Way back in December 2014 we posted the below about the BBC and Phil Shiner…I see no reason to change anything…..it more than stands the test of time which is more than Shiner and the BBC do…..Time for Lord Hall to apologise for all the slurs and traumas he has helped put British troops through.
If like me you have been listening or watching the BBC for the last few years and hearing their coverage of the alleged abuse of Iraqis or Afghans by British troops you will know that the BBC has given itself over to the likes of lawyer Phil Shiner and his extraordinary tales, his own very singular version of the truth.
Today the BBC must be absolutely gutted as the Al Sweady inquiry clears, as expected, British troops of allegations they tortured and killed prisoners.
The BBC has put a lot of work into helping Shiner smear the Army’s reputation and put a great many soldiers through the wringer for so many years.
In 2008 the BBC’s Panorama produced a programme, On Whose Orders?, that claimed to investigate the allegations….here is what one viewer thought of the programme:
Is it just me or do these left wing lobbyists and solicitors actually work with, or very close with the BBC , they have a voice out of all proportion and seem to be able to spout whatever bollox they like on the BBC, I swear they should give Shami Chakrabati her own show, for someone who’s never been elected as any kind of public official, she seems to get more airtime than the PM!
Is it any co-incidence that her sister works for the beeb?
What I’m getting at is do these far left lawyers aproach the bbc with program ideas?
Make no mistake , this was phil shiners program, the bbc only tried to distance themselves from him at the end because of all the critisism they’d recieved in all the major newspapers , that’s the reason they emphisised the program was still being made in the newspaper reports, to do some last minute distancing from phil shiner.
The Sun newspaper wasn’t impressed:
Beeb ‘slurs’ on Iraq heroes
The BBC were initially blocked from broadcasting the programme but went to court to force the issue so insistent were they about finding out the ‘truth’ of the matter…here they are boasting of their ‘victory’:
Panorama’s legal victory
Panorama has won an important victory in the High Court against the Ministry of Defence which was attempting to prevent the broadcast of details of alleged abuse by soldiers in Iraq.
The Panorama programme ended with a bit of a disclaimer…as set out in the web report:
Panorama has seen no proof that prisoners died at the hands of their captors and concludes that the case being brought by solicitors Phil Shiner and Martyn Day represents the most extreme interpretation of a troubling but confusing incident. They are asking for the bodies to be disinterred and evidence to be handed to Scotland Yard.
Despite that dsitinct lack of proof for the next 5 years the BBC continued to bombard us with the allegations in a manner that suggested there was far more substance to them than there was…as we now know…they being the result of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hatred….you can wonder whether the judge was talking about the Iraqis, Shiner, the BBC or all three of them.
The BBC was very proud of its Panorama programme stating this on the announcement of the inquiry:
New inquiry into British army abuse in Iraq vindicates Panorama
Ironically the first line of this pyrrhic victory was this:
Time can make a world of difference in an emotive, ongoing story.
The BBC goes on to suggest:
In revisiting these allegations through public inquiries, the entire system of military justice will inevitably be called into question.
Well I imagine military justice has been vindicated…the RMP said there was no case…and there was no case….it was clearly a case of highly suspect allegations being encouraged by ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers backed up by a media organisation that had its fingers badly burnt as it was caught lying about the Iraq War Dossier and has been seeking to exact revenge ever since.
As the BBC was so clearly ready to congratulate itself on firstly getting its ‘legal victory’ and then slapping itself on the back when it thought itself ‘vindicated’ perhaps it should now make a very large apology to the Public it so badly misled and not least the soldiers it helped pillory and their families who have all had to suffer these allegations for so long.
Con Coughlin at the Telegraph is of the same mind:
Al Sweady inquiry: The British Army deserves a full apology from the BBC
Looking back, it is amazing just how many people were prepared to believe the accusations that the British Army routinely tortured detainees.
Of course it was the BBC and its fellow travellers on the Left who made the most of accusations that British soldiers had committed what amounted to war crimes following a three-hour battle with Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq in May 2004. Rather than praising the British soldiers for their undoubted heroism in tackling the Shia-dominated Mehdi Army in a fierce battle that could have gone either way, the BBC preferred to concentrate its considerable resources on Iraqi claims that some of the captured insurgents had been killed in cold blood, while others had been subjected to torture.
It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the Army’s accusers, and all those at the BBC and elsewhere who were credulous, or naive, enough to believe them. But now that the truth is out, perhaps those responsible for making this programme, and who gave an air of credibility to the claims, would now like to issue a fulsome apology to the British Armed Forces for their own grave errors of judgment.
They could even make a new programme explaining why they got the story so horribly wrong in the first place. Now, that really would be a first.
More seriously, though, Tony Hall, who as the BBC’s director-general has overall responsibility for the corporation’s current affairs output (in a previous life he was in charge of BBC news and current affairs), should undertake an urgent investigation of his own to find out how Panorama got it so badly wrong.