Apart from Jeremy Bowen’s pro Palestinian position, his grievance against Israelis, his reliance on Palestinian stringers because of his inability to speak either Hebrew or Arabic, and his lisp, one thing that annoys me about the BBC’s M.E. editor is the difficulty he has with his own language. This morning he chats with Sarah Montague about Obama’s forthcoming speech aimed at embracing the Muslim world. Struggling for a while with “ much looked-forward-to” he eventually found the word that had eluded him - “anticipated.” His vocabulary-light rhetoric is always peppered with “quite franklys” and “if you see what I means,” although I’m not sure he’s ever ventured a “to be Honest” Thanks to Pounce for drawing my attention to this example of BBC bias. A candidate for gratuitous and unnecessary pr-Obama report of the On the subject of caving in to pro-Palestinian pressure, something unusual appeared in the Independent yesterday. A letter from film director Gary Sinyor, recipient of the award for Best British Film from the EIFF 1992 for his film “Leon the Pig Farmer” (Do read it all) The BBC probably thought they were doing their bit for balance by inviting Helen Szamuely of the Eurosceptical blog EU Referendum onto a discussion with Zainab Badawi. Linguistic Limitations
>> TUESDAY, JUNE 02, 2009
Anyway, he says that Netanyahu has his hands tied by the religious right, who have got it into their silly little heads that the land belongs to the chosen ones. Obama has the difficult task of convincing these religiously fanatical Jews to accede to Arab demands while overlooking entirely the intransigence, violence and genocidal intentions of his religiously fanatical Islamic brethren.
With next week’s ME visit by the One, 'going forward', Jeremy Bowen’s reports on the BBC are being eagerly - “much looked forward to.”
I’ll leave Justin Webb to everyone out there. Over to you.
(Too early for the Today link. Please, someone add it later)Passive Killing
>> MONDAY, JUNE 01, 2009
Police raid! Allegations of torture! Zionist Agents!
All of this and more, but wait - Who has done these evil things?
Israel is not in the headline. Why not? Because this time Israel is not the culprit.
There doesn’t seem to be culprit at all.
In fact no-one in particular seems to have murdered anyone. Just Fighting. Fighting is what has killed six Palestinians.
That explains why the headline is not:
“Palestinians murder Palestinians in West Bank Gun Battle.”
BBC headline writers have a habit of taking all responsibility away from Palestinians, who just die from ‘fighting’ whereas Israelis “kill militants” and “strike children,” and if any Israelis should die, it’s from Fighting, Rockets, or Explosions. You know, the ones that just happen.Obamalove
>> SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2009
year monthweek perhaps?Caving In. Part 2.
He explains eloquently why Ken Loach was wrong to threaten the Edinburgh International Film Festival, forcing them to hand back the £300 sponsorship money from Israel...... or else.
“To repress the freedom of a film festival, to blackmail it, because it has accepted £300 from a government body to fly over a film-maker is petty and outrageous.[.....] “to acquiesce to this blackmail is more outrageous still. [........] “To be seen to give in to extremists is simply not an option.”
Amen to that.
Meanwhile, back at the BBC, they’re still promoting Loach’s latest film.
Caving in to this sort of pressure seems to be the order of the day, and sad to say, the BBC’s twin habits of doing that and vilifying Israel epitomise the downward spiral we’re in.Brussels Broadcasting Corporation
On the other hand, they might have considered that UK feelings about the EU are not at all warm, and that two pro-EU bloggers out of three was a touch imbalanced. There was Nosemonkey, a "critically pro-EU and centrist" blogger, Shiraz Socialist, a "moderately angry nouveau-middle-class leftwinger" (I'll refer to him as SS), and Szamuely, a lovable if crotchety Eurosceptic (I am sure she will love the description). Of the three, I am pretty certain Szamuely's blog has much the largest readership (circa 3000 daily visits).
Then again, perhaps we should look at another metric- time alloted to speakers. In this regard, by my rough reckoning, Szamuely got 92 seconds, Nosemonkey 112, and Shiraz Socialist 134. Shiraz also got the last word, in which he claimed that EU institutions need to be strengthened. He had also been given the first word, fed to him by Badawi, that politicians in general were in the doghouse. Very conveniently, following that the whole discussion managed to omit mention of which party are firmly in the doghouse. People were angry with the recession, they said, but the "L" word went missing.
Now to the tone- it was clear that Badawi was "ready" for Ms Szamuely. She interrupted her several times and disputed with her the "usefulness" of the EU Parliament (Szamuely had a ready retort about Commission overrules of Parliamnetary objections, but that got lost in Badawi's hectoring). Badawi interrupted her too when she mentioned UKIP, clarifying who they were while Szamuely was in full flow. Then, during the discussion wind up, she told Szamuely (who we have seen got less time) to say "briefly" how she saw the UK public mood, and repeated that "briefly" so that she could give time to... SS.
She did not once interrupt SS, nor dispute with him when he claimed that EU institutions need strengthening, nor when he stated that people were angry about the (his word) "laissez-faire" economics of recent times. She even murmurred, "mmm, yes" at one stage.
Nosemonkey was mainly there for posing value, but he managed to slip in a cheap jab about Tory MPs resigning over expenses which Badawi... let go,surprisingly.
All in all then, a startlingly biased presentation, once you look closely. But see for yourself and make up your own mind by watching the video on EU Referendum's blog.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Six killed in gun battle! Home-owner killed! Politically motivated arrests!
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