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Commenter “pounce” pointed out this story:

Government hails Saddam verdict

The UK government has welcomed the conviction by a Baghdad court of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.

In the story we hear the views of Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, Home Secretary John Reid, Anas Altikriti, spokesman of the British Muslim Initiative, Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The headline does not accurately describe the story, as it covers the reactions to Saddam’s sentence expressed by the opposition parties as well as the reaction of the government, but one gets the general point: it is the reaction of Parliament. However Anas Altikriti and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari were not elected by anyone. While their reaction is certainly newsworthy, it shows the BBC’s communalist mindset that these unelected representatives – whose claim to “represent” even people of their own faith is far from universally acknowledged – are interspersed between the elected leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Scottish Nationalist parties as if all were in the same category.

Via Drinking from Home, via commenter Alan, this story of how the BBC ignored a massacre committed by Islamic Courts’ men in Somalia.

I have been deeply suspicious of the BBC’s Somalia output for a while now: lots of spin about how the Islamic Courts were bringing the smack of firm Government. This report, “Taming Mogadishu” ,for example, describes how “restaurants are opening, business is booming – and people are proud to show off to visitors their new-found security.”

And all with a wave of the magic Islamic wand, no doubt. The author describes how “Trials are swift and punishments public: publicity is their policeman.”

How very snappy and euphemistic.

Meanwhile, the Somalinet website which has published this criticism of the BBC may not have very good English, but its points are stark enough:

“Many believe BBC Somali service has always been partial and inaccurate while though minority, many think it is actually part of Somalia’s problem.”

Perhaps even more worryingly,

“SomaliNet has a concrete prove with images that shows BBC Somali Service management going out of their way to suppress other news agencies who reported a different version of one of their reports”

Precisely what this last point means I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t sound at all good, while it does sound like the BBC I’ve come to know and, well, not like.

Also not reported by the BBC, an anti-Islamist rally in Somalia.

[By the way, I don’t know much about the Somalinet website, but I do know it carries articles favourable, as well as unfavourable, to the Islamic Courts.]

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.

K Havakoz writes:

Found this today at
link

“Polls revealed religion as a striking predictor of voting behaviour – the more often a voter attended church, the more likely they were to vote for President Bush, by a wide margin. That is not a good thing in a nation where more than 90% believe in God.”

regards,

K. Havakoz

On similar lines, Will and others have pointed out a piece by Justin Webb.

But in rural America he (Bush) looks at home, and somehow less goofy, less jarring.

In the car park after the Georgia event the locals drifted off to do whatever Georgians do at night (pray I guess), knowing that the Republicans have a fight on their hands but still confident that it can be turned round.

They have not given up and many really do believe in miracles…

UPDATE: Nigel Holland comments that “The first linked article has been edited, it now reads “In a nation where more than 90% believe in God, that is not a good thing for the Democrats.”

included an appeal for help with the so-called ‘honour’ killing of Naziat Khan by her husband, Zafar Iqbal, who is thought to be on the run in Pakistan.

Part of the appeal included a background piece about the nature of so-called ‘honour’ crimes in Britain’s minority communities, explaining that such backward attitudes pervade all ages, which was demonstrated with several vox pop clips of younger Asian British males expressing their views on family honour.

One of the men shown was particularly forthright in the lengths he would go to in this regard, and said, I recall, words to the effect that ‘and you can quote me’ on that. Strangely, in his case, the Beeboids blurred out his face, so he managed to spread his evil views without of course being able to be held responsible for what he said, either by his family, community or the local constabulary.

included this one liner:

“Two Palestinian women are killed in an Israeli siege at a mosque in Gaza”

…which is a stunningly one-sided abridgement of the story. Turning to the World page on BBC Views Online for instance, we see a more accurate summary of events:

Gaza women end mosque stand-off

A siege at a Gaza mosque ends after the gunmen inside escape by mingling in a human shield of women.

When BBC News Twenty-Bore finally got round to their full report of the story it was introduced with:

“Two Palestinian women are reportedly killed…”

…just another word omitted from the headline version, natch.

The BBC’s Paul Reynolds, who has occasionally commented here, has written an article entitled, “Pentagon gears up for new media war.” Towards the end, it says:

A cautionary tale comes from the Vietnam War. There, the war was lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. No amount of spin could change it. The turning point in the media war came when the veteran CBS News presenter, Walter Cronkite, went to Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968. He came back and declared that there was “stalemate”.

Pete in London comments:

No, the war wasn’t lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. The war was lost when Walther Cronkite and others lied to obscure what was happening on the battlefield. This was covered in here on the 19th and 20th October, following Bush remarks apparently likening Iraq to the Tet Offensive (again, another case of skewed reporting by the BBC).

Personally, I’d say it was more likely that Cronkite et al were fooled – fooled with the assistance of their own anti-anti-communist worldview – rather than that they lied, but the result was the same.

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.

Slightly off B-BBC topic – but why does this story – that someone in Edinburgh jumped on a car bonnet and damaged it – make the BBC news website, when a man beating a woman to death with a mallet does not ? The killing of Deborah Wheatley by Mark Goldstraw in 2001 was only reported by the BBC when Goldstraw was accused of four other killings.