Search Results for: climate

“Are you in Iraq ? Have you seen any troop movements ?”

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We all know the BBC’s corporate view of the Great Satan America, but I think this is going beyond rhetoric.

“Politicians reacted in disbelief to the revelation that for over two hours yesterday, the BBC News website carried a request for people in Iraq to report on troop movements. The request was removed from the website after it sparked furious protests that the corporation was endangering the lives of British servicemen and women.

But according to accounts last night, a story on a major operation by US and Iraqi troops against al-Qa’eda somewhere north of Baghdad contained an extraordinary request for information about the movement of troops. Last night the BBC confirmed the wording of the request was: “Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below.”

The BBC confirmed last night that this form of words had appeared on the website from “late morning” until early afternoon.”

The request was more likely to endanger the lives of US and Iraqi forces, being appended to this piece on the Diyala province offensive north of Baghdad.

Thanks to the glories of Revisionista, we can see that the request for troop information was there from revision 3 at 09.30 GMT up to revision 10 at 13.40 GMT – more than four hours.

The squaddies at ARRSE aren’t best pleased.

“Did you realise the BBC are now helping insurgents in northern Iraq with their intel ??”

I do hope if the BBC are going to request this sort of info that all their staff are security cleared. One wouldn’t like to think of such information falling into the wrong hands. Alternatively, could they try a radical new departure and request information on the movements of “militants” and “insurgents” ? And what would they say if Al-Jazeera asked their viewers to report on the movements of BBC staff in Gaza, Iraq or Afghanistan ?

Hat-tips to Max, Heron and David in the comments (via Tim Blair).

UPDATE – I think this is what’s called disingenuous.

“However, yesterday we used the phrase “have you seen any troop movements” in this request for information. The Telegraph and some others wrongly interpreted this as an attempt on our part to seek out military detail.”

What on earth could give that impression ? How could anyone think that asking about troop movements is an attempt to seek out military detail ?

“We phrased it badly, and as soon as we realised what we had done – a couple of hours – we removed the form.”

Four hours and 10 minutes according to Revisionista. Is Vicky Taylor not even capable of putting the corporate hand up honestly over the timing, is Revisionista wrong, or has she been inaccurately briefed ? Alas, I can’t ask her, because I’m banned from commenting – at least that’s how I translate “you are not allowed to comment”.

And off topic, but kudos to Nick Reynolds for his continuing ‘mission to explain’ and David Gregory for his contributions to an interesting discussion on the reporting of climate change in the comments to this post.

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The blogging equivalent of a slow full-toss outside leg stump …

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Times – “Bias at the Beeb – Official“

There are some things you do not need an official report to tell you – that John Prescott thinks he is a babe magnet, that President Mugabe is not entirely in favour of white farmers and that Al-Qaeda takes a pretty dim view of the West. The report commissioned by the BBC into itself concluded with something equally blindingly obvious. It said that the organisation is institutionally biased and especially gullible to the blandishments of politically driven celebrities, such as Bono and Bob Geldof. Almost anyone in Britain could have told the BBC that for free, but maybe it’s better to have it in an official report.

Even taking into account the small but insistent internal voice pointing out that the Times is part of the Great Satan Murdoch’s media empire, there’s not much to disagree with there.

” … what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes … the BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club.”

Telegraph – “BBC report finds bias within corporation”

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded. The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased – and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial. But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised. Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner ‘Make Poverty History’.

Mr Blair said the campaign was a “mighty achievement”. The huge Live 8 concerts across the world were its culmination and the BBC cleared its schedules to show them, with coverage on BBC One, Two and Three and Radio One and Two. Around the same time it also screened a specially-written episode of Curtis’s popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley that featured a minute long Make Poverty History video and saw characters urged to support it. And it aired another Curtis drama, The Girl in the Café, in which Bill Nighy falls in love with an anti-poverty campaigner – even giving Gordon Brown an advance copy. The BBC also ran a week long Africa special featuring a series of documentaries by Geldof and a day celebrating the National Health Service, prompting Sky News political editor Adam Boulton to tell a House of Lords select committee it was in danger of peddling government propaganda.

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

(En passant, the BBCs uncritical coverage of the millionaires Geldof, Bono and Curtis illustrates neatly a feature of modern philanthropy. In Victorian times a rich man with a conscience would put his hands in his own pockets to fund a worthy cause – a tradition which continues in America (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett) to this day. Across the water the favoured option of a charitably inclined multimillionaire is to get poorer people to fund your favourite causes via higher taxation – while in some cases avoiding such taxes yourself.)

Strangely the Observer headlines its report “Vicar of Dibley accused of breaking BBC guidelines“. Can’t imagine why. But they also have BBC insider Richard Tait’s view of the report.

UPDATE 18/06 – Commenter Richy is clairvoyant !

“If overly critical then surely the it’ll be placed in the “england” section or the “entertainment” section.”

“Entertainment” it is !

You can find the report here. Plenty of pdfs to get through. The “impartiality monitoring group” doesn’t look like a diverse cross-section of British political opinion to me – you do wonder what political perspectives the man who “co-founded the Democracy Coalition for Children and Young
People” or Kat Fletcher bring to the party.

More coverage at Times (also under Entertainment), Telegraph, Mail, more Sunday Times. Oh, and apologies for calling a BBC Trustee a BBC ‘insider’. Cultural misunderstanding … via commenter JBH, the Michael Crick anecdote about BBC execs all being Guardian readers. Sounds too good to be true – Mr Crick seems to have a puckish sense of humour. But I’m sure it “illustrates a wider truth”, as Dan Rather and Piers Morgan would say.

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Unconscious lack of bias

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: heard on BBC2 (circa 20:00, 9th April, advertising a later programme)

Experts say it’s now or never to tackle climate change …

Taken literally, this is a very balanced presentation of the two main viewpoints on this subject. Some experts state that humans cause global warming and we must act now. Other experts regard that theory as scientific nonsense and see never as a more appropriate time to do the pointless and costly actions it recommends.

Alas, something in her tone persuaded me that the presenter did not mean it that way.

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Weather to notice or not

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Yes, it’s Easter. Happy Easter to those in the “Christian world”!

It’s been a great weekend for climate change at the Beeb. Good Friday saw headline after headline drawn from the pre-release of one of the IPCC’s four reports expected this year. Now the main pre-report report is lurking both under Science and Nature and also under the Americas section, for some reason, although the IPCC met in, guess where? Brussels.

April 4th saw them see fit to report Scotland basking in warmth ahead of this Easter weekend; as if to show that weather stories arestories, even if they can’t boast any records.

Then we have, currently, a report from Mexicodetailing the drying up of a lake there. This begins with citing that well-known source of water disappearance, God, as one possible explanation, and then posits the alternative – man-made global warming. Yeah, that’s balance. The same source who cited God as the main culprit, a Ms Ortega Torres, also claims a dramatic reduction in rainfall and blames this on anthropomorphic global warming:

“Ms Ortega Torres has no doubts why the lake has shrunk so much.

“It’s because of climate change,” she says. “This area used to get around 300 days of rain a year. Now we are lucky to see 100 to 150 days. So the lake cannot be replenished.”

 
Faith abounding, apparently.

Because lost in the rest of the text, concealed as a contributing factor, is the massive increase in Mexico’s population and the demand that has placed on agricultural production and water consumption.

Worth investigating, I’d have thought- especially the source and specifics of the rainfall claim. I’d have thought that’s what editorial meetings are for.

But no, probably they’re for deciding not to cover record-breaking cold weather across much of the United States. And when I say record-breaking, I mean, RECORD BREAKING. That is to say, daytime historic lows in cities like Atlanta (1886), Augusta (1981), and Charlotte (1961). And it’s also pretty chilly in Nashville (hat-tip, Insta).

Bad timing, Auntie. High time to manage the news. I notice that the unwisely opened Have Your Say is dominated by MMGW sceptics, like this chap from Lithuania who comments:

“I dont like BBC as it provides us information about global warming. It provides us all arguments for, however, almost all arguments against are kept quiet.”

Indeed, Mr Kinselis, indeed.

[nb. all the above is not an argument against global warming per se, but against the dramatic claims made for MMGW. Evidence that record low temperatures are possible in this carbon benighted world needs to be carefully recorded and studied, and noted by both public and politicians worldwide. How are the BBC helping that along, I wonder?]

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Greetings, Mr Barron.

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According to commenter “will”, Newsnight editor Peter Barron quotes this blog in his weekly email:

One of the consequences of ‘Paxman slams the BBC on climate hyprocrisy’ [Out of date link to original “This is London” article deleted] has been a prominent posting [link] on Biased BBC, a website devoted to pointing out what it sees as the politically-correct institutional group-think of much of the corporation’s output.

This time they weren’t accusing Jeremy of bias – they’ve elevated him to their role [sic] of honour for his honesty in saying: “People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago”

Read more here.

Jeremy Paxman’s comments can be read here.

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Paxman accuses BBC of hypocrisy over environment

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writes Jason Deans in yesterday’s MediaGrauniad, reporting on an article by Jeremy Paxman in the BBC’s internal magazine Ariel (known satirically inside and outside the Corporation as Pravda!). Some excerpts:

Jeremy Paxman has accused the BBC of hypocrisy over climate change, saying it takes a “high moral tone” in its reporting of the issue while at the same time pursuing environmentally irresponsible policies…

“I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour,” Paxman said, writing in this week’s edition of in-house BBC magazine Ariel.

“I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. But it strikes me as very odd indeed that an organisation which affects such a high moral tone cannot be more environmentally responsible,” he added.

Emphasis added above, and:

He added that when he asked Yogesh Chauhan, the BBC’s chief advisor, corporate responsibility, why the corporation did not practice what it preaches in its climate change coverage, the reply was: “The biggest impact we can make is through our programmes”.

“The problem is that no one has yet worked out how to generate electricity by hand
wringing,” Paxman added.

Do read the whole thing. It looks like Jeremy is very much sold on the idea of man made global warming, and, more significantly, that he recognises and acknowledges the BBC’s lack of impartiality in pursuing and promoting that agenda.

It’d be really great if Jeremy and the rest of the BBC would recognise that, to paraphrase Jeremy, there are also “people who know a lot more than [the BBC] do [who] may be right when they claim that it is [not, or substantially not, a] consequence of our own behaviour”.

The greatest service the BBC can do for mankind in this debate to actually ensure that there is a full and proper debate and a full and ongoing exploration of all the issues from all rational viewpoints, rather than their current, virtually unchallenged, wholesale promotion of the views of a) those involved in the climate change industry; and, b) those with a political axe to grind (e.g. sundry anti-capitalist greens, wishy-washy lefties etc.).

As for piddling away the licence fee on ‘offsetting’, in itself a controversial ‘solution’ to the alleged problem, if the BBC feels it needs to address the problem, it’d be better just to minimise their carbon footprint, rather than waste tellytaxpayers money as a way of salving their troubled consciences.

Update: More on Paxo in The Times. (Is that how you spell ‘moron’? 🙂

P.S. For his honesty Jeremy has gained a coveted spot on our sidebar!

Hat tip for the links to commenters dmatr & will.

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They are like ravening beasts. What shall I feed them?

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Blimey. 409 comments. Looks like it’s time for a roundup, below, and a new “open thread” post coming up in a minute.

  • An article in the New York Sun by Daniel Johnson says

    The BBC now has a huge audience in America as well as in the rest of the world for its endless reiteration of the implied thesis that the Jewish state is the root of all evil — not only of war in the East but of terrorism in the West too — and that the ” Israel lobby” rules in Washington. Gloating over the supposed triumph of Realpolitik since the midterm elections, the BBC can hardly contain its Schadenfreude at the departure not merely of Donald Rumsfeld but also of John Bolton.

(Hat tip: Alan)

Oliver writes:

“Hi BBBC – I thought this report interesting especially the line:

“The barrier goes up, and you drive in through a gap in the 30-foot high concrete wall that Israel says it has built to keep out suicide bombers.”

Love that ‘says it has’…

Yours

Oliver

  • Neil Craig of A Place to Stand wrote to the BBC, copying us in. An extract:

    Dear BBCThis morning David Attenborough was interviewed on the Andrew Marr programme on the subject of putative global warming & made the somewhat improbable statement that “in 20 years much of Norfolk will be under water”. Since sea level has been rising at about 0.6 mm a year since the last ice age & does not appear to have significantly changed recently this would require much of Norfolk to be less than half an inch above sea level now which I do not believe is the case. Indeed historically Norfolk has, for geological reasons, been rising faster than the sea. Even the alarmist BBC have heretofore claimed only 30 cm* a century which amounts to 2 inches in 20 years.

    I was therefore somewhat surprised when the interviewer never even questioned the remark & finished the interview calling Mr Attenborough, whose basic claim to fame is as a BBC spokesman an “icon”, which clearly put a BBC seal of approval on it.

    If it really is the case that the BBC are officially promising us that Norfolk will largely be underwater by 2026 I will have to accept that as the sort of ridiculous propaganda which represents the very highest standards to which the BBC aspire.

    *Taken from the BBC article. A typo in Mr Craig’s email meant that the link url had been typed over the next few characters. Read the rest of his post here.

  • On a similar subject, another correspondent writes:

    Hi,

  • First, we know how these signed “petitions” by THOUSANDS of scientists go as reported by the BBC et al. Did deep and you’ll find a overwhelming list of left wing partisan advocates and non-“scientists”. This BBC article is no different. You get your usual suspects in this article. The BBC just carries the water whenever they put out a PR.

    US scientists reject interference

    The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy…..[and the Bush bashing begins]

    One of the main article sources, the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security is a San Francisco area left wing “green” advocacy group represented by the BBC as a “Non Partisan” organization. Well, as usual, the reporter simply didn’t look at the board of directors or it’s advisory board. Look for yourself

    http://www.pacinst.org

    The other source The Union of Concerned Scientists, again, is a green advocacy organization. Check it out. http://www.ucsusa.org.

    I don’t see this blog as having any particular collective opinion on whether and whither climate change. But we are getting quite a few emails saying, as these do, that the BBC is very much of one opinion when presenting the issue.

    UPDATE: Ian Hart, the communications director of the Pacific Institute, comments

    First, the Pacific Institute is a think tank or a research institute, not a “‘green’ advocacy group.” While we may advocate certain policies, it is not our primary goal or tool. If you look at our staff you will not find lawyers or lobbyists, but mostly scientists.

    Second, the Pacific Institute is a non partisan organization and Jonathan Amos was correct in noting that in his article. When we work with governments, we’ve worked with Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. We’ve also worked in numerous countries where those parties mean nothing. So we are indeed non partisan.

    Looking at its website, it is true that the Pacific Institute is non-partisan in the sense that it is not connected to any political party. The Advisory Board contains both Nancy Ramsey, the Legislative Director for Senator John Kerry (D) and the Hon. Claudine Schneider, a former Republican Representative for Rhode Island.

    Nonetheless, the Pacific institute is not apolitical. Sample quotes: “Social justice has long been the missing element from the debate over environmental pollution and economic development.” “Globalization and privatisation of the world’s resources are leading to controversy, dispute and even violence.” It favours mildly statist solutions.

    I am more sympathetic to Ian Hart’s defence of his own organisation than I am to the BBC’s description of it. The phrase “non-partisan” will be taken to mean “non-political” by most readers of the website, and I rather think the BBC knows this and exploits it – in many cases, not just this one. In particular I think that the BBC gently exploits the fact that in the US, because of campaign finance restrictions and the fact that political donations from individuals are made public there, the fact that an organisation can be non-partisan and yet have a political agenda is widely understood, whereas over here the two terms “non political” and “non partisan” are practically interchangeable. A think tank as right wing as the Pacific Institute is left wing would almost always be described as “right wing” on the BBC.

 

Ascribing partial responsibility for rape

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to anyone other than the rapist prompted paragraph headings such as “disturbing attitudes” when the BBC reported on the Amnesty survey of attitudes towards rape. (My personal view on the subject of responsibility for rape can be read here.)

Hat tip to Grimer, who has pointed out an example of the BBC being less clear about ascribing responsibility for rape to the rapists. Grimer writes:

Stop Press!

EU and USA responsible for rape of of Palestinians (according to the BBC)

Rape in war ‘a growing problem’

Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding. Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly since the EU and the US cut funding after January’s election of Hamas, Luay Shabaneh of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says.

So, because we’ve stopped giving them billions in aid, they are now raping each other. How quaint.

I think Grimer has somewhat overstated his case, although I have no doubt that this was overstatement was conscious and rhetorical. One aspect of the BBC climate of opinion that I have no quarrel with is its sincere abhorrence of rape. Still, feminist writers (who also sometimes use rhetorical overstatement) have pointed out that separately trivial forms of words can combine to harmful effect.

“Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding.”

Google the phrase “rape culture” and you will find many writers who would say that words such as those support a culture that excuses rape. I don’t agree – it is legitimate to raise the hypothesis of “links” between incidence of rape and other variables. But I think it likely that that particular possible link (rape to development funding) was especially congenial to the BBC, despite being so indirect. Otherwise why did the BBC not focus on another possible link, more direct, more plausible and equally implicit in the article’s own words. You can see this link by cutting out seven words from the paragraph quoted above. What is left is still a true statement.

Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly … after January’s election of Hamas.

Read this post from Classical Values, “Hamas honors women!” on the attitudes of Palestinian society towards women who have been raped – attitudes exacerbated by the electoral victory of Hamas.

Anthropologist James Emery explained in 2003, how “among Palestinians, all sexual encounters, including rape and incest, are blamed on the woman.” Men are always presumed innocent and the responsibility falls on the woman or girl to protect her honor at all costs. When 17-year-old Afaf Younes ran away from her father after he allegedly sexually assaulted her, she was caught and sent home to him. He then shot and killed her to protect his honor.

That case and others like it happened when the EU’s development funding was in full flow. I hope the BBC takes a more questioning attitude to statements by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics next time.

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A finger in every pie.

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From the open comments thread above, this enlightening list from Ritter. His links work; for obscure Blogger/Haloscan/too-idle-to-type-them-out reasons, mine don’t. So if your life is incomplete wihout the BBC’s guidance on Lifestyle Detox, Parenting or Muslim Devotional Sounds, click on the link. As will be obvious, Ritter was replying to an earlier comment from Archduke.

Archduke – following on from your earlier post re BBC ‘actionnetwork’ – pick a subject, any subject, and the BBC can and does throw huge quantities of money at it. Some examples of the out-of-control BBC:

BBC Collective

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/

588,000 pages

http://www.google.com/search? hl=…G=Google+Search

BBC h2g2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

2,330,000 pages

http://www.google.com/search?q=s…en&lr=&filter=0

BBC Teens

http://www.bbc.co.uk/teens/

14,900 pages

http://www.google.com/search? hl=…G=Google+Search

What the hell has this got to do with the BBC’s charter?

BBC Celebdaq

http://www.bbc.co.uk/celebdaq/in…daq/ index.shtml

This however is where the BBC are pouring bucketloads of cash: Local content:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/whereilive/

Thinking of starting a small website about Jersey, your local area? Why bother, the BBC has it covered:

BBC Where I Live – Jersey

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/

Local Radio, TV, the RAC and AA all provide Travel news, but oh no, the BBC has to do it as well – more bucketloads of cash poured here:

BBC Travel

http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/

400+ pages enough for you?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=…%2F&btnG=Search

BBC Climate Change

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/ hottopic…matechaos.shtml

The BBC loves spending cash on it’s pet subjects, f*ck the licence fee payer and the charter:

BBC Africa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcafrica/i…ica/ index.shtml

That’s 42,000 pages on BBC Africa!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=…%2F&btnG=Search

Don’t forget ‘Africa Lives on the BBC’:

BBC Africa Lives on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/africalives…ves/ index.shtml

700+ pages

http://www.google.com/search?hl=…%2F&btnG=Search

BBC Islam – One Life

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onel…ion/ islam.shtml

BBC Islam – Religion & Ethics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/re…lam/ index.shtml

BBC Islam – World Service

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservic…ons/ islam.shtml

BBC In-depth – Islam Around the World

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/s…tml/ default.stm

BBC Islam – Devotional Sounds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwor…v_sounds_islam/

BBC Asian Network

http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/

BBC Create

http://www.bbc.co.uk/create/

BBC Holidays

http://www.bbc.co.uk/holiday/tv_…parture_lounge/

BBC First Aid

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/firs…rst_aid_action/

BBC Lifestyle Detox

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lifestyle/detox/

BBC Lifestyle A-Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lifestyle/a…tyle/ atoz.shtml

BBC NHS (Sorry ‘Health’)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/

That’s 36,900 pages

http://www.google.com/search?hl=….uk%2Fhealth% 2F

or you can go here:

NHS Direct

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/

BBC Inside Out

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/

that’s another 10,000+ pages

http://www.google.com/search?hl=…%2F&btnG=Search

BBC Keyskills

http://www.bbc.co.uk/keyskills/

BBC Mobile

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/web/…web/ index.shtml

BBC Parenting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/

Loadsamoney! – Fancy some of it? There are currently 91 jobs available at the BBC

Jobs at the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/jobs/

Archduke then came up with his own list of BBC local sites. He comments, “got a website idea for your local area? dont bother – the bbc will probably steal your idea anyway and you’ll have to close down.” And Ritter responds with “more in the fun game of picking a subject, any subject and discovering that the BBC can and has thrown lots of cash at it….”, followed by another list of bijoux BBC projects.

Certain items – notably H2G2 and Inside Out – were defended by other commenters. But it’s still a very big list of very small relevance to what the BBC was set up to do. The BBC has (and enforces) the right in law to demand funding via a licence fee from any British person wishing to own a television, irrespective of whether they make any use of BBC services. Was this very considerable power, unique in any modern democracy, really given them so they could run an exam revision site?

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Lacking a spine

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This is not a post about the BBC’s lacking courage. They do, but the metaphor is a bit more literal than that. I’m referring to an interesting article concerning the booming state of the Israeli economy which is paradoxically dominated by the BBC’s focus on poverty.

The trouble is, like so many BBC reports, it lacks the spine provided by recognition of fundamentals. So we get a jelly-like rambling commentary telling us how

‘Last year, the economy expanded at its fastest rate in years, bolstered by healthy growth in exports, strength in the technology sector and a healthy investment climate.’

You look through the article in vain for the central theme: it is conveyed only in hints about a positive ‘investment climate’ and how ‘a Palestinian uprising sparked a slump’ in 2000.

But the real story behind economic growth is the stability brought about by Sharon’s barrier policy and unilateral action. Because they will not focus on this, a fundamental issue, they are released to focus on one of their cherished topics, poverty, which enables them to include Palestinian alienation in their ‘compassionate’ coverage. In doing so they pass over the fact that the gap between rich and poor is mirrored by the gulf between terrorist sponsoring people and law-abiding citizens.

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