First off, please note I’m off on my hols. So don’t write to me for the next two weeks. I hope my colleagues will keep posting; but if they, too, are busy on other aspects of their lives I expect the world will carry on somehow.

• Matt comments:
  

  All of the way through the US Lobbyist scandal BBC Online have been presenting the matter as if it were only Republicans who had been in receipt of questionable largesse and laregly ignored the, admittedly lesser numbers, of Democrats also tainted. Their choice of headlines for these stories has been particularly biased and misleading.

  Now today they are reporting a story regarding the changing of Wikipedia entries which solely implicates Democrats on Capitol Hill without even vaguely making it clear that it was only the Democrats who have been doing this indeed the only Republican mentioned has had his entry changed in a perjorative manner by Democrats. This is a perfect example of the constant subtle anti conservative bias that dominates BBC Online: “Congress ‘made Wikipedia changes'”

• Context, context, context says the Pedant-General regarding the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Jyllands-Posten originally wanted to make a point about a climate of fear. BBC reporting is not doing its job when it leaves this context out.
• Mike Jericho compares the headlines on the beating of two Chinese activists, one an activist against corruption, the other against abortion.
• Disillusioned German writes: “Not sure if you were aware of that but the BBC are actually running banner ads for their News Website. I’ve taken the attached Flash Banner from the International Herald Tribune Europe website. I’ve also come across it on the Yahoo News Germany website.” He included a download, but I’m too ignorant to know how to post it. Personally, I’m not particularly bothered by this advertising, but in the old days the BBC used to boast of being above crude commercialism.
• Every now and then we like to include links to websites taking a different view to our own about BBC bias. I was asked, very politely, to link to this one. I must state frankly to the author that I would not usually link to a website with these views:
  

  How fair has the media been really to the Palestinian cause? I mean, you had a man by the name of Bob Elkins who was a Zionist, in the very least a strong Zionist sympathizer, and he was hired by the BBC to report during the crucial 67 and October wars, as well as just the everyday situation, and he was very very misleading
  The BBC is labeled as one of the more just TV stations, but always at some point they have had and they do have, Zionists controlling the programmes and the different points of views

  – But during the present controversy, it seemed appropriate, somehow, to make an exception. BTW, looking at the following and previous few posts on that blog I can’t quite figure out where it’s coming from. They do not all seem of a piece with the above.

• Susan comments on this BBC story:
  

  “Shooting kills priest in Turkey

  Yes, that’s right – a “shooting” killed the priest, according to al-Beeb. Said shooting just got up and done that poor man in all by its little self.

So goodbye for the next two weeks. One thing I won’t miss is the obligation to delete mindlessly anti-Islamic comments. I have typed approximately these words many times: this site tolerates debate about religion, including the religion of Islam. Tolerates, but does not encourage. We would prefer you discussed, critically or favourably, the British Broadcasting Corporation, since that it what this site is about. For now we choose not to operate a strict policy of restricting the subject to the BBC, a decision that may change. Sober criticism or defence of any religion or atheism is acceptable. Inflammatory comments are not.

Matt Frei visits the home town of the American held hostage in Iraq. Amidst much tired hackish blather, he informs us that over 200 westerners have been kidnapped in Iraq, and that:

“…one in three have been executed by their captors.”

What a putz. Have the berks at the BBC no decency? To any reasonable human being these people were murdered – there is no other word for it. Simple as that.

Lead item today was, of course (for seasoned BBC monitors), the UN climate change conference in Canada. Much general blather about how the Americans have refused, so far, to agree on draft plans for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, though strangely, no clear explanation as to what the American’s objections actually are.

That said, the reporter, David Shukman, did refer to China as being similarly unencumbered by the Kyoto Protocol – voiced over film of a Chinese coal mine with, we are informed, a methane capture system – so they’re obviously doing their high-tech bit.

Unfortunately, doubtless for reasons of space, David was unable to explore the Chinese aspect of this story, to inform us, for instance, that China has, er, 24,000 coal mines (all kitted out with methane recovery systems?) or that China has “plans for 544 new coal-fired power stations to meet an insatiable demand for energy”. Must try harder David – if you’re not going to tell us the whole story you might as well not bother!

While the BBC get all excited about cool new British cloning, and fresh monkey business, they apparently haven’t noticed a whacking blow to their greatest environmental news fetish- news that the Antarctic is putting on weight. (via A Tangled Web)

Oddly no-one ever seems to learn that when it comes to a lot of the investigations we perform in science today our knowledge is in its infancy. At least one guy the BBC interviewed seemed to get it:

‘”A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has been hidden right under our noses,”‘

Makes you wonder what else has been hidden from them that’s right under their noses. Especially those scientific minds that bring us the Beeb in all its glory.

Update (Sat)– In response to Natalie’s interest, expressed in the comments, here are a few links gleaned from a commenter at the aforementioned ATW- post here– that highlight the fact that the BBC really have bought into a political agenda with their relentless enviro-spin. All over the web I’ve found people quoting the BBC as a source for global warming warnings- including in the post I’ve just linked from ATW. I hope these three links– posted in order of technicality, with the most technical first- illustrate that the Beeb has sidelined debate in favour of left-tinged crusading politics, as usual. From the second of the three sources linked, this quote impressed me a lot, and it was good to read-

‘the predication of government, and United Nations’, policy for energy growth on the unsustainable myth of ‘global warming’ is a serious threat to us all, but especially to the 1.6 billion people in the less-developed world who have no access to any modern form of energy. The twin curses of water poverty and energy poverty remain the real scandals. By contrast, the political imposition on the rest of the world of our Northern, self-indulgent ecochondria about ‘global warming’ could prove to be a neo-colonialism too far.’

Here’s a full transcript, annotated with my thoughts as it went along:

Darren Jordan, 21’14” into the programme:

The Green Party says it has a real chance of winning its first parliamentary seat at the forthcoming General Election. The Greens have members in the European and Scottish Parliaments, as well as more than sixty local councillors, but they’ve never come close to winning a Westminster constituency. Well, our Political Correspondent, Vicki Young, is at the Party’s spring conference, in Chesterfield, Vicki…

That’s news to me. I wonder which constituency they have in mind?

‘Going Live!’ to Vicki Young:

That’s right Darren, the Greens are feeling very confident. As you say, they’re already represented in councils across the country, in the Scottish Parliament, in the European Parliament and in the London Assembly, but now they feel it’s time to move on, and they really want to have that breakthrough they so desperately need.

Yes Vicki, we heard all that from Darren already, and don’t we all want to have that breakthrough we so desperately need…

Start of Vicki Young’s ‘package’:

The Greens are keen to shake off any impression that they are a one issue party. Of course, debates on climate change still feature heavily at this conference, but there’s more emphasis on the public services, policies for a citizen’s pension and extra community policing. The Party’s predicting its best General Election results ever.

Tell us more Vicki, tell us about the Greens’ firm opposition to Britain joining the Euro! Oh, go on, they’re really not as loopy as everyone thinks – tell us about that!

Clip of Dr. Caroline Lucas, MEP, Green Party:

There is a political party with an intelligent, radical, passionate vision for politics. There is a party that offers a radical and credible alternative to business as usual, and that party, friends, is our party, the Green Party, [snippet inaudible, due to applause]

Yaaaaawn….

Back to Vicki Young, film of construction work:

The Greens say this construction project in Brighton is an example of how they make a difference. The Party has six councillors in the City, they’ve negotiated with developers and the unions to encourage vocational training projects for local people, as well as more energy efficient buildings.

Six Green councillors sitting on a wall council. Fancy that! Brighton & Hove has, er, 54 councillors. Gosh. I wonder if the other councillors were watching football or doing something else when the Greens sorted all that out. Looking on the bright side though, six is double the number of yellow LibDems on the council!

Councillor Keith Taylor, Green Party:

This is living as if we mean to stay, er, not actually throwing buildings up, erm, as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible and, er, in an energy sense, as frivolously as possible.

Rrrright.

More of Vicki Young’s ‘package’:

Back at their conference delegates are confident that Brighton could produce the Party’s first Westminster MP. Their election campaign will focus on environmental issues and the public services, but they believe their opposition to the war in Iraq will be a vote-winner, especially with disillusioned Labour supporters.

At last! Now we know for sure it’s Brighton where they’re so confident. Let’s see, Brighton has two Westminster constituencies – Brighton Kemptown and Brighton Pavilion. Wonder which one’s the Green target. Let’s have a look at the results from last time: Brighton Kemptown – Lab 47.82%, Con 35.26%, LD 10.37%, Green 3.29%. Not that one then. Brighton Pavilion – Lab 48.73%, Con 25.05%, LD 13.13%, Green 9.35%. Well, not as bad as Kemptown, but still not a snowball’s chance in hell, eh Vicki. But I’m sure you knew that already.

Back to ‘Going Live!’ to Vicki Young:

Now, as one Green Party member put it to me today, he said “it’s no longer an off the wall idea that the Greens could have an MP at Westminster”, but they do know that the electoral system, the first past the post system, isn’t that kind to them, they need proportional representation really, if they are to realistically get an MP. And, privately they do admit that, really, this time around, it’s a bit of a long shot.

Yes, indeedy, just as the much missed Spitting Image lampooned the not-so-much-missed David Steel, “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for… a bit of a disappointment”, it’s not likely that Tony Blair (or anyone else at Westminster who isn’t as two-faced and yellow as Charles Kennedy and his cronies) is gonna change the first-past the post system, is it, after the kludge they’ve ended up with in Scotland with a lousy self-perpetuating Lib-Lab Flib-Flab coalition that’s an embarrassment even to Blair. Oh, and Vicki, you might have mentioned that if the Greens have their way with proportional representation then all sorts of kooks, commies, neo-Nazis and LibDems will be strutting around Westminster with them in no time.

Darren Jordan, 23’40” into the programme:

Vicki, thank you.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to fringe parties, all those with a reasonable electoral base, getting a look-in on the BBC’s news coverage from time to time, but could we please avoid the manufacture of stories like “The Greens are gonna get a seat at Westminster” leading ever so anti-climactically to an utterly predictable conclusion where even the Greens admit “Oh no they’re not!”. Straightforward, realistic facts will do fine, thank you.

Earlier in Friday’s One O’Clock News we were treated to an even more ridiculous than usual ‘Going Live!’ two-way interview when we ‘Went Live!’ to “our media correspondent, Torin Douglas” who, yes, you guessed it, “is outside Television Centre now”! I guess the BBC management wouldn’t let Torin inside to tell Darren personally about the BBC’s massive payout to lifelong criminal Brendon Fearon…

You can view it all in glorious Realplayer 256Kbps format if you wish. Just so they don’t feel left out, BBC News Online got in their own me-too “the Greens are gonna make it big at Westminster“ puff-piece too.

Ok, first off I’ll admit that I’m a luddite sceptic when it comes to the global environmental debate that seems to have been foisted on us for an indefinite period from around the mid-eighties. I’ve heard little except grave warnings, and deep grave warnings, throughout my life about what a mess we’ve made/are making of the world’s environment. My feeling about this statement has always been that it’s a shame to lose animals but people come first. To think I thought I had done my bit when I raised 30 quid for the WWF in ’89!

So, I’m posting because I have to, because other people have been telling me to get my finger out and say something about the BBC’s enviromania.

I’ll start with something I can be sure of: the BBC’s Evan Davies (often among the more balanced BBC types) made an exaggeration in an otherwise interesting article when he compared a peasant who was watching a road being built in economically upsurgent China to a Tiennamen Square protestor:

‘The scene was reminiscent of that famous image of the man in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. Here, there were no tanks, just earth-moving equipment.

The farmer was not exactly obstructing them, he was just gazing, but you could imagine him taking a forlorn stand against an anonymous power.’

To me this is demeaning to everyone involved in the analogy, and evidence not only of a complacent cultural ignorance, but the typical BBC dreamy mentality that what we see under capitalism is no better than what we saw under communism. Ok, China is a special case in a way, but needless to say, Davies finds that his assumption (his own word) about the peasant’s feelings about the road development was incorrect.

As for the BBC’s attitude to environmental warming issues, I suspect their prejudices are similarly entrenched. Wizbang has a couple of posts which help illustrate this. (thanks to reader Mike). Facile, trusting, picture-based journalism might summarise these instances nicely.

Unlike me and my support for the WWF, the BBC just can’t give up the causes they’ve espoused. I suspect the real reason for this is ignorance and fear of the unknown, which makes them more similar to me than they’d care to admit (hang on, aren’t you admitting that you and the BBC are similar?-ed Yes, I suppose so. Just that I know when to quit).

Ignorance and fear of the unknown aren’t enough, however, to explain the BBC’s many manias, the enviro one included. For that you need hubris and an inability to hear themselves. That’s why they should listen to people who dissent from their viewpoints, like Melanie Phillips (who no doubt has the effect on many Leftists of searing their eardrums tightly closed), who says

‘Some readers may have heard me on Wednesday night’s Moral Maze on BBC Radio Four on the subject of Kyoto (repeated on Saturday night at 2215). I was battling vainly against a green witness, my three fellow panellists and the chairman to get them to acknowledge not just that there was a division of scientific opinion about global warming but that, one by one, the key claims supporting the theory wwre being demolished.’

See, they can put her on a show but they can’t hear what she’s saying. The rest is must-read, btw.

There! I managed to post without mentioning any factual reasons at all why I disagree with both the BBC and their warming mantra. They have something to do with extensive vineyards in Roman England, skating on the Thames and a visit I made to the Orkney’s ancient settlement, Skara Brae. Ain’t Scotland ace? A good summary of this viewpoint here. For the BBC’s views on English vineyards, and some startling certainty about global warming, see here.

As various prior posts about ‘The Power Of Nightmares’ have listed its various propaganda tricks, I will say no more here than that their contempt is justified. If the producer of ‘The Power Of Nightmares’ ever wanted to learn how to make a documentary series with a somewhat better ratio of fact to slanted comment, they could do worse than look at ‘Empire Warriors’. Its producer may have the same views as their colleague, but the very fact I write it that way indicates a difference in how they make programmes. Despite the gross error I note below, this is a series from which one can learn something.

’Empire Warriors’ format is for participants (i.e. British veterans and civilians, and their enemies) to reminisce, linked by brief factual voiceover and occasional low-key dramatisations of key incidents. The first episode was about Lt. Colonel Colin Mitchell (‘mad mitch’) and the Argylls in Aden in 1967 (something I can just barely remember from my childhood). If a Robert Fisk watched it, he would summarise it as a tale of pointless imperialist brutality. However the episode did much less than a Greg Dyke would wish to prevent viewers taking quite different messages from it. There was a message about Labour politicians too cowardly to authorise desperately needed action, and then too cowardly to restrain an officer who did it anyway and proved more adept than them at handling the media. There was a message about how military action that terrifies politicians can prove easy and effective when finally done, costing fewer Arab and British lives than inaction did. There was simply the message that terrorists can be defeated. You could take other messages from the story instead, or as well, perhaps without having to be a Fisk to do so, but this episode seemed to be telling the story and letting viewers read into it what they would.

Near the end, a single sentence on Mitchell’s various careers during the rest of his life did include the word ‘mercenary’; that word suggests a character in a Frederick Forsyth novel to most viewers, but its dictionary definition would include both a Gurkha and those British soldiers who stayed in the middle east after 1967, technically paid by the Sultan of Oman or similar local rulers but with the full blessing of HMG. Just a little more (or less) on this might have been clearer. Save for this trivial point, it told the story while grinding no very obvious axe. (If you want more on what happened, here is a summary and here is an interesting page on a soldier with the Argylls in Aden who was later killed, when a civilian, in a quite separate terrorist action.)

The next episode was on Jewish terrorists in Palestine in the late forties, concentrating on the King David Hotel bomb and surrounding events. Compared with the BBC’s usual standards when the subject is Israel, the actual describing of events was quite bias-free, and the voiceover did state that Irgun and Stern Gang (who were not clearly distinguished) were ‘only supported by a small minority of the Jewish population in Palestine’. However they had no interview with anyone from Haganah, which slightly undercut the effect of this. The member of Irgun they interviewed described her induction into Irgun well, with its heavy emphasis on secrecy, but most viewers would not realise that Irgun were often hiding from the main Jewish organisation at least as much as from the Palestine CID. That the tip-offs CID received were sometimes from Haganah also did not appear. Indeed the word Haganah was never once mentioned. The episode had only an hour to tell its story, I concede it would not be easy to point at something to cut, and Haganah’s relations with Irgun were just a little complicated to summarise; still, the omission limited understanding.

However the truly ridiculous thing in this episode, disfiguring an otherwise good series, was its line about, ‘How ironic it is that it was the Jews of Irgun who invented terrorism’. That was an interviewee, but the voiceover promptly agreed, calling the King David hotel explosion ‘the first terrorist attack of the 20th century’ and generally treating the whole idea that Jews invented terrorism as indisputable fact. Counter-examples are so many and blatant that you wonder how makers of a history programme can know so little. Alas, I am much less surprised that they found no-one else in the BBC to correct them. That this idea could appear in a programme whose researchers have done a generally competent job speaks volumes about the current BBC climate of ignorance and bias on Israel and on terrorism.

The communists alone exploded the Sofia Cathedral bomb (Bulgarian communists, inter-war years), various bombs in Russia before WWI, and so on. In Western Europe and the United States, the anarchists used bomb, bullet and dagger to kill 6 heads of state and plenty of ordinary people during the twenty years before 1914 (Osama, eat your heart out). Three of these heads of state and a good few of the ordinary victims perished after 1899. And, by the way, have they never heard of a group called the IRA, or do they just imagine they were inactive before the late 1960s? Do I need to go on?

(As part of this ‘irony’, the programme also stated that Stern Gang were the inventors of the letter bomb; this may be true, for all I know. [Added Later: but in fact would appear to be false. This article describes an anarchist letter bomb of 1919. Thanks to Dave Smith for the pointer.])

This nonsense was a pity because otherwise the series captures much living history, seems more willing than some to let protagonists speak for themselves (and viewers think for themselves), provides much needed historical background to current events, and wisely does not underline the parallels but just tells the story. The third episode, on fighting the communist insurgency in Malaya, was worth watching just for the footage of a very English lady cutting flowers into a wicker basket that also held a couple of hand-grenades, just in case. The account of being ambushed by the communists was one of those stories worth hearing in their own right, not just as history. And the ‘happy warrior’ character of Churchhill’s wartime bodyguard came splendidly through as he described how he reorganised the Malaya CID to fight the communists with intelligence.

Despite my criticisms, anyone who turned off ‘Power of Nightmares’ in disgust and is now wondering how to get value from their licence fee could do worse than watch ‘Empire Warriors’. I look forward to future episodes.

[The quotes above were noted down from memory after the episode.]

Bad Dairy Products and Faulty Electrics. Or Parmalat and Enron- not that there’s anything wrong with the actual substances they both deal/dealt in, especially Parmalat, whose dairy products are allegedly yum-yummy. No, the question I have is whether the Beeb really enjoys talking more about the Enron scandal than the Parmalat one. You see, 404 articles versus 48 might be said to tell a story. That story might be that one scandal’s been around longer than the other, or that one scandal is much bigger than the other- and that latter point one of the BBC’s own articles makes:

‘Parallels with Enron should not be taken too far…Enron was notionally 11 times larger than the Italian firm’.

Fair enough. Then why does another article say that

‘It is becoming clear that a vast fraud, probably the biggest in corporate history, has been perpetrated at Parmalat’

Why, too, are the figures given by the BBC for the companies’ respective debts 14.3bn Euros and $15bn? In today’s currency climate that would make Parmalat’s debts significantly bigger than Enron’s.

Not only these anomalies worry me. There’s also some hyped up anti-capitalist language, and contradiction as well. In one article we find in quick succession ‘disgraced.. giant Enron … byword… corporate misgovernance.. greed’ . In another article (the first one highlighted) we hear that

‘Enron was so shocking because it epitomised everything that American capitalism had been taught to admire- glamour, nerve, rapid growth and revolutionary thinking. It’s failure was- perhaps rightly- seen as a failure of corporate America, and so shook the very foundations’

Yet, in the same article, we are are introduced to the problems of ‘Parmalat, Italy’s iconic food and dairy company’. What’s the difference here between an ‘epitome’ and an ‘icon’- both indicate a brand that is looked up to? So even on that front, Parmalat would appear to have claims to rival Enron- but the rhetorical gulf completely undermines that reasonable conclusion. That’s not to mention the question of employees, and potential unemployment, where again Parmalat (36,000 vs 21, 000) may be seen to outstrip Enron (a fact not surprising when you consider their businesses). The judgement that Enron ‘perhaps rightly’ symbolised the failure of ‘American capitalism’ should at least be extended to ‘European social capitalism’ through the Parmalat scandal in Europe, or it should be retracted. The coverage on the BBC’s part appears to be quite deliberately unequal. The really sad thing is they can’t even maintain a consistent line on the matter in their own articles: hence their coverage draws attention to itself with the whiff of hypocrisy and self-contradiction. Friday Update: I’ve altered the above post- mostly about synchronising quotes with links, but also some changes of tone. Sorry for any confusion.

. This “analysis” is by by Barbara Plett – BBC correspondent in Ramallah. The analysis of the analysis is by Robert Hinkley of The Sporadic Chronicle. (The title of this post is by him, too.) Alert readers may notice that that the present BBC text differs from the text Mr Hinkley quotes. For instance, this

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries are still in an official state of war, caused by Israel’s occupation and illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

Now reads

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries have been in a state of war since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.”

I guess that in the several hours between the time Mr Hinkley wrote the piece and when I posted it that stealth editor has been busy again. The second version is an improvement on the first – but it is interesting to have the window into Barbara Plett’s thought that the first inaccurate and tendentious version provides.

From this point on Barbara Plett’s text is in ordinary type and Robert Hinkley’s in italics.

————————

“Syria is, of course, Israel’s enemy. The two countries are still in

an official state of war, caused by Israel’s occupation and illegal

annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

This state of war is caused by Israel’s illegal occupation of a

Syrian mountain range. Bad Israel. If only Israel gave Syria its

mountains back everything would be fine. Why, if only Israel had given

the mountains back in, say, 1972 then all those Syrian soldiers

wouldn’t have had to climb over the mountains on Yom Kippur in 1973

and that way Israel could have been pushed into the sea and we

wouldn’t have this ongoing conflict.

“And since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, Israel has

increasingly focused on the Palestinian opposition groups hosted by

Syria. ”

First they’re not “terrorists”, they’re “militants”. Then they’re

not “militants”, they’re “opposition groups”. Opposition. A lot like,

say, the Conservative Party, or the Democratic Party. Conservative

Party, meet Islamic Jihad, your fellow Opposition. The next step will

be for Islamic Jihad to be described as “modernisers”, or perhaps

“progessives”. [Members of the Palestinian Authority _acknowledge_ Syrian support of

Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Walking Bomb Brigade etc…]

“In response to Syria’s anti- war, anti-occupation stance, the US has

demanded that it clean up its act to fit the new regional order – one

that increasingly defines all armed resistance, whether in Iraq or

other occupied Arab territories, as “terrorism.” ”

The US has demanded Syria clean up its act (ie: stop supporting

terror groups, which members of the Palestinian Authority acknowledge

Syria does). How unreasonable. How dare the Americans? Cos it’s not

“terrorism”, it’s “opposition”! The Americans have only done this

because of Syria’s anti-war, anti-occupation stance, and not because

the Americans in any way want to cut off funding and material to

groups which try very hard to kill civilians in large numbers.

“According to diplomatic sources, Damascus also urged the exiled Hamas

and Islamic Jihad leaderships to accept the unilateral Palestinian

ceasefire declared in June.

They did, but the truce has since broken down. ”

Just how much LSD does someone have to have taken to beleive that

Hamas and Islamic Jihad actually observed any cease-fire?

“It is in this climate that Israel has chosen to go on the offensive,

to send what Israel Radio called a clear signal that Damascus must

stop its support of Palestinian “terror groups”.”

Sneer quotes remind us that the so-called terror groups are actually

opposition groups.

Then Rob writes,

Let’s play Sneer Quote Shuffle – take the same article and reposition

sneer quotes:

—–

UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that another commenter, Dan Skapol, has taken a critical look at the same Barbara Plett article in the comments to the post below.