Nicholas Vance of LNBBCN has some serious questions

(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 … Continue reading

A racist stereotype hastily changed.

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 … Continue reading

Last Night’s BBC News

(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 … Continue reading

Before I forget.

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 … Continue reading

Let’s see if we can identify a pattern

: 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? … Continue reading

A curate’s egg

: 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 … Continue reading

Francis Turner

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. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Shedding a tear for Yasser Arafat.

This morning’s BBC Breakfast News has been noticeably sombre so far – Natasha Kaplinsky (daughter of South African political refugees and former employee of Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and John Smith, for those who don’t already know) looks as if she’s in mourning. Barbara Plett and Lyse Doucet, reporting from the West Bank, are both suitably attired in black (a privilege the BBC didn’t have the grace to afford to … Continue reading