“No one should expect journalists to be as high-minded as Nick Davies. Theirs is -or should be -a murky, occasionally mucky, job done by people short on scruples and long on curiosity, suspicious of everything and everybody, and of favours most of all.”     Daily Telegraph

Wonder what attracted the BBC to their new business editor:

BBC business editor Ahmed and links to top PR firm [ and New Labour]

When the BBC appointed a successor to its business editor Robert Peston, it was, no doubt, looking for someone less contentious.

But just four months into the job and already his replacement, Kamal Ahmed, has found himself potentially in breach of the broadcaster’s editorial guidelines governing impartiality.

For Ahmed, who moved from the Sunday Telegraph in March, is pictured in the July issue of Vanity Fair alongside Michael Hayman and Nick Giles, co-founders of business PR  consultancy Seven Hills, in an advertorial for the firm.

In his exposé Flat Earth News, Nick Davies accused Ahmed of being too close to Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell and a New Labour mouthpiece.

Has Ahmed now let himself get too close to the PR industry?

From 2007:

Observer exec denies he helped ‘sex up’ Campbell’s dodgy dossier amid a spat with the Guardianistas

Ahmed defended himself in 2008 …but The Independent didn’t seem too convinced:

Ahmed bites back

What Nick Davies did write in his account of The Observer under former editor Roger Alton was damning. Alton was pictured as politically naive, more interested in sport and women than Westminster, while Ahmed was out of his depth after being made The Observer’s political editor in 2000 despite having no significant experience of the Commons. Davies described how Ahmed struggled during his first month in the role and, after running a number of incorrect stories, even offered to resign. It was in this environment of political turmoil, Davies claimed, that Ahmed latched on to Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. As a result, Observer readers were “slowly soaked in disinformation” as Ahmed became a “conduit for government announcements”. When The Observer supported the decision to invade Iraq, Davies recounted how colleagues feared Ahmed had crossed the line between dispassionate journalist and government aide.

“…….some people, a tiny minority, may have misconstrued that as being because I was too close to Number Ten.”

In fact, senior staff at The Observer did approach Ahmed with their concerns. One says he did believe Ahmed had become too close to Campbell, and told him so. “Kamal would go around calling himself ‘Campbell Ahmed’,” he recalls. “A joke’s a joke, but at the same time, never a truer word was said.” And according to one political reporter, Ahmed’s one-to-one with Campbell on that flight and his two trips to Chequers to interview the Prime Minister were more unusual than he would like to admit.

This is from a review of Nick Davies’ book setting out the main points learned from it:

“No one should expect journalists to be as high-minded as Nick Davies. Theirs is -or should be -a murky, occasionally mucky, job done by people short on scruples and long on curiosity, suspicious of everything and everybody, and of favours most of all.”     Daily Telegraph

Flat Earth News –Nick Davies –Summary contents

The Workers

The essential ingredients for the concoction of all Flat Earth news —an unreliable statement created by outsiders, usually for their own commercial or political benefit, injected via a wire agency into  of the media through which it then circulates around the whole body of global communication. And, most important, at every stage, as it passes through the hands of all those journalists into all those outlets, nobody checks it.  Not enough workers, too little time, wrong priorities.

The Suppliers

Two routes: Press Association and PR. PA used without checking. PA only aim to accurately report was said.  UK has more PR people than journos. Commercial, Political, Special interest & NGO.  Result a world-wide, homogenised set of stories. E.g. Google News 14,000stories were actually 24 news events

Rules of Production

1. Run cheap stories, 2. Select safe facts, 3. Avoid the electric fence (e.g. special interest attacks), 4. Select safe ideas (flow with the consensus), 5. Always give both sides of the story, 6. Give them what they want, 7. Bias against truth (everything reduce to events –thus missing the chronic and slow burn problems), 8. Give them what they want to believe in (confirmation bias), 9. Go with the moral panic, 10. Ninja Turtle syndrome (follow what everybody else is following)

• OK written pre Twitter -so presumably much worse now
• Get news out FAST
• Ultimately the real product needs to match the story. You can’t just invent a myth and sustain it

Those last three points resonate greatly….Twitter adding so much more to BBC bias whilst their desperation to get ‘news’ out fast lays them open to all sorts of ‘mistakes’, many of them ones that they are happy to accept…. such as their claim that Israel breached its ceasefire yesterday, reported as fact but probably not true……which brings us to inventing myths….the BBC is actually very good at sustaining the myths it invents, from Israel the war criminal, to climate change and the peaceful nature of Islam.

Thanks to jackde for linking to the below where it is explained how Hamas plan to take advantage of Israeli rules of engagement which limit their use of force due to the presence of civilians when they return fire on Hamas, any resultant civilian casualties will help to slow the Israelis down as they have to treat them, and the destruction of homes will increase hatred towards Israel and mobilise support for Hamas :

Captured Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Human Shields

IDF forces in the Gaza Strip found a Hamas manual on “Urban Warfare,” which belonged to the Shuja’iya Brigade of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. The manual explains how the civilian population can be used against IDF forces and reveals that Hamas knows the IDF is committed to minimizing harm to civilians.

In a portion entitled “Limiting the Use of Weapons,” the manual explains that:

The soldiers and commanders (of the IDF) must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and [destruction of] civilian facilities. It is difficult for them to get the most use out of their firearms, especially of supporting fire [e.g. artillery].

Clearly Hamas knows the IDF will limit its use of weapons in order to avoid harming civilians, including refraining from using larger firepower to support for infantry.

The manual goes on to explain that the “presence of civilians are pockets of resistance” that cause three major problems for advancing troops:

(1) Problems with opening fire
(2) Problems in controlling the civilian population during operations and afterward
(3) Assurance of supplying medical care to civilians who need it

Lastly, the manual discusses the benefits for Hamas when civilian homes are destroyed:

The destruction of civilian homes: This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers [the IDF] and increases their gathering [support] around the city defenders (resistance forces[i.e. Hamas]).

It is clear that Hamas actually desires the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, knowing it will increase hatred for the IDF and support their fighters.

The above Tweet from Hamas is interesting…it shows that not only do they target civilians but that they relish inflicting terror and fear upon them.

No doubt the UN will be making some strong statements about such war crimes and the BBC will be buttonholing Cameron and asking him if he believes these are war crimes.

Meanwhile the BBC has been busy broadcasting pure Hamas propaganda all day, not based upon anything the BBC could actually prove but on the reliable information provided by Hamas itself, and of course it helps that the BBC journos are only hearing what they want to hear.

What you don’t hear emphasised by the BBC is that Hamas have rejected the ceasefire, what you do hear, headlining the news bulletins, is that Israel has breached it…this is from the New York Times:

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the dominant faction in Gaza, said it would not observe the truce, which he disparaged as a media exercise, and he warned residents to exercise caution when they ventured outside. “The unilateral cease-fire announced by Israel is an attempt to divert attention from Israeli massacres,” he said.

You also don’t hear that Israel denies breaching the ceasefire as the NYT tells us:

Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza, said that the strike on the house in Shati took place several minutes after the announced start of the cease-fire, but one Israeli official from the army agency that controls coordination with Gaza told Israel Radio that the strike took place just before the cease-fire began.

Here is the BBC version….note the missing report that Hamas have rejected the ceasefire whilst reporting ‘Israeli massacres‘…

Violation of truce?

Hamas responded to the truce with suspicion, accusing the IDF of trying to “divert the attention from Israeli massacres”.

Palestinian health officials claim Israel carried out an air strike on a refugee camp inside Gaza City just minutes after the ceasefire began.

BBC correspondents there said they heard the explosion and saw a house that had been destroyed in the attack.

The BBC gave a quick mention that about 10 rockets had been fired into Israel….but there is no indication of when they were fired………The Jerusalem Post tells us:

During Israel’s unilateral cease-fire, dozens of rockets fired from Gaza

So Israel may or may not have bombed a house just before or just after the ceasefire was supposed to have begun but the BBC has whipped this up into a major incident….but strangely ignores Hamas stating that it will not take part in the ceasefire and hides the truth about Hamas rockets being fired during the ceasefire.

On Shelagh Fogarty’s show the news bulletin headlined with Israel ‘breaking the truce’…as claimed by Palestinians with Martin Patience suggesting a bomb strike was a breach.  We then (9 mins)  heard that Palestinian officials said that an Israeli strike hit a house just as the ceasefire was about to start. Janay Boulos from the BBC Arabic Service which told us that the ceasefire [Israeli  and Unilateral] had been breached by Israel bombing a refugee camp just as the ceasefire started….‘The ceasefire was breached this morning...we’ve got our reporter there and saw the immense destruction inside the city there.’

Fogarty then speaks to Osama Damo…..

‘Osama Damo from Save the Children told us that the ceasefire simply isn’t holding’

Damo replies……’The ceasefire isn’t holding at the moment….Shortly before the announced ceasefire there was a bombing on a home.’

Ah yes….the Israelis breached their own ceasefire by dropping a bomb before the ceasefire was due to begin.

On the 13:00 bulletin the BBC says ‘There are reports the ceasefire has been broken’

Really…reports from who?  The Palestinians.

The BBC reports that children have been killed in a refugee camp in an Israeli strike just minutes after a ceasefire there.

The bulletin has selected only part of the comments from Osama Damo’s interview with Fogarty telling us he said… ‘The ceasefire isn’t holding at the moment.’

Oddly they didn’t report the second part of his piece…‘Shortly before the announced ceasefire there was a bombing on a home.’

At 13:15 we heard from Martin Patience again who when asked by Fogarty ‘What evidence is there that the ceasefire isn’t holding?’  replied  that ‘It is right before us…a house reduced to rubble in Gaza…just minutes after that ceasefire came into effect there was a huge explosion…one child injured, other people injured in what Palestinians see as a clear violation of Israel’s own ceasefire.’  Oh yes…the blockade must be lifted..Palestinians describe this as the biggest open air prison in the world…have to get that in.

Patience claims to have heard the explosion after the ceasefire but then gives the impression that this version of events actually came from the Palestinians….as did all the other BBC journos on reporting on this…..though that hasn’t stopped them from reporting it as fact.

Amazing how ready the BBC is to condemn the Israelis and how ready they are to give us the Palestinian version of things but makes so little effort to actually confirm any such claims.

We are always being told just how crowded Gaza is….but that’s not really true in comparison to other places…..London, spread over a vastly bigger area, is still more crowded whilst Jordan is vastly underpopulated by comparison with only 68 people/km²….Jordan actually being ‘Palestine’ why then do all those Palestinian ‘refugees’ not find themselves a home there?

Somewhere on 5Live yesterday we were told that there is open space in Gaza, as Google Maps will confirm, but that if Hamas placed its military kit there it would get immediately blasted by the Israelis…so…they place them amongst the civilian population to hide it there…that ‘non-existent’ human shield that the BBC’s top Middle East expert likes to spout about.

The BBC’s Ian Pannell claims that Hamas made no claim about capturing an Israeli soldier, a claim that mislead everyone including the IDF into thinking he was a prisoner:

Obviously he hasn’t read Hamas’s Twitter feed:

So did the Israeli’s invent the story of the captured soldier or were they lead to believe that by the fact that he was missing and that Hamas claimed they had captured him?

Just another case of a BBC journalist ‘inventing’ his own news in order to paint the Israelis in the blackest possible light.

The BBC has lovingly lingered on UNRWA condemnation of Israel for hitting a THIRD UNRWA school. It’s all part of the “damn-Israel” meme that the BBC has spewed out during the latest conflict. However, for some reason, none of the world class BBC journalists felt inclined to ask UNWRA why it has allowed at least THREE of its schools to be used to store Hamas missiles. Further, why has the BBC not questioned UNWRA as to why it handed BACK the missiles to Hamas having discovered them? I fully understand that Chris Gunness is a poster boy for the BBC as he damns Israel from morning to dusk but surely the BBC has an obligation to make viewers aware that UNRWA has many serious questions to ask – none of which it is asking!!!!!

The BBC’s Jon Donnison shows he doesn’t care a jot about the Israelis…it’s all their own fault…

Hmmm….wonder if we can blame the BBC et al for all Hamas’ actions now that they have the BBC in their corner?

Will the Israelis then be ‘reaping’ what the BBC has sown?  Of course they won’t be called Israelis then…just refugees, displaced persons…or corpses.

I wonder if he thinks the Palestinians have ‘reaped what they have sown’ when they voted for Hamas and are now getting bombed because of it?

I imagine the BBC journos applaud this from the Guardian’s Peter Preston:

Gaza: where a howl of pain and outrage is the only point of view

For journalists covering the horror in Gaza, it must feel obscene to stick to the old routine of ‘fairness and balance’

If you’re a correspondent living the horrors of the Strip from one ceasefire to the next, keeping count of the toll, tweeting pictures of carnage (like the BBC’s wonderful Ian Pannell), wearing the kid gloves of fairness and balance must seem somewhere between obscene and impossible.

It’s a desperate task, gallantly performed. But there are times, remember, where the rituals of F and B don’t work at all – when the truth is a howl of pain and outrage. Jon Snow had one of those YouTube moments a few days ago when he got back from Gaza. Listen to Aidan White from the Ethical Journalism Network: “Bias is not always propaganda – some stories only make ethical sense when told by journalists with a point of view.” Especially as they wade through pools of blood.

No…bias is propaganda…especially in this case where the BBC is pumping out a relentless stream of anti-Israeli propaganda with the sole intention of trying to put political and social pressure upon the Israeli government.  There is absolutely no context for the Israeli actions from the BBC.  This is not a single battle, this is a 70 year war with the Muslims intent on annihilating the Jews.  Which is why the Jews fight so hard.  Another Holocaust wouldn’t be a coincidence it would be genocide, ethnic cleansing, plain old murder….a murder that the BBC has unfortunately decided to take sides in.

England cricketer Moeen Ali, of Pakistani ‘heritage’, and a Muslim, wore wristbands that said ‘Save Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’.   Both are highly political statements, in particular the ‘Free Palestine’ one which cheerleads the destruction of Israel as ‘Palestine’ is considered to be from the ‘river to the sea’ and the State of Israel itself is considered by Palestinians to be located on ‘occupied’ Palestinian land.

Perhaps the likes of Moeen Ali would like to explain why they have no such views about the slaughter and mayhem being visited upon the much of the rest of the Muslim world and beyond by people just like him.

Is it just a ‘Jewish’ thing that means the likes of Moeen Ali and the BBC’s battalions of reporters focus on Gaza?

Any impartial observer would perhaps think so .  Can be any other explanation as to why so much attention is concentrated upon the Jewish counterattack in Gaza?

Perhaps Moeen Ali would like to consider what is going on in the land of his fathers before criticising Israel…“We left all our belongings. The Pakistani government was bombing our villages.”:

Fresh fighting in Pakistan’s North Waziristan displaces more than 75,000 into Afghanistan

A military offensive in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region has forced more than 75,000 people to flee their homes over the past two weeks, seeking shelter across the border in Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces. Many left suddenly, with very few possessions. “We could only manage to get ourselves out of Miranshah,” one man told UNHCR staff, referring to the capital of the mountainous North Waziristan region. “We left all our belongings. The Pakistani government was bombing our villages.”

You might also ask where are the endless stream of BBC Tweets with the graphic descriptions and photographs of injured children?

And  it’s not as if it’s all quiet elsewhere in the Muslim world:

WARNING: The video linked to below has graphic footage of mass murder by Islamic militants.

The Prophet’s Methodology

al-Furqān Media presents a new video message from the Islamic State

Some still photographs taken from the video that give an idea of the cold blooded, deliberate savagery in the name of Islam:

Everyone of these men were killed….murdered…

Meanwhile across the border in Syria over 700 were killed in two days:

More than 700 killed in Syria as ISIS tightens grip on east

Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat—More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rami Abdul Rahman, told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was the first time casualties had topped 700 in the space of two days since the conflict began in 2011. He contrasted the violence to the gas attack in the Ghouta region close to Damascus last year, which he said killed around 500 people.

In Iraq hundreds are being killed by both sides:

Hundreds Butchered by ISIS, Over A Hundred More Killed By Iraq Gov’t

In one month nearly 6,000 are killed in Iraq:

Almost 5,700 Killed Across Iraq in July

Meanwhile in Africa:

Boko Haram village raids kill hundreds in Nigeria

Kano, Nigeria (CNN) — Hundreds of people were killed in raids by Boko Haram Islamic militants in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, on the border with Cameroon, with some sources putting the death toll at 400 to 500.

On Tuesday, heavily armed men dressed as soldiers in all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles attacked neighboring Goshe, Attagara, Agapalwa and Aganjara villages in Gwoza district, shooting residents to death and burning homes.

“The killings are massive. Nobody can say how many people were killed, but the figure runs into some hundreds,” said Peter Biye, a lawmaker in Nigeria’s lower parliament representing the Gwoza region.

#ShaveGaza

If Moeen Ali really has a humanitarian conscience then rather than grandstanding for his Islamic brethren against the Jews he might be better off taking a closer look at what is going on in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world and start asking some questions about what is driving the mass slaughter perpetrated upon Muslims, non-Muslims and those Muslims considered non-Muslims….by other Muslims.

Moeen Ali considers his beard an important visible sign of his devotion to his faith…he’s very proud of it.    It’s a very public statement and well known part of his persona.

Maybe he and all other righteous Muslims who want to ‘Save Gaza’ from the Jews should shave off their beards in a sign of their anger and disgust at what is being done in the name of Islam by other Muslims.

Such a symbolic action would have a huge effect on the watching world, most importantly amongst fellow Muslims, and would confirm Ali’s pious credentials as someone concerned with stopping all suffering not just that imposed by the Israelis.

Maybe the BBC will start shipping out its reporters en masse to these locations and start posting photographs of the dead and injured and detailing the graphic deaths in their Tweets as they do ad infinitum from Gaza.

But perhaps not…after all Hamas in Gaza isn’t going to shoot you or behead you as long as you do what you’re told and report only what they tell you to, but getting up close and personal with ISIS and Boko Haram is decidedly risky…so the BBC stick to the low hanging fruit and anyway…who likes the Israeli’s eh?

I can see that the current Open Thread is bulging at the seams so time for a new one! As we prepare for another week of BBC bias, THIS is where to detail it and debate it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-QIPE53aTc

The BBC did nothing to dispel the Palestinian Pallywood propaganda that claimed an Israeli sniper killed an unarmed man despite the huge response to the video and its uptake by mainstream media.

How different the BBC reaction when a small video goes on-line showing a boy firing an RPG on a beach with a few claims that it is a beach in Gaza.

Israeli shells killed four boys on a Gaza beach recently and it cost the Israelis dear in the propaganda war…the BBC know this and want to keep the pressure on the Israelis and so moved rapidly to squash any rumours that Palestinian kids have been using weapons on a beach that might have made people think the Israeli mistake may have been more ‘understandable’ if they’d seen someone firing an RPG on beach.

The fact that in most YouTube videos of this boy and  the RPG it is clear that the video is from Libya doesn’t deter the BBC pro-Palestinian machine grinding into gear to ensure the wrong message doesn’t spread….shame about that other faked sniper video they ignored…..

#BBCtrending: The boy on a beach with an RPG

A video of a young boy firing a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) on a beach has shocked many people. But what’s the story behind it?

The young boy looks tiny as he stands on a beach, places an RPG on his shoulder and fires. There’s a huge bang and smoke billows all around. All the while two adults look on and encourage him.

It’s unclear who the boy or the adults are. The video itself has been posted multiple times. Though it’s being widely viewed now, it appears to have been first posted at least as far back as January.

Though some of the postings refer to it as a “Palestinian child firing an RPG on Gaza Beach”, it actually appears to be from Libya. The accents in the video are Libyan, and some have suggested it may have been on a beach in the Sirte area.

Always curious what catches the BBC’s eye…it’s not just out of interest here….there is a definite motive that  generated this BBC story.