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Yesterday I made a brief post at Samizdata to highlight a post from Drinking From Home concerning two pictures of a woman lamenting the destruction of her home by the Israelis. The pictures have different dates, and show different homes, but are pretty obviously same woman. What do I find when glancing at DFH this morning? That one of the pictures turns up on the BBC. And that was spotted by our regular commenter Dave t of the Cabarfeidh Pages. An anonymous commenter to DFH’s post says he/she may have found another Reuters picture of a third destroyed home with the same lady lamenting in front of it. It is difficult to be sure, but I think I can see the same scar on her left cheek and mark under her right eye. Small world, all these bloggers quoting each other in circles, all one’s homes getting busted up by the Israelis.

To be clear, I don’t particularly blame the BBC for using the picture (although it will be interesting to see if they continue using it given the attention it has received). Thousands of pictures come their way, they can’t check them all. I don’t even blame Reuters/AP that much, for the same reason – although I do think all the news agencies need to face the fact that their Arab stringers who actually go out and take the pictures have their own agenda and aren’t generally too scrupulous about how they advance it. However any time information from, say, the US, British or Israeli Army is relayed by the BBC we hear someone dolefully informing us that this information has a particular source and implying that we must bear that in mind when assessing it. Likewise if a report is made from a country with a repressive government we are told that the report was made under restrictions. Quite right too. But no such warnings come with photos or statements from people living in in places where the rule of Hamas or Hezbollah is at least as vicious, and the culture at least as steeped in propaganda, as that of most of the world’s open dictatorships.

ADDED LATER: Incidentally, the issue of photo-doctoring is becoming a story in itself. One of our commenters snapped a Google search of stories on the issue. Keep your eyes peeled for how and if the BBC reports it.

UPDATE: The picture is now gone from the BBC story DFH linked to. As usual the “last edited” field has not been changed; it still reads 14.07 BST Saturday. There is a discussion of photo-doctoring on the BBC’s The Editors blog here.

– an article by Tim Montgomerie in The Business. (Thanks to the several commenters who highlighted this story.)

Hat tip: Dumbjon, who pointed to this hilarious post from Rottweiler Puppy: Nikki, Warwickshire: Busy at the BBC.

The oft-quoted Nikki was quoted as saying, “Surely the lives of the innocent should take precedent” in her first few outings. Then for “Dozens killed in Lebanon air raid”, someone finally noticed and corrected it to “precedence”. Can’t have such a stalwart commenter looking illiterate, can we?

I have to defend the BBC against one of Rottypup’s claims. Nikki does not appear in “Olmert says fighting will go on.” So it’s only sixteen times, not seventeen.

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.

I’m afraid this is a post that was meant to appear several days ago. I intended to press “publish” before we went away for a few days, but in the rush of packing it didn’t happen. Some elements may also have been mentioned in the 2,390,766 emails and comments I haven’t read; consider yourselves hat-tipped in spirit.

• Incoming email:
  

  Today programme, July 29th. The reporter, only asked British Muslims what they thought of the Lebanon crisis. NOBODY else. There were masses of e-mails complaining , Carolyn (?)Quinn admitted.

• Hat tip to James Hammett for alerting me to an article by James Taranto: BB “C” no evil. It’s about how the peculiarly ghastly murders committed by Samir Quantar were described by the BBC. Interestingly our commenters report that this story started off giving a non-sanitized account, and then was edited to blandness.
• That’s the reverse of the usual order of events, in which the story starts off bland and – possibly as an effect of scrutiny by blogs such as this one – gradually fills in some of the omitted details. The usual order appears to have been followed in the evolution of the Seattle murder.
• Kudos to the Mr Buchanan of the BBC World Service programme Newshour for this hard-hitting interview with a Hezbollah representative, as described by Bryan in comments.
• In this post for Samizdata, Paul Marks points out an all-too-typical error in an article for BBC History magazine on education in the nineteenth century.
• The way the Beeb dealt with the Mel Gibson affair wasn’t so much biased as panic-stricken. Nigel’s email was typical:
  

  Wearing your Biased BBC hat, I thought that you might be interested in two stories about Mel Gibson’s drink-driving incident, one from The Sunday Times (link) and one from BBC News (link).

  The BBC report seems to be missing something…

  The BBC did get round to mentioning what Gibbers actually said eventually, but one can only wonder exactly why they didn’t at first. Can’t have been that they thought “Mel Gibson got drunk” was the newsworthy part of the story. Can’t have been that they had a soft spot for the man; while they might have done while he was making anti-English movies, I doubt it extended to the maker of The Passion of the Christ. My best guess is that the BBC has got so used to playing down the anti-semitism of its favoured victim groups that they just did it out of habit.

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.

Ok. Well, it appears I was wrong in the observation posted here about the lack of BBC coverage of a pro-Israel march. Sorry folks. Thanks to those who pointed out BBC coverage such as this. I heard all about the anti-Israel marches that had been held just before; nothing about this. It’s impossible for me to evaluate the coverage and say whether it was proportionate in the light of what’s emerged so that’s my testimony.

Referring to the other matter I mentioned, I think that giving coverage to 60 protestors against an arms fair is to open the way to inconsistency: how many more protests with a strength of 60 will they ignore in the future? How can they justify it?

And btw the BBC’s search facility sucks completely. No hard feelings though.

As part of its services to the chattering classes, the BBC has been preaching teaching how to say “Qana”. Important stuff, I am sure, for making up anti-war chants and for feeling comfortable in that after-dinner conversation mode.

The Beeb have also been quick to help define what we’re to associate with “Qana”- an Israeli ‘war crime’.

Once more this brings into question why the BBC gives such prominence to the views of pressure groups. Why pressure groups and not blogs like this or this? Blogs after all have their international associations and expertise, just like pressure groups.

Unlike the BBC and HRW these blogs have emerged because they give credit to details. It’s detail that reveals the truth of things. It used to be known as “journalism”, but since that word has been misappropriated into meaning ‘making a difference’, maybe we’ll have to think of a new word that means reporting what happens. Suggestions welcome in comments.

(all links from other people: Ritter, Archduke, Melanie Phillips. Hat tips to all)

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.

This article in the Jerusalem Post points to this BBC article as encapsulating a point of view regarding Israel which dominates at the BBC. Basically, it is Israel as regional bully-boy,

Such a thing is, of course, a little bit more complex than it seems at first sight. I searched Nick Thorpe on the BBC website and found that, while in the article already cited he caricatures Israel’s experience of Hezbullah missiles as ‘like pinpricks in the ankles of a giant, taunting him to stamp back with his big, US-issue army boots.‘, he was also the author of this article (back in Feb this year).

In it, he decribes the effect of Palestinian Qassam rockets falling from Gaza onto the southern Israeli town of Sderot. He himself describes a local kindergarten which had ‘lost two children – on their way here in the morning – to rocket attacks in the past few years.’

Of the kind of more deadly thing Hezbullah have been firing, Thorpe says (in the July 15th article), “Even to my untrained eye, a Katyusha rocket is a world apart from a Qassam.”

So how can a journalist who has reasonably borne witness to the anguish of children in Sderot revert to the kind of imagery which is gleefully spewed out by, among others, Guardian cartoonists? (See here for a shocking example -though in truth I have known Guardian cartoonists were sick for some years now).

Well, even in the eyewitness report from Sderot Thorpe slips all too easily into caricature: “The people of Sderot are mostly immigrants, Jews from far and wide coming home to Mother Israel for a cheap house, sunshine and prospects for the children.” (might as well be sun, sea and sand- the reason why Palestinians cling to Gaza; btw- I wonder what drives the land prices down? Can’t imagine.)

It’s obvious from this spin that he finds the concept of a Jewish home state at best rather kitsch, and at worst retrogressively nationalistic. He has slipped from observation to ideology- a slip that is so familiar and exacerbated in the current circumstances. But, really, Nick Thorpe, “pin pricks”? Didn’t you see with your own eyes the fear of the kindergarten children? Haven’t you acknowledged that the Katyusha is far worse? Where’s the proportion, man?

Last point: I do agree with the JP article that Thorpe’s mindless caricaturing is representative of the BBC’s coverage in general. How this happens amidst the BBC’s luxuriant resources overseen by an army of pretty well-qualified people is a source of fascination. One I’d rather not have though. You can find an alternative view, or rather a big waffle, at Comment is free here (thanks to commenter). In addition, here is a very good analysis of Israel’s position vis a vis Hezbullah which you won’t find on the BBC.