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Can they possibly understand what a news article is? Are they too concerned about the poor delicate egos of their Somali news team that they daren’t criticise the blatant one-sideness of the coverage?

What kind of NEWS article is headed “Fears stalk Somalia’s capital once again”

What kind of reporter states so baldly “The advice from one and all is to get Ethiopian troops to withdraw from the country and replace them with African peacekeepers.”

Does everyone love the so-called peacekeepers of the AU so much? Or resent the loss of the Islamofascists who hated entertainments and freedom so much?

Truly blatant stuff. Pathetic and worthless for real understanding. The BBC would be better off without their Somalia section.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Study these excerpts from today’s news. Excerpt 1:

Britons held in Somali clash

Several British terror suspects have been captured during the fighting in Somalia, it was claimed yesterday.

At least seven Britons are said to have been picked up as they fled with fighters from the Islamic movement when they were forced out of the capital, Mogadishu. The men, all carrying British passports and including one said to have been badly wounded, are reportedly being held by Ethiopian troops.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said last night that it was still waiting to check the identities of the men and establish what the Ethiopian authorities intend to do with them.

Excerpt 2:

Britons may be hurt in US strikes

Reports that seven Britons have been hurt in US air strikes on suspected Islamist fighters in Somalia are being investigated by the Foreign Office.

A spokeswoman said the FO was aware of the reports that “British nationals had been injured and detained”.

But she added: “We do not have British officials on the ground there or actual evidence that they are British.”

The US attacks come amid claims by the Somali deputy PM that some of the Islamists’ support came from Britain.

Using your skill and judgement, can you tell which one is the BBC Views Online view (at a cost of £3bn p.a.) and which is from The Times (at a cost of, er, free). For those few who need help with this quiz (hello Beeboids!), click here for the former, and here for the latter story.

Read the rest of The Times story for an in-depth view of the activities of these British passport holders (as distinct from Britons) in Somalia.

A BBC mole sent Stephen Pollard a “Mini briefing on the Israeli and Palestinians” that was either written by or forwarded by Jeremy Bowen. Read it, and Stephen Pollard’s comments, here. One memorable phrase:

the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.

Emphasis added. Readers might like to discuss the meaning of “strength” in this passage.

The “kill various Palestinians” bit came from this description of Ehud Barak:

(Among his many exploits was disguising himself as a woman during a raid in Beirut to kill various Palestinians).”

Pollard comments that this is, “written as if he did so for the sake of it.”

It is also written as if the Palestinians to be killed were selected randomly, like, er, the way Palestinian suicide bombers select their victims. Innocent civilians were killed in that Israeli operation, as well as those most definitely guilty – but the intended targets were not just any Palestinians but senior members of the PLO. The operation was part of the effort to kill those responsible for the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes. But mentioning that would spoil the story.

on BBC Views Online’s Entertainment page whenever they think there’s half an excuse to do so, whether it’s an award gained or a minor ratings triumph over ITV or whatever.

Strangely, there’s a BBC entertainment related story just now that hasn’t made it on to Views Online’s Entertainment page. For some reason, Casting Director ‘groped’ actors, has been hidden away in the London/South section at the bottom of the England page, that well known hidey-hole for stuff the BBC feels it ought to report but doesn’t really want anyone to see.

Even within the story, the name BBC doesn’t get mentioned until the fourth paragraph. What’s the betting that if the story concerned an ITV casting director that it would have been on the Entertainment page and that ITV would have been in the headline or at least the first paragraph?

The BBC. It’s what we do…

at the end of last week there were many, many Beeboid references to ‘the Prophet Mohammed’, as if Mohammed was generally accepted as being a, or even the, prophet.

The BBC would, quite rightly, never refer to Jesus in their coverage as ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, so I’m at a loss as to whether it’s plain laziness or multiculti-zeal that permits such reverential treatment of Mohammed. Mercifully, Martha Kearney on Newsnight showed the rest of the BBC how it should be done, as shown in her introduction of the clip below from Friday’s programme. Note how the correspondent, Andy Tighe, then lazily refers to Mohammed as ‘the Prophet Mohammed’.

Martha Kearney correctly denotes Mohammed as ‘the Islamic Prophet’,
rather than the usual lazy BBC acceptance of him as ‘the Prophet’.

An Observer portrait of Migrationwatch chair Sir Andrew Green, and his recent Today programme appearance (RealAudio) contains some interesting asides.

‘We probably were reluctant and slow to take him seriously to begin with,’ says one senior executive in BBC News. ‘We probably didn’t like what he had to say. But then we were also slow to pick up on immigration as a story, not least because we are a very middle-class organisation and the impact of mass immigration was being felt more in working-class communities.’ But Sir Andrew plugged away, throwing out statistic after statistic. ‘If he’s proved himself,’ says the BBC executive, ‘it’s because he hasn’t put a foot wrong on the information he’s published.’

An echo there of ex-business editor Jeff Randall’s criticisms.

‘Whenever we had an anti-immigration interviewee, it was a Nazi with a tattoo on his face who looked like he’d just bitten the head off a cat. I pointed out that it’s the white working class who have to make immigration work. Immigrants don’t move to Hampstead, mate’.

You can see this new, less biased approach in the reporting. Migrationwatch used to be “the self-styled Migrationwatch UK pressure group“. Now they’ve been upgraded to “pressure group Migrationwatch UK“.

Favoured pressure groups, for example anti-prison campaigners, are still “the crime reduction charity NACRO” or “the independent Commission“.

.

I’ve been trying to get round to this for a long time, and I know other commenters have been noticing the BBC’s pro-Islam coverage in Somalia. The BBC is just rancid on this subject, and there may be good reasons why that is.

I, partly inspired by the great blogger DFH, and commenters here, have been delving into the BBC’s Somalia coverage, and it’s murky.

DFH had a great post up a while back which demonstrated that the BBC’s chief man in Somalia is in fact a businessman supportive of the Islamic Courts, who is seen as partisan by opponents of the Courts.

There can be little doubt of the views of this Mr Yusuf Garaad Omar. I was almost knocked over with disbelief when I read this commentary on the Islamic Courts’ governance on the BBC:

“Fear of a good lashing or having one’s head shaved is keeping drivers in Somalia’s capital on the straight and narrow.”

Oh yes, a “good lashing”‘s something the BBC’s always been behind, isn’t it?

Garaad continued, “Trials are swift and punishments public: publicity is their policeman.”

Oh how nifty.

I now notice that some different sheriffs are in charge, and it seems Mr Garaad’s “news” service is changing tune:

“Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of the Somali capital Mogadishu in protest at the presence of Ethiopian forces backing the interim government.”

When the Islamists were in charge we got only paeans to “law and order”, no interviews with the targets of the punishments, no quotes from the inevitable opponents of such a draconian regime.

Now we’re getting the works:

“Some government troops and Ethiopian forces opened fire to disperse the crowds and my son was hit by a bullet,” Omar Halame Rage told AFP.

“This is unacceptable and an inhuman action. We don’t need those Ethiopian forces with their government soldiers if they are shooting our children,” he is quoted as saying.”

Nice job, though, Beeb, hiding behind the AFP there.

Meanwhile, “Observers say Mogadishu is awash with weapons, and violence has increased since Ethiopian-led troops ousted Islamist militias.”

Funny how Mogadishu wasn’t “awash with weapons” when the I.C. were in charge. It’s such bullshit, such blatantly stupid bullshit designed to increase pressure on the Ethiopians internationally and offer comfort and a future to the ousted Islamists.

In seeing the BBC as biased in Somalia we would not be alone. Many voices have been raised in the blogosphere. An interesting instance can be found here. But really, when the facileness of the BBC’s coverage is considered, it is clear that a massaging of reality has been taking place. It is morally insupportable, and certainly not worth paying for.

Rob Schneider wrote on 2 January:

Natalie,

In tonight’s BBC news Matt [Frei] was reporting on ex-President Ford’s funeral in Washington. He said (and I can’t remember the exact quote) that “He was a popular president. But he pardoned President Nixon and the country never forgave him.”

That is simply not true and misrepresents history.

Ford became president on 9th August 1974. He announced his decision about President Nixon on 8th September 1974. That was approximately one month after assuming office. He hadn’t achieved any level of “popularity” during that month. Instead, the country was still reeling from events which lead the resignation of President Nixon. There are vast numbers of people in the country, while regretting that such a pardon was necessary, but still understand that it was the right thing to do. The “country” never considered the issue of “forgiveness” as that’s not really the issue.

Surely the pardon could be on many people’s thoughts as they voted in 1976, when Ford lost to Carter. However there were many other issues, including the economy (it was a period of high-inflation), the remants of the Vietnam War, Republican vs. Democrat (the Republicans had won the two previous elections), etc.

–rms

I can’t claim to know a great deal about the events in American history that Mr Schneider describes, and I have no strong opinion either way on whether the pardon was a good thing. But Matt Frei’s statement that “the country never forgave him” is contradicted by the many recent articles covering Ford’s death saying that the pardon turned out to be a good decision. These articles did not just come from right wing or Republican sources. Here, for instance, is a leading article from the Guardian. If that does not count because it is not an American newspaper, here is another from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. There were many others.

Pounce comments on one of today’s front page stories at the BBC:

Skin bleaching cream couple fined

A couple believed to have earned £1m selling toxic skin lightening creams were ordered by a court to pay nearly £100,000 in fines and costs. Yinka and Michael Oluyemi sold banned bleaching concoctions from their two cosmetics shops in south-east London.

[snip]

The church-going couple, who lived in a £725,000 house in Sydenham, have three children, including one who is studying law.

Pounce writes:

Ok help me here. Why is the fact that these people go to church (thus pointing out they are Christians) in the story?

Pounce goes on to say that there are numerous BBC stories that pointedly don’t inform you of the faith of non-Christian criminals or alleged criminals, even where it is much more relevant than that of the Oluyemis. One such, the plumber charged with terrorism offenses, Kazi Nurur Rahman, whose mastery of the mysteries of the U-bend is always considered worthy of mention when other more relevant aspects of his life are not, has become an in-joke here. When I went looking for a comparative story to illustrate Pounce’s point I knew my search would not take long. In the event it took about ten seconds. Also on the England front page this morning was a story concerning the murder of his wife and four daughters by Mohammed Riaz. This crime took place in Accrington last November.

A search for “Accrington” and “Riaz” on the BBC news website got fifteen relevant results (the one at the bottom of page 2 refers to someone else). Only one of these fifteen, this one, mentions that Mr Riaz was a man who “did not socialise much, other than at his local mosque.”

Note that I am not saying that the murder of his family necessarily had anything to do with Mr Riaz’s religion. The possibility of a so-called “honour killing” was raised widely in the press and explicitly not discounted by the police, but eventual investigations pointed to the most likely prime motive being something to do with the breakdown of the Riaz marriage. We’ll never know. However the likelihood of religion being a factor was higher than for the vastly lesser crime of Mr and Mrs Oluyemi.