Interventions.

Example #1: Catholic cardinal denounces abortion, and says Catholic politicians who back abortion should consider their stance on receiving Communion.

The BBC invites comments on the following question:

“Should the church intervene in politics”

What are your views on the speech given by the Cardinal? Should politics and religion be kept separate?

Example #2: Anglican Archbishop criticises the government over its case for war in Iraq and says that there has been a loss of trust in the political system.

The BBC invites comments on the following question:

“Is Archbishop right to speak out against the government?”

Do you agree with the Archbishop’s views? Is he right to speak out about the government? Have you lost your trust in politics?

Notice how in the second case, Dr Williams is described as “speaking out”, which has a flavour of courage about it, whereas Cardinal O’Brien is “intervening in politics”, which suggests a busybody. Yet a Catholic prelate has a far more obvious duty to relay his Church’s clear and emphatic teaching about abortion (particularly when his remarks are addressed to politicians who identify themselves as Catholics) than an Anglican prelate has to employ a sermon give his personal opinion about one particular war, a subject upon which the Anglican church can have no doctrine, for all the efforts of its more “progressive” members. I wonder why the BBC did not see fit to ask “should religion and politics be kept separate?” in the case of Dr Williams’ views rather than Cardinal O’Brien’s?

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Fairly Unbalanced

Two links for you. One of them supports the continued existence of the BBC, one of them, er, does not. Both agree the BBC is biased.

Devil’s Kitchen pursues the line that it might be biased, but it’s quality bias. No adverts to interrupt the tone, and anyway, we can always complain! Yeah, must try that…

The pseudonymous poster of this video, though, takes the Daily Mail slam to the BBC. (thanks to Ultraviolets in the comments, who noticed it very promptly :-)).

Personally I recommend the comments to the DK post, where all the salient points about licence fee coercion, a poll tax for television, concerns about one way ideological traffic, are raised. My own view (aside from agreeing with the poll tax point) is that the fact that Britain has had a lively media that we can take some pride in is a historical legacy, but that the entrenchment of the BBC was a wrong turn which has progressively eroded the responsibility and freedom of the press, and is doing so more insidiously as the years go by. Whatever your pleasures in viewing, you could find them without the BBC.

Exit questions for the Beeboids: why do so many newspapers spend so much time talking about the BBC? Why did a news organisation become the news?

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

The moral murk

From the pathetic (see below post) to the poignant. Joseph Loconte notes the frenzied way in which the BBC is campaigning for the release of its journalist Alan Johnston.

Naturally one feels a little of their desperation; we’ve seen far too many atrocities and needless deaths over recent years in the name of Islam and the Palestinians.

Quite whether almost daily Johnston-centred updates, pleas and reports from the BBC is a good use of telly-taxpayers money is a question almost indecent to mention, yet inevitable because the BBC is a state-sponsored organisation. One wouldn’t wish to be brought into it, but where one’s wallet is compelled, one is drawn afterwards.

There is also the question of the BBC’s closeness to Government, as HMG seeks to draw near and reason with Abu Qatada, a radical (terror enabler) believed to have close links to Al Qaeda, believed to have influence in the group holding Johnston. To what extent the BBC is using its influence to manoeuvre the Foreign Office- which funds the BBC world service – is as unclear as ever.

Loconte zeroes in on the words of Mark Thompson, BBC DG:

“Alan…is a brave, dedicated and humane journalist who was deeply committed to reporting events in Gaza to the wider world,”…“The people of Gaza are ill-served by kidnappings of this nature.” (highlight mine)

Loconte points out the strangeness of saying “kidnappings of this nature”, which implies that some kidnappings might be justified. Certainly such a distinction is in keeping with BBC moral equivocations over terrorism. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, just as any of your nuanced imams might say.

Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

“Political realities.”

Stan Brin copied us the text of his complaint regarding a story about Jewish nostalgia for Iraq. He wrote:

The story “Israelis from Iraq remember Babylon” posted at:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6611667.stm [Israelis from Iraq remember Babylon] is essentially a hoax. It falsely disguises a mass expulsion and terror campaign as a “mass migration” as if they just chose to move, or perhaps there was a crop failure. In fact, there were mass riots and mass murder.

Perhaps your “journalist” found someone who remembers the Shiah Muharam holiday fondly but I never met anyone who wanted to return to Iraq. I am an expert in middle east history, and lived with Jews from Arab countries, and they were unanimous that they would never go back, even if they miss the food.

It should be noted that well over 99 percent of the Jews of Arab countries fled since 1948. Most Jewish communities (except in Morocco) are essentially extinct. Some of the Jews were forcibly deported (Egypt and Libya), others escaped by fleeing across borders (Iraq, Syria, Yemen). All lost everything they had, their propert stolen, their citizenship revoked. Many died as they fled.

Iraq, the subject of the story, was especially brutal. Of a quarter million Jews in 1940, perhaps a dozen remain today.

My Iraq-born roommate fled across mountains, avoiding Iraqi border police who would have had him tortured to death. He tells of an Iraqi border guard who kept a box filled with the finger nails of Jews whom he and his colleagues captures.

He has no nostalgia for Iraq.

What next from BBC? Auschwitz was a fun place to visit? Jews enjoy oppression?

I guess that all begs the questions, if the Jews enjoyed having their finger nails pulled out, would they want to go back to Iraq so the Palestinians could move in?

Stan Brin

Some of the phrases used in the BBC article by Lipika Pelham are certainly masterpieces of euphemism.

“For the Jews of Middle Eastern origins, like their European co-religionists, coming to Israel was the culmination of a religious journey – it was the fulfilment of the centuries-old dream to live in the so-called Promised Land.”

Sounds like something from a success book. Follow your dream! Oh, sorry, should read “follow your so-called dream.” The impression is given that the mass movement of Iraqi Jews to Israel was primarily motivated by religious enthusiasm. I have no doubt that they did rejoice that next year would indeed be in Jerusalem. They also rejoiced to have escaped alive, if destitute. Ethnic cleansing is not usually described so pleasantly by the BBC.

“But many who came over to Israel as part of the mass migration that followed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, look back with nostalgia and fondness for the life that they had left behind.”

Followed the creation of the Jewish state? “Followed by” is a phrase often used by BBC when it wishes to imply causality without having to assert it. It is certainly literally true that Operation Ezra and Nehemiah followed the creation of the Jewish state. However since it took place in 1950-52 the “following” was distant enough for other events to slip in between them, some of which might be worthy of mention. By omitting the violent persecution of Iraq’s Jews that took place in the meantime, the BBC implicitly shifts blame from the persecutors onto the Jewish state.

“…the descendants of the Iraqi and Kurdish Jewish immigrants.”

I assume that in the interests of consistency all references to “Palestinian refugee camps” such as this one will shortly be changed to “Palestinian immigrant camps.”

“Yakov recalls, with vivid, powerful details, the life that he had once led, a life that was changed overnight by the political realities of the time.”

At the idea of including in the same sentence praise for “vivid, powerful details” and the detail-free phrase “changed by the political realities of the time”, Sir Humphrey himself would blush for shame.

“Anti-Jewish sentiment flared up after the creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49.”

Any news on what form expression of that sentiment took? Any news on the riots and pogroms? Any news of the dismissal of Jews from government service? Any news of how Shafiq Ades was hanged on a trumped up charge, presumably by those malicious political realities? Not from the BBC.

“This led to the departure of most of Iraq’s ancient Jewish community. By 1952, 120,000 Jews had left Iraq for Israel.”

“Led to”. See comments on “Followed by” above.

UPDATE: According to News Sniffer the two sentences I quoted just above, referring anti-Jewish sentiment flaring up and how this “led to” the departure of most Iraqi Jews – two sentences that I thought inadequate and vague enough to criticise specifically – are actually an improvement. The original version of the article did not include them.