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[ADDED 21.00 BST: This post has been updated. The BBC story has now been stealth edited to be less misleading and the identity of the singer, who is a US marine, has emerged.]

Commenter Barker John alerted me to this post from LGF.

The BBC story concerned is by Adam Brookes and is called ‘Kill Iraqis marine song’ probe and misplaced quote marks are the least of its problems. It describes a video of a man, apparently a US marine, singing a song about Iraq.

The BBC story is worded to give the impression that the song is about US marines gleefully killing Iraqis, including children.

…apparently shows a serving marine singing about killing Iraqi civilians.

And

Posted on the YouTube website, the video shows a man in uniform strumming a guitar while singing about killing Iraqis, as others laugh and cheer.

And

The lyrics caught on video refer to the shooting of Iraqi civilians, especially children.

These are weasel words. The lyrics do refer to “the shooting” of a child – but by her own father and brother, not by the narrator. The narrator’s first reaction to seeing an Iraqi girl is to fall in love with her. She takes him home to see her family. It turns out to be an ambush.

You can watch and listen for yourself if you follow the link to the LGF post. (Not work safe or suitable for children due to swearing and general tastelessness.)

I cut and pasted the version of the lyrics given by Rayra, making a few changes where I heard things differently or ambiguously.

I was out in the sands of Iraq

And we were under attack

And I, well, I didn’t know where to go.

And the first thing that I could see was

Everybody’s favorite Burger [or Burqua?] King

So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.

Then suddenly to my surprise

I looked up and I saw her eyes

And I knew it was love at first sight.

And she said…

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad

Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah [This cartoon Arabic is taken from the film “Team America”.]

Hadji girl I can’t understand what you’re saying.

And she said…

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad

Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

Hadji girl I love you anyway.

Then she said that she wanted me to see.

She wanted me to go meet her family

But I, well, I couldn’t figure out how to say no.

‘Cause I don’t speak Arabic.

So, she took me down an old dirt trail.

And she pulled up to a side shanty

And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.

Cause her brother and her father shouted… [Some LGF commenters thought “shouted” was “shot her”. I heard “shouted.”]

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad

Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

They pulled out their AKs so I could see

And they said…

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad

Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me.

[This line is timed to be the punch line and one can hear laughter]

As the bullets began to fly

The blood sprayed from between her eyes

And then I laughed maniacally

Then I hid behind the TV

And I locked and loaded my M-16

And I blew those little fuckers to eternity.

And I said…

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad

Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

They should have known they were fucking with a Marine.

This song is insensitive and in poor taste. Soldiers’ songs often are. Twenty years ago two popular songs in the British Army were “Bestiality is Best, Boys” and (to the tune of Camptown Races) “Napalm Burns on a Baby’s Back, Doodah, Doodah.”

In the song, the narrator is described as using the little sister as a human shield in an attempt to stop himself from being shot in ambush. Not exactly in accordance with the highest military tradition, but softened by the fact that that line is obviously meant to surprise by its very ingloriousness. It is the punch line of a black joke.

(AFTERTHOUGHT: The BBC loves to describe its own comedies as “edgy”, meaning “close to the edge of what is permissible” rather than “irritable.”)

Had the BBC been content to report this straight, there would have been a minor story along the same lines as those we have seen about “lads’ culture” or “canteen culture” in the British armed services and police. It could have reported the embarrassment of various Pentagon spokesmen and I’d have said, fair cop. But the BBC, so careful to report the sayings of Jihadists in a sensitive manner, could not resist the chance to selectively quote in such a way as to cause maximum resentment among Muslims.

Another example of bias: the “Bullets began to fly” lines from the lyrics are quoted in the main story and also featured in a quote box. The same quote box has a helpful link to another story called Haditha: Massacre and cover-up? This story has a pair of graphics illustrating two incompatible accounts of the alleged massacre at Haditha. One is labelled “Haditha deaths: US troops’ version” and the other labelled “Haditha deaths: eyewitnesses’ version.” Dunno about you, but I thought this was begging the question.

UPDATE: Hat tip to Mike: the BBC story has now been stealth edited to read “The lyrics caught on video refer to the shooting of Iraqi civilians, especially children, by insurgents and then how a marine responds, opening fire himself.” As is usual with the BBC, the “last updated” field has not been altered.

UPDATE II: DFH provides before and after screenshots of the BBC story and Biodegradable links to an interview with the Marine who made up the song.

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.

Palestinians may have caused Gaza beach deaths, Olmert says:

Both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz indicated Sunday that Friday’s blast on a Gaza Strip beach that killed seven civilians may have been caused by the Palestinians, and not by the IDF.

Peretz told the weekly cabinet meeting that he had established an investigative committee headed by a major-general, which is to present its findings on Tuesday.

Peretz said the panel’s preliminary findings showed that the Ghalia family was not killed by a shell fired by the IDF ground forces or the IAF. Peretz said that one of six artillery shells fired by the IDF was unaccounted for, but that there was a gap between when the shells were fired and the time the Palestinians said the shells landed.

Peretz told the ministers that some 40 Kassam rockets were fired at Sderot and nearby communities over the weekend, and that Nati Angel – the Sderot man seriously wounded by a Kassam Sunday morning at a school near the city – was a “personal friend.” Peretz lives in Sderot, where he used to be mayor.

If this does turn out to be the cause, or even a distinctly possible cause, of this tragic incident, I expect the BBC, particularly given their intensive coverage of the original story, will be extremely keen to revisit the story in depth, in order to ensure that the truth is fully investigated and reported in an impartial manner, lest another serious falsehood is perpetrated and established. But I won’t be holding my breath while waiting for Haw-Hawley and co. to leap in to action.

Update: According to Funerals for Gaza beach victims:

The BBC’s Simon Wilson in Jerusalem says that Saturday’s rocket attacks appear mainly symbolic.

Try telling that to Nati Angel (see above). I can think of some a***s that could do with a symbolic rocket or two up them…

But a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigade, said next time the rockets would be longer range and hit deeper inside Israel.

Presumably for even greater ‘symbolism’, eh Mr. Wilson.

Hat tip: commenters dumbcisco re. JP link and Big Mouth re. Wilson quote.

by Christopher Hart of Rageh Omaar’s second book for Penguin, ONLY HALF OF ME: Being a Muslim in Britain. The review is well worth reading, highlighting various contradictions and errors in the former BBC star reporter’s account. A sample:

Never have books explaining Islam been more needed. And you might have expected much from a Somali-born, Oxford-educated Muslim and leading BBC journalist, especially when his book is the second in a two-book deal for which Penguin paid around £600,000. Unfortunately, Rageh Omaar’s book on growing up a Muslim in Britain, interspersed with asides about his homeland, the Iraq war and the general Wickedness of the West, is a crushing disappointment: bland, platitudinous, muddled, lazy, factually unreliable and morally reprehensible.

There is only a single moment here when the disorienting experience of cultural translocation comes alive: when his family first flew out of Somalia in 1972, stopping over in Rome, and the five-year-old Rageh gazed on the city’s fountains, astonished by both the naked statuary and the prodigious waste of water. Otherwise the biographical material here is thin and puzzling. He tells us that he lived around London’s Edgware Road from “five until I was 25”, and while taking A-levels would pop into the “Husseins’ shop to buy cigarettes”. This is odd because I remember him spending much of his time as a boarder at Cheltenham College, a smiley little chap in the fourth form when I was in the sixth.

Unlike Rageh’s book, which, if his first volume is anything to go by, will be heavily discounted and remaindered within weeks, the rest of the review is well worth reading too.

Hat tip: commenter Ralph for the ST link.

, by Graeme Wilson, the House of Lords BBC Charter Review committee has criticised Tessa Jowell for refusing to give Parliament more say over the BBC’s tellytax and the “democratic deficit” surrounding decisions on the tellytax and the long-term direction of the corporation. Jowell has rejected recommendations from two separate reports over the last eight months:

Lord Fowler, the committee’s chairman, said: “Parliament should have a much greater role in examining the BBC Charter and the BBC bid for an increased licence fee.

“The BBC now receives over £3 billion from the public. On the basis of the BBC’s bid this will rise to £4 billion in the next seven years. The way this bid is scrutinised is totally inadequate.”

The committee said it was deeply concerned about the “democratic deficit” surrounding both the licence fee and the BBC’s Royal Charter.

It continued: “We strongly believe that the government has too much unchecked power in these areas and that Parliament must be given a greater role.”

Hat tip: commenter Barker John for the DT link.

a fisking and a digging following the return of Jonathan Charles on the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent – a taster:

I emailed Dr Solis to ask if Jonathan Charles had represented his views accurately. Here’s his response in full:

I do not recall saying anything like, “all they’re thinking about is getting home alive,” although I did say that which precedes that phrase. I don’t believe I would have used the term “trigger happy.” I did say something to the effect that any lessons learned through classes on battlefield conduct would soon be forgotten and soon there would be further incidents involving the deaths of noncombatants.

I say “I do not recall” not as a weasel-worded phrase, but because I have recently spoken to many reporters, hosts and interviewers and it is impossible for me to recall with exactitude each phrase I may have used. But I am confident that I would not have said anything about getting home alive and I doubt that I would have used so trite a phrase as “trigger happy.”

Oh dear, has Mr Charles been sexing up his reports again? One might even begin to think that he has some sort of agenda.

Do read the whole thing.

– Thais complain as BBC ‘reopens tsunami wounds’ by Jan McGirk:

The BBC says its forthcoming mini-series, Aftermath, is a “thought-provoking drama of loss, survival and hope”. But for many Thais who lost their families in the 2004 tsunami, the film-makers are reopening wounds.

Further outrage has greeted the decision to hire Thais to play corpses at a cut-rate pay of £6 a day for the series, to be broadcast later this year.

However:

But Robert Reynolds, who runs a charity for tsunami orphans in Krabi province, was incensed after discovering Western extras were routinely paid 1,400 baht [£20]. He says he wrote to executives at the prize-winning Kudos productions, demanding that they take care not to offend. “Thais lost everything,” he pointed out to The Nation. “They had no homes to go back to.”

Maybe this story is something that could be included in BBC Views Online’s Ten Things we didn’t know last week column next week – perhaps this is a true story even, unlike last week’s Labour con that Views Online so happily fell for.

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.

magazine we learn that:

Number crunching:

200 – Number of staff the BBC is sending to Germany to cover the world cup;

20 – Number of senior BBC executives who also find it necessary to go.

Nice work if you can get it!

was limited to gems such as Fawlty Towers and Are You being Served?”–so Gerard Baker concludes. As a Yank, I must agree.

To much fanfare, and a fair amount of predictable gushing from its liberal admirers in the US, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the state-owned bureaucracy that bestrides the UK cultural and political landscape like a colossus, launched a 24 hour news channel in America last week.

Billboards in Manhattan bellowed the BBC’s message to passers- by, promising that the corporation would be bringing “news beyond your borders” into Americans’ parochial little lives….

Emboldened, its mangers now clearly think the time is now ripe to enter the US TV news market and offer a distinctive product. A few years ago the former boss of the BBC attacked American television news for too slavishly following the government line. Instead the BBC now says in its publicity, it will offer “both sides of the story”.

Roughly translated this means the BBC thinks that, while the vast majority of Americans are morons who are perfectly content to swallow right-wing rubbish from their political and media masters, there is an educated and sophisticated elite on the coasts that feels somehow its worldview is underrepresented by the current giants of the mainstream media in the US.

This is no surprise to B-BBC visitors. I find it interesting to have a former BBC employee underline the elitist snobbery of the institution. (Yes, lurkers, he’s got to be a right-wing nutcase.)