. Hazhir Teimourian has serious worries about BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson’s recent book, ‘The Wars Against Saddam: Taking The Hard Road To Baghdad’, which the Kurdish commentator on Middle Eastern affairs reviewed for the Literary Review (offline at the moment) this month. Having blamed Simpson’s account for giving Saddam an easy ride, and accused him of blaming the UK and US far too much over deaths caused by … Continue reading →

BBC News Online journalists have been banned from referring to Saddam Hussein as a former dictator. Instead, they must call him “the deposed former President of Iraq”. With 501 instances of Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, being referred to as exactly that on the BBC’s website, one cannot help but wonder why such a double standard has come to pass at the BBC. What makes one former dictator more deserving … Continue reading →

does the BBC respond to criticism? With censorship, of course. True, in this case it’s self censorship, but they can scarcely ask for more from the public than acceptance of a compulsory license fee (kind of an act of censorship by itself)- so they just have to put up with criticism and find ways of deflecting it. Their new policy, apparently, is not to let anyone “whose main profile or … Continue reading →

There are some funny things happening on Blogger. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC states it will not publish comments of an offensive or inflammatory nature on its websites. I am fairly sure that an email calling, let us say, for the execution for treason of George Galloway would never appear, even though plenty of people have opined that he should be strung up. However this post from Black Triangle gives an insight into what does and does not immediately strike the … Continue reading →

Anthony Cox — who will forever be remembered as the author of that WMD 404 page — notes an interesting exchange with the BBC on his blog. After BBC News published a call for President Bush’s assassination, Cox wrote to them to ask for it to be removed. In a very curt, two sentence reply, BBC News claimed they never published the call for Bush’s death — because, as it … Continue reading →

. Hazhir Teimourian is a writer and journalist, and he reviewed BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson’s latest book ‘The Wars Against Saddam: Taking The Hard Road To Baghdad’ for the Literary Review this month (unfortunately offline at the moment). Teimourian’s review is headed ‘The BBC Tribe At War’. The headline caught my attention, and what he had to say held it completely. Teimourian is of Kurdish origin, but has … Continue reading →

It’s puzzling why the BBC’s coverage of the Iraqi foreign minister slamming the UN has omitted the harshest words he had for the supranational organisation. In case you missed it, the New York Times — unlike the BBC — did find it fit to print: “Settling scores with the United States-led coalition should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people,” Mr. Zebari said … Continue reading →

Read Melanie Phillips on an exchange between John Humphrys and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s top diplomat in Iraq. Humphrys: ‘Doesn’t that rather weaken the argument for having gone to war in the first place? If he didn’t have support in the Arab world; if he didn’t have (as we must assume in the absence of any evidence that he didn’t have WMD)…’ Eh? What an astonishing series of non sequiturs! … Continue reading →

Looking on the BBC website tonight is, ironically, like looking into a battery of indignant peacenik artillery. What have we got? Let me offer the headlines: ‘UN chief demands clear Iraq role’ ‘US remains Iraq resistance target’ ‘Vatican slams Saddam treatment’ ‘Blix sceptical on Iraqi WMD claims’ I mean, talk about rallying the troops. Now let me offer you the antidote to this poisonous weaponery, courtesy of Mark Steyn in … Continue reading →