We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war.
Posted on February 11, 2012
by Pam Field at the NEW LEFT
BIAS AND THE BBC
The BBC should be an important voice, not least because we, the people own it- and its users, ( so that’s us again) – fund it. We would hope to be able to trust it to provide quality educational material and to keep us informed about what is happening in the world, and honest and accurate reporting.
Today, rather than report on Ed Miliband’s letter to the House of Lords about the Health Bill, the BBC bombards us with articles about the Falklands, Syria and disgruntled Christians.
So what is happening at the BBC? We are kept well informed about the goings-on in the Falkland Islands. Is that a co-incidence in that as I remember it was the flag-waving and cheering of the departing ships, which led to a recovery for Margaret Thatcher in 1982 when the public-service cuts were hitting hard?
The BBC inform us of the coming-and-goings of managers of football clubs, and then about complaints from Christians about being marginalised. I am unsure as to why the BBC should be a voice for religious groups – isn’t that what churches are for?
While all this is going on, the most unpopular policies in recent years go unreported by the BBC, and by much of the Press.
HEALTH AND WELFARE
The Health Service Reform Bill amounts to privatisation of the National Health Service as the most unpopular policy in sixty years. It is the duty of the BBC to keep us informed, and News is being stifled. Why?
Neither of the Coalition parties have an overall majority, and, despite campaigning to protect the NHS, the Tory-led Coalition are railroading through privatisation of the health service at great cost to the British people, in terms of health, loss of assets and skills. Both Coalition parties must be held responsible for the destruction of the NHS.
While the Independent reports the cost of 600 million pounds, as a result of the redundancies from NHS cuts, the BBC do not. While the Guardian and the Scottish Herald briefly reported of The Spartacus Report and Disability Living Allowance and Welfare “Reform”, the BBC did not. While Sky News reports that Ed Miliband, Leader of the Labour Party, has written to the House of Lords asking it to drop the Health Bill, the BBC do not. It is the responsibility of the BBC to report and represent the Leader of the Opposition, the Government ensures its activities are reported as they wish them to be.
THE GLOBAL ISSUE
We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war. On Think Left CJ Stone writes of Manufacturing Consent for the Invasion of Iran. The media consensus is to ensure that the US and its allies can depend of governments of the world to open up markets to foreign investment – in other words to multinationals and through the global market ensure that the very rich remain rich and powerful, no matter how much poverty and starvation there is, or no matter what permanent damage to the planet results. Dr Tristan Learoyd’s (Think Left) article on the aftermath of the war in Libya questions whether the Libyan people face really freedoms or that of another tyrant, global unbridled capitalism.
The BBC are consistently failing to report accurately, if at all. They are failing to inform and to educate. Lies and propaganda cloak the facts.
The lack of BBC’s challenging reporting questioning the government’s viewpoint can be shown in their reporting of George Osborne’s agreement with the Swiss banks. The type of language used and the tone of delivery invited certainty in the desirability of this decision. The only caveat referred to was that because the agreement did not come into force until 2013, there was still plenty of time for the secret bank holdings to be moved to somewhere where no tax would be liable!
There was absolutely no recognition, acknowledgement or questioning of the Coalition government’s thinking or motivation in making this settlement. Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK makes clear why the ramifications of this deal should have been discussed:
To say that this is a quite extraordinary act by the UK government massively understates the irresponsibility of what they have agreed.
The UK is apparently going to accept settlement for past tax at around 30% of the assets held in a Swiss account. That might be reasonable if the funds placed in Switzerland had been taxed in the UK before being deposited in Switzerland and it was only the income on those funds that had been evaded since then. But what we know for sure is that most money held in Switzerland got their illicitly – it was not taxed before its arrival in the Alps. It’s tax evaded money.
As a result we would now expect 40% tax (at least) on the capital in all these accounts in Switzerland as a matter of course plus a 100% penalty that might reasonably be charged in a case of deliberate tax evasion (meaning in total 80% of the capital balance should be paid to settle the tax originally evaded) and then there is of course interest due on the late payment plus tax due on the income earned since. Nothing less than 100% is due on these balances – wiping them out of course – and anything else is a scandalous underpayment.
But George Osborne is not going to demand that sum. He’s instead going to accept a tiny part of what is owing. Richard Murphy(Tax Research UK)
In spite of these charges, there was no counterbalance on the BBC, to George Osborne’s extraordinary claim to be ‘cracking down on tax cheats’. But then again there all too rarely seems to be any serious attempt to question government explanation.
The importance of the Swiss settlement is that it is a significant part of a larger process, the ‘shadow economy’ of tax havens which has been so meticulously exposed by Nick Shaxton in his book “Treasure islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world.’ However, as Nick Shaxton himself described with surprise, in May 2011, ‘the BBC, the heart of British media, doesn’t seem interested.’
‘The argument at the heart of Treasure Islands is about as big as it gets. This really is the hitherto untold story of globalisation. This really is the dark heart of the global economy.’
‘With trillions of dollars – literally trillions – being cycled through this libertarian, anti-democratic system, stripping away taxation, financial regulation, criminal laws, and so on, bending and distorting markets and global capital flows in powerful ways that no economist could ever explain using current models. With Britain, as I mentioned, slap bang in the middle of it all.’
‘Nobody has said, … that there isn’t a gigantic global network of British tax havens quietly hoovering up trillions and funnelling them to the City of London. Nobody has said the City Corporation isn’t this utterly bizarre, ancient and massively powerful organisation at the heart of Britain and the British establishment. Nobody has accused me of making gross factual mistakes, distorting the historical or statistical record, or anything like that. The FT, for instance calls it “meticulously researched.’
‘…. the BBC is shirking on its responsibility to inform and to educate.’
THE DANGER IS LOSS OF FREEDOM
John Christensen was so disturbed by his interview with Evan Davis on the Today program that he wrote an open letter asking why
The frustration of Shaxton and Christensen with the BBC is increasingly being voiced on comment threads. For example:
“Richard, might I ask an unrelated question?
What do you think of the BBC’s current financial coverage? Do you think it is extensive, honesty, penetrating? Is it reflective of the real turmoil and double-dealing taking place in the City of London, or is it supine and obfuscatory? I was stunned to find that the BBC had dedicated part of its website to asking which ‘cuts’ people felt the government should make; and this in spite of the fact that the banks had been handed trillions of pounds of taxpayers money? No mention was made of the fact that the private debt of the the banking sector was transferred to the public’s balance sheet – nor was there any mention that this private debt crisis, because it was shirted onto the public balance sheet, helped to trigger a fiscal and thence sovereign debt crisis! Do you think we are seeing honest reporting of events? If not, how do you think we can go about solving this problem?
Thanks,
Jonah.”
‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ which means democracy requires us having access to information which we’re not getting from the BBC.
Inventing Reality : Michael Parenti
“Even if the [media] does not mold our every opinion, it does mold our opinion visibility; it can frame the perceptual limits around which our opinions take shape. Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us. The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about … the media teach us tunnel vision conditioning us to perceive the problems of society as isolated particulars, thereby stunting our critical vision. Larger casualties are reduced to immediately distinct events, while the linkages of wealth, power and policy go unreported or are buried under a congestion of surface impressions and personalities.
In sum, the media set the limits on public discourse.
They may not always mold opinion, but they do not always have to. It is enough that they create opinion visibility, giving legitimacy to certain views and illegitimacy to others … This power to determine the issue agenda, the information flow, and the parameters of political debate so that it extends from ultra-right to no further than moderate center is, if not total, still totally awesome.”
And so, eventually we know and believe only that which what we are permitted, because that is what suits the powers that be. In generations to come, history can be rewritten if it is allowed to be. Eventually we become nothing but zombies walking around with a false reality.
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
The BBC: NATO’s media partner-in-crime
25 October 2011
By William Bowles
Well they’ve finally silenced Muammar Gaddafi, the man the BBC calls “an oddball until the end”. The manner of his capture and death seems not to bother the BBC but then who cares about ‘oddballs’?
The video, with commentary by the BBC’s chief foreigncorrespondent propagandist for NATO John Simpson,
Other commentators however, had a somewhat different take on events, for example:
Meanwhile, back in TV-land the BBC’s ‘coverage’ of Gaddafi’s death veered wildly, first in one direction and then in another as it attempted to adjust its wobbly spin on things. Strikingly, not a single story questions the nature of his capture and subsequent murder, and the role NATO played in Gaddafi’s murder is hinted at in only two pieces on the 20 October (see below).
By William Bowles
Well they’ve finally silenced Muammar Gaddafi, the man the BBC calls “an oddball until the end”. The manner of his capture and death seems not to bother the BBC but then who cares about ‘oddballs’?
The video, with commentary by the BBC’s chief foreign
Attacked by NATO jets, then tortured and shot in cold blood in front of jubilant ‘rebels’, all Simpson has to offer is the perpetuation of racist Western myths about the Arabs, about the ‘other’. Disgusting stuff but totally in tune with BBC’s role as NATO’s media partner.“looks back at the life of a man who “remained a one-off, an oddball right until the end”. — BBC News, 20 October 2011
Other commentators however, had a somewhat different take on events, for example:
Hence the BBC’s focus on Gaddafi the ‘oddball’ and the ‘last of the buffoon dictators’, anything to dehumanize the man, all the better to justify his murder.“The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies’ are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,’ Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, described how the West treated the cold-blooded murder of Moammur Gaddafi.” — ‘Envoy slams ‘sadistic’ triumphalism‘, RT, 22 October 2011
Meanwhile, back in TV-land the BBC’s ‘coverage’ of Gaddafi’s death veered wildly, first in one direction and then in another as it attempted to adjust its wobbly spin on things. Strikingly, not a single story questions the nature of his capture and subsequent murder, and the role NATO played in Gaddafi’s murder is hinted at in only two pieces on the 20 October (see below).
(Earliest to latest)
20 October 2011
Fallen hero of Libya’s final battle (obviously not about Gaddafi but about the ‘heroic’ rebels focusing on a Brit who had joined the ‘rebels’, got shot and died)
VIDEO: Libyan forces ‘capture Gaddafi’ (12:37pm replete with talk that most were glad that “the hated dictator” had been caught and according to the text, “Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been captured and wounded in both legs, the National Transitional Council has said” though it’s not stated in the video).
VIDEO: Libyan TV announces Gaddafi ‘capture’ (13:01) (NTC TV announcement of Gaddafi’s capture “Libyan TV’s news presenter thanked God as he announced the reports that Col Muammar Gaddafi had been captured by rebels in Sirte.”)
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi ‘killed’ (22:01) This is the most disingenuous of the BBC’s propaganda blitz on behalf of NATO replete with the allegation that Gaddafi had a “golden gun” when he was captured, an allegation that disappeared almost immediately just like the ‘African mercenaries’ and ‘bombing of civilians’ disinfo that acted as the justification for unleashing the Dogs of War on defenceless Libya.
This is one of only two references to a NATO attack on Gaddafi’s convoy and it’s pretty much a NATO press release rehashed:
“Nato, which has been running a bombing campaign in Libya for months, said it had carried out an air strike earlier on Thursday.
“French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said French jets had fired warning shots to halt a convoy carrying Col Gaddafi as it tried to flee Sirte.
“He said Libyan fighters had then descended and taken the colonel.”
It then quotes Mr Jibril (ex)leader of the NTC who alleged that,
“When the car [with Gaddafi onboard and already wounded] was moving it was caught in crossfire between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces in which he was hit by a bullet in the head,” said Mr Jibril, quoting from the report.
Not content with presenting this allegation as news, the piece presents us with some of the other allegations doing the rounds, though the piece opened with the ‘crossfire’ version of Gaddafi’s murder, obviously the preferred one coming as it did from the NTC itself.
“Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril announced the death, and later said the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”
But just to be on the safe side, the BBC gives us some alternate endings to choose from later in the piece:
“Earlier, some NTC fighters gave a different account of the colonel’s death, saying he had been shot when he tried to escape.
“One NTC fighter told the BBC that he found Col Gaddafi hiding in a hole, and the former leader had begged him not to shoot.
“The fighter showed reporters a golden pistol he said he had taken from Col Gaddafi.
“Arabic TV channels showed images of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes where the reporters said Col Gaddafi was found.
None of which were true but the last fabrication about Gaddafi being found in a drain with its echoes of the image of Saddam Hussein down a hole made the headlines first, such is the power of the BBC to shape our take on events. The BBC even ran the footage as ‘news’.
Later on the same day, another BBC correspondent propagandist for NATO, Jeremy Bowen allegedly explains in‘How Gaddafi’s power collapsed‘ that the rebels, “helped” by NATO bombing overthrew Gaddafi.
Finally at 11pm, almost eleven hours after its first report, the BBC ran this story on its main news titled ‘Gaddafi’s demise: End of a dictator‘ which opens,”[Gaddafi] was found cowering in a storm drain after his convoy was attacked by NATO jets” though the voiceover tells us that he was found in a ditch and once more repeats the fabrication of (ex)-Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril that “the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”
Amazingly, the fact that the cellphone video shows Gaddafi, covered in blood and alive in the back of a pickup truck being kicked around and struggling, seems not to bother the BBC, allegedly anal about attention to detail. But who cares, what dramatic footage even if it’s only 2 megapixels-worth?
Three days later (23/10/11) the BBC ran a story titled, ‘Does new video provide clues as to who killed Gaddafi?‘ In it we are shown a Libyan ‘rebel’ surrounded by his mates who announce that this is the man who shot Gaddafi through the head, waving the pistol around. But the BBC, now in a bind over its punting of the “crossfire” story from day one leaves the last word to (ex) Acting Prime Minister Jibril who states once again that Gaddafi was “killed in crossfire”.
Thus the much-vaunted BBC, famed for its ‘impartiality’ is now quite happy to run barely legible footage shot on a cellphone, throw in a quote from the (ex) acting-prime minister and call it the truth.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
BBC Bombast – Propaganda, Complaints And Black Holes of Silence
MediaLens
July 11, 2011
On the BBC television news, the pulsing theme tune sets the tone: the world is a serious place and we, the BBC, are here to give it to you straight. The computer-animated intro, featuring the Earth encompassed by transmitted signals, together with the high-tech news studio, proclaims impeccable credentials. The newscaster – Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce, perhaps Emily Maitlis or Nick Owen – looks directly into the camera with the requisite degree of gravitas. The message is clear: ‘You can trust us. We have no agenda. This is the BBC. This is The News.'
The dramatic packaging allows propaganda to slip through in digestible chunks. And it is a diet that, like the soma in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, promotes mass adherence to state ideology. We are fed myths that our governments are essentially well-intentioned; that powerful investors, banks and corporations promote ‘free trade’ and ‘open markets’ while providing responsibly for society’s wants and needs; that prevailing state-corporate policies and practices constitute human ‘progress’; and that, in any case, no serious or credible alternatives exist.
Anyone can spot the propaganda with a modicum of vigilance while watching the news.
For example, take the BBC News at Ten report on June 19 about the deaths of nine Libyans, including two babies, killed in a Nato air raid. The Nato killings were presented in the headlines as what the Libyan government ‘says’ happened. In his piece, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen repeated the party line: ‘Nato’s mandate is to protect civilians.’
Three days later, Bowen reported the brutal consequences of yet another Nato air attack, with fifteen dead including at least three children and two women.
Over footage of the bombed house, Bowen said:
'It [Nato] says close monitoring showed it was a command centre. The family say it was their home.'
Then Bowen continued with the following astonishing remarks:
'Was a decision taken that killing civilians here would save others elsewhere?'
And:
‘The deaths here raise the moral question at the heart of the Nato mission in Libya. Its mandate is to protect civilians. So is it ever justifiable to kill them?’
Imagine a BBC correspondent asking of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban: ‘Was a decision taken that killing civilians here would save lives elsewhere?’ It simply would not happen.
When Bowen was challenged by a Media Lens reader, the BBC editor replied:
‘It's always worth pondering moral issues.’ (June 23, 2011)
But the moral ‘pondering’ is from the perspective of one side only: the one armed with the most powerful, state-of-the-art weaponry invading yet another country that is opposing Western interests. The BBC News audience is clearly expected to identify with Nato. After all, these are ‘our’ forces out there ‘protecting civilians’. But not only that, we are asked to assume that there is a moral basis to Nato’s killing. Again, just try to imagine the same ‘pondering’ by a BBC correspondent from the perspective of officially-decreed enemies.
Britain Is ‘In Love With Obama’
It is not only when death is being inflicted by Western firepower that the BBC can be expected to conform to state doctrine. It applies most definitely to events of state pomp and ceremony: royal weddings, Trooping the Colour, Armed Forces Day, anniversaries of D-Day, and on and on. Indeed, the BBC distinguishes itself by setting its 'patriotism' volume control to eleven on such occasions.
Reporting on President Obama’s state visit to the UK, BBC political editor Nick Robinson gushed happily on the News at Ten:
‘There was never any doubt that Britain was in love with Obama.’ (May 25, 2011)
Robinson was seemingly unaware of the slippery step where ‘balanced’ journalism tips over into hagiography.
In fact, many in this country believe that Obama shares ultimate responsibility for numerous war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. We asked Robinson:
‘What gives you the right to sweep aside this section of the British public?’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
He responded:
‘The opinion polls back up my suggestion that Britain - or, at least, a sizeable majority of opinion - is enthusiastic about President Obama.’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
We answered:
‘The recent ComRes/ITV News poll suggests 40% of the British public disagree, or haven’t made up their minds, about Obama being “a good president”. That’s hardly “love”, to quote you.
‘54% agree or don't know that he's "lived up to expectations". Is that “love”?
‘Only 34% think he’s “doing a good job of managing the situation in Afghanistan.” And the same low figure, 34%, on his handling of the Middle East.
‘None of this justifies your gushing assertion:
‘ “There was never any doubt that Britain was in love with Obama.”
‘Perhaps some Britons are indeed “in love with Obama”. This isn’t surprising given that you, and much of the rest of the national media, have swooned over Obama from Day 1. That’s not reporting; it’s propaganda.’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
To give Robinson credit, he did at least respond one more time:
‘Noted!’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
However, his reporting and analysis are unchanged. The BBC's Nick Robinson remains a reliable channel for the mix of official propaganda and platitude that passes for political comment.
Propaganda Merchants R Us
Or consider BBC News presenter Emily Maitlis reading out a headline about Yemen:
‘We’ll be looking at the West’s fear [that] a power vacuum could lead to more instability in the country.’ (News at Ten, June 5, 2011)
That was the propaganda version of reporting.
The straight version is that the ‘fear’ shared by Western leaders and corporations is that they will lose control, influence, profits and access to resources. ‘Stability’ is when such conditions are secure. Hence the endless Western military ‘interventions’ in resource-rich regions of the planet. (See here on Yemen).
On Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news discussion programme, Jeremy Paxman can be relied upon to adhere to an establishment-friendly framework, while snarling in a way that appears challenging:
‘It’s the overwhelming duty of government, of course, to protect the people. But how do we make ourselves safe from those who loathe, more or less, everything this country stands for?' (Newsnight, BBC2, June 6, 2011; our emphasis)
That’s right. It's ‘our’ love of democracy, freedom and human rights that people around the world hate so much; not ‘our’ foreign policies that so regularly see ‘unpeople’ being blown up, maimed, widowed, orphaned and turned into refugees in deference to ‘our’ corporate and strategic interests.
This is the kind of accuracy and impartiality that the BBC constantly strives to broadcast.
Not to be outdone, the agenda-setting Today programme on BBC Radio 4 does its bit, too. So it asks penetrating questions such as:
‘After years reminding its critics that it is the only democracy [sic] in the Middle East surrounded by Arab autocracies, how would Israel cope if the rest of the region suddenly became democratic?’ (Kevin Connolly, ‘Israel’s “cold peace” with Egypt’, May 30, 2011)
BBC correspondent Kevin Connolly reported ‘from Israel on their ambiguous feelings about the Arab Spring.’
To the soothing backdrop of gentle splashing noises, Connolly spoke of how you can sail out into the Red Sea ‘and see how precariously Israel sits between two of its Arab neighbours – Jordan on one shore and Egypt on the other’.
Does this picture sound familiar? Yes, it’s the Zionist propaganda image of plucky little Israel squeezed between dangerous Arab regimes. That set the tone for the piece, with one Palestinian voice briefly included so that the BBC could tick the box marked ‘balance’.
Connolly concluded:
‘There are those in Israel who believe the creative thing to do at this moment of turbulence is to push harder for peace with the Palestinians. It’s much likelier that Israel, always cautious in these matters, will simply become more cautious still.’
The listener needs to swallow the pill that Israel is forever 'cautious'. Not at all a dangerous, expansionary, nuclear-armed state.
BBC presenter Sarah Montague is a serial offender on the Today programme. In an interview with Tony Blair, who was promoting the paperback publication of his self-aggrandising book ‘A Journey’, she asked:
‘And when the Israeli [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu says that the Palestinian Authority needs to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas, what do you say to him?’ (June 9, 2011)
For attentive listeners, the biased presumption was clear: the core issue is that the Palestinians must first renounce violence. Not the cruel imposers of the Gaza siege; not the brutal forces of illegal military occupation, unmentioned in the interview; not the Israelis. The implication of Blair’s response, unchallenged by Montague, was that Israel only responds to Palestinian violence.
This was further evidence of the systematic bias in BBC News demonstrated so powerfully by Greg Philo and Mike Berry in their recent book, More Bad News From Israel. Montague did not respond to our email challenging her Blair interview, even after a gentle nudge two weeks later.
Boaden Broadcasts Bombast
‘In each decade, from its inception to the present day, the BBC bears the scars of its entanglements with those in power.’
Those were the remarkable opening words delivered in a grandiose speech by the BBC’s news director Helen Boaden recently. (Value of Journalism Speech given at The BBC College of Journalism and POLIS international conference, June 10, 2011.)
In support of her claim, Boaden cited several examples including prime minister Anthony Eden’s accusation during the Suez crisis in the 1950s of the BBC ‘giving comfort to the enemy.’
And, in the 1990s, ‘[the BBC’s] John Simpson found himself under attack for his supposedly “biased reports” about the impact of NATO bombing on Belgrade.’
There was much that Boaden missed in her partial history of the BBC’s ‘entanglements with those in power’, as we will see below.
‘It is the journalists' job to hold power to account’, she continued, ‘to shine light in dark places.’
This is indeed what journalists keep telling themselves. Without a hint of irony, Boaden continued to wax lyrical:
‘To hold power to account – we have to tell the truth as we see it, to the people who need it, independent of government and commercial interests.
‘But we must do so freely and fairly, and in a genuine spirit of inquiry.
‘And if you ask the questions of those in power – you must be prepared to answer them – and to acknowledge your own mistakes.’
Readers may well scratch their heads at this proclaimed BBC willingness to answer questions and acknowledge mistakes. Because the BBC’s own record, documented in ten years of media alerts, displays the very opposite. Boaden tries to pre-empt the public howls of laughter and derision:
‘It's just a fact of life that e-mails mean that, these days, viewers can complain – or even praise us, perhaps! – more easily than they could in the past.
‘It is hard to strike a balance between allowing all-comers to complain and making the process unduly restrictive.
‘It means the system can be preyed on by interest groups, or individuals with an obsessive interest, or those with the time and resources to pursue an agenda of their own.
‘Sometimes, when people complain about a lack of impartiality, they are simply trying to impose their version of the truth on us.
‘It can be difficult for us, or unpleasant.’
Long-time readers may recall that Boaden was so scrupulous about accountability that she changed her email address to evade questions and complaints. Even the former BBC chairman Lord Grade described his experience of complaining to the BBC as ‘grisly’ due to a system he said was ‘absolutely hopeless’. What hope for the rest of us mere mortals?
As individuals with ‘an obsessive interest’ in truthful news reporting, and with the ‘time and resources’ to pursue this demented ‘agenda’, we challenged Boaden as follows (the full version of our email is archived here):
You said that: ‘Our ratings for trust, impartiality and independence have [...] continued to rise over the last three years.’
But you do not provide any figures to back this up. Could you possibly point to the relevant references, please?
You also said that:
‘In each decade, from its inception to the present day, the BBC bears the scars of its entanglements with those in power.’
However, what followed was as a rather selective and debatable list.
Here is some of what you missed:
The BBC was founded by Lord Reith in 1922 and immediately used as a propaganda weapon for the Baldwin government during the General Strike, when it was known by workers as the "British Falsehood Corporation". During the strike, no representative of organised labour was allowed to be heard on the BBC. Ramsay McDonald, the leader of the opposition, was also banned.
In their highly respected study of the British media, Power Without Responsibility, James Curran and Jean Seaton wrote of ‘the continuous and insidious dependence of the Corporation [the BBC] on the government’. (Routledge, 4th edition, 1991, p.144)
John Pilger has reported:
‘Journalists with a reputation for independence were refused BBC posts because they were not considered “safe”.’ (John Pilger, Hidden Agendas, Vintage, 1998, p.496)
In 2003, a Cardiff University report found that the BBC ‘displayed the most “pro-war” agenda of any broadcaster’ on the Iraq invasion. Over the three weeks of the initial conflict, 11% of the sources quoted by the BBC were of coalition government or military origin, the highest proportion of all the main television broadcasters. The BBC was less likely than Sky, ITV or Channel 4 News to use independent sources, who also tended to be the most sceptical. The BBC also placed least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, which were mentioned in 22% of its stories about the Iraqi people, and it was least likely to report on Iraqi opposition to the invasion.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Bergin, the press officer for the Stop The War Coalition, told Media Lens:
‘Representatives of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition people from their programmes, even though everyone knows we are central to organising the massive anti-war movement...’ (Email to Media Lens, March 14, 2003)
In a speech at New York's Columbia University, John Pilger commented:
‘We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called “Operation Mass Appeal”, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All these stories were fake.’ (John Pilger, 'The real first casualty of war,' New Statesman, April 24, 2006)
In truth, the BBC's relationship with the establishment was accurately summarised long ago, in a single diary entry made by Lord Reith:
‘They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’
I hope you will respond, please.
(Email, June 13, 2011)
Almost inevitably, the reply was a standard brush-off, sent by someone in the BBC Press Office:
‘As I am sure you will appreciate, Helen receives a very large volume of correspondence so it is not always possible for her to correspond with individuals directly.’ (June 16, 2011)
Chancing our luck, we emailed back:
‘Helen Boaden said:
‘“Our ratings for trust, impartiality and independence have [...] continued to rise over the last three years.”
‘Could you possibly point me to the relevant surveys, please? Are they available online?’
The Press Office response was friendly enough:
'hi - here you go
'Our scores for trust and impartiality have improved over last three years
1. BBC is independent and impartial - 52% to 56%
2. BBC News is independent - 60% to 64%
3. BBC News is trustworthy - 64% to 67%'
(email, June 24, 2011)
There were no references, no sources.
We tried one more time:
‘Much appreciated – but can you point me to the surveys in full, please? There are no doubt details of how, where and when they were conducted and so on.
‘These details must surely be publicly available in a report?’ (email, June 24, 2011)
The response?
‘It's internal research - the reports aren't published.’ (email, June 24, 2011)
This was truly lamentable. The public is supposed to take on trust the research that the publicly-funded BBC undertakes to prove its supposed independence, impartiality and – trustworthiness!
But the bigger picture is worse. The BBC regularly churns out a diet of pre-digested pabulum that props up power. As Aldous Huxley wrote, these doses of soma dished out to the people construct ‘a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.’ The consequences for humanity of media propaganda have proven calamitous and – as the world slides ever-further into the abyss of catastrophic climate change - could yet be terminal.
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The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Please write to:
Helen Boaden, BBC news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk
Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk
Nick Robinson, BBC political editor
Email: nick.robinson@bbc.co.uk
Please blind-copy us in on any exchanges or forward them to us later at:
editor@medialens.org
July 11, 2011
On the BBC television news, the pulsing theme tune sets the tone: the world is a serious place and we, the BBC, are here to give it to you straight. The computer-animated intro, featuring the Earth encompassed by transmitted signals, together with the high-tech news studio, proclaims impeccable credentials. The newscaster – Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce, perhaps Emily Maitlis or Nick Owen – looks directly into the camera with the requisite degree of gravitas. The message is clear: ‘You can trust us. We have no agenda. This is the BBC. This is The News.'
The dramatic packaging allows propaganda to slip through in digestible chunks. And it is a diet that, like the soma in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, promotes mass adherence to state ideology. We are fed myths that our governments are essentially well-intentioned; that powerful investors, banks and corporations promote ‘free trade’ and ‘open markets’ while providing responsibly for society’s wants and needs; that prevailing state-corporate policies and practices constitute human ‘progress’; and that, in any case, no serious or credible alternatives exist.
Anyone can spot the propaganda with a modicum of vigilance while watching the news.
For example, take the BBC News at Ten report on June 19 about the deaths of nine Libyans, including two babies, killed in a Nato air raid. The Nato killings were presented in the headlines as what the Libyan government ‘says’ happened. In his piece, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen repeated the party line: ‘Nato’s mandate is to protect civilians.’
Three days later, Bowen reported the brutal consequences of yet another Nato air attack, with fifteen dead including at least three children and two women.
Over footage of the bombed house, Bowen said:
'It [Nato] says close monitoring showed it was a command centre. The family say it was their home.'
Then Bowen continued with the following astonishing remarks:
'Was a decision taken that killing civilians here would save others elsewhere?'
And:
‘The deaths here raise the moral question at the heart of the Nato mission in Libya. Its mandate is to protect civilians. So is it ever justifiable to kill them?’
Imagine a BBC correspondent asking of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban: ‘Was a decision taken that killing civilians here would save lives elsewhere?’ It simply would not happen.
When Bowen was challenged by a Media Lens reader, the BBC editor replied:
‘It's always worth pondering moral issues.’ (June 23, 2011)
But the moral ‘pondering’ is from the perspective of one side only: the one armed with the most powerful, state-of-the-art weaponry invading yet another country that is opposing Western interests. The BBC News audience is clearly expected to identify with Nato. After all, these are ‘our’ forces out there ‘protecting civilians’. But not only that, we are asked to assume that there is a moral basis to Nato’s killing. Again, just try to imagine the same ‘pondering’ by a BBC correspondent from the perspective of officially-decreed enemies.
Britain Is ‘In Love With Obama’
It is not only when death is being inflicted by Western firepower that the BBC can be expected to conform to state doctrine. It applies most definitely to events of state pomp and ceremony: royal weddings, Trooping the Colour, Armed Forces Day, anniversaries of D-Day, and on and on. Indeed, the BBC distinguishes itself by setting its 'patriotism' volume control to eleven on such occasions.
Reporting on President Obama’s state visit to the UK, BBC political editor Nick Robinson gushed happily on the News at Ten:
‘There was never any doubt that Britain was in love with Obama.’ (May 25, 2011)
Robinson was seemingly unaware of the slippery step where ‘balanced’ journalism tips over into hagiography.
In fact, many in this country believe that Obama shares ultimate responsibility for numerous war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. We asked Robinson:
‘What gives you the right to sweep aside this section of the British public?’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
He responded:
‘The opinion polls back up my suggestion that Britain - or, at least, a sizeable majority of opinion - is enthusiastic about President Obama.’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
We answered:
‘The recent ComRes/ITV News poll suggests 40% of the British public disagree, or haven’t made up their minds, about Obama being “a good president”. That’s hardly “love”, to quote you.
‘54% agree or don't know that he's "lived up to expectations". Is that “love”?
‘Only 34% think he’s “doing a good job of managing the situation in Afghanistan.” And the same low figure, 34%, on his handling of the Middle East.
‘None of this justifies your gushing assertion:
‘ “There was never any doubt that Britain was in love with Obama.”
‘Perhaps some Britons are indeed “in love with Obama”. This isn’t surprising given that you, and much of the rest of the national media, have swooned over Obama from Day 1. That’s not reporting; it’s propaganda.’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
To give Robinson credit, he did at least respond one more time:
‘Noted!’ (Email, May 26, 2011)
However, his reporting and analysis are unchanged. The BBC's Nick Robinson remains a reliable channel for the mix of official propaganda and platitude that passes for political comment.
Propaganda Merchants R Us
Or consider BBC News presenter Emily Maitlis reading out a headline about Yemen:
‘We’ll be looking at the West’s fear [that] a power vacuum could lead to more instability in the country.’ (News at Ten, June 5, 2011)
That was the propaganda version of reporting.
The straight version is that the ‘fear’ shared by Western leaders and corporations is that they will lose control, influence, profits and access to resources. ‘Stability’ is when such conditions are secure. Hence the endless Western military ‘interventions’ in resource-rich regions of the planet. (See here on Yemen).
On Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news discussion programme, Jeremy Paxman can be relied upon to adhere to an establishment-friendly framework, while snarling in a way that appears challenging:
‘It’s the overwhelming duty of government, of course, to protect the people. But how do we make ourselves safe from those who loathe, more or less, everything this country stands for?' (Newsnight, BBC2, June 6, 2011; our emphasis)
That’s right. It's ‘our’ love of democracy, freedom and human rights that people around the world hate so much; not ‘our’ foreign policies that so regularly see ‘unpeople’ being blown up, maimed, widowed, orphaned and turned into refugees in deference to ‘our’ corporate and strategic interests.
This is the kind of accuracy and impartiality that the BBC constantly strives to broadcast.
Not to be outdone, the agenda-setting Today programme on BBC Radio 4 does its bit, too. So it asks penetrating questions such as:
‘After years reminding its critics that it is the only democracy [sic] in the Middle East surrounded by Arab autocracies, how would Israel cope if the rest of the region suddenly became democratic?’ (Kevin Connolly, ‘Israel’s “cold peace” with Egypt’, May 30, 2011)
BBC correspondent Kevin Connolly reported ‘from Israel on their ambiguous feelings about the Arab Spring.’
To the soothing backdrop of gentle splashing noises, Connolly spoke of how you can sail out into the Red Sea ‘and see how precariously Israel sits between two of its Arab neighbours – Jordan on one shore and Egypt on the other’.
Does this picture sound familiar? Yes, it’s the Zionist propaganda image of plucky little Israel squeezed between dangerous Arab regimes. That set the tone for the piece, with one Palestinian voice briefly included so that the BBC could tick the box marked ‘balance’.
Connolly concluded:
‘There are those in Israel who believe the creative thing to do at this moment of turbulence is to push harder for peace with the Palestinians. It’s much likelier that Israel, always cautious in these matters, will simply become more cautious still.’
The listener needs to swallow the pill that Israel is forever 'cautious'. Not at all a dangerous, expansionary, nuclear-armed state.
BBC presenter Sarah Montague is a serial offender on the Today programme. In an interview with Tony Blair, who was promoting the paperback publication of his self-aggrandising book ‘A Journey’, she asked:
‘And when the Israeli [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu says that the Palestinian Authority needs to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas, what do you say to him?’ (June 9, 2011)
For attentive listeners, the biased presumption was clear: the core issue is that the Palestinians must first renounce violence. Not the cruel imposers of the Gaza siege; not the brutal forces of illegal military occupation, unmentioned in the interview; not the Israelis. The implication of Blair’s response, unchallenged by Montague, was that Israel only responds to Palestinian violence.
This was further evidence of the systematic bias in BBC News demonstrated so powerfully by Greg Philo and Mike Berry in their recent book, More Bad News From Israel. Montague did not respond to our email challenging her Blair interview, even after a gentle nudge two weeks later.
Boaden Broadcasts Bombast
‘In each decade, from its inception to the present day, the BBC bears the scars of its entanglements with those in power.’
Those were the remarkable opening words delivered in a grandiose speech by the BBC’s news director Helen Boaden recently. (Value of Journalism Speech given at The BBC College of Journalism and POLIS international conference, June 10, 2011.)
In support of her claim, Boaden cited several examples including prime minister Anthony Eden’s accusation during the Suez crisis in the 1950s of the BBC ‘giving comfort to the enemy.’
And, in the 1990s, ‘[the BBC’s] John Simpson found himself under attack for his supposedly “biased reports” about the impact of NATO bombing on Belgrade.’
There was much that Boaden missed in her partial history of the BBC’s ‘entanglements with those in power’, as we will see below.
‘It is the journalists' job to hold power to account’, she continued, ‘to shine light in dark places.’
This is indeed what journalists keep telling themselves. Without a hint of irony, Boaden continued to wax lyrical:
‘To hold power to account – we have to tell the truth as we see it, to the people who need it, independent of government and commercial interests.
‘But we must do so freely and fairly, and in a genuine spirit of inquiry.
‘And if you ask the questions of those in power – you must be prepared to answer them – and to acknowledge your own mistakes.’
Readers may well scratch their heads at this proclaimed BBC willingness to answer questions and acknowledge mistakes. Because the BBC’s own record, documented in ten years of media alerts, displays the very opposite. Boaden tries to pre-empt the public howls of laughter and derision:
‘It's just a fact of life that e-mails mean that, these days, viewers can complain – or even praise us, perhaps! – more easily than they could in the past.
‘It is hard to strike a balance between allowing all-comers to complain and making the process unduly restrictive.
‘It means the system can be preyed on by interest groups, or individuals with an obsessive interest, or those with the time and resources to pursue an agenda of their own.
‘Sometimes, when people complain about a lack of impartiality, they are simply trying to impose their version of the truth on us.
‘It can be difficult for us, or unpleasant.’
Long-time readers may recall that Boaden was so scrupulous about accountability that she changed her email address to evade questions and complaints. Even the former BBC chairman Lord Grade described his experience of complaining to the BBC as ‘grisly’ due to a system he said was ‘absolutely hopeless’. What hope for the rest of us mere mortals?
As individuals with ‘an obsessive interest’ in truthful news reporting, and with the ‘time and resources’ to pursue this demented ‘agenda’, we challenged Boaden as follows (the full version of our email is archived here):
You said that: ‘Our ratings for trust, impartiality and independence have [...] continued to rise over the last three years.’
But you do not provide any figures to back this up. Could you possibly point to the relevant references, please?
You also said that:
‘In each decade, from its inception to the present day, the BBC bears the scars of its entanglements with those in power.’
However, what followed was as a rather selective and debatable list.
Here is some of what you missed:
The BBC was founded by Lord Reith in 1922 and immediately used as a propaganda weapon for the Baldwin government during the General Strike, when it was known by workers as the "British Falsehood Corporation". During the strike, no representative of organised labour was allowed to be heard on the BBC. Ramsay McDonald, the leader of the opposition, was also banned.
In their highly respected study of the British media, Power Without Responsibility, James Curran and Jean Seaton wrote of ‘the continuous and insidious dependence of the Corporation [the BBC] on the government’. (Routledge, 4th edition, 1991, p.144)
John Pilger has reported:
‘Journalists with a reputation for independence were refused BBC posts because they were not considered “safe”.’ (John Pilger, Hidden Agendas, Vintage, 1998, p.496)
In 2003, a Cardiff University report found that the BBC ‘displayed the most “pro-war” agenda of any broadcaster’ on the Iraq invasion. Over the three weeks of the initial conflict, 11% of the sources quoted by the BBC were of coalition government or military origin, the highest proportion of all the main television broadcasters. The BBC was less likely than Sky, ITV or Channel 4 News to use independent sources, who also tended to be the most sceptical. The BBC also placed least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, which were mentioned in 22% of its stories about the Iraqi people, and it was least likely to report on Iraqi opposition to the invasion.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Bergin, the press officer for the Stop The War Coalition, told Media Lens:
‘Representatives of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition people from their programmes, even though everyone knows we are central to organising the massive anti-war movement...’ (Email to Media Lens, March 14, 2003)
In a speech at New York's Columbia University, John Pilger commented:
‘We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called “Operation Mass Appeal”, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All these stories were fake.’ (John Pilger, 'The real first casualty of war,' New Statesman, April 24, 2006)
In truth, the BBC's relationship with the establishment was accurately summarised long ago, in a single diary entry made by Lord Reith:
‘They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’
I hope you will respond, please.
(Email, June 13, 2011)
Almost inevitably, the reply was a standard brush-off, sent by someone in the BBC Press Office:
‘As I am sure you will appreciate, Helen receives a very large volume of correspondence so it is not always possible for her to correspond with individuals directly.’ (June 16, 2011)
Chancing our luck, we emailed back:
‘Helen Boaden said:
‘“Our ratings for trust, impartiality and independence have [...] continued to rise over the last three years.”
‘Could you possibly point me to the relevant surveys, please? Are they available online?’
The Press Office response was friendly enough:
'hi - here you go
'Our scores for trust and impartiality have improved over last three years
1. BBC is independent and impartial - 52% to 56%
2. BBC News is independent - 60% to 64%
3. BBC News is trustworthy - 64% to 67%'
(email, June 24, 2011)
There were no references, no sources.
We tried one more time:
‘Much appreciated – but can you point me to the surveys in full, please? There are no doubt details of how, where and when they were conducted and so on.
‘These details must surely be publicly available in a report?’ (email, June 24, 2011)
The response?
‘It's internal research - the reports aren't published.’ (email, June 24, 2011)
This was truly lamentable. The public is supposed to take on trust the research that the publicly-funded BBC undertakes to prove its supposed independence, impartiality and – trustworthiness!
But the bigger picture is worse. The BBC regularly churns out a diet of pre-digested pabulum that props up power. As Aldous Huxley wrote, these doses of soma dished out to the people construct ‘a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.’ The consequences for humanity of media propaganda have proven calamitous and – as the world slides ever-further into the abyss of catastrophic climate change - could yet be terminal.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Please write to:
Helen Boaden, BBC news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk
Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk
Nick Robinson, BBC political editor
Email: nick.robinson@bbc.co.uk
Please blind-copy us in on any exchanges or forward them to us later at:
editor@medialens.org
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