Author Archives: Natalie

Norman Geras writes:

…Marr presented Blair as now going for the humanitarian dimension of the Iraq intervention because of how things had turned out with WMD and as though he had just discovered it. This is becoming one of the major components in the anti-war party’s current mythology. But that’s what it is: mythology. Blair stated the humanitarian argument plain as day, albeit as subsidiary.

Incidentally, there is no such thing as trespass in the noble sport of Beeb hunting. On the contrary. Extra spears always welcome.

One is wielded by Brian Micklethwait iin this Samizdata post. Actually, I think the likeliest explanation for this one is that offered by Dr Johnson when asked why he defined ‘pastern’ as the kneee of a horse. “Ignorance, Madam. Pure ignorance.” The writer just didn’t know what “rally” meant. Something to do with Indianopolis, innit?

I got this one from the comments to the post below. Many, including me, were surprised to note that the audience of Radio 4’s tranzi flagship Today apparently contains a goodly proportion of believers in the right to armed home defence. Laban Tall writes about the way the BBC dealt with this distasteful result.

with some of your emails in the next few days.

, visiting family and letting my poor nerves recover from the stress of Beeb-watching. But I did scribble this one down specially for B-BBC. On 31st Dec, the Ceefax news index on page 102 said “122- Israeli troops shoot protestors.” Sounds bad, said I, thinking about the deaths or injuries implied by the word “shoot”, and grimly set the remote to page 122. It turned out that the only things shot were tear gas and rubber bullets. No injuries, let alone deaths, were mentioned. I assume that rubber bullets and (I think) tear gas canisters are usually dispensed by pulling a trigger and hence the use of the verb “to shoot” may be literally correct. But tell me, given the way the English language is used in practice, do you think the headline accurately reflects the contents of the story?

and it’s an embarrassment for Israel, says the BBC:

…the BBC’s Jill McGivering, in Jerusalem, says the incident is sure to cause some embarrassment for the Israelis.

Huh? Why Israel? Are the Egyptians likely to berate the Israelis for not having a bunch of non-Muslim security goons crawling over one of Islam’s most holy shrines? Are the Egyptians likely to demand that Israel make its control over Jerusalem more strongly felt?

It’s an embarrassment all right. But not for the Israelis.

There are some funny things happening on Blogger.

The BBC states it will not publish comments of an offensive or inflammatory nature on its websites. I am fairly sure that an email calling, let us say, for the execution for treason of George Galloway would never appear, even though plenty of people have opined that he should be strung up. However this post from Black Triangle gives an insight into what does and does not immediately strike the BBC as offensive.

There are also some wise words on stealth editing.

UPDATE: Looks like me and Jackie D were posting simultaneously. Great minds think alike, and all that. I’ll leave this post up as evidence that we abjure stealth editing on this blog. (Except for misplaced apostrophes, spelling mistakes and jokes we only think of later.)

Read Melanie Phillips on an exchange between John Humphrys and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s top diplomat in Iraq.

Humphrys: ‘Doesn’t that rather weaken the argument for having gone to war in the first place? If he didn’t have support in the Arab world; if he didn’t have (as we must assume in the absence of any evidence that he didn’t have WMD)…’

Eh? What an astonishing series of non sequiturs! Saddam was a threat because he wanted to overthrow his neighbours, not because he was always round there watching a video with them. He had regional ambitions to rule the Arab world. By definition that would imply the Arab world wouldn’t have been too keen on him. And as for the ‘assumption’ that because WMD haven’t been found, they never existed — for heaven’s sake, is there absolutely no-one in the whole of the BBC’s editorial hierarchy who can tell Humphrys that this argument, which he loses no opportunity to make, is simply idiotic? Or do they all share this obsessional delusion?

is delineating the BBC worldview. You can help the good work.

kept a minute by minute watch on the breaking news of Saddam’s capture. He spotted some interesting editing:

(Obliged to correct myself again – at 3.45 PM.) The BBC video I’ve linked to now no longer shows the beginning of the Bremer press conference, but goes straight to the pictures of Saddam undergoing medical examination. Now, why? It couldn’t be that ‘Ladies and gentlemen – we got him!’, followed by jubilant applause, was somehow not kosher by them? It surely couldn’t.

There’s also mention of the BBC at the bottom of this post about Noam Chomsky.