Author Archives: Natalie

(the blog, not the news) is on a roll. In these three posts the author examines BBC reports from one of their stringers in Iraq, Fadil al-Badrani. He is not without sympathy:

Iraqis working with the foreign news media are in grave danger — unless, that is, they report stories in a manner to the liking of the insurgents and terrorists. For example, Iraqi journalists sometimes get tips on upcoming atrocities so they can be on the scene and tell the world about the chaos and misery that have engulfed the country since the Americans arrived. The more frightening the images and story, the better it is for the reporter’s well-being. All this is especially true for a stringer working in a town like Fallujah — a stringer like Fadil al-Badrani.

Nonetheless he wants highter standards from the BBC than this:

On Monday, Newsnight interviewed Fadil al-Badrani who, we were told, lives in central Fallujah. We were not told Mr al-Badrani’s occupation. Nor were we told how the BBC managed to find him and arrange a telephone interview. The viewer was left with the impression that Mr al-Badrani was merely an unfortunate civilian trapped in the city. He described an apocalyptic scene. The Americans have turned Fallujah into “hell,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr al-Badrani was back on the telephone — this time identified as an Iraqi journalist.

(Via Blithering Bunny and LGF.)

A certain amount of illness in our household kept me from recording this when it happened, but I would like to say it now. Last Thursday, November 11th, I caught the tail end of the six o’clock news on Radio 4. I heard a report from Fallujah. To my surprise the report made explicit (a) that some insurgents had fired from a mosque; (b) that a group of US marines had voluntarily given away their own position in order to warn some civilians of danger; (c) that as a result one of the soldiers was wounded; and, finally, described the action of a marine lieutenant in attempting to rescue the wounded man despite having already had a shot bounce off his helmet as “an incredible feat of heroism.” The lieutenant was killed.

I’m not saying that this report was at all typical. This post from Siflay Hraka describes what I’d say is a more representative style of reporting from Fallujah. But in fairness to the BBC I would like to note that it happened. Unfortunately I did not catch the reporter’s name.

of L’Ombre de l’Olivier has written about the BBC’s description of the film “Submission”, the final and fatal work of murdered film-maker Theo Van Gogh.

When a modern artist or filmaker makes a work criticising Christianity or capitalism the BBC usually goes out of its way to explain the rationale for its provocativeness.

A reader writes:

Wanted to draw your attention to another case of BBC bias on the Today Programme this morning. [Monday 8 November] In an interview with the Director of OFFA, Sir Martin Harris, the BBC presenter attacked OFFA from a left-wing point of view. No mention at all was made of the argument that favouring state school pupils might lead to a lowering of standards. The only criticism from the right was a mention that Chris Patten and Michael Beloff had said that this was a crude form of social engineering; note the implied position that Oxford is being elitist – others have made the same criticism of OFFA, but curiously were not mentioned. A transcript of the presenter’s questions is below. You can see how many questions were left wing attacks, compared with the one right wing criticism. Note that Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Michael Beloff, President of Trinity College, Oxford, also appeared on the programme later on, and the same presenter let them say what they wanted to say.

Here are the presenter’s questions:

“You’ve said that you hope universities can be persuaded to spend £200 million a year on bursaries. Will that be enough to encourage a broader spread of admissions?”

“Wouldn’t it make more of a difference if you could actually control admissions? You can’t do that can you, you do have limited powers to control these bursaries but you’ve already been criticised because you don’t have enough powers.”

“But is there any real onus on the universities to increase and broaden the spread of admissions because if you can’t actually affect the admissions policy, if you can’t put quotas, for example, down, what is there to make the universities do what they should?”

“Well, do they, though?” [in response to Sir Martin’s point that universities respond to incentives and challenges]

“But how do you respond to the criticism that you’ve faced already so far. It’s like you’re damned before you even begin. For example, Michael Beloff, President of Trinity College Oxford, and Chris Patten, the new Chancellor of Oxford University, they say that this type of meddling is a shoddy attempt by the Government at social engineering”.

“Are you prepared to impose fines and at what point will you make that decision?”

“You’re sounding very reasonable [Sir Martin’s point that disadvantaged students will have a better change of getting to university], but that’s exactly why some people have criticised a softly softly approach, and they would like somebody like you to come down hard on the universities and say ‘you have to take in a certain number of students from poorer backgrounds.’”

“Are you a little too close, though, to the institutions that you’re supposed to be monitoring? You are a former Vice-Chancellor of the leading Russell Group universities.”

“You won’t find it too hard to impose your restrictions on your former colleagues?”

It’s a mistake to concentrate only on the answers given in an interview. The questions asked are often just as revealing. – NS

:

BBC are determined to say Bush’s inevitable screwup in Iraq will cause high oil prices.

Markets think differently

of Instapundit fame has up a column in the Guardian that makes some good points and links to this blog. (A good point in itself, we always think.) Here’s a quote:

Those of you across the Atlantic may wish to take a lesson from this. As the BBC’s atrocious handling of the Gilligan affair – and, indeed, its war coverage generally – illustrates, media bias is hardly limited to the United States. In fact, it’s probably stronger elsewhere, and less noted, because there are fewer alternatives. Most countries have nothing like American-style talk radio, for example, because it poses far too great a threat to elites to be permitted. Still, British blogs like Samizdata, Biased BBC, Harry’s Place and Normblog are providing alternative voices. Since I don’t think that elite media have done a very good job during the decades of their dominance, I look forward to seeing alternative media make a difference around the world.

Seems OK. As so often when the BBC is concentrating it is pretty good, it’s the off-the-cuff remarks that let it down. I haven’t seen enough to make any better assessment than that. More interesting by far than the TV was this real-time vote counting thingy that clocked up the votes as Bush took Florida. This similar doodad for Ohio says that Bush is likely to take that state, too – and hence the US.

The BBC seemed slow to mention developing results within crucial states although millions followed the count via Drudge or by clicking on the state concerned on the BBC’s own map. To be fair, the other channels – even Fox (on the internet) – were just as cautious, and after the too-early call for Gore in 2000 maybe better safe than sorry.

ADDED LATER: Any hopes I might have had of posting the above in the wee small hours and reporting on the news as it happens were dashed by the fact that several million other Blogger users were trying to do the same.

Blithering Bunny points out some politically parochial comments by Peter Jay, former Economics Editor of the BBC. Can he really think that “…there are for all practical purposes no conservative ‘have-nots.'”? Or that “Conservatism is not and can never be a philosophy”? Given Jay’s eminence I would have thought better of him. The title of his review, which I stole for this post, would apply to its writer.

I’m trying to work out if the fact that Jay used to be married to a Prime Minister’s daughter who is now Baroness Jay is relevant. Actually, that is a fib. I’m really trying to work out something funny but not too mean to say about it – and failing.

The EU Serf writes:

As an overseas Brit, I watch BBC World from time to time. On Sunday I was watching the programme Dateline London, which invites journalists, usually foreigners, to give their views on events in the news. The line up for Sunday was as follows

• Lauren Booth, Mail on Sunday
• Patrick Tyler, New York Times
• Jean Pierre Langellier, Le Monde
• Tererai Karimakwenda, SW Radio Africa

With the exception of Tererai, their positions on the war in Iraq were obvious before they opened their mouths. Funnily enough, he was the only one with anything worthwhile to say, though he turned out to be against the war as well, his arguments were at least grown up, unlike the name calling that the majority of the media has descended to.

So far though nothing too distressing to report until this:

One of the group, I think it was Lauren Booth suddenly challenged the word insurgent, was it too condemning a word. Now I understand why a person may dislike the word terrorist in some circumstances, it is after all a political word, whichever side of the argument it may be. But insurgent, I couldn’t believe my ears. I had been thinking that it was an acceptable term for everyone, far better than militant and non condemning unlike terrorist. The word is totally neutral, a technical military term. According to the dictionary:

Insurgent:

1) One who rebels against established authority.

2) A member of a political party who rebels against the policies and decisions of the party.

Absolutely nothing to discuss, but discuss they did, without any interference from the host.

I should have known better, I gave up watching this programme because of the obsession with Iraq and the opportunity the story gives to condemn the USA, GW Bush and the west in general. When there is so much else happening in the world, you would think they could give it a rest now and again.

My fellow-poster on Samizdata, Paul Marks, is a fairly anti-war libertarian who opposes neocon views. (He knows what he is opposing and does not use “neocon” as a catch-all term of abuse.) Despite his own opposition this is some of what he had to say about yesterday’s BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares”:

The program claimed that Soviet support for terrorist groups was another ‘myth’ indeed that the wise CIA rejected this ‘myth’ because they know it was originally based on CIA lies about the the Soviet Union. The trouble is that the Soviet Union DID support terrorist groups. The Marxist ones (including some in the Middle East as well as east Asia, Europe, and Latin America) were natural targets for Soviet support, and support them it did. The basic point of the Soviet Union was to spread Marxism all over the world – oh sorry this is another ‘neocon myth’.

On the basis of the above if The Power of Nightmares claims that ‘neocons’ have made up a ‘myth’ about an international network of Islamic terrorist network, I will take it as an indication that such a network does indeed exist. Do not laugh. The program was already laying the ground work for claiming that no such network exists – just a few isolated individuals. And that these individuals are the way they are because of the wicked United States. For example the United States corrupted Egypt – under President Sadat the economy was controlled by a “handful of millionaires”. The basic fact that Egypt was (and is) a state dominated economy and that Sadat only allowed a bit of private enterprise round the edge was utterly ignored.

“But” the defenders of the program will cry “The Power of Nightmares contained lots of interviews with neocons and other people who would defend all of what you say above”. So it did, but it did not allow any of these people to present the evidence for what they said – it allowed them to say something and then (at once) treated what they said as utterly absurd. The program (and I suspect the whole series) has an agenda – and that agenda is to spread lies. Many of them (although not the one about Sadat) may be nice lies for libertarians and traditional American Conservatives to hear, but they remain lies. And the people who were interviewed by the program, in order to be held up to contempt, would have better advised to say “no I will not be interviewed by you, because you are from the BBC and will leave out any facts you do not like”.

Boldface type added by me because I noticed exactly the same pattern. A thirty-second interview would immediately be followed by the commentator saying, often without evidence but with a tone implying that this was undisputed fact, that whatever the interviewee had said was rubbish. Read the whole post, including the comments by John Thacker.