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“Lobstertom” writes:

Finally they’ve given us a report on the Oil for Food scandal – buried in the Business section.

It is “We discovered this…” and “we found that…” It is an absolute lot of nonsense. And of course with a shot at the Americans in the last line.

Also they fail to mention Kofi Annan at all – as you will know UNSCAM was run out of his office.

If they have changed the “report” I have already taken a copy – I’ll let you know if they change it.

I was amused but not surprised by the headline: “Companies in ‘oil-for-food scam'” True, companies were one end of it. But given that it takes two to tango wouldn’t an equally valid headline have been “UN in ‘oil-for-food scam'”? Equally valid but not equally likely to appear.

Come to think of it another equally valid but not equally likely headline would be “Biggest Financial Scandal in the History of the World.”

(again) to ask of the BBC’s coverage in Fallujah.

Looking at the BBC pages this morning, it did seem to me that the BBC’s coverage began and ended with the notion of a humanitarian crisis caused by the US assault on Fallujah. The question Nicholas raises is, who exactly was responsible for this crisis? Was it really the consequence of US actions? He suggests that one particular angle has been ignored by the BBC: that of the actions of the thugs (or Minutemen if you prefer to take your lead from Michael Moore) who controlled Fallujah prior to the US military action- and in particular the relationship these men may have had with the BBC’s ‘inside sources’. It’s a good question.

Update. This needed saying:

‘Since the Vietnam era, American journalists seem to operate by an ethic reversing the infamous slogan of antiwar demonstrators, who chant “media lies, people die.” Much more accurate would be to say “people die, media lies.”‘

Trust today’s BBC to be in the vanguard of an unworthy cause.

According to one of Tim Blair’s readers, Richard Compton, the caption to the picture of Condoleezza Rice on this BBC piece about her appointment as Bush’s secretary of state has been changed.

It originally read “His master’s voice.”

If you scroll down the post there is another useful comment on the BBC article from “Bill”:

Wow, that Beeb piece is off the wall… “the influence of the State Department which tends to take a longer term view of world affairs… [than the president]”

Cause Islamicism and tyranny always just fix themselves if we’re nice to them… the “long-term” view. In fact Theo van Gogh was just saying the other day… oh, wait. No. No, he wasn’t saying anything.

“The State Department has lost power over the past 30 years as influence has moved to the White House.” Errrrrummmmmm…. yah. Last I checked it was and extension of the Whitehouse, not a separate branch of government…

(the blog, not the news) is on a roll. In these three posts the author examines BBC reports from one of their stringers in Iraq, Fadil al-Badrani. He is not without sympathy:

Iraqis working with the foreign news media are in grave danger — unless, that is, they report stories in a manner to the liking of the insurgents and terrorists. For example, Iraqi journalists sometimes get tips on upcoming atrocities so they can be on the scene and tell the world about the chaos and misery that have engulfed the country since the Americans arrived. The more frightening the images and story, the better it is for the reporter’s well-being. All this is especially true for a stringer working in a town like Fallujah — a stringer like Fadil al-Badrani.

Nonetheless he wants highter standards from the BBC than this:

On Monday, Newsnight interviewed Fadil al-Badrani who, we were told, lives in central Fallujah. We were not told Mr al-Badrani’s occupation. Nor were we told how the BBC managed to find him and arrange a telephone interview. The viewer was left with the impression that Mr al-Badrani was merely an unfortunate civilian trapped in the city. He described an apocalyptic scene. The Americans have turned Fallujah into “hell,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr al-Badrani was back on the telephone — this time identified as an Iraqi journalist.

(Via Blithering Bunny and LGF.)

A certain amount of illness in our household kept me from recording this when it happened, but I would like to say it now. Last Thursday, November 11th, I caught the tail end of the six o’clock news on Radio 4. I heard a report from Fallujah. To my surprise the report made explicit (a) that some insurgents had fired from a mosque; (b) that a group of US marines had voluntarily given away their own position in order to warn some civilians of danger; (c) that as a result one of the soldiers was wounded; and, finally, described the action of a marine lieutenant in attempting to rescue the wounded man despite having already had a shot bounce off his helmet as “an incredible feat of heroism.” The lieutenant was killed.

I’m not saying that this report was at all typical. This post from Siflay Hraka describes what I’d say is a more representative style of reporting from Fallujah. But in fairness to the BBC I would like to note that it happened. Unfortunately I did not catch the reporter’s name.

George Galloway, friend and idol to the lefties at the BBC, has had his back scratched again, either intentionally or through incompetence, in today’s reporting of his court case against The Daily Telegraph.

BBC News Online’s story the full quote is “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability” – note that crucial word ‘Sir’ at the beginning – the word that implies almost conclusively that the reference is to Saddam specifically rather than his long-suffering people.

I suppose it is possible that The Telegraph’s legal team omitted that part of the film clip in court, but I suspect it’s far more likely that it was omitted by the BBC in their report. Would anyone from BBC News Online care to comment?

:

Lord Black’s frontpage; Galloway’s not (I speak of the World Edition, and even on the UK frontpage at the time of writing Black occupies a higher spot than Galloway’s court case, and the BBC take their time to inform us that Black’s case is only a civil one).

Powell’s top headline; UNscam (bigger than you thought) is nowhere to be found. Mmmm- where the heck are all those updates? Or is it the case that US Congressional proceedings are inherently untrustworthy- something to do with the voters, perhaps?

: “the AG could read from the phonebook and the New York Times would run the headline, ‘Ashcroft Lists Innocent Americans to be Interned.'”

: at first, I thought the BBC news would manage to cover Arafat’s death without once mentioning that he himself had ever caused anyone else’s.

“The Israelis, with whom he failed to negotiate a peace, regarded him as a terrorist but … died without achieving his dream of freedom … Israel branded him as a terrorist but … Ariel who once said he regretted not having killed Arafat twenty years ago … couldn’t bring himself to utter the name of his oldest enemy … If Sharon blames them [the new Palestinian leaders] and isolates them, as he isolated Arafat, then nothing will change here. In fact things could get worse. … It’s become an article of faith in Israel that Yassar Arafat is the obstacle … Arafat has been the great enemy and frankly also the great excuse. The Israelis have been saying for years that Arafat is unreliable, that Arafact can’t be trusted and that may have been true to a greater or lesser extent but the pressure will be on the Israelis … “

There was also just a hint of the ‘summarising what they should have said, not what they did’ syndrome noted before on this blog.

“… Sharon will want them [the new Palestinian leaders] to prove themselves … Israelis will be safer, the opposition believes, if they start talking to the Palestians straight away … “. Actually, the opposition leader desired dialogue but pointed out that, “they are difficult people to talk to.”

“… Tony Blair saying there has to be progress .. ” led naturally into talk of pressure on the U.S. and Israel but Tony in fact simply moved skillfully and quickly off the subject of Arafat onto a not-quite-so-emphatic generality about its being desirable to resume the peace process.

“… The UN shares Europe’s frustration at the stalling of dialogue …” The context and the mention of Europe implied that the frustration was directed at Israel. Probably in fact it is but Kofi’s actual remarks were an invitation to the Palestinians to make the legacy of Arafat’s death a renewed search for peace.

However, well on in the news item, the broadcast stepped out of the standard newsdesk-talking-to-reporters format to present a cameo short history of Arafat’s life, and this was rather different. It mentioned the Munich killings and called them murder, even if the remark, “Arafat’s direct resposibility was unclear but Israel blamed him”, seemed just a little carping in tone. It mentioned that Arafat only recognised Israel’s right to exist very late in the day. It mentioned his “disastrous misjudgement in backing Saddam in the first gulf war”. It mentioned that agreement with Israel over Palestinian autonomy was hampered by the fact that Arafat’s “administration was notoriously corrupt”. It mentioned that he initiated the “cycle of suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals”. It mentioned a good deal else but it was a passably balanced brief summary; respectable reportage.

Matt Frei also did point out, amidst the ‘pressure on U.S.’ stuff, that “the worst thing that could happen to any new palestinian leader is for the U.S. to back him too openly”, noting that some restraint in their public involvement was inevitable. In the past, I have sometimes seen Matt’s coverage as the very epitome of Greg-Dyke-style reporting but I would not have said that of his short slot today.

So, good in parts, or at least, unbiased in parts. It’s just a pity the factual reporting mostly came late in the slot while the one-sided stuff was presented first.

of L’Ombre de l’Olivier has written about the BBC’s description of the film “Submission”, the final and fatal work of murdered film-maker Theo Van Gogh.

When a modern artist or filmaker makes a work criticising Christianity or capitalism the BBC usually goes out of its way to explain the rationale for its provocativeness.