The BBC spokespersons that used to grace B-BBC with their presence always insisted that if one or two biased items slipped through, in the long term they would be counterbalanced, because balance was an overall concept, achieved over time. They must have had in mind a timescale of around two hundred years.
Yesterday on News 24, they featured a story that has been on the BBC website for a few days, about the discovery during a raid on a house in Manchester of a video that shows children being ‘radicalised.’
Kim Howells was shown expressing his surprise. If you’re chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, and you haven’t even heard of the Hamas Bunny, surely something’s wrong. There are hundreds of such things on Youtube, many featuring a nightmarish Mickey Mouse whose voice and appearance alone would surely traumatise any child, never mind indoctrinating it with jihad.
At least the problem was being given an airing. But the Muslim lady featured in the story said ‘the most worrying thing’ was that people might think this sort of carry-on was representative of all Muslims. The actual radicalisation and indoctrination seemed to bother her less.
The website transcript of the words in the vid included “I want to kill the infidels” but missed out the bit where he clearly said “To kill Jews.” If I remember correctly they had it on the News 24 subtitles, so someone at BBC online must have thought it was unseemly, and edited it out.