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Our hearts go out to the family and friends of BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers who was murdered by terrorists in Riyadh as he and correspondent Frank Gardner filmed a report. Many questions remain as to whether Saudi Arabia will descend into further instability, but there is no question that anyone can become a target in this war on terror. I recently posted on Frank Gardner (and the BBC’s) questioning stance on the very idea of a ‘war on terror’. Though we may disagree on this point, all of us at B-BBC wish and pray for the speedy and full recovery of Mr Gardner and comfort to the bereaved family of Simon Cumbers.

of the D-Day commemorations yesterday was good and the news coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan, if not affectionate, at least respectful. There. I’ve said it.

John Hensley comments:

I would appreciate it if this could be mentioned in the blog.

Junichiro Koizumi made a trip to N. Korea recently to negotiate permission for the children of Japanese kidnap victims to join their parents in Japan. A side story, written by Sarah Buckley, was about US soldier Charles Jenkins, who married a kidnap victim and is still in N. Korea:

link.

In the article is this remark:

“The [kidnap victims’] homecoming was supposed to be brief, but Tokyo never allowed the five to return….”

I politely asked the BBC to consider whether there are grounds for claiming that the victims are in Japan against their will. After 3 days there has been no correction. I challenge anyone to find a news source other than KCNA [the North Korean news agency] for this claim.

The word “allow” is about as unambiguous in this sentence as it can be. Either Buckley is a careless writer or she believes that the victims really are eager to return to the Korean gulag state. If the latter, I’m inclined to allow her to return there herself, with extreme prejudice.

Nigel writes:

‘Shooting D-Day through a lens’ is an interesting story about US photographer Marty Lederhandler and how some of his photos ended up being published by the Germans. (It’s to do with knackered carrier pigeons. No, this is not part of an ‘Allo ‘Allo script.)

Anyhow, the interview wanders onto the subject of Iraq. Wouldn’t you know it, the BBC even create one of their little highlight boxes for the following quote: “It’s a place where we don’t need to be. It’s a waste. We had no reason to attack Iraq. They didn’t do anything to us. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

Full article at link

I can’t help thinking his views about the Iraq war would not have merited a quote box if he had been in favour.

For instance, despite the intrinsic newsworthiness of the views of the the last surving military leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Marek Edelman, don’t expect to see him quoted by the Beeb when he says, “Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they’re saving somebody else.”

In fact it seems to me that the BBC are going all-out to ensure that no one thinks undesirable thoughts when remembering the war against fascism, and in particular the US role in it. In Radio 4’s Today programme this morning the announcer said the Americans thought the Europeans should “act a bit more grateful.” No doubt some do. There are lots of Americans and they think many and various things. But it was typical (a) that this unattributed speculation was presented as news, and (b)that the form of words should be that most likely to arouse resentment. I’m not holding my breath waiting to hear someone in the Today programme saying that Americans think that Europeans should remember that war can sometimes be less terrible than a peace that leaves a megalomaniacal dictator in power.

A minute later he said that Europeans thought that “gratitude for events then does not mean no criticism now.” I quote from memory, and I may not have got it exactly right, but it was far more neutrally phrased than what he said about Americans.

Nick Cohen writing in the New Statesman reports that the BBC editors would not publish stories about the takeover of the leadership of the anti-war movement by the Socialist Workers Party, nor about the at first sight rather suprising alliance between the SWP and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Two interesting points:

– the story was leaked to Nick Cohen by disgruntled BBC reporters.

– Harry’s Place, a left-wing pro-Iraq-liberation website familiar to regular readers here is mentioned in the story.

Kudos to The New Statesman for reporting something so uncongenial to their editorial line.

Instapundit has picked up the story and comments further.

Hugh Hewitt, LA-based blogger, professor of law and former NPR broadcaster, has just ‘endured’ two weeks of the Beeb.

I am just returned from two weeks in Europe, which meant having to watch CNN International, with its wall-to-wall anti-Bush anchoring, reading the International Herald Tribune –a New York Times lite– and of course enduring the BBC. I don’t know if the world hates us, but American and British media reporting to the English-speaking world living in Europe certainly do. The coverage is most distorted on the issue of the war, where anchors routinely set up questions that presume the failure of the war in Iraq and the collapse of support for the war in the United States. No bit of good news is allowed to stand unchallenged, even when its significance cannot be overstated. Like the arrival of a multi-ethnic, multi-regional representative government on its way to direct elections.

Case in point: This BBC interview with Sir Jeremy Greenstock. The Today Programme interviewer frames questions in the most negative way to reinforce the view that the new interim Iraqi government is failed from the start.

Normblog points to an article in Ha’aretz about Malcolm Balen, the man the BBC has appointed to oversee its coverage of Israel.

I don’t have any special knowledge of medical matters myself, but would like to pass on these comments from a reader writes:

I am an medical equipment engineer and installer, my wife is a mid-wife, so we both for different reasons take a keen interest in medical stories, ESPECIALLY at teatime, when we eat and watch the evening news.

So tonight 28/5 we were both intestested in in a news

item on the 6 o’clock news, “Iraqis take charge of their

own health service” report (proberbly repeated at 10pm

if you are interested)

Before I explain this, approx 3 years ago we were both

watching Channel 4 news and an item about the UN

sanctions agianst Saddam. We both noted the state of

the hospital and the 1970s Soviet incubators being

used, we were both horrified. This hospital as I

recall was stated as being the Baghdad main hospital.

So cue tonights report on the six o’clock news. To

most certainly the same hospital.The reporter in her

report walked past some brand new incubators and

remarked, “there are no spare parts for these incubators” not “infant mortality is obviously going to improve now

that modern western incubators are availible” NO that

just would not fit into THE PICTURE would it?

I was mortified at the offhand, crass and misleading

reporting, I counted at least 6 brand new incubators

and all she can say “there are no spare parts”

As for the spare parts issue, I found out from a

blogger site yesterday (no one else had cared to

mention it) that commercial flights were once agian

going to Baghdad, this is important as it is well

known in the medical equipment industry, that service

and maintainence are the key standards that companies

compete against each other at. I was in Cairo a few

weeks ago working and got parts delivered from

Chicago in 14 hours, so I am pretty certain Fedex

will be delivering into Iraq, especially as 120k of

American soldiers are there.

I enjoyed my meal, but saying that I still feel sick,

how could the reporting standards of the BBC, who are

supposed to be the benchmark of world TV be so low?

the last couple of weeks I have had much less time for the internet and blogging. Belatedly, from Jim Miller, here is an example of BBC bias from a couple of weeks back. I missed it then, but the issue is still current.

I think the B-BBC posters have between them the full range of possible opinions about gay marriage (my own view is the standard libertarian one, and Jim Miller mentions his own mixed feelings), but it is undeniable that the assumption that marriage can only lawfully be between a man and a woman was, as Jim says, nearly universal in all Western societies until only a generation ago and is still the majority opinion in the US. It is not by any stretch “radical” or unique to Republicans, or unique to Americans for that matter.

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