We had a look at the casualty figures from Gaza two weeks ago (H/T Pounce) and based on the figures available then it looked like 61% of the casualties were fighting age men (18 to 60 years old…of course there will also be many under 18 who are fighters and not all men in the age bracket will be fighters.)

The BBC refrained from doing any analysis on these figures and preferred instead to give us casualty numbers as provided by Hamas, via the UN….importantly these figures didn’t make an honest effort to discriminate between possible militants and others.

I have heard a lot of the reporting from Gaza by the BBC and what has been missing from much of it is any sense that the Israelis are fighting ‘someone’….the reports tell us the Israelis have been attacking or bombarding or bombing Gaza but don’t explain why….Hamas seem to have been erased from the picture…..if the Israelis are firing the must be firing for a reason, at something…the BBC gives the impression that they are firing ‘indiscriminately’ …Sheila Fogarty herself admitted that people had the idea that Israel was just ‘carpet bombing’ Gaza…..wonder where they got that idea?

Maybe those ideas will start to change as the BBC starts to report the truth about what the Israeli army  has been targeting…….

The BBC gave Hamas a months worth of priceless anti-Israeli PR by quoting those figures unchecked…but it has finally come clean and started to question the data….

Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures

 War zones are not easy places to collect statistics.

In the Gaza conflict, most news organisations have been quoting from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which leads a group of humanitarian organisations known as the Protection Cluster.

Its recent report said that as of 6 August, 1,843 Palestinians had been killed and 66 Israelis and one Thai national since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July.

There has been some research suggesting that men in general are more likely to die in conflict than women, although no typical ratio is given.

Nonetheless, if the Israeli attacks have been “indiscriminate”, as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women.

An analysis by the New York Times looked at the names of 1,431 casualties and found that “the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided.”

“At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71% of the population and 33% of the known-age casualties.”

Some of the conclusions being drawn from them [the figures] may be premature.

The IDF estimates:

Israeli military officials said 750-1,000 Hamas and other gunmen had been killed in the fighting as of Tuesday, August 5.

The big question is will any of this ‘caution’ filter down to inform the other BBC reports?

I guess not…..

Ironically as the BBC publishes the above it also publishes this…claiming only 166 of the casulaties are ‘militants’:

Gaza conflict: The hundreds who lost their lives

If a Conservative politician had come out with the line that they would like to see a major UK city “Free of Pakistanis”, the BBC would (rightfully) be all over it. Yet when leading Cat impersonator and Israeli-hater George Galloway comes out with the contention that Bradford should be “Israeli-free” (by which he really means Jew Free) the BBC let it pass without that much comment. Maybe they agree with not so gorgeous George? I also note that Jew hating LibDem David Ward suggested than ‘the ban” on Israel should be UK wide. Again, a certain amount of obfuscation here but is he really saying he wants Jews out of the UK? The BBC didn’t pursue that line, too busy praising Nick Clegg when he suggests “the war on drugs” has failed and we need to legalise narcotics. Ah well – BBC priorities.

BBC playing games about Gaza again. It screeches “Israel air strikes resume in Gaza amid rockets”.….so creating the impression that those bad JOOOOOOOS are back to their business of killing innocent women and children. You have to read a little more carefully to see that it was HAMAS that refused to continue the temporary truce and it was Hamas that attacked Israel with several rockets this morning.

Here you go, a new OPEN THREAD for the weekend. Detail the bias here please.

The curious silence of the Twitterati and all that.

Remember when Nigel Farage said he might prefer to have a house full of Germans next door rather than a house full of Romanians and the world went mad with opportunistic politicians and media luvvies telling us that Farage was a racist…his ‘racial slur’ deemed ‘deeply offensive’?

A couple of months later and all that indignant self righteousness seems to have vanished, the politicians and luvvies can’t muster so much as a raised eyebrow now when a racial group is grievously slurred and accused of ‘social cleansing’……not only that but when once the threat to London was angry young black men burning up the city:

….apparently this is the new great threat….the white hipster…..coz they only come in white apparently…. with beards and bobble hats…the new Taliban….

…as you can see they love a good fire…..

Pauline Pearce says gentrification has left Hackney a divided place…….

White hipsters, not black looters, are now threatening post-riots London

Three years ago, I shouted down young men as they burnt cars on the streets of Hackney, where I live. Now they come in beards and bobble hats instead.

Standing outside the retro bars and clubs, and, I’m sorry to say, they are all white. It’s impossible not to notice.

 When I look at my community now, I still don’t see anybody speaking up. What we need to do is say we are all one and we need to make it work together.

London belongs to all of us. Not just those who can afford to pay £5 for a cappuccino.

I’m guessing these guys aren’t white……..

…but they are hipsters.

Good that people have got over that kneejerk urge to shout down anyone as racist who says anything in any way controversial that they don’t want to hear and can come to terms intellectually and morally with racist comments…..though it does help if they are made by a black person.

Good that the BBC has grown up enough to ignore such a ‘racial slur’ and realise that saying white people are socially cleansing blacks out of parts of London is merely real politik and the claim that white hipsters are a greater threat to London than rioters and looters is an ‘interesting idea’.

Good that the BBC doesn’t waste any of our licence money whipping up a witch hunt against Pauline for her Little Hackneylander views having learnt its lesson when it failed to demonise Nigel Farage.

Personally I think Hipsters just want to have fun:

….oh hang on…hang on a mo!!!  There’s black people in there enjoying themselves…don’t they know they’ve been ‘socially cleansed’….and what’s that……reggae, hip hop, soul, funk and R&B music…damn….there ain’t nothing for black people…oppressed and excluded once again from society by white colonialism.

Maybe she’s right after all:

Islamic State’s new icon is a hipster jihadi

BBC foreign correspondent Matthew Price:

"Israel, as a colony, cannot continue to exist" – interesting article – http://t.co/NISKmAf1rk

— Matthew Price (@BBCMatthewPrice) August 6, 2014

Just a couple of snippets from the article that Price finds so “interesting”:

It is time to call a spade a spade: Israel, as a colony, is a constant source of violence and conflict. It is not an ex-colony, nor is it an accepted part of the world for many. It is a territory in the Middle East under Western occupation, which possesses no political legitimacy now, nor can it ever acquire such legitimacy in the future because it has no raison d’être and cannot create one…

What I propose here is that the flow of millions of Zionists to Palestine be reversed. That the Zionists who emigrated to Israel should be offered a peaceful and generously compensated return to where they came from or the choice of any other destination. And that the descendants of emigrants who were born in Israel be invited to return to the countries of their parents/grandparents, or to go somewhere else as they choose.

Just wow. And if this is what BBC journalists are happy to promote on social media, imagine what they’re saying to each other off line.

Hi all. Here’s a new Open Thread for you all. Please detail the bias and ignore trolls who seem determined to derail this site. Do NOT engage with them please in any way.

David Cameron must have long regretted his liberal urges as he saw the beneficiary of his PR stunt/ethnic minority box ticking exercise run rampage, undermining the government’s foreign policy and subverting and emasculating its anti Islamic terror programme.

Baroness Warsi was more interested in promoting Islam than in doing her job….people will say ‘ah but she defended all religions‘…indeed she did…but in doing so her real aim was to ensure that Islam was allowed to maintain its customs and traditions not just in private but  in the Public sphere as well…..she said.…’I’m Muslim, but all faiths are important to me. I think that in order to create a more just society people need to feel stronger in their religious identities.’

Stronger in their religious identities?….By promoting ‘all faiths’ she makes Islam stronger and more assertive of its ‘rights’ and demands….she knows Christianity is losing ground so supporting it is just a question of time……..as Islam is gaining and likely to keep on growing with immigration and a high birthrate….and so likely to be the dominant religion demographically quicker than you might think…politically it is already the dominant religion with the media and politicians running scared of it.

Warsi’s narrative is the same line the Islamist MCB takes…a rather paradoxical approach to integration…if you want Muslims to integrate they must be allowed to form their own unique and separate societies in which they can practice their beliefs unhindered by local laws and social norms….a parallel society…a mini-Pakistan, or several mini-Pakistans, within Britain.

And she had some pretty rum bedfellows working alongside her.

The BBC however doesn’t make mention of any of the doubts about her loyalties and her dubious contacts.  The BBC is more concerned with airing her attack on the Government for its measured approach to Gaza….

Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi has resigned from the government, saying its policy on the crisis in Gaza is “morally indefensible”

One interesting phrase from Warsi is this:

Lady Warsi’s resignation letter says government policy is “morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long term effect on our reputation internationally and domestically”.

It’s that ‘domestically’ we should be concerned about.  Is she threatening us with yet more ‘outraged’ Muslims angry at ‘our’ foreign policy? That after all is the justification, so often supported by the BBC, for Islamist terror attempts.

Just why do Muslims get so ‘angry’ about Gaza and yet, like Warsi herself, turn a blind eye to the same or worse in Muslim countries?

Why has Warsi not resigned over the government’s handling of Syria or its failure to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East?

It seems Muslim Warsi is only concerned with Muslim suffering when caused by Israelis.

It seems that the BBC refuses to go down that road and challenge her on her views and loyalties.

It’s not as if the questions haven’t been asked many, many times……

‘Hopeless’ Warsi ‘resisting’ David Cameron’s fight against extremism

Baroness Warsi and the demons of hate

Baroness Warsi and the OIC

Baroness Warsi was over-promoted, incapable and incompetent

Why does the BBC not report the death-cult Jew-hatred that airs on Hamas TV? http://t.co/iMkoSWujEa, http://t.co/9IezfW3WKG @HughSykes

— DB (@4d2b) August 5, 2014

@4d2b @allanholloway Maybe because #genocide blog was so surprising (& retracted), but the bile of those videos is routine and nothing new.

— HughSykes (@HughSykes) August 5, 2014

“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.