[Khornet]

And is that our friend Mr. Gilligan, he of the 'sexed up' case?
Hmmmmm....

www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment_nr_comment072903.asp

[Iain]

Link doesn't seem to be working

[Khornet]

www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment072903.asp

[Iain]

Couple of quick responses

In English, Arabic, or any of the other 43 languages used by the BBC World Service, attaching a virulently anti-American viewpoint to one of the most trusted brands in the world has a deep significance.

Criticising the actions of the government of a country is not necessarily anti-that country. How would Americans like it if I told them that attacking Iraq was ''anti-Iraq''?

When the war was fought against the Baathist regime it would be clearly incorrect to make that claim. Yet that is exactly what people are doing when they claim that criticising Bush or American foreign policy or American economic policy is actually anti-American.

For most of the rest of the day, the BBC's correspondents, including its diplomatic correspondent, Peter Biles, confessed to being "confused" by the conflicting statements of the Coalition military command and the Iraqi information ministry. Who could you believe, they kept asking themselves?

How could they believe indeed? Perfectly fair to question the information given to them by both sides.

[Iain]

Baghdad has been Saddamized for decades, so the World Service is just piling on. And while most Iraqis obviously don't like their brutal government, along the streets and down the alleys of Baghdad, there are some pretty crazy people getting their news tonight from the likes of Wood, Gilligan, and the others at the BBC. The Americans will return tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next. Soon, they will be everywhere in Iraq, trying to rebuild the place. But one day, one of those crazy teenagers they produce over there might remember the World Service interview with the Palestinian guy, or that Iraqi mullah's call for jihad. Maybe he'll grab a gun and go out to welcome the British and American newcomers — and get shot before he blows anybody away. Some hopeless, misguided young BBC correspondent, riding his big Scoop moment, will report it on the World Service as an outrage.

I like the Scoop reference, a book I highly recommend.

This paragraph makes an interesting point. Should the BBC or any other news organisation only report the news that it is acceptable to report by the standards of Western governments and Western life? No, it is an independant broadcaster and its remit is to broadcast both sides, thus it is not wrong for the BBC to show interviews with the comedy Iraqi Information Minister or with ''the Palestinian guy''.

What happened in Iraq happened, it was not all nice and pleasant and we didn't avoid civilian casualties or bad publicity at all times. You want your news to gloss over that? Goebbels was very good at ''glossing over''.

[Khornet]

I find it impossible to believe that you actually understood that article. Read it, yes, since you have quoted it. But understood?

This account is documentation of a deliberate ignoring of truth on the part of the BBC. Never mind the writer's conclusions: how do you explain the beahvior of the BBC when there was already readily available info disproving- not just contradicting- its version of events? Info that was readily available for anyone who wanted to check?

Goebbels et al were in the business of disseminating untruth. Those who oppose that should condemn what the BBC did in this particular case, on this particular date, and ask themselves what made it possible. This is not a matter of what is "acceptable" to one audience or the other; they either report the truth or they do not. The truth was unacceptable to the BBC, so they didn't look for it very hard. They had to work hard to keep from seeing it.

It would seem this is another case of "Thou shalt not question that which reflects badly on the US, lest thou become a Nazi. Thou shalt always double-check on any reports favorable to them, for they are unclean. "

Oh, and another thing: both Goebbels and the BBC were government-funded media outfits.

[agricola]

Khornet,

I) the author is correct that the WS has been dumbed down from its old standards, largely because of the fetish for rolling news that remains in the Shephards Bush area.

II) However the BBC journalists reported the truth - that they had not seen any US incursions into the centre of Baghdad. To use a London example, if an army was marching through Chiswick from Heathrow, if you were at Liverpool Street station you wouldnt know anything about it.

St John makes the other points I would have made, it is the correct decision to show "Comical Ali" and the "neutral" Arab viewpoint, especially given subsequent events - judging by FOX one would be under the impression that Iraq is likely to become another US state.

[Khornet]

we must be talking about a different article. I'll have to recheck my link. A global news service with ability to ferret out all kinds of facts in real-time, somehow can't seem to find a way to fact-check on the presence of a US division across the distance from Heathrow to Liverpool street, and because they can't see that far, assume that it must be treated as more US propaganda. Yet they managed to find some buried minor 'weapons expert' to 'prove' that the British Govt. had 'sexed up' the intel. An armored column shoots up the center of the city, and they can't find a witness to interview. Yet they can instantly find where the explosion struck a house, and witnesses to tell them it was the Americans.

Fog of war my butt. They couldn't see the truth because they didn't want to see the truth. They didn't want to see the truth because they had already decided before the war began that America is wrong. They are free to think so, but if they claim to be a news service they need to try to be objective. They didn't try. It's that simple, it's that dishonest, and it's that pathetic. If the US Govt. did this, it would be wrong also....but the BBC would then have found the truth right quick.

Agricola, by your standard (The BBC reported the truth, because they had not seen any US incursions..) Bush told the truth at the SOTU. Which is it? To argue that the consequences were different is immaterial. Did they tell the truth?

[Iain]

khornet - we were talking about bias. Maybe you need to think about that concept.

How could a BBC team attached to the Iraqi's know that a report they were receiving was inaccurate? That is why there were reporters attached to both sides, not because Greg Dyke wants Saddam Hussein's babies, but to get both sides of the story.

All they did was report the Iraqi claims, and all they did was report American claims. That is what news agencies do they report. Nobody ever said that the BBC reported the whole and objective truth that day, how could they? That is not the same as outright lies, it is just reporting. Fox does the same thing you know.

Anyway journalists are as often victims of American and British intelligence operations as they are Iraqi. Like the reporter I read about who got tipped off anonymously that one of the Sept 11th hijackers was connected to the Iraqi embassy in Prague. That was all an intelligence operation to connect Iraq to the WTC attacks. Bad behaviour on all sides.

[agricola]

khornet,

No, the BBC told the truth, their reporters had not seen anything in the centre of Baghdad. If they had, it would have been reported - the attack on the Information Ministry by that A-10, the decapitation of the Saddam statue, indeed news from the "embedded" reporters

For Bush to have told the truth he would have had to be unaware that the Niger claims were false - it seems that the CIA had grave doubts prior to the SOTU address, and given that the IAEA proved the documents fake in a few hours one would hope that any intelligence agency of any kind of quality would have seen through them at least as quickly.

[Khornet]

what amount of fact-checking do you think would have kept Gilligan from saying he was reporting from the airport and seeing no Americans when Gilligan wasn't at the aiport? Does he not know an airport when he sees one? Could he have some kind of "bias" against recognizing airports as such?

Having reporters on both sides seems not to have mattered here, since another BBC man IN BAGHDAD pointed out that Gilligan wasn't at the airport.

No, ST John, it's not true that all they did was report the claims of both sides. To claim that you have to make a mighty effort to ignore big chunks of the story....kinda like the BBC, come to think of it... al-Sahaf's bizarre pronouncements were aired without qualification or comment from the BBC, yet BBC feels compelled to remark that the US has a history of making erroneous announcements. How is that? Why not add qualifying comment to BOTH sides, or NEITHER?

While the BBC is reporting real-time that there are no Americans in Baghdad, television is at the same time showing GIs in the very place the BBC says there are none. How is that? I submit that the BBC will move heaven and earth to double-check a US claim, but wouldn't cross the street (literaly, in this case) to check one made by America's enemies.

Yes, St John, we are talking about bias, with a capital B. But I guess it's not bias when the BBC lies, only when the Americans do it. When it's the BBC, it's "evenhandedness". That's the part of the bias concept I don't get. Guilty as charged, and proud of it.

You can try all day long, but you can't get around, and you can't explain away, what the BBC did on April 4/5. Nice try, though.

I don't know whether the first casualty of this war was the truth, but it looks like the biggest casualty has been the credibility of the media, not least that of the BBC.

[Khornet]

give me a break. For Bush to KNOW that the uranium claim was false, he'd have had to do quite a bit of fact-checking. All Gilligan had to do was walk across the street. Couldn't be bothered, must be true 'cause it makes the US look like fools.

The BBC could have checked for themselves, instantly and easily. Why didn't they?

[Iain]

Did American broadcasts not show the Iraqi Information Ministers broadcasts?

It is quite clear you have made up your mind

And that is fine.

[Khornet]

if I don't respond anymore tonight, it's not that I'm ignoring you (come to think of it, if I walk away now I can say- truthfully- that there have been no coherent responses to my last points, since I don't SEE any) but rather that I do my THR reading in my office, and I'm going home now. Later, chaps.

[Iain]

Good night. Perhaps you could see past your preconceptions and see that valid responses have been made. If not, I still wish you a pleasant evening.

[agricola]

Khornet,

Youre not there to read this, but:

i) the CIA should have expressed reservations over the quality of the material presented to him. Put it another way, can you honestly imagine a situation in which the POTUS's state of the union speech isnt thoroughly checked to make sure there were no mistakes?

ii) Gilligan could not have "just walked across the street". For a start, Baghdad is not a one horse town, its a massive city and if he had been with the Information Ministry guides he is hardly likely to have been taken to the scene of any enemy incursion. At the end of the day, all he can report is what was in front of his own eyes - if he didnt see anything, he didnt see anything. That is not lying.

Anyway, given the sad propensity for US forces to friendly fire independent journalists (especially British ones), its understandable that he didnt want to push the issue.

[MicroBalrog]

Put it another way, can you honestly imagine a situation in which the POTUS's state of the union speech isnt thoroughly checked to make sure there were no mistakes?


10 kids a day...

[fallingblock]

"No, it is an independant broadcaster and its remit is to broadcast both sides,..."

:eek:

Surely you do not believe that the BBC is independent in any way, shape or form? What leads you to suggest such a thing?

It exists on money extorted from the British taxpayer and has a world-wide reputation for "progressive" bias.

Our pathetic Australian Broadcasting Corp. suffers much the same problems of endemic institutional bias as does the BBC...no doubt for similar reasons.

When a broadcaster is supported by voluntary subscription and subject to that subscription being revoked, then perhaps it can be independent.

Government control of the medium in no way contributes to 'fair' or 'balanced' reporting...it in fact often enhances the risk of the medium being controlled by established and biased cliques...as is certainly the case with ABC.

[Khornet]

back at the office. When we left our hero, he was trying to get his friends to acknowledge or refute the statement made in an article about the BBC, to wit:

That a large, well-financed major media outlet with global reach consistently, and in the face of freely available evidence to the contrary, evidence found and reported at the same moment by other media outlets and known by members of its own organization at the same moment, chose instead to ignore what was obvious to anyone. That said media outlet, proudly skeptical of US govt. pronouncements, went on a guided tour of Baghdad run by the Iraqi Ministry of Truth and accepted at face value what they were allowed to see, while conspicuously adding a warning disqualifier to the US pronouncement on the same event. That their reporter told the world he was at the airport, and there were no Americans there, when he was not at the airport at all. That such behavior leaves the BBC open to charges of the most egregious bias.

So far this point has not been responded to, much less refuted. Now, the author of the article may be wrong. He may be biased. He may be lying. I don't know, because I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. But my interlocutors apparently do, and yet they seem unwilling to address this point.

You can say my mind's made up. You can call me biased, opinionated, closed-minded, blind. But none of that answers the point, and if you will not confront that point, I am left to conclude that it is because you cannot...because it is true.

[Iain]

Have to run out but will quickly say that I feel most of your points have been answered with relation to not accepting what the Iraqi's were saying, instead just [b]reporting[/] it. Which is fair enough, all news media should do this when it has the opportunity.

With reference to Gilligan, it says nowhere in the BBC Charter that ''The BBC is completely immune to the employment of idiots''. This kind of thing happens quite a lot to lots of different companies. A radio station called Talk Sport was recently criticised for claiming to be commentating live on soccer matches, the commenters were actually watching the TV in the studio. i appreciate your point is more serious than this, but off the top of my head I cannot recall the details of other incidents I have heard about.

That said media outlet, proudly skeptical of US govt. pronouncements, went on a guided tour of Baghdad run by the Iraqi Ministry of Truth and accepted at face value what they were allowed to see

That sums up your attitude though. You are not going to listen to anything anyone says to disagree with you. Just another person attacking the British on this forum, I'm all for criticising my own country, but so much of it on THR revolves around calling Britain ''socialist'', which is thoughtless.

Now I'm late.

[Khornet]

don't look now, but Britain is socialist, and has been for some decades. But that's not my point, which you still don't address.

The remark of mine which you quote as 'summing up my atitude' is a description of what the BBC did. Can I ask you to please acknowledge that, or refute it?

To reply that I'm bashing Britain by criticizing the BBC is to dodge the question, aside from being gratuitous....although I can understand your feelings, since the volume of like criticism of my own country dwarfs the criticism of yours.

Nonetheless, I must ask: did the BBC do what the article says? If so, is that honest reporting?

And if Gilligan is an idiot, what does that tell us about the Niger business?

To paraphrase an MP of an earlier era, I can only point out what is written in the article. I can't understand it for you. We have reached an impasse, and to insist on a response to my point will only lead to acrimony, which I'm sure neither of us desires.

[agricola]

Khornet,

Its you who is missing the point. The BBC did report the US claims, as the article demonstrates - they even challenged Gilligan and Rageh Omar with them. Gilligan and Omar were the men on the ground, they were under IMI control and they couldnt see anything, which they reported. Had they JUST reported the IMI sponsored version of events, youd be correct that they were biased - but they werent. They reported both sides of the issue and left the viewer to decide. As a matter of fact, all BBC reports from the war contained provisos where appropriate that the journalists were attached to, or supervised by, or briefed by CENTCOM or IMI personnel in order to make clear any questionable reporting - something which neither you nor the author have acknowledged.

That is their job and it is the definition of honest reporting - if you wanted a mouthpiece for CENTCOM then there was always FOX or the laughably biased Sky News.

With regards to Gilligans statement, well that is understandable given the repeated "fall" of Umm Qasr, repeated "finds of WMD material", the Jessica Lynch / torture of POW claims and the "execution" of the two UK soldiers and other manipulations of the media carried out by CENTCOM during the war.