Nationalist parties as if all were in the same category.
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.
The BBC and a misleading story:
Soldier silent over abuse photos
A Territorial Army soldier who allegedly sold fake pictures showing British troops abusing Iraqis has refused to answer questions about them.
Shouldn’t the headline read:
Soldier silent over fake abuse photos
I wonder why the BBC leads with such a headline?
K Havakoz writes:
Found this today at
link“Polls revealed religion as a striking predictor of voting behaviour – the more often a voter attended church, the more likely they were to vote for President Bush, by a wide margin. That is not a good thing in a nation where more than 90% believe in God.”
regards,
K. Havakoz
On similar lines, Will and others have pointed out a piece by Justin Webb.
But in rural America he (Bush) looks at home, and somehow less goofy, less jarring.
In the car park after the Georgia event the locals drifted off to do whatever Georgians do at night (pray I guess), knowing that the Republicans have a fight on their hands but still confident that it can be turned round.
They have not given up and many really do believe in miracles…
UPDATE: Nigel Holland comments that “The first linked article has been edited, it now reads “In a nation where more than 90% believe in God, that is not a good thing for the Democrats.”
The BBC’s Paul Reynolds, who has occasionally commented here, has written an article entitled, “Pentagon gears up for new media war.” Towards the end, it says:
A cautionary tale comes from the Vietnam War. There, the war was lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. No amount of spin could change it. The turning point in the media war came when the veteran CBS News presenter, Walter Cronkite, went to Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968. He came back and declared that there was “stalemate”.
Pete in London comments:
No, the war wasn’t lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. The war was lost when Walther Cronkite and others lied to obscure what was happening on the battlefield. This was covered in here on the 19th and 20th October, following Bush remarks apparently likening Iraq to the Tet Offensive (again, another case of skewed reporting by the BBC).
Personally, I’d say it was more likely that Cronkite et al were fooled – fooled with the assistance of their own anti-anti-communist worldview – rather than that they lied, but the result was the same.
