Some questions for BBC supporters:[ul][]According to the OP, the BBC had a show where a pro-war PM was savaged by an overwhelming anti-war audience. Have there also been shows where anti-war presenters were savaged by overwhelming pro-war audiences?[]Do BBC commentators sometimes make asides about how much good the US is doing by promoting a war against Saddam?[]Does the BBC focus on the torture and political arrests endemic to Iraq?[]Does the BBC focus on the openness and tolerance of Israel? The freedom of Arab citizens to vote and serve in the Knesset? The tolerance of gays and other minorities? []Does the BBC contrast the openness in Israel with the intolerance of gays and Jews in Iraq and much of the Middle East?[]Does the BBC focus on the good that the US does, such as supplying almost 60% of the international food aid?[]Did the BBC make it clear how beneficial the Afghanistan war was for the Afghan people, in terms of avoiding mass starvation, improved rights for women, etc.? [] Did they report prominently on all the Afghani people who are returning to the country?Does the BBC focus on Iraq’s 12-year lack of cooperation and the unlikelihood that they will ever voluntarily disarm?[/ul]
I would not catergorize myself as a BBC supporter, but I am sick of hearing people saying the BBC is too pro-war/anti-war, as people have to realize just because it doesn’t match up with their opinion, doesn’t mean it’s bias
To December:
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Infact most audiences on Question Time, reflect the whole gambit of opinion. There are no real ‘anti-war presenters’ as that would be an obvious and serious breach of their impartialty. Also December, I would like to point out you would have a very hard time getting a pro-war audience in the UK, without delibrately picking people for that purpose.
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BBC presenters do not make asides in the same way that US News anchors do, as it is not their job to offer opinions.
3.The BBC focuses very strongly on the torture and political unrest in Iraq, in fact their was a documentary (Correspondant) on that very subject on the BBC a few hours ago. I believe the final lines were (paraphrased from sketchy memory) “Their may be a bloodbath after the war [in the struggle for leadership of Iraq], but whoever wins control, their could be few regimes worst than Saddam’s.”
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Israel is not quite the utopia you paint it out to be, Arabs and Black Jews are subject to alot of institutionalized racism. I wouldn’t say it focused on this as that would clearly be showing a bias towards Israel, but it does cover stories such as the election of Uzi (Israel’s first openly gay MP). Israel is described often as a ‘western democracy’ and they certainly don’t mislead anyone about the status of Israel’s democracy.
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Again they do not contrast as that would be showing a clear bias, but they ceratinly do report on the poor treatment of women in other middle-eastern countries and do not mislead anyone about the status of those regimes.
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Again focusing on one thing is showing bias, but they do report US aid figures often.
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Now you are showing your bias, in truth the improvement in the rights of women in Afghainistan has been extremely small. The Afghan war was of only marginal benefit to the ordinary Afghan as the Northern Alliance are only slightly better than the Taliban. As for the BBC it does report on the changes in Afghanistan, but as I said there have been no great changes anyway.
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It reported on the prominent Afghans who returned to the country, certainly, but in truth more Afghans are still leaving the country than returning.
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Yes.
In fact, all the anti-war Prime Ministers in England at the moment have been subjected to precisely that treatment! 
[The real point here is: What the hell are you complaining about? They gave Tony Blair a chance to explain his views to the British public…And, having heard part of (what was presumably) that show on NPR, I must say that Tony Blair makes a way better case for going to war against Iraq than Bush. In fact, listening to Blair made me yearn for the days when we had someone with a reasonable intellect in the White House.]
The only BBC I get is the website and World Service Radio. The website seems to be very pro-war, but the World Service radio seems to be very anti-war.
I guess it depends on what BBC you consume.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by december *
**[ul][li]Do BBC commentators sometimes make asides about how much good the US is doing by promoting a war against Saddam[]Does the BBC contrast the openness in Israel with the intolerance of gays and Jews in Iraq and much of the Middle East[/ul] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Come, come, december, you can do better than this! How ludicrous.
Are you seriously suggesting the BBC is biased if its presenters decline to operate as part of the US propaganda machine?
Are you seriously suggesting that Israel’s tolerance for homosexuals has any bearing on the atrocities or illegal acts it may or may not be committing in Palestine? (“OK, Israel loves gays, therefore it can have the West Bank.”)
december - honestly, your posts in this thread are really laughable. I personally would be ashamed to post such illogical, biased and ignorant rubbish. You do yourself and your argument no good at all.
As I have said over and over again at this point, the BBC provides balance.
It allows a biased viewpoint, which it then counters with the opposite, equally biased, viewpoint. If they interview a Palestinian politician, they will bring in an Israeli politician immediately afterwards, and vice versa.
It provides equal-opportunity bias, if you will.
I do suggest that you watch or listen to some of the interviews that are available on streaming media on their site.
In another thread jjimm already supplied december with this link.
Newsnight challenges Tony Blair . On that page you’ll find a video and a transcript of the show. Why don’t you look at that and form your own opinion rather than taking one from a competing news sourse who are commerially bias if not politically so?
Your opinion of the BBC matters very little as it’s perfectly clear you do not look at it or read it and the only time it shows up on your radar is when it doesn’t agree with your view of the world.
Another five minutes on the BBC site gives me the following:
Story of a suicide bombing - the story of two victims’ families, an Israeli paramedic (as well as the thoughts of the suicide bomber’s family). The sisters of Shiri Negari
The family of Moshe Gottlieb.
Were I to fail to understand about balance, december, and regard these quotes in isolation, I might scream “ANTI-PALESTINIAN PRO-ISRAELI BIAS”! However, I don’t, because the site gives me both (or rather, the many-faceted edges) of opinion.
Really, December accusing the BBC of not emphasising the social nature of Israel, rather than it’s political side, is a little like becrying that CNN stop portraying Osama bin Laden as an evil person, and instead as a loving family man!
There was one recent incident that suggests management at BBC News is more pro-war than not. Or, far more likely, just overly responsive to frantic spinning from Number 10.
When the govt’s published arguments for war came out a few weeks back, it was revealed that a large section was unauthorised cut’n’paste from a 12-year old paper by a student in America. All they’d done is change a few words to alter the overall tone.
To me (and to many others) this is the scandal of the year. Primarily because it’s a (failed) attempt to fool people into backing war; secondarily because it conclusively shows that our government operates on spin and spin alone. One wonders if they actually ever bothered to look at any genuine military intelligence. With an effective opposition and a more critical media, this one incident should have shaken the whole damned government to it’s core, maybe even toppled it.
So how did the BBC handle this story?
A factual item ran as the BBC News homepage’s 3rd lead item for about 4 daylight hours before being dropped, and a new link put on the homepage that went to a different article; one with a much more opinionated piece that stated “Plagiarism : everybody does it” and cited famous examples of people pinching other people’s work. Not a dickiebird about the important aspect of the news, ie how low the government is stooping to find ‘evidence’ to justify war.
I would bet everything I own that that sudden and drastic change of tone from the BBC was a direct result of a political pressure from 10 Downing Street in full damage-limitation mode.
This I’ll agree with Reuben: I’ve turned from a “let’s wait and hear the evidence” position to one of “what lies will my government tell me next”.
However, I think the issue was comprehensively discussed / debated on the BBC. I think the BBC’s suffers sometimes from trying too hard to be impartial - because the government wouldn’t put up any ministers to try to defend this scandal, the BBC probably decided not to hammer away on its own, as that would have looked partial in itself.
But it was definitely reported extensively by the BBC.
Piffle. British PM patches together old info to make a phony case for war? What a bunch of losers! Our President simply refers to a report that never even existed as proof positive for war! Then Colin Powell presents pictures of broken down shacks in the Godforsaken Desert as state-of-the-art bio-weapons labs.
You guys got a lot to learn about this shit.
In a very quick search I found.
Spin inquiry targets Iraq dossier
‘Dodgy dossier’ mocked in Sundays
Iraq dossier ‘solid’ - Downing Street
A piece of plagiarism?
I agree however that this should have caused a much bigger shit storm than it did.
In a way it did: it’s completely scuppered what little credibility the Government had left. Now, every time Blair or one of the cabinet try to present evidence of Saddam’s misdeeds the reaction is “Uh-huh – where’d you copy THIS one from?” It’s been a serious setback.
Heck, Ken Livingstone has more credibility these days.
Yojimbo’s links are interesting, but yo(u) missed one. The third of yojimbo’s links is the original story, but The Plagiarism Plague is the apologetic drivel that replaced it on the mainpage link just a few hours later, and which I referred to in my above post. Please read it! It’s an eye-opener for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe it was on BBC TV, but I was really referring to the website. Which, now I think about it, presumably has a much larger (global) audience.
Which aspect did BBC TV focus on? :
(a) Plagiarism. Embarrassing for the gov’t, but pretty harmless in itself.
(b) The proof that spin is clearly still King, and that external sources are routinely dressed up as intelligence.
© The attempt to deceive parliament, country, and the whole damned world.
I’ll bet (a) dominated.
I think Reuben, the website publishes articles that are broadcast on the TV and radio.
Yeap, I admit I’m referring mainly to the BBC TV and radio output. Full coverage for several days until it became clear that HM Government weren’t going to bite.
And also correct, it was mainly on the ‘plagarism’ charges. I think the approach was that the government appear incompetant rather than dishonest.
Either way, it smells.
jjimm, thank you for providing this example. It shows the huge gulf between us. You see this report as illustrating balance. I see it as giving equal treatment to mass-murdering terrorists and innocent victims. Not only is this report biased against Israel, it’s also biased against those Palistinians who don’t support these barbaric attacks.
MC Master of Cermonies, thank you for answering the questions. I’d be interested in others’ answers as well.
December, one man’s freedon fighter is another’s terrorist.