Well I’m glad you are amused december, which I suppose may be your way of acknowledging what people have been telling you both in this and the previous BBC thread: that the BBC is regularly accused of bias from both sides.
Here, btw, is a relevant excerpt from your cite:
“Mr Damazer said allegations by the anti-war lobby that the BBC had become “shackled” by the government and military were “profoundly ill-judged and unfair””
I suppose it might be too much to ask at this point if this article has made you wonder whether Andrew Sullivan is the most reliable source on the subject of the BBC’s alleged biases? In any case, thanks for posting.
London, thanks for the follow-up. I should add that what I said about Hitchens’s background is just hazy memory from reading his columns; I might actually be confusing Hitchens with another Nation columnist, b/c the two were always sparring about fascism during WW2. As a longtime Nation reader, I was really sorry to see Hitchens go the way he did. If Elvis’s theory is right, and he wanted the rewards that come with being a left-bashing TV pundit, that is sadder still. He wouldn’t be the first.
OK, let’s agree that the BBC is no more biased than is Rush Limbaugh quoted out of context.
Mandelstam, Gary Kumquat, IIRC American news organizations typically have rules prohibiting their people from actively participating in partisan activities. So, it’s noteworthy that this high BBC exec was a speaker at a meeting of an anti-war group.
OK, let’s agree that the BBC is no more biased than is Rush Limbaugh quoted out of context.
Mandelstam, Gary Kumquat, IIRC American news organizations typically have rules prohibiting their people from actively participating in partisan activities. So, it’s noteworthy that this high BBC exec was a speaker at a meeting of an anti-war group.
Are you honestly telling me that the BBC has admitted that, in the current situation, everything that they broadcast isn’t iron clad truth direct from the mouth of the Almighty Himself, infallible and incorruptible?
My world is shaken. I must immediately stop believing everything that they say, and start listening to a news source which never makes any mistakes, ever.
Oh, and the opening paragraph of the article you cited:
Which doesn’t seem to be too gloomy to me.
(also: “partisan activities?” Anti-War sentiment runs across all political parties here, december. In case you forgot, nearly a full third of the parliamentary Labour Party (that’s the party Tony Blair leads) voted against him in the motion to go to war, and he’s lost a number of his cabinet over this issue. Are there rules prohibiting members of the US media from having an opinion?)
Of course not, but as I understand it, they’re not supposed to do which publicly demonstrate their opinions – such as speaking at an anti-war group’s meeting.
You are correct that the speaker chose examples where the BBC had erred in a pro-war direction.
If you want to debate whether or not the BBC is anti or pro war I guess that could be worthwhile, but the overall thrust of this thread hasn’t even come close to being demonstrated.
Some points that need to be made before this can become a factual debate:
Is the BBC broadcasting in Arabic or some language that Iraqis can understand?
If so, how well is it translated? Does the same “pro-Saddam” bias come through?
How many Iraqis can actually watch tv anyway?
And most importantly to me: Has anybody asked the Iraqi’s what effect the BBC has had on their opinions of the war? What do the Iraqi’s say?
So you’re reading his speech here, in which he repeatedly denies that the BBC is pro-war, as his speaking to a friendly crowd at an event that publicly demonstrates his opinion? Not exactly how I’m reading his defensiveness, to say the least.
Oh please December, provide any evidence that he was there in any capacity other than to put forward the BBC’s defence against allegations of being pro-war biased.
Here’s some background on Damazer’s appearance before this peace group.
So, Damazer was apparently defending the BBC against an accusation of not being sufficiently anti-war. I not believe that a high executive of NPR would address a meeting of A.N.S.W.E.R. or MoveOn for any reason, not even to defend their reputation against criticisms from this group.
I’m confused. That quote appears to suggest that the anti-war group was criticising the BBC’s lack of attention, and that Damazer was justifying the lack of anti-war coverage. How is his appearance at this gathering supporting the idea that the BBC is particularly anti-war?
december: "I not believe that a high executive of NPR would address a meeting of A.N.S.W.E.R. or MoveOn for any reason, not even to defend their reputation against criticisms from this group.
"
First of all, this particular group appears to have been a group of professional media workers (some of whom might work for the BBC): quite different from ANSWER or even the more broadly-based MoveOn. Second, you are wrong about NPR. They have an ombudsman and they regularly address all kinds of bias complaints, from individuals as well s organizations, right on the radio. Third, moreso even than NPR the BBC, as a publicly-subsidized broadcasting service, tries to be extremely accountable and informative to all parties. They do not want to leave complaints unaddressed. A few years ago I attended a conference on media and the BBC sent a top executive, and two well-known announcers to take part: needless to say, no commercial broadcaster did the same. (Though perhaps you would put academics interested in media in the same camp as ANSWER and MoveOn ).
Fourth, what exactly is your point? What difference does it make if Damazer went out of his way to assure anti-war media workers than the BBC does not have a pro-war bias. Do you think he doth protest too much?
Andrew Sullivan’s extreme attacks on the BBC, and his assertions of their military role, are looking lamer by the minute, no?
was it amusing to you because the starter of this thread seemed to be posting this quote to show that the BBC isn’t sufficiently pro-war, when in reality this implies exactly the opposite? That’s the only amusement I can see.
Sam, I’d tell you get off your high horse, but I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself when you hit the bottom. December’s OP begins wit its standard title begging what he knows is a controversial matter: Not unlike if someone posted “Is President Bush’s beating of his wife causing more marital strife than necessary?”
This is of the standard form: Does/Is/Will [begged major question] lead to [extremely inflamatory result]
He then proceeds to recite the allegation of a right-wing columnist with a long-standing motive of trying to demonstrate that major news sources are tilted so left as to love Saddam and want to stop the war.
Nothing wrong with that, per se, just part of the pattern.
However, it should be noted that Sullivan’s general MO (not unlike december) is to quote anything he can find that seems like an example, usually out of its context. This is a fairly _un_reasonable type of evidence for the broad claims he’s making: especially when the evidence rests on particular interpretations of ambiguous words. In any news source, unless deliberately slanted one way or another, it’s easy to find purely harmless phrasings that can be read as if they were slants one way or another, especially if they are first presented outside of their original context in order for confirmation bias to take over.
So, given that, let’s look at the “evidence.” Notice that it’s all evidence for the claim that the title of the thread begs, not the inflamatory result: december knows what he was doing.
First up, we have an embedded reporter: a man bombarded with the information the military sends to its troops to boost morale. Here he says: “This is simply NOT TRUE [that the Coalition is taking heavy causalties]. Nor is it true to say — as the same intro stated — that coalition forces are fighting ‘guerrillas’.
And yet, we know the first of these statements to be misinformed itself: surrender ruses and other tactics have caused the deaths of many soldiers. It was the taking of these deaths and injuries, indeed, that convinced the Coalition not to go into Basra and engage in urban warfare: a decision that (I believe) is in the process of being reversed because of the urgency of getting aid in.
And what sort of tactics is the enemy using? Engaging our troops in ordered divisions on the battlefield? No: by uninformed men laying traps, hiding among civilian populations, moving around, sniping at our troops, etc. So why is it unfair to call them guerrillas? We have plenty of military sources calling it just that.
In other words: this “evidence” rests entirely on the shouted BBC’s OWN REPORTER SAYS… but when we come to examine the basis of this reporters claims, they are nonsense.
Next, we have exactly what I was talking about: people reading quotes without any emotional or contextual placement that desperately try to find bias in statements that have a much more reasonable interpretation: that reporters (and, indeed everyone but the Iraqis) consider missing Coalition soldiers “the worst possible news” in a string of such incidents. If this reflects anything, it reflects the overly high expectations that reporters had for Coalition victory (which may or may not be the fault of the Coalition itself), which may or may not be part of the over-excited press drama script (WOW… meeting some tragic setbacks… our longest/darkest/gloomiest hour… VICTORY!)
So, in other words, the “evidence” we are asked to consider is inflated bumpkiss. Thus completes the pattern.
As more evidence about Sullivan operates on this subject, here’s a recent example from the daily howler:
Here’s the summarizing last three paragraphs:
No political or military context? Many commentators (including Sullivan himself!) have noted that the opinion of Iraqi people is a key factor to both winning the war and keeping the Arab world opinion from getting too heavy. So exactly what is wrong with the analysis of this article? It defends the accident as an accident inevitable to all wars, this one in particular NOT being indiscriminate. It notes a major feature of this war: that we are concerned not so much with the number of kills, but with convincing the Iraqis to give up and reject their leader so that they can move on. The market destruction, which led to mobs of disorganized Iraqis cradling dead and wounded cursing the Coalition and vocally supporting Saddam, was indeed not a good outcome, accidental or not. But the BBC doesn’t even say that: it just says that Iraqis feel the Coalition has made victims of those it wants to liberate: which seems to be prefectly true.
So, as the daily howler asks: who is being more balanced here? Sullivan and december, or the BBC?
While people in this thread would have done well to consider the nature of the evidence first, it was pretty far beneath any rational standard for evidence of the first begged claim, let alone the inflamatory result. It IS true that partisan observers will always be more sensitive to reading bias against them, and so even an unbiased source will rack up many allegations of bias from both sides. Mandel had it basically right, and still does, especially about the profoundly silly attempt to present apologizing to a anti-war group for what they percieved pro-war bias as evidence of anti-war bias.
Bob Somerby (the Daily Howler) despises Andrew Sullivan. He has written many columns attacking Sullivan. That doesn’t necessarily make Somerby wrong.
The Daily Howler generally sets out to critique news coverage independent of whether it’s right or wrong. Somerby’s criticism is that Sullivan makes a weak case, not that he’s wrong about BBC’s alleged bias. That’s why Somerby says,
Does anti-war bias affect the war effort? Here’s a quote from an Iraqi refugee writing in the New Republic.
I maintain the the anti-war demonstrations contribute to the “confusion about American intentions,” so they tend to discourage Iraqis from rising up against the Fedayeen.
Just in case Mandelstam (or anyone else) is interested, I just chanced across this extensive interview with Christopher Hitchens
courtesy UC Berkeley - be warned, in his intro the interviewer refers to CH as ‘A Man of Letters’, so it’s signposted ‘sycophantic’ early on …
Nonetheless, an entertaining and insightful read if you have the time - two thumbs up:
December: “Somerby’s criticism is that Sullivan makes a weak case, not that he’s wrong about BBC’s alleged bias. That’s why Somerby says, ‘Is something wrong with the BBC? We haven?t studied their coverage.’”
Yes, but, neither, apparently has Sullivan.
Basically we’ve got Andrew Sullivan making outlandish claims based on no study of BBC coverage, and we’ve got Somerby debunking these outlandish claims based on the claims themselves. By my count that’s Somerby 1/Sullivan O.
“I maintain the the anti-war demonstrations contribute to the “confusion about American intentions,” so they tend to discourage Iraqis from rising up against the Fedayeen.”
The phrase “confusion about American intentions” seems likely to refer both to the first Bush administration’s willingness to let rebellious Iraqis get slaughtered, and to doubts about what an American occupation might be like and what kind of government the Americans might install. As I said in a previous thread, one Iraqi I heard interviewed on the radio disliked Saddam but felt comfortable that he had already murdered all of his political enemies and lined his pockets. What he expected out of a new government, was a new wave of murders and a new round of shakedowns. This is not a people whose experience has left them very trustful or optimistic about the future.
It also seems much more likely to me that anti-war demonstrations in the Arab world are of greater importance to the morale of the Iraqi people. IIRC, it’s Collounsbury’s impression that televised American demonstrations have left some in the Arab world feeling that not all Americans are that bad. In any case, what makes you so sure that Saddam is airing footage of American demonstrations?
Finally, the BBC’s coverage isn’t to do with American demonstrations. Sullivan expects us to believe that every time a BBC announcer expresses regret over British deaths or some other lamentable event that the Iraqis–who, presumably, speak the Queen’s English, and have the resources to tune into the BBC on a regular basis–respond by hardening their resolve to fight for Saddam. On these grounds he concludes that the BBC is “pro-Saddam.”
To be frank I’m running out of adjectives (and patience). Absurd? Ludicrous? Irresponsible? Moronic? Risible? Rebarbative? Dumb?
