Author Archives: Natalie

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Stand by for some more Beeboid reporting from the Middle East. The trailer for Broadcasting House has just said that there will be some ‘moderate Israeli voices’ which we ‘rarely have the opportunity to hear’.

Two questions dear Auntie. Firstly, exactly WHY do we have so few opportunities to hear ‘moderate Israeli voices?’ After all, Israel and the Israelis are always there, and you don’t have to run the gauntlet of terrorism or a repressive regime in order to talk to them, now do you? (Unlike in the PA) Or are you implying that the majority of Israelis are rabid extremists wanting the extermination of Palestinians en masse? And therefore you’ve had to search far and wide before finding moderates?

Secondly, what you YOU call ‘moderate Israeli voices’? Can you mean Israelis who want to live in a Jewish State alongside their fellow Arab Israelis and Arab neighbouring states including a confident, friendly and cooperative Palestinian State without fear of antisemitism whoever perpetrates it?

Or do you mean Israelis who, because of the principles of Free Speech are free to vilify the existence of their own country and people in an orgy of self imolation and condemnation?

I await BH with uncontrollable longing ….

It was broadcast on Sunday morning. It would be interesting to know how it turned out.

A belated hat tip to PJF and The American Expatriate for pointing out an exquisite use of ellipses. Please note that the Dowdified quote originally appearing in this article has now been removed by the BBC. Still, purely out of historical interest, here is what Scott Callahan observed:

Quoth Rumsfeld:

You just can’t hear day after day after day after day things like that that often aren’t true, with a lack of balance, and not come away thinking, gee, that must not be a very good country.

And after coming through the BBC quotation grinder:

You just can’t … not come away thinking, gee, that [the US] must not be a very good country.

To be totally fair, the mangled quote appears in a quote box on the side of the article, and the body of the article does contain the full, proper quote. But the quote box is highlighted and in bold, and is the first thing the eye is drawn to apart from perhaps the headline and the photo of Rumsfeld. And in it the BBC has altered what is an implicit criticism of the media into an unqualified and derogatory observation about the US itself.

The quote box now has an entirely different Rumsfeld quote, “The United States is notably unskilful in our communications and our public diplomacy.”

In the comments to this post, Angie Schultz of Machinery of Night commented on a startling phrase in this piece by Steve Schifferes on the subject of President Bush and Africa. She said:

Talk about your weird sentences:

And now that Mr Bush is essentially a lame-duck President, no longer facing re-election, he has even less clout with Congress…

Apparently, one runs for a second term as President so as to have clout with Congress during one’s first term, but heaven help you if you win, because then you’ll have to serve out four years as a lame duck.

Oh, well, I guess there’s all that oil money to squirrel away for four years.

Robert Conquest in We and They pointed out the clever technique of inserting the word “essentially” where mere facts merit the word “not.” The example he quoted was “America is essentially a totalitarian country.” “Essentially” suggests that the writer and reader have seen a deeper truth beyond the superficial appearances of a situation – without the trouble of actually arguing the case. Bush’s party has a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is difficult to see what more the poor man has to do to avoid being described as “essentially a lame duck president.”

Two emails from readers about BBC coverage of African issues follow.

Karim Bakhtiar of the uncompromising new blog Nuke Labour writes:

Hi Natalie,

I came across the following example of BBC anti-private-sector pro-government pro-NGO bias.

Channel: BBC News 24

Programme: Reporters

Date: 12th June 2005

Time: 10:40 UK time

“Nomsa is HIV positive. Last year, feeling sick, she bought ARVs [Anti-retroviral drugs] from a private doctor, who didn’t have the correct combination of drugs in stock. Nomsa did not recover. Worse, by starting on the wrong course, she may have built up resistance to the drugs, making it harder to treat her”
…

“Nomsa is now at the same clinic as Prudence [the main subject of the report] run by the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières. Soon she’ll know if she’s responding to treatment or if she’s resistant to drugs, in which case she might not survive.

The Médecins Sans Frontières (or MSF) clinic is receiving more and more patients who are buying the wrong Anti-retrovirals from private doctors.

MSF believes this is happening because the government has not moved fast enough to provide free drugs to the huge HIV positive population.”

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent this:

On the BBC website, the issue of aid to Africa is straightforward. (“Enough payback for Iraq?”) It’s those knights on white chargers Blair and Brown against that nasty Mr Bush. The good guys want to wave a magic wand and cancel debt relief, thereby allowing Africans to build hundreds of new schools and hospitals. Mr Nasty is sitting in his counting house saying ‘bah, humbug’ to everything and condemning millions to premature death and misery.

In contrast, the British press have discussed in depth why the US’s policy to Africa is, in fact, both generous and much more realistic in tying aid to specific projects, ánd why debt relief may not be the best way forward. For example, Bronwen Maddox in the Times (July 8) (“Why it’s wrong to paint America as hard-hearted”) neatly explained why the US was “much more generous than its critics often credit” and why President Bush is constrained from backing Brown’s International Finance Facility because of the US constitution, which prohibits long term commitment to such projects.

The website has oodles of uncritical references to Brown and Blair’s demands, but can only parody the US’s efforts as the world’s biggest spender on African aid. This is how the “objective” assessment on the website about the US approach concludes:

“Bush treads his own path on Africa”

It has to be remembered that there is a lot less political support for foreign aid in the US Congress – unless it is to support political allies like Israel.

Many Republicans are deeply sceptical of the UN institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whom they suspect of inefficiency and corruption.

And with the growing fiscal deficit, many Democrats would argue that any spare cash should be spent on displaced US workers, not helping workers get jobs abroad.

And now that Mr Bush is essentially a lame-duck President, no longer facing re-election, he has even less clout with Congress, as both sides are positioning themselves for possible Presidential contests in 2008.

During the Cold War, US supported generous foreign aid, including the Marshall Plan, because it was seen as vital for US interests to strengthen its anti-communist allies.

Despite the war on terror, it is no longer clear that the US has the political will to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor countries.

LYNDA: “How come you don’t watch it?”

THE DOCTOR: “I didn’t pay my licence fee.”

LYNDA: “Wha-? You get executed for that!”

“Tory nuclear waste sites revealed”, says the BBC.

A list of 12 sites considered for storing nuclear waste by the last Tory government has been released under the Freedom of Information Act

I’m not one to say the Beeb must always accede to Conservative Central Office’s preference for the official name of their party, but count the number of times the word “Tory” occurs in this piece. Mention is made that “The current government is looking for a definite solution to nuclear waste storage, and will start from scratch” but we don’t discover what party the current government are. Here is more about that Tory list:

It was drawn up in the 1980s, but the plan to bury waste at the sites was abandoned following the landslide defeat of John Major’s government in 1997.

We might forget the size of Tony Blair’s majority in our excitement?

TORY POTENTIAL SITES

Means PLACES TO PUT NUCLEAR WASTE rather than marginal constituencies.

Nirex is emphasising that the released list is purely historical and when a decision is made on where to store nuclear waste, the Tory list would not become the starting point of a new exercise.

…

One of the Tory list sites in Essex, at the former Ministry of Defence facility at Potton island, is just a few kilometres from the centre of Southend.

…

And there has been speculation about Stanford in Norfolk, where the MoD owns land, which is also on the Tory list.

…

Bad Tories. Voting Tory makes you radioactive.

Hat tip – DumbJon.

UPDATE: Some poor innocents claim that the towns to be scorched by nuclear fire are selected by civil servants and scientists by criteria that are scarcely affected by what political party is in power.

No, no, it was Tories I tell you!

Fear them. They seek human women.

Take a look at this new blog, The American Expatriate. The author, Scott Callahan, is what it says on the box. He says his primary aim “is to document and counter the misinformation about America that regularly flows forth from the British media.”

Of interest to Beeb-watchers is this post about how the BBC has changed its tune about the release of John Kerry’s military records.

But the one I really liked was this one, about the nomination of Christopher Cox to the Securities & Exchange Commission. I like it for its textual analysis:

Note the constant use of the passive tense. The SEC “is expected to…” Expected by who? The BBC doesn’t say. Doubts have been raised. Who has these doubts? The BBC doesn’t say. Mr. Cox is “seen as” close to the finance industry. Seen by who? The BBC doesn’t say. Even when the passive voice is abandoned, the actors are vague and unknown. Anonymous “experts” say this and “some commentators” say that. Hell, search the internet long enough and you can find “some commentator” saying virtually anything.

And I like it because it provides a comparator:

…compare this article with the Beeb’s piece on previous SEC head William Donaldson when he took over in 2003. Note how almost the entire piece is given over to Donaldson’s own words, while in this recent piece quotations from Cox are comprised of a single, 6 word sentence fragment.

. I am happy to say that Scott Norvell’s article for the WSJ.com Opinion Journal, which mentioned this site and was discussed in this post, is now available to read online.

In other news, the BBC has completely reformed. All traces of bias have been swept away. In a spirit of sincere self-criticism for past errors the entire staff have all agreed to make over their worldly goods to Jeb Bush’s campaign fund and take up life as mendicant monks.

This may not be true. I haven’t been paying any attention to the news for the last few days so I wouldn’t know. If you have been paying attention, feel free to talk about it below.

or How the Children’s BBC Website Channels the Anti-Globalisation Lobby. Inspired by a comments debate here I typed in the word “trade” into the search box of the Children’s BBC Newsround site and took a look at what I got. Some of the results referred to illegal trade in animals or animal skins. I excluded these from consideration – perhaps prematurely.

My first significant result was “How fair is international trade?” – a lesson plan on the CBBC website provided by Christian Aid.

That’s three issues for debate before we even start. A lesson plan from Christian Aid on the BBC. A right little tranzi love-nest. Excuse me, why are the BBC doing lesson plans anyway? I must have missed the widespread public consultation that preceded the decision that a portion of your license fee was best spent giving a state-subsidised body market share in the lesson plan business. Tough luck on anyone in the private sector who thought that there might be an honest penny to be made providing resources for teachers. Never mind, anyone who wants to make a profit from education is obviously evil and best kept far from our little ones. Why, they might start saying “on the other hand” and contumaciously adding counter-arguments to the lesson plans that Christian Aid provides. At least we can trust the BBC not to do that. I’ll come to what changes the BBC does make to Christian Aid material later. For now, just bear in mind that the lesson plan includes this sentence:

Such companies can provide work and enrich a country’s economy – or they can exploit the workers with low pay and destroy the environment.

OK, so what else does this Christian Aid lesson stamped with the BBC imprimatur plan actually teach? It starts with an “icebreaker”:

Ask the class:

What do we know about the fairness of rules?
What are the risks if powerful people make up the rules for trade? Prompt: Rig them in their own favour, they behave unfairly.
How can we make sure the rules of trade are fair? Prompt: Let everyone get involved in making them, have a referee.

An exceptionally independent-minded child might wonder if the “powerful people” who rig the rules in their own favour might include governments or the referees their club appoints – but as any observer of playground dynamics knows, most children are not independent minded.

On to the next one. Fair Trade chocolate. It’s OK: an account of a cocoa-growers’ association. Two and a quarter centuries of economic theory make the reference in the opening sentence to a “fair price” controversial. Maybe one day the BBC will hire someone who is aware of this.

Could trade replace aid? Another lesson plan, this time from the Fairtrade foundation. I don’t have any blanket opposition to people using that wonderful capitalist spur to ethical behaviour, the brand name, to enable bodies like the Fairtrade foundation to get advantageous terms for producers and let consumers buy a feelgood factor with their coffee. But is there any good reason why the BBC always publishes (or perhaps commissions?) lesson plans written by bodies like the Fairtrade foundation and never by free-market think tanks, or indeed multi-national companies?

This plan is basically the same format as the Christian Aid one: get the little bleeders to prepare for a career as bureaucrats by writing some Rules. Do not get them to discuss why they or anyone else should assume the right to write Rules governing voluntary exchange between other people. After a diversion into Marx’s Labour Theory of Value (“The producers will get a price that reflects their effort”) the plan goes on to finish with that old teacher’s standby, the quotable number. We are told that someone from CAFOD says “Poor countries currently lose £500bn a year in unfair trade.” I was amused by the care taken to source the unimportant part of the quote (which fellow-tranzi said it to whom) compared to the blithe unconcern about the important part (how the figure was calculated and whether it is true).

My next result was “How Fair is International Trade?” Good heavens, a lesson plan from Christian Aid! So good they named it twice. The one I mentioned earlier dates from March 2005. This one carries the date September 2004. My energy ran out before I could establish whether there were any minor changes of wording but I can confirm that the background is white rather than blue and the incomprehensible picture of papier maché puppets is placed at the top rather than to the right.

What is Fair Trade? This tells you what its supporters think fair trade is and says famous people like it.

“Make Trade Fair has celebrity supporters such as Coldplay’s Chris Martin and U2’s Bono.”

Or, as the Daily Ablution described him, “the philosophe and future Nobel Laureate” Chris Martin. Why the BBC failed to mention the “theologian/ethicist Thom Yorke of Radiohead” is a matter between the Board of Governors and Mr Yorke’s publicist.

This article also features external links to Fairtrade and Make Trade Fair. Naturally there are no external links to any group failing to toe the party line. Internal links take you to the other BBC articles in the series, called “What is the World Trade Organisation?”, “What are transnational corporations?” etc. I had a go at them in my earlier Fair Trade 4 Kidz post. Back then I raged that in all the four articles I linked to there was literally half a sentence (from the transnational corporations one) saying that trade might be a good thing, and that was instantly quashed in the closing clause. The sentence I was referring to was:

Such companies can provide work and enrich a country’s economy – or some say they can exploit the workers with low pay and destroy the environment.

Yes, that’s right. It’s exactly the same wording as the sentence from the Christian Aid lesson plan except that the BBC, stern upholder of impartiality, added the words “some say.” I would like to know who copied whom. Did Christian Aid copy the Beeb, as the dates suggest? Or did the BBC lift a standard Approved Phrase from the Christian Aid website? Either way, the BBC is too close to a political organisation.

John Melbourne wrote regarding the Dr Who two-parter just aired, The Empty Child.

A two part edition has just finished showing on BBC 1 this Saturday.

On the 21 May edition, a group of feral children use the cover of an air raid to rob houses of food. The home we are shown inside has a lavish spread on the table, far more than could be fairly obtained using ration cards. Indeed, there is so much food that about a dozen children can be fed. The good Doctor, upon seeing this behaviour, observes “I see, practical Marxism in Action”.

There’s something odd about this.

Wartime Britain was supposed to be the epitome of socialist planning in action. Rationing made sure that everyone got fair shares – egalitarianism in action. Of course all systems are abused, but black marketeers were punished if they were caught. Let’s assume for the writer’s benefit that this particular family is a “deserving” victim. If the children repeat their stealing on other days they must inevitably rob from families who will be “undeserving”. Does the writer want us to think that feral children have a right to steal?

We learn little of why the children are living like this. One of them starts a story about his evacuation experience: “there was a man…”, but stops. My thought was that the writer wanted me to assume it was child sex abuse but couldn’t actually put that in. Leading the group, we have Nancy, our heroine, because she helps others less fortunate than herself. At the end, we learn that she was the teenage mum for the dead boy, who is the title character. Good victim points here: homeless, starving, orphaned, teenage-mum, lost her child and female role model.

Oddly, all the children are dressed for an audition in Enid Blyton’s Famous 5 or else they just left their schools in uniform. No ingrained dirt, raggedy clothes or strong cockney accents spoil this delightful scene – the best mannered group of feral children you are ever likely to meet. Perhaps the makers thought that some “rougher” children might not gain our sympathy.

In the second episode, the Doctor saves the day as usual and makes a parting request to the blitz era Londoners who owe him their lives: “… and don’t forget to create the Welfare State.” Odd that he didn’t ask them to nationalise the utilities, the telephone service or the British car industry etc. Surely that is practical Marxism in action?

Despite travelling in time, the Doctor seems to have acquired an early twenty first century left-liberal perspective on politics. Knowing the future as he does, he could have made some “improvements” to our own day:

Dr Who: “and don’t use DDT to eradicate Malaria in Europe, let alone Africa.”

Dr Who: “and don’t let Jews emigrate to Palestine”.

Perhaps that would be too far even for the BBC.

Once upon a time, the BBC would never have permitted politics to enter into a children’s TV show. Now they permit glib ahistorical asides to pander to their own views. When the writer includes remarks referring to Marx and the Welfare state, he knows that no child will understand what they are. The only purpose is to link the ideas with the kudos possessed by the character of Dr Who. Given the millions of people who have died in the failed Marxist experiments of USSR, China, Cambodia, and so on, and the lack of any Marxist state that even approaches a decent human rights record, one would have thought that Marx would be a slightly controversial choice and maybe not the first benevolent historical figure to come to mind. The BBC ought to have questioned the merit of putting a partisan statement concerning Marx into the mouth of a children’s hero.

Good of the BBC to rescue Marx from the scrap-heap of history.

Once again a cheap shot from the scriptwriter has the effect of making adult viewers who a second earlier were rigid with terror, wishing they could join their offspring behind the sofa, suddenly slump, look at each other and say “huh?” in voices conveying disappointment and diminishing suprise.

Just imagine the outrage if one of these little asides had been directed the other way. “Oh, by the way,” says the Doctor, “that welfare state stuff is a bad idea. You end up with loads more fifteen year old mothers…”

Earlier B-BBC Dr Who posts here and here.