Do we believe this? I don’t.
This page entitled “Should ‘anti-Islam’ cartoons have been published?” is an edited roundup of opinions sent in by readers of the BBC website. This is the style that the BBC used to have for all its Have Your Say pages until the organisation rather creditably changed to a lightly moderated forum style last year, in which posts can either be read in the order of most to least recent, or, crucially, in the order of most to least recommended.
So why is this page not an open forum? Well, it says “We are running this style of debate due to technical problems. We apologise to all our readers and contributors and will return to normal service as soon as possible.” The Pedant-General, he of Infinitives Unsplit, emailed me to say, “you must post something about this.” As it happens I had taken a hurried look at the page myself earlier and I confess that like the Pedant-General, I had thought cynical thoughts. But almost certainly it is true; there is immense public interest in this issue and so one would expect many people to be attempting to use the board, which might well cause technical problems.
So while I’ll accept the BBC’s explanation that there were technical troubles I am frankly sceptical when it says it “reflects the balance of opinion we have received so far.” It sure didn’t look like that on the open forum – which seems to be open again now.
As the Pedant-General says,
In the “recommended” section, not one of the first five PAGES of comments was anything other than wholly supportive of need to publish. The vast majority of the supportive comments were coherent and rational, where the vast majority of the Muslim complainants demonstrated that they had no concept of free speech. Many were of the form “Free speech does not mean freedom to offend or insult”. To which the answer is “Yes it is. That is exactly what it is”.
The current top comment has 1121 recommendations. For most of these debates the top comment has about a hundred.
In this post the Pedant-General points out that the Have Your Say homepage (NB: link will change) currently takes you to the edited roundup, not the open forum. I just checked. As of 6.21pm, he’s right. On the BBC news front page, too, the link that says, “Heated Debate – readers from Europe and the middle east react…”) again takes you to the edited roundup.
You can get to the forum if you go to the Have Your Say homepage then go via the quotes in the grey box on the top left – but there’s no indication to users who don’t already know that those quotes will take you to a forum. You know what I think? I think that the technical problems were real, but they came in very handy for the BBC. They’d rather unsophisticated, non-regular readers went to the edited discussion rather than the free-for-all.
The Pedant-General has more here (“Where is OUR spine, damnit?”) In this post he talks about the failure to report the context of the original publication. It has not been well reported – arguably it should reappear in pretty much every report – but to be fair it is mentioned in this Q & A.
Pity. The BBC showed half a spine in showing the cartoons on TV, albeit with a ridiculous dramatic reconstruction of an artist drawing them. (What was this, Crimewatch?) Half a spine is more than the British press showed.
As Natalie points out the real HYS on the cartoons is still hidden because of “technical difficulties”.
This has happened just before the weekend and could mean that the doctored version is the only version accessible for the next couple of days.
Coincidence? What are the chances of that happening?
Grab the link to the real pages whenever you can: you can still (sometimes) use them to get behind the censorship.
Log dates and times whilst you are about. I want these bastards nailed for this.
Sorry, Natalie, you are being too generous in the Q&A.
Firstly, the explanation – the whole basis upon which the Danish position is founded – is well down the page. We get the grievance first.
Secondly this:
“A weekly newspaper in Jordan reprinted some of the cartoons and urged Muslims to “be reasonable”.
He was sacked within hours.
By “he” I mean the editor. Oh, and all copies of the paper were removed from the stands….
They don’t report that bit, which I would have thought – in a section on entitled “The reaction is not uniform” – would be relevant.
Do the sums.
I have just posted the following on the new HYS about the cartoons:
“By going directly to the “All your Have Your Says” page I can use the website (which you are saying has technical difficulties) without problems. I think it is no coincidence that you have taken down the system just before the weekend when all messages on the first 5 pages are in favour of cartoon publication. You are misrepresenting the truth when you say that your newly manufactured comments page reflects the balance of opinion so far.”
5 live finished a poll at lunchtime yesterday, with 3,500 votes.
58% of the voters agreeing that the cartoons should have been printed.
At 5 pm yesterday, people were being asked to stop voting as the poll had finished, and this morning we were told there had been 93,0000 votes cast…the majority which were ‘no’ votes.
This was a concerted effort by a minority to effect a poll in their favour, and would have made a nice story.
——————–
Viewing the protestors in London on the early evening news, I got a glimpse of one placard with the word ‘Jew’ on it, but I didn’t see the whole message.
Did the BBC cutaway on purpose?
Does anyone have pictures of the placards, or know what that particular one said?
I wonder if a FOI request for internal BBC emails relating to the Cartoon issue might be interesting?
I think that the nature of posts allowed by the Beeb’s moderators is rather suspect too…
Here’s a couple (from me) that have repeatedly *not* been published:
=============
“Of course the pictures should be published – why the hell not?
I am henceforth boycotting all products from Muslim countries and businesses and encourage all other non-Muslims to do the same!
Perhaps the West is finally waking up to the true nature of the “religion of peace”?”
=============
“The main reason why muslims create such a furore?
Because they know our spineless and PC crippled mainstream media and governments will fall over themselves in a rush to appease. (That means you too, BBC).
Another victory for the fanatics, another step towards the Islamification of the West.”
=============
Rog:
You must couch your posts to the BBC in Libbie terms….
“I am horrified that people are making fun of those poor people in dusty lands far away that they brutally raped, raped I tell you for centuries. No wonder they want to chop our heads off, it is no more than we deserve. Thank goodness the BBC stands ready to repel these disgusting capitalists and warmongers. Yours aye Harold Pinter and (insert 100 well known liberal names)”
“Dear BBC. Thank you for not publishing pictures of those nasty shredder thingies that Mr S Hussein used to mince his political enemies. It would have quite put me off my morning Earl Grey and tiffin not to mention upset the houseboy.” (Sgnd) (Insert name of well known millionaire socialist lawyer here)(You have a choice of hundreds)
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2006/02/03/picture_this.php
EXCELLENT – post at Harry’s Place showing the sort of ‘cartoons’ that Arab papers print. Jews are Nazis?
David Irving gets hounded (rightly) for his views yet Red Ken’s mates and others are all deniers as well and no-one says anything?
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/02/islamic-society-of-denmark-used-fake.html
More on the additional fake cartoons…
What depresses me is that this is all about CONTEXT.
If you know that why the original JP cartoons where published, it is very clear why the Danes MUST be supported and we MUST publish the cartoons. If you don’t, it is offensive pure and simple.
I have put in countless messages to the HYS board since 9am. Nothing on the board.
I genuinely believe that the BBC is afraid of publishing the context for fear of blowing the whole respect for Islam thing out of the water and making themselves look ridiculous.
Re the Arab cartoons depicting Jews/Israeli…
A newspaper editor (or the nation’s favourite state broadcaster) should publish the Danish cartoons and a selection of the cartoons from the Arab press next to them.
This would quell some of the accusations of favouritism towards Jews which are made so frequently by the Muslim lobby.
(Like hell it would!)
something that has gotten scant coverage in the West
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1869575,00.html
well, it looks as if the Indians have finally “got it”…
a bit OT, but did anyone else hear Jane Garvey on the Drivetime show sometime last year, plainly stating that the BBC do handle Muslims/Islam with kid gloves?
i didnt. but i thought last nights Newsnight was quite a change. something is happening. the internal contradictions are just getting too great for the beeboid mind. they are heading towards a groupthink psychosis…
“daisy… daisssy.. “
War Is On
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/747
More images here: Getty Images
Any chance of these images ever seeing the light of day on the BBC?
Any chance of the BBC sending one of their undercover reporting units to one of these rallies like they did with the BNP?
Bad Link, should be:
Getty Images
I suppose the charitable assumption is that the beeb’s servers were being hammered so badly they had to take out the link from Have Your Say – in which case why not say so as the amount of interest is clearly news in itself? Their selected comments clearly don’t reflect the balance of opinion up to the point where they pulled the open discussion – which still seems to work via the link you gave. Paranoia suggests all sorts of possibilities – not necessarily discreditable to the beeb. If I was running their page I wouldn’t be happy if I was told I’d have blood on my hands if I didn’t pull the link.
photos from todays London demo
religion of peace?
http://static.flickr.com/41/95050811_aa84f6875c.jpg
more here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tag/protest
fifth column. i hope to God that MI5 are keeping track of these people.
Just watched newsnight and thought everyone was about to dive on their prayer mats. Maybe it’s time to interview Nick Griffin to add a little bit of balence.
oh god – so last nights newsnight was a bit of a aberration?
oh dear…
archduke:
Mark Steyn was on Newsnight and told it how it is.
Did he get the first word?
No, that went to the Muslim.
Did he get the last word?
No, that went to the Muslim.
Same old same old
I just looked at some of the photos that were taken during the “demo”. How ugly these followers of islam are. We need a “If you don’t like democracy we’ll immediately send you back to your own countries” clause in our laws.
French newspaper Libération, of which the circulation at 139,479 asof 2004 is more than doube that of France Soir, has republished two of the Muhammad cartoons yesterday.
Charles Moore has a nice article in today’s Telegraph – wonders how so many Danish flags were available for burning so quickly – a flag with a Christian Cross at its centre – something the primitives rioting in their own toilet bowls do not seem to consider.
It is hard to understand why these Danish Imams went on a trip to show off their three home-produced insults to intelligence – just who produced the three extra cartoons ? Surely not one of these imams ?
How ugly these followers of islam are. We need a “If you don’t like democracy we’ll immediately send you back to your own countries” clause in our laws.
disillusioned_german
Of course – but we live in the Europe Adolf Hitler built. The whole of postwar Europe was built in a mirror-image of his Europe and now the absurdities of living a Counter-Legacy are coming home as the most powerful concept in Politics makes clear.
Reductio Ad Absurdam – this is the destroyer of political dogma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
We now see how far the tangled web has brought them – German Governments want to use the Army for internal security as in Britain but cannot although funnily enough it was this reserve army that allowed Stauffenberg to stage his coup against Hitler in 1944.
Politicians are completely overwhelmed by it all
moral maze, is on about the cartoons. 10.15pm tonight.
OT
Michelle Malkin is hosting a blogburst on the Muhammad cartoons here:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004446.htm
Did the Dane’s just fire the second shot heard around the world?
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2006/02/denmark-shot-heard-around-world.html
A cartoon.
An old fashioned newspaper man smoking a stogie and with a press card in his hat proclaims victory in a game of cards with a man whose sense of fashion runs to a full beard, turban, and something much akin to a long white dress.
Said fashion victim pulls out a large knife and shouts “TRUMPS”
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004448.htm
remind me again.
why was Nick Griffin arrested?
will members of parliament be asking Tony Blair why incitement to genocide against all of us, was tolerated on the streets of London yesterday?
probably not.
does anyone else get the strange feeling that we’re sleepwalking into something bigger than 9.11?
remind me again.
why was Nick Griffin arrested?
Because he was holding a private meeting in a pub in Keighley and the BBC used a hidden camera to make it a public meeting………………….
So in fact anything you say in your own homes could become public if you let a journalist with a recording device in – obviously you should strip search everyone and sweep for bugs or hold meetings in a Faraday Cage
It’s annoying – and no doubt a technical problem – but why is the Newsnight website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm) only showing (partially) Thursday’s edition, not last night’s?
does anyone else get the strange feeling that we’re sleepwalking into something bigger than 9.11?
archduke | Homepage | 04.02.
That has been going on for quite a while but I think politicians deserve a round of applause:
Since 1946 we have been preparing for war against the USSR – now we are dependent on Russia for gas supplies – something Ronald Reagan tried to prevent in 1981.
We pulled out of the Middle East at the end of the 1950s and ran down our Intelligence Ops so now we depend for oil on very unstable and hostile regimes without real control
We left India and created a zone of conflict in Kashmir and imported lots of peasants from Mirpur and other villages for cheap labour
Then we had Labour abolish the primary purpose rule and quintuple immigration bringing in village elders as “imams” so they could spout bigotry as if divine logic
To buy votes these groups were packaged and funded with public money to deliver bulk votes in carrier bags to the party
Variants on this approach took place throughout Europe. The political class were dined and bought with Saudi money and the saudis funded mosques with Wahabbi ideology with the blessings of stupid European politicians.
Look at the King Fahd School in Bonn and which politicians blessed it and consider its record on bigotry and anti-Christian, anti-Western propaganda
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html
http://www.welt.de/z/plog/blog.php/the_free_west
Anon.
I found it srange that the protesters (in London)came from the Finsbury Park Mosque which had supposedly been liberated from the fundamentalists by the moderate Muslims.
Found this set of cartoons from the land of the free. It cheered me up just a little.
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/
Politicians are completely overwhelmed by it all
Rick | 04.02.06 – 7:19 am | #
Spot on Rick. Anyone know how this is going down in the US? Any muslim protests? Would the US authorities tolerate open violent threats of “another 7/11” in the States? (like we do of another 7/7).
twas me above
Slightly off topic…Yesterday (03/02/06), a group of Muslims marched from the Regent’s Park mosque in central London to the Danish embassy.
To give a flavour of the demonstration I’ll quote this Press Association report:
“The chants got more violent as the afternoon progressed with shouts of “bomb bomb Denmark” and “nuke nuke Denmark”.
There were also shouts of “Osama bin Laden” and “7/7 is on its way”.
The crowd turned near hysterical when it burnt the Danish flag.
There were rowdy cheers as the material went up in flames and was stamped on by the demonstrators.”
This was widely reported internationally and nationally. Reuters and Associated Press ran reports and it appeared on Sky News, ITN news and even the BBC Radio 4 6pm news and the 10pm BBC1 television bulletin • although in an anodyne and heavily toned down version.
But there was nothing on the BBC website • not even on the London regional pages.
Finally, at 10am this morning – about 18 hours after the story broke – a report was published on the BBC website, largely focussing on further demonstrations planned for today and including just two pictures which appear to have been carefully chosen to avoid giving the full flavour of the protest.
I suppose they reasoned they couldn’t get away with ignoring the story two days on the run.
See this – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4676524.stm
Why the delay? I can’t believe it is simply incompetence. I suspect the story reflected badly on British Muslims and was therefore suppressed.
Reporters should be in the business of reporting the news accurately, not hiding the facts from the public for political reasons.
Anonymous,
From what I can tell (and I’m not at all saying this is completely accurate, just my impression), the American reaction has been muted for one reason:
It’s a religious nation and even though it’s Muslims being offended, they still see their point of view.
Remember all the outrage about a few infantile depictions of Jesus: `Piss-Christ` and all that silliness. Although ostensibly the anger at that blasphemy was framed as a protest against allocation of public funds, I think the main was reason for the anger was, y’know, the blasphemy.
So on many of the Christian/Conservatives websites I’ve visited, the reaction is grumbling, but doesn’t approach the discontent of secular Europe.
But it’s no surprise: in which continent is freedom of expression specifically against religion more tolerated? Europe or the US?
Europe, clearly. It would be disingenuous in the extreme to suggest otherwise.
Frankly, I’m disappointed our American cousins, as a whole, don’t seem to be as angry as I am about the rank hypocrisy and offensive attempts at repression from the majority of Muslims, and I’m no reactionary `let’s blame Muslims type` either.
But perhaps I’ve missed a groundswell of anger and indignation against this attack on free speech.
I hope so.
Although when I say Europe is generally more tolerant than the US about attacks on religion, I clearly don’t include those European Muslims who carry placards like: `you’ll all be crawling when the Mujahadeen come roaring`
I better not say how I’d like to react to people like that, and I’m generally a moderate person.
It’s back on-line (the HYS page) with what seems to be the original order intact.
Added: Wednesday, 1 February, 2006, 16:44 GMT 16:44 UK
Yes they should have been published.
Islamic law does not apply to newspapers published in the West and Muslims cannot expect to be able impose Islamic law on non-Muslims. Muslims need to appreciate that their religion (and therefore Mohammed) is sacred only to themselves. If they have faith then no amount of cartoons in western newspapers should matter.
nicky Molasses, London, United Kingdom
Recommended by 1173 people
Silly question I know, but why are the Muslim protesters, who call for death and destruction not charged with incitement?
Surley what they are saying is far worse that what Griffin was charged for.
Is Government losing the battle here?
Ought we be rather worried?
SiN
Yes, I am worried. Worried that we British are soooo tolerant of those who want us dead, that it will take more bombings in London & elsewhere before the appeasers are outnumbered by those who want to take some action and ‘slap’ (metaphorically) the errant children (islamists in Europe).
Take the UK’s treatment of Germany prior to WW2. For how long did we appease them before we had had enough? The future is predictable – just look again at the past.
Socialism is Necrotizing, if the Muslim protestors calling for the death of Westerners were to be arrested, it would surely be considered an act of racism and discrimination on the grounds of religious belief.
Both Sky & BBC News are showing heavily censored reports re the demos in London. “No death threats to see here, move along now”
Pretty shameful. Thankfully I can get the real news elsewhere on the net and blogsphere.
My take is that the broadcaters & newspapers have concluded that if they criticise Islam, they;ll be issued witha fatwa and will revcieve absolutely no support from the government and authorities (police etc), leaving them and their staff wide open to be intimidated, killed, whatever.
At this stage, they guess, it’s just not worth it. Yes they are scared. Who can blame them? But the government needs to do better than Neville Straw and his “peace in our time” mini-speech.
I have faith (ironic eh?) that we’ll pull together to fight islam at some point, but not till much later, till much more blood has been spilled. A terrible shame.
Today’s oxymoron:
Muslim moderates
It wasn’t so long ago that young Israelis sported T-shirts embazoned with ‘No Arabs, No Terrorists’.
Perhaps it should be ‘No Muslims, No Terrorists’