Category Archives: Uncategorized

Many complaints about the BBC’s sneering treatment of Christianity have been made. Meanwhile, in an article about the Hajj, this interesting line:

‘An estimated two million worshippers are expected at Mecca, where the prophet Ibrahim was told by Allah to build a shrine dedicated to him.’

I do not pretend to be an expert in Judaism or Islam, but I understand Ibrahim is the Islamic equivalent of Abraham. Whether in fact the person Jews believe to be the father of the Jewish people really went to Mecca is highly debatable,and certainly not to be reported by the BBC as if it were fact. It would have been much more sensible to say ‘Islam holds that the prophet Ibrahim…’, but that would be questioning the beliefs of non-Christians, a PC anathema.

I don’t know if this one represents BBC bias or simply shows how little I know. Perhaps better-informed readers can tell me.

Here’s the item: the answer to question 3 of this BBC quiz on the US presidency says:

“President Truman had an 85% approval rating at the beginning of 1945, but that sank to a little over 30% after he ordered two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan.”

I was very surprised at this. My impression was that the news of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the surrender of Japan within days, was greeted in the US (as it was in the UK) with awe and a certain amount of heartsearching, but that the overwhelming reaction was relief; relief that the war was so suddenly over without the need for a massive attack on a fanatically-defended Japan. In support of Truman’s decision, Churchill said:

“To avoid a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.”

While I am certainly aware that there were a few on the Allied side who opposed the Bomb in 1945, in general my impression was that Churchill’s reaction was atypical only in its eloquence. I wondered if the BBC’s explanation of Truman’s unpopularity was not an attempt (possibly unconscious) to impose modern BBC disapproval of the atom bomb onto the Americans of a previous generation.

UPDATE: Good heavens! Whoever reads this site for the Beeb, congratulations on your fast response. I had just pressed “publish” and clicked the link to check it worked – and found the reference to the atomic bomb had gone. It now reads:

President Truman had an 85% approval rating at the beginning of 1945, but that sank to a little over 30% in the wake of the Korean War and domestic problems.

Thing is, now I know I was right and it wasn’t true that the the reason for Truman being unpopular was the Bomb. The question remains how this error came to be made in the first place. Know what I think? I think it was BBC bias.

. The BBC’s relativistic ‘impartiality’ explores the new depths available when you accomodate the Al Jazeera perspective, with this report of the Taleban’s drugs policy. We all know what sensitive and sensible civil administrators the Taleban were, so thank goodness the BBC have The Noble British Academic to rely on for this insightful appraisal. It does seem a bit coy, however, not to explain what having your face ‘blackened’ involved, and what ‘eradication’ implied; what it might be like to be ‘paraded through the streets’ or what an Afghan prison was like under the Taleban. Apparently we must just swallow our ‘neo-con’ pride and learn from their success. Draconian measures (intimidation and terror, for instance) when implemented vigorously, increase the authority of the authorities- wow, I am surprised to hear that. The fact that they worked at ‘local levels’ suggests that what was going on was little better than vigilante behaviour- ok for the Afghans, it is implied, but not for us.

, the BuzzMachine’s been a fine place for scrutinising and debating the BBC. Thanks, Jeff.

In the comments to the previous post reader Lee Moore said this:

A beautifully balanced tale of how the Lebanese have returned to the barbarity of the death penalty:

Link.

We hear about protestors, we hear about the former Prime Minister who refused to approve executions, we hear about Amnesty’s objections, we hear about other “human rights” groups’ objections, we even hear about the EU’s objections. Nothing is omitted, except…..

surprisingly we hear nothing about the views of other Lebanese people, either the people who did approve the sentences or about public opinion. Nor do we hear that Amnesty and friends are, on this subject, a minority opinion in this country.

I wonder why. Oh, all right, I don’t really.

The Lebanese government ought to hire some terrorists, sorry “militants” to burst in and blow up the three condemned men in the name of Free Palestine. Then the Beeb would bend over backwards to understand the killers.

Really.

(Hat tip to Rich.)

Foreign Policy is a highly regarded US publication with a wide and important international readership.

From the current edition, this quote:

‘With varying degrees of delicacy, everyone from fringe U.S. presidential candidates Lyndon LaRouche and Patrick Buchanan to European news outlets such as the BBC and Le Monde have used neocon as a synonym for Jew, focusing on Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen, and others with obvious Jewish names. Trying to resurrect the old dual-loyalties canard, they cite links between some neocons and the Likud Party to argue that neocons wanted to invade Iraq because they were doing Israel’s bidding.

Yes, neocons have links to the Likud Party, but they also have links to the British Tories and other conservative parties around the world, just as some in the Democratic Party have ties to the left-leaning Labour Party in Great Britain and the Labor Party in Israel. These connections reflect ideological, not ethnic, affinity. And while many neocons are Jewish, many are not. Former drug czar Bill Bennett, ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, social scientist James Q. Wilson, theologian Michael Novak, and Jeane Kirkpatrick aren’t exactly synagogue-goers. Yet they are as committed to Israel’s defense as Jewish neocons are—a commitment based not on shared religion or ethnicity but on shared liberal democratic values. Israel has won the support of most Americans, of all faiths, because it is the only democracy in the Middle East, and because its enemies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, and Syria) also proclaim themselves to be the enemies of the United States.

The charge that neocons are concerned above all with the welfare of Israel is patently false. In the 1980s, they were the leading proponents of democratization in places as disparate as Nicaragua, Poland, and South Korea. In the 1990s, they were the most ardent champions of interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo—missions designed to rescue Muslims, not Jews. Today neocons agitate for democracy in China (even as Israel has sold arms to Beijing!) and against the abuse of Christians in Sudan. Their advocacy of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is entirely consistent with this long track record. If neocons were agents of Likud, they would have advocated an invasion not of Iraq or Afghanistan but of Iran, which Israel considers to be the biggest threat to its own security.’

The BBC used to be an authoritative, non-biased, reference news-source for the world. Now it is merely a European news outlet broadcasting anti-Semitism.

: one of the saddest sights for an opponent of deceit is to see politically-correct bias managing to deceive someone who is not its natural or willing dupe. Jeremy Clarkson, though he jokes about his anti-U.S. bias, is not the most natural target of left-wing propaganda. Most of his programme on the gun (‘Inventions that changed the world’, shown this evening on BBC 2) was, by BBC standards, a watchable and by no means intemperate view of the topic.

Then he got onto relative statistics on gun-related killings: 1994 was the stated year. Suddenly the figures he was saying started to remind me of something. Although I have a passable memory for figures, I was not videoing the program and can only say that I think they were US: 11,127, Germany: 381, etc; the figures from Michael Moore’s notorious ‘Bowling for Columbine’.

David Hardy’s detailed analysis of Bowling has some useful discussion of how Moore may have acquired these dubious figures (and much else that was not just dubious) for the film. Jeremy Clarkson is not an obvious victim of a man like Moore. Perhaps he spends too much time with BBC colleagues who are. Perhaps he simply doesn’t realize how far the politically correct will go. After all, Columbine won an Oscar for ‘best documentary’; people could think that meant it was fact, not fiction.

I am annoyed by deliberate BBC bias. I am depressed by this very minor and probably quite innocent repetition of Moore’s bias. Meanwhile, one can but hope that Jeremy will put his anti-American bias to more productive use; Moore is one after all.

. Scott Burgess has the shocking truth.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but BBC’s website seems to have an insatiable desire to fill up bandwidth.

The front page of the New York Times on 11 January had an interesting piece about the lengths of film credits – http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/movies/11CRED.html.

Surprisingly, the BBC news website had an interesting article bylined Michael Osborn ‘Last Updated: Tuesday, 13 January, 2004, 17:41 GMT ‘ on:

BBC: ‘The Lord of the Rings trilogy has reached its climax by setting a new record for having the longest closing credits in Hollywood history…’

NYT: ‘They are known as closing credits, but the other day at a movie theater in Times Square, after three and a half epic hours of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” the credits did not seem to want to close’

BBC: ‘This is in stark contrast to the dawn of Hollywood, when silent horror flick Nosferatu mentioned just 16 names in a mere ninety seconds.’

NYT: ‘The 1922 vampire classic “Nosferatu,” a kind of special-effects vehicle of its day, credited only 11 cast members and 5 others, including the director and cinematographer, and the credits lasted 1 minute 35 seconds’

BBC: ‘The Return Of The King lists oddities such as “compositing inferno artist” on its epic credits, while Mr Fay’s personal favourite is “cockroach wrangler”.

NYT: ‘At eight minutes, the moviegoers still in the theater were watching a scroll of completely inscrutable titles like “wrangler manager” and “compositing inferno artist.” Of course, the caterer had to be immortalized, too.’

BBC: ‘Big name stars often like their vast entourages to be mentioned – Russell Crowe boasted a 17-strong team on the credits of Master and Commander.’

NYT: ‘And in big-budget movies with powerful stars, the stars often succeed in winning screen credit for anyone who has anything to do with their performances. In “Master and Commander,” the list of attendants to Russell Crowe alone reads like the staff list at a small company: his costumer, two hairstylists, a makeup artist, two special makeup artists, a stunt double, a stand-in, a trainer, a dialect coach, a swordmaster, three violin coaches, two assistants and the name of the company that provided his personal security.’

BBC: ‘While a film credit name-check can be an important career boost to someone in the business, …’

NYT: ‘In some movies with limited budgets, travel agencies and other companies are sometimes given credit – in essence free advertising in a prestigious format – if they agree to work for less.’

BBC side bar: ‘NUMBER OF CREDITED NAMES

1922 Nosferatu – 16

1977 Star Wars – 143

1999 The Matrix – 151

2003 LOTR II – 559

2003 Matrix III – 701

Source: Baseline Hollywood ‘

NYT: ‘According to Baseline, which compiles information about movies, the original “Star Wars” in 1977 listed 143 people in its credits. In 1999, “The Matrix” listed 551, including Longy Nguyin, a sports masseuse. Last year, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” listed 559 names, “Finding Nemo” listed 642, and the third installment of the “Matrix” series had 701.’

Curiouser and curiouser.

Mr Osborn – did you really contact Baseline Hollywood, or is the NYT article the source of the figures?