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The Saturday 11th October edition of Today carried an article about the California election.

Margaret Doyle introduced an American author called Jonathan Franzen. Franzen was introduced as a ‘liberal’, which a spot of googling certainly confirms to be the case (though the BBC shows progress here in introducing the standpoint of a speaker who would be unknown to most listeners).

Franzen’s interview was really a monologue. Naturally, the result of the California election was down to the stupidity of the electors. According to Franzen, there are a lot of angry people in America who have no right to be angry. The electorate couldn’t understand the issues etc etc. The failures of previous Governor Mr Davies were not mentioned.

All of Franzen’s comments were accepted without comment by a fawning Doyle. The real question was why this article was included at all. Franzen certainly was not a witty speaker (rather dull actually), and he had nothing fresh to say on the subject. Was it because has was, from a BBC point of view, ‘on message’?

Ok. I thought this piece was going to be long (hint: this is a stealth edit), but it isn’t all that bad when I look at it on the page. It’s just one out of many examples from the ongoing famine of truth and feast of slanted opinion that the BBC is harbouring during this Iraq business.

‘Birth Pains of Iraq’s Democracy’: cynicism, mindlessness and obfuscation?

Terribly strong nouns, those- those that I’ve used in my part of the headline. The rest are provided by Martin Asser’s correspondent piece here about Iraq and the chances for its emerging democracy. Asser’s nouns, by the way, create the prospect of a tension between a good result, ‘democracy’, and a difficult passage, ‘birth pains’. [creep, creep- the question mark is mine ]

On reading his article, one can only feel that the title is ironic, since the main point of the article is to question whether the birth will ever take place (‘didn’t we put the mother in danger for no good reason?’ is the rhetorical implication). Of course, with all the hoohah about negativism, we can’t expect that intent to be signalled by a question mark and scare quotes.

The article is topped and tailed with a flourish of selective hyperbole. The Iraqis, we are told, as if Asser looked into their souls, are ‘profoundly sceptical about their American rulers’ promises to restore democracy after decades of totalitarian dictatorship’ (italics mine). They are also, we are informed by an apparently summary quote at the end of the piece, concerned that ‘the presence of the Americans here takes away our dignity’. So it wasn’t Saddam Hussein who took away their dignity, after all, it’s the result of the American invasion.

Yet, of course, Asser appears not to say that when he mentions that ‘Saddam Hussein…plundered the whole country for years’.

Contradictory you’d think? Not the way that Asser puts it.

Asser has set a context for his reference to Saddam by first referring to Ahmed Chalabi and Iyyad Alawi ‘who were brought in by the Americans despite not having constituencies in the country’ (i.m.- what does it mean?). He goes on to say that ‘Mr Chalabi is widely considered a crook’. Now, after setting the scene, we move on to the biggest crook, which is admitted to be Saddam.

What Asser is saying here is that the US has allied itself with people qualitatively no different to Saddam. That seems to me completely wrong and misleading. It carries the implication that Saddam was primarily an embezzler. Since when did Chalabi have a reputation as a torturer or a mass murderer? There is surely a qualitative as well as a desperately understated quantitative difference between them- ‘billions’ is scarcely adequate by itself to express the monies we are talking of in Saddam’s case.

[Ok, I want to return here with a stealthy edit. I want to acknowledge the phrase ‘pales into insignificance’ and make a few points.
1) Asser uses a figure of speech, not a reasoned phrase.

2) A crook is a crook is a crook.

3) Compare the coverage (in numbers of words as well as detail) of Chalabi’s apparent misdoings with Saddam’s, and ask yourself how the article’s tone is affected.

4) Consider the structure I’ve outlined. My conclusion is that Asser sets up totemic phrases to avoid accusations of bias, but his whole thrust knocks those totems to pieces.]

Sadly, we’re back to usual territory: downplay Saddam and flag up what I can only describe as American inadequacies and injustices. In conclusion: the war was wrong and the Yanks are the real bad guys, yahboo!

I would end there if I could; I have given an utterly defensible conclusion but I haven’t yet addressed the main theme of the article, just the punchline. That’s the effect the Beeb has on me I’m afraid.

So, let’s track back to the article’s origins. As time and space is short, I’ll make bullet points as I scan the article chronologically.
· Contradiction

. Asser says ‘little power has been put into the hands of…the IGC (Iraqi Governing Council)’, and the Iraqis are ‘profoundly sceptical’, but they are also ‘investing considerable hope in the council dealing with their

acute

problems’ (i.m.). Apparently unaware of the contradiction there, Asser then goes on to list the problems, but why do BBC journalists so rarely emphasise that the unemployed men are the result of undoing a military dictatorship and the stagnation of the real economy under Saddam? There’s a huge story seemingly utterly ignored.

· Suggestiveness. Asser rightly states the aims of the IGC, which include its and the coalition’s dissolution, but later adds ‘It is the first real test of a political system which may have to last for years’ (i.m.). This is exaggeration and crystal ball gazing masquerading as reporting an item of news- the tension over Turkey’s involvement in peacekeeping, which might seem to have the potential to shorten the transition by giving Muslim assistance.

· Repetition. ‘If constitutional issues seem somewhat removed from the day-to-day ones that plague Iraq…’. Aren’t they the things he’s just been talking about in the context of the IGC? Or does he insinuate the Baathist terrorism? Either way it’s piling up the cynical tone unjustifiably.

· Rumour mongering from the hotel bar. ‘Recent Iraqi reports citing IGC sources talk about…’ going the same way as Lebanon? Really?

· Repetition of contradiction .If the IGC has been given so little power, and there are all the problems it is powerless to deal with, how come the Iraqis ‘appear to give the process a chance to succeed’? Are they inherently irrational, a version of the much touted ‘Arab street’? Or is it just Asser? I suppose if you really gave emphasis to how bad Saddam was, and factored in the ‘anything’s better than Saddam’ argument, it might make sense, but if, as Asser seems to intend, it’s combined with the idea that it is the Americans who have taken away Iraqis’ ‘honour and their dignity’, it just doesn’t add up.

Happy 100,000 hits to us

Happy 100,000 hits, dear Biased Bee Bee Cee-ee…

Happy 100,000 hits to us.

Was Radio 1 really making the right choice when it opted for Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?” as the backing music for a report on Arnie’s election to the California governorship, and potential future ambitions? Is the lyric “terrorists in the USA, the big CIA, the bloods and the crips and the KKK” really appropriate? Ignorance or bias, you decide…

Ms Kay is not happy again. She still views the win as a loss for Davis, rather than a win for Arnie because people wanted him to.

More interestingly, even if one supports the argument that a narrowly-based, high culture state broadcaster is permissible to allow people to better themselves (don’t scoff too much – I believe this is the thesis of Rose’s ‘Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes’ – and the market does not appear to be very efficient at giving poor people the high culture that the better-off can afford to consume – at extreme public subsidy too I might add), even if one allows this, should a state broadcaster’s role include opinion at all?

Perhaps this is where it has gone wrong – the BBC worked all those long years ago when it provided cold news (and was relied on as the fact source of record) and also high-culture plays and opera etc (and I dare say I am happy that there might have been some miners’ children in the impoverished North who learnt about Beethoven that way). The private sector is better at the BBC at providing opinion, and can do it more quickly and more efficiently. Why should the BBC provide opinion at all?

This is a quick fix, because the soft-left bias corrodes its news reporting as well as its editorial, but some proper guidelines and real editing could go a long way to fixing that. Of course, once it was made to spin off to the private sector all of the commerical tat it produces, subsidised by us, in direct competiton with the other TV channels (like EastEnders and 500 dreary home improvement shows) and dumped all of its new, sloppily researched and error-ridden, left-leaning ‘gotcha’ attack investigative journalism (that appears to have had tragic effects), it would have much more time to ensuring that its news was sober and sensible. Why was the British public happy for BT to float (another dinosaur from the bad old days of socialist Britain), yet the defunct NHS and multiple-tentacled Marxist juggernaut that is the BBC are sacred cows? (extreme mixed metaphor alert there)

Comments?

A comical series of counter comments runs through this article.

One of the things Auntie doesn’t like is that it might seem to boost the Republicans. Remember, Arnold was only running on a ‘Republican ticket’, whatever they are (something to do with trains or whatever). Remember too, Arnold, you’ve been ‘short on detail and “big” on promises’, but also that you’ve got by by ‘not promising very much of anything’. In general, Auntie doesn’t feel you deserve your victory (that’s scarcely mentioning your wandering hands). She hopes you’ll bear that in mind as your economy outgrows that of the United Kingdom.

Here goes…

For serious coverage of the California circus, which also happens to be a State not far away from having an economy the size of Britain’s, Mark Steyn’s essay ‘A state too far’ is available here.

There’s no denying though that the Beeb has a great sense of humour. Take a look at an example from David Bamford

here

Note the gentle indulgence of George Bush’s mental flailings over Israel’s recent actions. Poor George it seems can’t help but contradict himself as a matter of custom. This despite the fact that they are merely fleshing out ‘formal’ policy. The US do not seem ’embarrassed’ by Israel’s strike meanwhile, not that I can think why they should be since they say they had no prior warning of the decision, and therefore no real say in the matter, which has elsewhere been described by the Beeb itself as a ‘response’ to the Haifa bombing. Stop putting ideas in my head, you Beebies!

The real issue involved here is the lumping together of the US and Israel as a solid block engaging in violence and intimidation of countries and groups in the Middle East. In reality, the bombing of the camp in Syria was an act of self-defence, one way or another, against a group (Islamic Jihad) which engineers the slaughter of civilians, and its supporter Syria. To try and pull the ‘stupid Bush’ wool over the moral understanding of these events seems to me despicable. In ridiculing Bush the BBC do a disservice to a proper understanding of events, however funny a character he presents. Actually, they are just boringly following the queue of satiricists from Slate magazine onwards. In my view, there is rarely contradiction in Bush’s words- merely a straightforwardness which fails to pander to journalists with their desire for ‘nuance’.

Have a look at the rest of the article for a carefully worked attempt to make us join in with a denunciation of US/Israeli policy. It begins with us being bored with the ‘same old, same old’ US/Israel schlock. Then we get the cynical BBC hackism of ‘reasonable’ supposition about the raid. Finally, this is topped by the assertion that this act, of which the US (we are assured a little disingenuously) is not embarrassed, is really a coded warning to Syria. In other words, the US was as much behind the attack as Israel. They’re in it together! Conspiracy! Conspiracy! Oh, and by the way, have you forgotten, in all the excitement and wit, what caused this much-hyped shooting match, the other day, in Haifa? I hope not.

BBC correspondent Katty Kay has a good laugh at Arnie the Terminator, wacky Californian delis, joke candidates and so on. She probably thinks she’s being impartial because she freely admits the incumbent Democrat, Gray Davis, is likely to lose.

“Arnie appears to have been given something of a free pass precisely because he is a film star and not a politician.

“Which, in the end, may be precisely the reason that Californians elect him over their very experienced but rather wooden governor.

“Which takes me to Gray Davis.

“What is it about this slim, silver-haired politician that Californians hate so much? “

Let me see… could it be the financial, energy and sleaze crises that have marked his administration? Not according to Kay. It can only be because he is a wooden public speaker. No doubt there are many funny and foolish aspects to the California gubernatorial election – but I am surprised that Katty Kay cannot even manage one word about the substantial reasons that one million Californians might have had for petitioning to recall Gray Davis before Arnie’s candidature was ever heard of.

If this were a case of explaining the odd customs of an obscure tribe the BBC would make a creditable attempt to dig beneath the surface to make apparently strange behaviours comprehensible. However when it comes to the democratic process in the largest state of the world’s most powerful democracy the only motives Kay ascribes to those she reports on are frivolous ones.

. This “analysis” is by by Barbara Plett – BBC correspondent in Ramallah. The analysis of the analysis is by Robert Hinkley of The Sporadic Chronicle. (The title of this post is by him, too.) Alert readers may notice that that the present BBC text differs from the text Mr Hinkley quotes. For instance, this

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries are still in an official state of war, caused by Israel’s occupation and illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

Now reads

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries have been in a state of war since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.”

I guess that in the several hours between the time Mr Hinkley wrote the piece and when I posted it that stealth editor has been busy again. The second version is an improvement on the first – but it is interesting to have the window into Barbara Plett’s thought that the first inaccurate and tendentious version provides.

From this point on Barbara Plett’s text is in ordinary type and Robert Hinkley’s in italics.

————————

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries are still in

an official state of war, caused by Israel’s occupation and illegal

annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

This state of war is caused by Israel’s illegal occupation of a

Syrian mountain range. Bad Israel. If only Israel gave Syria its

mountains back everything would be fine. Why, if only Israel had given

the mountains back in, say, 1972 then all those Syrian soldiers

wouldn’t have had to climb over the mountains on Yom Kippur in 1973

and that way Israel could have been pushed into the sea and we

wouldn’t have this ongoing conflict.

“And since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, Israel has

increasingly focused on the Palestinian opposition groups hosted by

Syria. ”

First they’re not “terrorists”, they’re “militants”. Then they’re

not “militants”, they’re “opposition groups”. Opposition. A lot like,

say, the Conservative Party, or the Democratic Party. Conservative

Party, meet Islamic Jihad, your fellow Opposition. The next step will

be for Islamic Jihad to be described as “modernisers”, or perhaps

“progessives”. [Members of the Palestinian Authority _acknowledge_ Syrian support of

Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Walking Bomb Brigade etc…]

“In response to Syria’s anti- war, anti-occupation stance, the US has

demanded that it clean up its act to fit the new regional order – one

that increasingly defines all armed resistance, whether in Iraq or

other occupied Arab territories, as “terrorism.” ”

The US has demanded Syria clean up its act (ie: stop supporting

terror groups, which members of the Palestinian Authority acknowledge

Syria does). How unreasonable. How dare the Americans? Cos it’s not

“terrorism”, it’s “opposition”! The Americans have only done this

because of Syria’s anti-war, anti-occupation stance, and not because

the Americans in any way want to cut off funding and material to

groups which try very hard to kill civilians in large numbers.

“According to diplomatic sources, Damascus also urged the exiled Hamas

and Islamic Jihad leaderships to accept the unilateral Palestinian

ceasefire declared in June.

They did, but the truce has since broken down. ”

Just how much LSD does someone have to have taken to beleive that

Hamas and Islamic Jihad actually observed any cease-fire?

“It is in this climate that Israel has chosen to go on the offensive,

to send what Israel Radio called a clear signal that Damascus must

stop its support of Palestinian “terror groups”.”

Sneer quotes remind us that the so-called terror groups are actually

opposition groups.

Then Rob writes,

Let’s play Sneer Quote Shuffle – take the same article and reposition

sneer quotes:

—–

UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that another commenter, Dan Skapol, has taken a critical look at the same Barbara Plett article in the comments to the post below.

A reader* wrote this email on Saturday. He or she included the original version of the story. Since then the story has changed, and it does now include mention of who carried out the mass-murder – nonetheless I think our reader makes some valid points about the first version. And the headline is still as ambiguous as ever:

I spotted this story on the BBC website this afternoon (Saturday). It’s the first section of their report on the latest suicide bombing.

Israel suicide attack kills 18

A suicide bomber has killed at least 18 people and injured up to 50 in an attack at a restaurant in the northern port of Haifa, Israeli police say.

The explosion occurred in the Maxim restaurant near Haifa’s beach promenade on the southern edge of the city.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which comes on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.

“There was a security guard outside but the attacker managed to enter and blow up,” Israeli police chief Shlomo Aharonishky said.

“There was a very big explosion, which blew out the windows. It was horrible,” a witness told Israeli TV.

Three children are reported to be among the dead.

It is the first such attack since 9 September, when 15 people were killed in twin suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Is it just me, or do others also find that headline misleading? Notice too, that the “P” word is missing from this part of the report. I suppose the Beeb cannot bring itself to admit that its Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ heroes could even contemplate harming Jews. Even in the final paragraph, which discusses the back-to-back suicide bombings in August, they omit to mention that they were carried out by Palestinians. With any other organization, I’d attribute this simply to bad journalism. In the case of the BBC, however…..

On a related subject, look at the comments to the previous post for a quick comment on how the BBC dealt with the retaliatory strike.

*Let us know if you want your name used.