Author Archives: Natalie

As Fidel Castro prepares to give his fiefdom to his brother in true feudal fashion, the BBC records the event thus: End of Castro’s half-century in power and Castro: Profile of the great survivor. It fair enough to call Castro a survivor when referring to the many American assassination attempts against him (mind you it might have been nice to have had a link back to the BBC’s own story describing credible reports that Castro returned the favour, in his case successfully), but I am a little tired of hearing him lauded for “outlasting” nine American presidents as if he were a heavyweight champion beating off challengers. Go Fidel! Your staying power really showed up those feeble Americans, with their wimpy term limits and free elections.

While thinking about such things, I amused myself by searching the BBC website for combinations of “Cuba”, “election” and “candidate”. Here are some of the reports I found:

Castro nominated for Cuban seat dates from December last year. It burbles happily away about nomination and re-election as if it were talking about a proper election where those procedures might actually give a result contrary to the wishes of those currently in power: “Cuban President Fidel Castro has been nominated as a candidate for a seat in the next National Assembly – indicating he may still hope to return to power. Mr Castro, 81, must be re-elected to the assembly if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” That brave old guy, submitting himself to the electorate… no, wait, it’s Cuba.

That story follows the tone set a month earlier in this piece: Cuba prepares for elections. It says, “But he will have to be re-elected to the national parliament if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” The tension, the tension!

A story from the “election” of January 2003 speaks of “electing 609 pro-government candidates who ran unopposed”. Someone truly on a mission to explain might have pointed that the lack of opposition was because only pro-government candidates are permitted to run, rather than leaving open the possibility that they were just loved so universally that no one wants to stand against them.

However I did find a BBC story about the Cuban elections that makes the true situation quite clear: “The Cuban government is reporting a 98 turnout for the the country’s elections – even athough there was no choice of candidates.” Pity it was ten years old.

The Weekly Standard (quoting the Jerusalem Post, but that link is not working for me) reports that:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as “great national leaders.”

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, the Associated Press’s former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as “an outrage” and “beyond belief.”

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh’s men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.

The BBC issued a statement Friday acknowledging that “the scripting of this phrase was imprecise.”

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Just a reminder that the scripting of this phrase imprecisely equated a terrorist hosted by the Syrians with a democratic leader murdered by the Syrians.

according to the Times.
Bear in mind that the trial is still continuing. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that. In any case the most damaging aspect of this story to the BBC is not the paintballing. The worst that happened there is that they were fooled. No, the most shocking thing is this:

Nasreen Suleaman, a researcher on the programme, told the court that Mr Hamid, 50, contacted her after the July 2005 attack and told her of his association with the bombers. But she said that she felt no obligation to contact the police with this information. Ms Suleaman said that she informed senior BBC managers but was not told to contact the police.

Sorry that I haven’t been posting for a while. Unfortunately my circumstances aren’t likely to change any time soon, so it is not a good idea to write to me with examples of BBC bias for the present. The odds of me posting your observation, however scandalous it is, are small. Best use the comments instead.

That said, here I am today, home unexpectedly. And Fausta writes, “If you guys thought the Beeb’s adoration of Che in English was bad, wait until you see it in Spanish” – see this post on Fausta’s blog.

UPDATE FROM TELFORD: More appalling hagiographies of Che (in addition to the one we posted on recently) from the BBC this week here, here and here (the last includes a sentence from his critics, which makes it unusually balanced by the BBC’s standards) (via Matthew in comments).

You may recall that this post discussed the pandering to conspiracy theorists in a linked series of Childrens’ BBC “guides” to the attacks of September 11 2001. They were brought to our attention by commenter “Holiday in Hamastan”. The guides talked as if it were only the US who believed that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks. Both this CBBC article and others in the series have now been significantly changed.

David Preiser was among those who complained. He writes:

Looks like a few people besides myself complained about the brainwashing attempt by the BBC. They made significant alterations to both this page and the “Who did it” page. Most significantly, I think, they mention Bin Laden’s celebratory video, which was a main point in my complaint.

I’m glad they made these changes. They are no longer attempting to indoctrinate British children into believing sick conspiracy theories about a mass murder, one in which 30 people from my street were killed in a pretty horrible way. I’m not even going to ask about the beliefs of whoever wrote/edit the original piece. One has to assume they were at least partial to the sick conspiracy theories in order to write something like that. One hopes at least that particular BBC employee got some enlightenment on the matter.

Trolls take note – some people actually do other things besides whinging about BBC bias. And it didn’t take all that long. I – and many others, I’m sure – made a logical argument, and a significant improvement was made.

So far as I can see, however, a similar formulation (“The US is sure that Bin Laden caused the terror attacks”) is still to be read on this page on Osama bin Laden. This page also contains a particularly offensive sentence that was discussed here by Not A Sheep, namely:

He [Osama bin Laden] also dislikes America because he thinks the US helped enemies of his religion – the Israeli Jews – during wars in the Middle East.

I seem to recall reading this sentence in one of the 9/11 CBBC pages as well, and it was discussed in comments to the earlier post, but I can’t see it there now. It should be deleted wherever it occurs. It implicitly accepts that Israeli Jews are enemies of the Islamic religion.

UPDATE 28 JUNE: David Preiser has reported that his and other complaints have borne fruit: the wording of this story has now been improved.

– several links about BBC coverage of terrorism and related issues.

Ritter comments:

Something missing here?

‘Honour killing’ relatives guilty [BBC story on the murder of Banaz Mahmod]

Context maybe? What was the killer(s) motive? The BBC know, but are unable to tell us.

Anyway, what’s missing? Oh, here it is:

Father guilty of daughter’s “honour killing” [Reuters story on the same murder]

“Her family decided to kill her because they believed the relationship had brought the dishonour as Suleimani was an Iranian Kurd and not a strict Muslim”

BBC News. Half the story.

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.

Impersonation. Some commenters are signing off with the names or nicknames of others in order to deceive. It may have started as a joke but this practice degrades debate. Please be warned that commenters impersonating others may be banned without notice.

You know that BBC story that described Ahmadinejad as a “trenchant critic” of Israel? It now says… “outspoken critic.”

Hat tip: Biodegradable (and the ever-wonderful News Sniffer.)

Biodegradable provided a list of others described as outspoken critics by the BBC. And Byran pointed out that, “they were picking so delicately over the phrase that they didn’t notice it should be an outspoken critic.”

What’s your favourite word?

An anonymous reader emailed me this link and added simply, “Read the question at the bottom.”

Huh? I mean huh? Where did that come from?

UPDATE: The question at the bottom has now disappeared. (Hat tip: Nick Reynolds of the BBC. Even he thought it was “remarkably silly”.)

If you have come late to this party and want to know what the question was, Bishop Hill recorded it for posterity:

Should City bankers donate a proportion of their fortunes to causes like the Royal Festival Hall? Let us know what you think using the form below.

The earlier article was and still is simply about the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall, without any mention of City bankers. The question came out of the blue and has now disappeared back into the blue – without, as Bryan comments, “explanation, apology or updating of the article.” The Last Updated field still says 9 June.