Double Standards
>> SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 2011
When something bad happens to Jews or Israelis the BBC reacts with indifference or worse.
The reporting of two recent incidents (or non-reporting of one of them) contrast sharply with the BBC’s treatment of similar incidents, which, when they concern Palestinians or Muslims, cause cataclysmic BBC eruptions.
Incident 1, the burning of the Torah in Corfu, was mentioned on the Open Thread with a link to Ray Cook’s blog, but ignored by the BBC.
Burning Korans make quite a splash, don’t they? (H/T Demon 1001)
The second incident is described sensitively by blogger Oy Va Goy.
It concerns the shooting of some religious Jews, killing one and seriously injuring others, and was at least reported by the BBC, though they dwelled on certain things which almost seemed as though they intended to justify the actions of the Palestinian police perpetrators.
When I switched on the radio this morning I caught the end of a news bulletin.
They seemed to be saying that the dead and injured Jews were in a Palestinian controlled area without permission.
That’s all.
Did anyone else hear that news bulletin?
The Protection of Information Act
Everybody who frequents this site will know that the BBC has spent lashings of our telly tax on legal fees to safeguard the secrecy of a report they themselves commissioned.
The subject was their coverage of the Middle East, and the question was: is the BBC biased against Israel?
The legal battle took many twists and turns, and Steven Sugar, who steadfastly fought for the release of the Balen report, very sadly and inopportunely died at the age of 60, shortly before another stage of the unfolding court case was due to be heard.
No-one knows whether Malcolm Balen’s findings confirmed the BBC’s anti Israel bias, but one thing’s for sure, the battle to keep them secret certainly gives the impression that they did.
So, in some ways, the BBC’s intransigent refusal to let us take a peek works against them almost as much as the revelation of its contents might have done.
One slightly ironic bonus of this ongoing legal tussle is that the public gets to discover a bit of extra information for free, namely that the BBC is virtually exempt from the obligations of the FOI act, because of a cunning exclusion clause concerning ‘journalism art or literature,’ for the purpose of, yer honour m’lud.
Anything in that category is ‘out with’ the FOI act. In other words the entire BBC output can, if it likes, shelter under the same get-out umbrella.
So are we up in arms at the arrogance of the BBC for wallowing in a unique all-embracing exemption from scrutiny, which flies in the face of the ultra desirable, most-wanted virtue du jour - *transparency* - the essential quality that all organisations long for, and the one thing that makes everything come good?
(WikiLeaks, anyone?)
Bear with me.
As well as (and to a large extent because of) the media - the dinner-party set, socialists, trade unions, celebrities and the Muslim community - all currently bask in a toxic climate of pro Palestinian advocacy and anti Israel activism.
It’s a kind of global man-made antisemitic climate-change, and it is alive and well, flourishing even, in our universities.
You can virtually get a doctorate in hating Jews.
The Arab sourced funding that some of our universities currently rely on has led to the alarming ascendancy of Islamic studies departments set up by Saudi Princes at places like Exeter, where anti Israel polemicists Ilan Pappéand Ghada Karmi prevail, and the LSE, Oxbridge and various other renowned academic institutions.
I vividly recall reading with dismay this 2008 article about Aberystwyth University.
It implies that if a student won’t toe the line they will probably fail their degree. So here’s my point.
I found a FOI request that I am glad the BBC refused to deliver. It’s in the public domain, and there’s no super injunction preventing me from knowing about it. I found it on Google, by accident, as I was looking for something else. I have no idea what this Palestinian gentleman from Strathclyde University intended to do with the information he requested. Ideas that ran through my head ranged from: *write a learned dissertation on Hasbara, *organise a troll blitzkrieg on B-BBC, and sadly, but inevitably, *kill infidels.
Why would I be grateful that the BBC refused to give details of the complainants and complaints about anti-Israel reports to a post graduate student who might be doing some important academic research?
Because the student is a Palestinian activist with links to some very hostile people. Because we live in a culture of intimidation.
Because B-BBC is number 12 on the list. Because because because. I hesitated before posting this. I sought advice.
They said “publish!” which I hereby do, sincerely hoping that B-BBC and I won’t be damned.
What a sorry state I’m in to have such worries. It’s regrettable that some of us, because of our particular circumstances, are conscious of the need to take limited steps to preserve our anonymity, just because we dare to defend Israel.
WHERE OTHERS LEAD....
A so-called "investigative" scoop in the Daily Telegraph suggesting that the BBC is involved in the organisation of COMplus, an international group that supports climate change alarmism, has also caused ripples in the blogsphere.
Richard North and WUWT have followed up.
I'm totally in favour of enterprising, sceptical journalism, but I'm afraid on this occasion, the Telegraph is more than a year behind.
I filed this story (based on research I carried out after an item by Richard North) on COMplus - whose acolytes include toerags such as former Labour ministers Eliot Morley and Stephen Byers - on March 15, 2010 (with a follow-up amplifying some of the key points on the same day) and gave chapter on verse why it was an insiduous menace in which the BBC was playing a major role.
EU Referendum also had this, detailing the full scale of COMplus linkages.
What was unearthed back then went far beyond the Telegraph's latest revelations, and I spelled out one aspect of the way the influence operated:
The scale and modus operandi of this activity beggars belief, and the BBC is in every sense a key component, putting it firmly in bed with the main greenie activists around the world.
Look for example, at just one of the COMplus partner organisations, the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE).
Naturally, its main goal is to make greenie propaganda (the annual report is a manual about the chilling art).
The main outlet is on the BBC World television service; its programmes such as Earth Report reach 172 countries and notch up audiences of 100m plus.
Principal funders of TVE include the World Wildlife Fund, Christian Aid, and Oxfam - the usual suspect NGOs who, in their pursuit of climate change nonsense, have become polticial activists whose main aim is to spread the lie that the West is to blame for all the developing world ills.
Predictably, TVE is run by one Cheryl Campbell, a former BBC journalist (and greenie fanatic) who was also communications chief of Christian Aid.
Also in on the act is the Reuters Foundation, which, as B-BBC also established in a previous post is the founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
This body is run partly by BBC journalist James Painter, a climate change activist who is a model of his type; Goebbels would have been proud of him.I don 't want to be churlish, and I am pleased that the Telegraph is finally looking at the rat's nest of establishment money-down-the-drain activity that supports climate change hysteria.
Easter Offering
This is a Guest Post By esteemed commenter Chuffer. ______________________________________
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