Open Thread
>> SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 08, 2009
Time for another open thread.
(Possible discussion for Remembrance Sunday - Media Lens wants the wearing of red poppies banned on the BBC.)
Trouble in Arcadia
A BAFTA-nominated documentary maker has accused the BBC of banning his latest film about life in a remote Highland glen because it shows a lack of impartiality about wind farms.Here's Scott's film about an ardent Scottish republican campaigner made as part of a series called The New Ten Commandments which was broadcast last year. This passed the BBC's impartiality guidelines, but a film highlighting opposition to wind farms did not. Thou shalt not take the name of climate change in vain!
BBC bosses part-funded the short film Arcadia by controversial Scots film producer David Graham Scott.
But the BBC has refused to broadcast the finished film, warning Scott that the documentary does not meet its strict rules on objectivity...
Scott said: "This was not meant to be a political film. It is more about the impact of modernity on an ancient landscape where people are having to cope with the modern world.
"I don't have a problem with the BBC's impartiality guidelines, but I think my film has been misinterpreted. I wouldn't want to alter the film to get it broadcast as that might ruin it."...
Protesters fighting the impact of wind farms in Scotland insist the film should be aired to highlight one of the biggest issues in rural Scotland amid the plight of communities where the farms are planned.
Bob Graham, who has fought a long-running campaign against wind farms across Scotland because of their visual impact, said: "The BBC has a duty to show realistic depictions of what wind farms can do to fragile environments and communities. They say the film is biased. I would say the BBC is biased in favour of wind farms, and that is why it will not show this documentary."
Scott's wind farm film was "one of seven films shot through the Bridging The Gap programme, which seeks to promote work by young Scots directors." It will be interesting to see the subject matter and "impartiality" of the films the BBC does broadcast.
(By the by - the Scottish republican seen in the above film has left this comment, among others, at YouTube:
If the Queen or any royalist successor is banned from Scotland's roads and rivers, and shot on sight for defying a ban then Scotland SHALL be free of monarchy from its veins.Pleasant chap.)
Fanfare cancelled
Yesterday I was rather sickened to see close-up the visage of our Prime Minister(discredited to all but Labour loyalists and those who know nothing about him ie. gullible foreigners) splayed across the BBC frontpage. Not anotherinterminable G20 pose-fest, I thought. Not another opportunity for G. Brown to mince across our screens flaunting his moral compass. Yet it was: Gordon had yet another populist wheeze- a tax of financial transactions- to "save the world" with.
The BBC was kindly obliging him, as they have always done. They seemed to sense a chance to hype Gordon as the world's saviour again- which bombast is the only way to cover the reality that he is the world's biggest bust as an economic manager and political leader.
Well now the latest pose-fest seems to have squibbed, the BBC having to play backstop for the Prime Mentalist. Despite another grotesque miscalculation on the part of HMG, the BBC report covering the event now simply leads with the glossy affirmation that "G20 vows to spur fragile growth". Gordon's latest serial embarrassment is slipped surreptitiously in lower down as having "received a lukewarm response from other G20 countries". This is just prior to Geitner's statement of a "very broad consensus that growth remains the dominant policy imperative across our economies".
Watching the C4News clip here, I almost laughed when Geitner prefaced his rebuttal of Gordon's scheme by saying that he wanted "to show the appropriate deference to our hosts" (Gordon/UK). Interestingly, Gordon's gesture did seem to meet a little gleeful approval from the French. And of course from the BBC, until the wind changed.
SHILLING FOR ISLAM...
>> SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2009
Just watched the BBC TV News. The line being retailed is that the mass murder of US soldiers may well lead to even more of that awful Islamophobia that so concerns the State Broadcaster. Even as Major Nidal shouted "Allahu Akbar" and slaughtered the innocent, the BBC has instantly reverted to "Islam is the victim" mode. One of my readers over on A Tangled Web is currently helping treat the injured at Fort Hoods and it is to my shame that I tell him how the British State Broadcaster is doing everything possible to present Nidal as the victim and the real guilty party as the USA.
"Shooting Raises Fears for Sanity of Entire Western World"
So sayeth Mark Steyn, referring to this BBC News story :
Steyn :
Really? Right now the body count stands at:
Non-Muslims 13
Muslims 0Even if you are concerned that it would be terribly unfair if all Muslims were to be tarred by Major Hasan's brush, it is, to put it at its mildest, the grossest bad taste to default every single time within minutes to the position that what's of most interest about an actual atrocity with real victims is that it may provoke an entirely hypothetical atrocity with entirely hypothetical victims.
"I honestly have no pity for them"
Following the criticism of some BBC coverage of the Fort Hood killings, credit is due to the BBC's Gavin Lee for including in his report this morning the following interview with a young Muslim from the same mosque attended by Major Hasan (the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npAvM-VWwhc
Duane : I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.The full segment from which this was taken can be heard here.
Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day.
I wonder if this is the same Duane from the same mosque quoted in the New York Times (my emphasis):
Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.
“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”
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