Hooray. Three cheers for Yolanda Knell’s report on the recent bomb attack in Egypt against Copts. A balanced report at last! She rectified the omissions we’ve been pointing out on B-BBC, and more. Listen to her report, then skip till just after halfway, when Kevin Bocquet starts his “analysis” of Islam v the West.
Boo. Kevin Bocquet undid all the promise of Yolanda Knell’s integrity by reverting to obfuscation, moral equivalence and politically correct mumbo jumbo, and by the way, Muslims admire America, and modestly dressed women embrace free speech, particularly the freedom to praise the burka.
In particular Bocquet pitted all of fundamental Islam against Pastor Terry Jones as if they represented opposite examples of extremism. To him, Jones’s Koran-burning threat counterbalanced the whole of radical Islam’s terrorist attacks, treating them as though they were equal combatants in a philosophical, moral conflict.
The mind boggled till Stephen Pollard pointed out how ludicrous this and many other things in Kevin’s report were, only to be shusshhed by Ed “Holy book” Stourton, and again later when Pollard had the audacity to mention the upsurge of Islam-fuelled antisemitism on campus.
Indy/ Church Times columnist Paul Valley mentioned intolerance, and Stourton assumed he was referring to Stephen Pollard. But he denied that. For a fleeting second I thought he was referring to the ROP. Silly me, he was referring to Stephen Pollard after all, albeit indirectly. He was, of course, alluding to our intolerance of Islam.
I think I see what Helen Boaden meant about impartiality.
In the debate between God and the Devil, the BBC proudly sits on the fence. In the struggle between good and evil, they’re impartial. Tolerance is handed out to all indiscriminately.
Just as after some Islam-fuelled violence the Egyptian authorities round up equal numbers of Islamists and Christians for the political expediency of appeasing radical Islam, the BBC rounds up equal numbers of Muslims and non Muslims for balance, struggling over who to blame for Islam-fuelled discontent, forever locked into their impossible quest to resolve irreconcilable differences.