Sunday, 1 May 2011


Criticism of the BBC

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[hide]

Criticism of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) refers to either disagreement with the BBC or evaluation, interpretation and analysis of the BBC. Criticism for alleged biases have come from the British government of the day, as well as from other political groups and various media outlets.

[edit]Iraq and The Hutton Inquiry

The BBC received criticism over its coverage of the events before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003.[1] The controversy over what it described as the "sexing up" of the case for war in Iraq by the government, led to the BBC being heavily criticised by the Hutton Inquiry,[2] although this finding was much disputed by the British press, who branded it as a government whitewash.[3][4]

The BBC's chairman and director general both resigned following the inquiry, and its vice-chairman Lord Ryder made a public apology to the government - which the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker MP described as "of such capitulation that I wanted to throw up when I heard it".[5]

[edit]Allegations of bias

[edit]Political bias

BBC News forms a major department of the BBC, and regularly receives complaints of bias, mostly of being overly left-wing, while some on the left criticise the BBC of being a part of the establishment. The Centre for Policy Studies - founded and run by prominent members of the centre-right Conservative Party says that, "Since at least the mid-1980s, the BBC has often been criticised for a perceived bias against those on the centre-right of politics."[6] Similar allegations have been made by past and present employees such as Antony Jay,[7] former political editor Andrew Marr,[8] North American editor Justin Webb,[8] former editor of the Today Programme Rod Liddle,[9] former correspondent Robin Aitken[10] and Peter Sissons, a veteran news anchor.[4] Mark Thompson, the current BBC Director General, has recently admitted: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left." [5]

Accusations of a left-wing bias were often made against the BBC by members of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the 1980s. Norman Tebbit called the BBC the “Stateless Person’s Broadcasting Corporation” because of what he regarded as its unpatriotic and neutral coverage of the Falklands War and Conservative MP Peter Bruinvels called it the “Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation”. Thatcher did not agree with the Television licence, she wanted to deregulate British broadcasting and she regarded the BBC as over-manned and uncompetitive, as well as biased against her. Throughout the 1980s her government appointed more and more Conservatives to the Board of Governors of the BBC. Steve Barnett noted in The Observer that "back in 1980, George Howard, the hunting, shooting and fishing aristocratic pal of Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, was appointed [BBC chairman] because Margaret Thatcher couldn't abide the thought of distinguished Liberal Mark Bonham-Carter being promoted from vice-chairman. "Then there was Stuart Young, accountant and brother of one of Thatcher's staunchest cabinet allies, who succeeded Howard in 1983. He was followed in 1986 by Marmaduke Hussey, brother-in-law of another Cabinet Minister who was plucked from the obscurity of a directorship at Rupert Murdoch's Times Newspapers. According to Norman Tebbit, then Tory party chairman, Hussey was appointed 'to get in there and sort the place out, and in days not months.'"[11] But controversies continued with the likes of the Nationwide general election special with Thatcher in 1983, a Panorama documentary called Maggie's Militant Tendency, the Real Livesinterview with Martin McGuinness, the BBC’s coverage of the United States’ 1986 Bombing of Libya and the Zircon affair. In 1987 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, was forced to resign. Thatcher later said: “I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it.”[12] In 2006 Tebbit said: "The BBC was always against Lady Thatcher.”[13]

Speaking to journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in 2009, Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Cabinet Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, claimed that BBC News needed more Conservatives: “I wish they would go and actively look for some Conservatives to be part of their news-gathering team, because they have acknowledged that one of their problems is that people who want to work at the BBC tend to be from the centre-left. That's why they have this issue with what Andrew Marr called an innate liberal bias.”[14] Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, described the BBC in 2009 as “part of a thoroughly unpleasant ultra-Leftist establishment”.[15]

By contrast, the writer and journalist John Pilger has frequently accused the BBC of a right-wing bias, a view supported by the left-wing website Media Lens. Websites such as Media Lens claim that the BBC acts to narrow the range of thought and like most commercial broadcasters it inherently portrays the opinions of the powerful.[16] This echoes the famous statement of employee general manager of the then privately owned BBC, John Reith, who confided to his diary in the midst of the 1926 general strike. The cabinet had decided not to take over the BBC. Reith noted that the decision was really a "negative one" because "they know they can trust us not to be really impartial". Since that time UK news has very rarely departed from the assumptions implicit in that judgment.[17] More recently, former Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has criticised the BBC for government bias and of maintaining the status quo in British politics.[18] The former Respect MP George Galloway has referred to it as the "Bush and Blair Corporation".[19]

[edit]Political correctness

On Friday 22 September 2006 the BBC's Board of Governors held an impartiality seminar which was streamed live on the internet. The previous day the then Chairman of the Governors,Michael Grade, explained the thinking behind the seminar in an article in The Guardian newspaper.[20] He also announced in the same article a live stream of the seminar would be available on the BBC Governors' website. The stream was only available live and was not publicised on the main BBC or BBC News websites, causing some media reports, including inThe Mail on Sunday, to mistakenly claim that it was "secret". The full transcript of the seminar was released in June 2007.

In the seminar there was a hypothetical discussion including senior BBC executives about what they would allow controversial Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to throw into a dustbin on the satirical television show Room 101. It was imagined that Baron Cohen would wish to throw into Room 101 kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Qur'an, and the Bible. There was also a hypothetical discussion about whether a Muslim BBC newsreader should be allowed to wear a headscarf.

In the seminar former BBC business editor Jeff Randall claimed that he was told by a senior news executive in the organisation that "The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it." The Daily Mail claims that political correspondent Andrew Marr said that "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias".[21]These comments were reported in the UK national press a couple of weeks later. At the seminar Helen Boaden (Director of BBC News) said that the BBC must be impartial on the issue of multiculturalism.

Helen Boaden responded to press criticism of the seminar in a post on the BBC's Editors' Blog. Peter Horrocks (Head of Television News) also blogged about the question of what was suitable attire for newsreaders in another post on the Editors Blog.

Mark Thompson (Director General of the BBC) responded to press criticism in an article in the Daily Mail[22] as did Mark Byford (Director, Journalism) in an interview in The Sunday Telegraph.[23]

[edit]Racism

The BBC has also been accused of racism. In a speech to the Royal Television Society in 2008, Lenny Henry said that ethnic minorities were "pitifully underserved" in television comedy and that little had changed at senior levels in terms of ethnic representation during his 32 years in television.[24] Jimmy McGovern in a 2007 interview called the BBC "one of the most racist institutions in England".[25]

The BBC is striving for 12.5% of its staff to be from a black and minority ethnic background (12% at 31 January 2009).[26] This is over 4% higher than the current percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK as a whole, though the BBC is largely based in urban areas with a more diverse demographic. However, it has been argued that much of its ethnic minority staff are cleaners, security guards and other menial labour, rather than as presenters and programme makers.[27]

[edit]"Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century"

A report commissioned by the BBC Trust, Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century,[28] published in June 2007, stressed that the BBC needed to take more care in being impartial. It said the BBC broke its own guidelines by screening an episode of The Vicar of Dibley which promoted the Make Poverty History campaign.[29] A transcript of the impartiality seminar is included as a separately published appendix to the report available via the BBC Trust.[30]

The Evening Standard claimed that the report showed the BBC "is out of touch with large swathes of the public and is guilty of self-censoring subjects that the corporation finds unpalatable".[31]

[edit]Israel / Palestine conflict

Criticism of the BBC's Middle East coverage from supporters of both Israel and Palestine led the BBC to commission an investigation and report from a senior broadcast journalistMalcolm Balen, referred to as the Balen Report and completed in 2004. The BBC's refusal to release the report under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 resulted in a long running legal case which continues.[32][33] This led to speculation that the report was damning, as well as to accusations of hypocrisy as the BBC frequently made use itself of Freedom of Information Act requests when researching news stories.[34]

After the Balen report, the BBC appointed a committee chosen by the Governors and referred to by the BBC as an "independent panel report" to write a report for publication which was completed in 2006. The committee said that "apart from individual lapses, there was little to suggest deliberate or systematic bias" in the BBC's reporting of the middle east. However their coverage had been "inconsistent," "not always providing a complete picture" and "misleading".[34] Reflecting concerns from all sides of the conflict the committee highlighted some identifiable shortcomings and made four recommendations.

According to an article in The Independent the report suggested that in fact BBC coverage implicitly favoured the Israeli side.[35] Martin Walker, then the editor of United Press International, agreed that the report implied favoritism towards Israel, but said this suggestion "produced mocking guffaws in my newsroom" and went on to list a number of episodes of (in his view) clear pro-Palestinian bias on the part of the BBC.[36]

Former BBC middle east correspondent Tim Llewellyn wrote in 2004 that the BBC's coverage allowed an Israeli view of the conflict to dominate, as demonstrated by research conducted by the Glasgow Media Group.[37]

In the course of their "Documentary Campaign 2000-2004," Trevor Asserson, Cassie Williams and Lee Kern of BBCWatch published a series of reports The BBC And The Middle Eaststating in their opinion that "the BBC consistently fails to adhere to its legal obligations to produce impartial and accurate reporting."[38]

Douglas Davis, the London correspondent of The Jerusalem Post, has accused the BBC of being anti-Israel and even antisemitic. He wrote that the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is "a relentless, one-dimensional portrayal of Israel as a demonic, criminal state and Israelis as brutal oppressors [which] bears all the hallmarks of a concerted campaign of vilification that, wittingly or not, has the effect of de-legitimising the Jewish state and pumping oxygen into a dark old European hatred that dared not speak its name for the past half-century."[39] "Anglicans for Israel", the pro-Israel pressure group,[40] have berated the BBC for apparent anti-Israel bias.[41]

Writing in the Financial Times, Philip Stephens, one of the panellists, later accused the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson, of misrepresenting the panel's conclusions. He further opined "My sense is that BBC news reporting has also lost a once iron-clad commitment to objectivity and a necessary respect for the democratic process. If I am right, the BBC, too, is lost."[42] Mark Thompson published a rebuttal in the FT on the following day.[43]

The Daily Telegraph criticized the BBC for its coverage of the Middle East, writing: "In its international and domestic news reporting, the corporation has consistently come across as naïve and partial, rather than sensitive and unbiased. Its reporting of Israel and Palestine, in particular, tends to underplay the hate-filled Islamist ideology that inspires Hamas and other factions, while never giving Israel the benefit of the doubt."[44]

In 2008 the BBC was accused by the pro-Israel watchdog group CAMERA of falsifying reports related to the aftermath of the Mercaz HaRav massacre. The BBC later apologised for incorrectly showing footage that they had said showed one of the perpetrator's houses being demolished.[45]

The BBC received particularly intense criticism in January 2009 for its decision not to broadcast a television appeal by aid agencies on behalf of the people of Gaza during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict on the grounds that it could compromise the BBC's journalistic impartiality. A number of protesters asserted that this showed pro-Israeli bias, while some analysts suggested that the BBC's decision in this matter derived from its concern to avoid anti-Israeli bias as analysed in the Balen report.[46] Many parties criticised the decision, includingChurch of England archbishops, British government ministers and even some BBC employees. More than 11,000 complaints were filed in a three-day span.[47] Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, protested BBC's decision by cancelling interviews scheduled with the company; ElBaradei claimed the refusal to air the aid appeal "violates the rules of basic human decency which are there to help vulnerable people irrespective of who is right or wrong."[48]

[edit]2006 Lebanon War

During the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli diplomatic officials boycotted BBC news programmes, refused interviews, and excluded BBC reporters from briefings because Israeli officials believed the BBC's reporting was biased, stating "the reports we see give the impression that the BBC is working on behalf of Hizbullah instead of doing fair journalism."[49] Francesca Unsworth, head of BBC News gathering, defended the coverage in an article in the Jewish News.[50]

[edit]The Balen Report

The BBC is seeking to overturn a ruling by the Information Tribunal rejecting the BBC's refusal to release the Balen report to a member of the public under the Freedom of Information Acton the grounds that it was held for the purposes of journalism. The report examines BBC radio and television broadcasts covering the Arab-Israeli conflict and was compiled in 2004 byMalcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser.

Critics of the BBC claimed that the Balen Report includes evidence of bias against Israel in news programming.[51][52] For examples, on 10 October 2006, The Daily Telegraph[53] claimed that "The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage. The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism. The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming."

It has been alleged that the corporation paid £200,000 for this legal action. The Daily Mail called the BBC's blocking a FOI request "shameful hypocrisy" in light of the corporation's previous extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism.[54]

On 27 April 2007 the High Court rejected Mr Steven Sugar's challenge to the Information Commissioner's decision. However on 11 February 2009 the House of Lords (the UK's highest court) reinstated the Information Tribunal's decision to allow Mr Sugar's appeal against the Information Commissioner's decision. The matter goes back to the High Court for determination of the BBC's further appeal on a point of law against the Tribunal's decision.

The BBC's press release following the High Court judgment included the following statement:

"The BBC's action in this case had nothing to do with the fact that the Balen report was about the Middle East – the same approach would have been taken whatever area of news output was covered."[55]

Mr Sugar was reported after his success in the House of Lords as saying:

"It is sad that the BBC felt it necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money fighting for three years to try to load the system against those requesting information from it. I am very pleased that the House of Lords has ruled that such obvious unfairness is not the result of the Act."[56]

[edit]Jeremy Bowen

In April 2009, the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust published a report on three complaints brought against two news items involving Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East Editor for BBC News.[57] The complaints included 24 allegations of inaccuracy or impartiality of which three were fully or partially upheld.[57][58][59] Parts of a news article were found to breach BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality. Also, one statement in a radio broadcast was found to breach BBC guidelines on accuracy.[57] The original website article was amended and Bowen did not face any disciplinary measures.[60]

The Jerusalem Post reported the story using the headline "Complaints of BBC bias partially upheld".[61] However, the report does not accuse Bowen of bias.[58] According to The Guardian, the problem was only that "Bowen should have used clearer language and been more precise in some aspects of the piece".[62] Also, for the disputed claim in the radio broadcast, the committee accepted that Bowen had an authoritative source.[62]

[edit]Alleged pro-Muslim bias

Hindu and Sikh leaders in the United Kingdom have accused the BBC of pandering to Britain's Muslim community by making a disproportionate number of programmes on Islam at the expense of covering other Asian religions.[citation needed]

In a letter sent in July to the Network of Sikh Organizations (NSO), the head of the BBC's Religion and Ethics, Michael Wakelin, denied any biases on their part. A spokesman for the BBC said the broadcaster was committed to representing all of Britain's faiths and communities.

However, a number of MPs, including Rob Marris and Keith Vaz, called on the BBC to do more to represent Britain's minority faiths. "I am disappointed," said Mr Vaz. "It is only right that as licence fee payers all faiths are represented in a way that mirrors their make-up in society. I hope that the BBC addresses the problem in its next year of programming."[63]

[edit]Allegations of Indophobia

In 2008, the BBC was criticised by some for referring to the terrorists who carried out the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as mere "gunmen".[64][65] However others have noted the reporting was consistent with complex editorial guidelines at the time.[66] This follows a steady stream of complaints from India that the BBC has an Indophobic bias that stems from a culturally ingrained racism against Indians arising from the British Raj. Rediff reporter, Arindam Banerji, has chronicled what he argues are numerous cases of Indophobic bias from the BBC regarding reportage, selection bias, misrepresentation, and fabrications. Hindu groups in the United Kingdom have accused the BBC of anti-Hindu bigotry and whitewashing Islamisthate groups that demonize the British Indian minority[67]

In protest against the use of the word "gunmen" by the BBC, journalist Mobashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar refused to take part in an interview following the Mumbai terror attacks.[68] British parliamentarian Stephen Pound has supported these claims, referring to the BBC's whitewashing of the terror attacks as "the worst sort of mealy mouthed posturing. It is desperation to avoid causing offence which ultimately causes more offence to everyone."[69]

Writing for The Hindu Business Line, reporter Premen Addy criticizes the BBC's reportage on South Asia as consistently anti-India and pro-Islamist,[70] and that they underreport India's economic and social achievements, as well as political and diplomatic efforts, and disproportionately highlight and exaggerate problems in the country. In addition, Addy alludes todiscrimination against Indian anchors and reporters in favor of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ones who are hostile to India.

Writing for the 2008 edition of the peer-reviewed Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Alasdair Pinkerton analyzes the coverage of India by the BBC since India's independence from British rule in 1947 until 2008. Pinkerton observes a tumultuous history involving allegations of anti-India bias in the BBC's reportage, particularly during the cold war, and concludes that the BBC's coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics shows a pervasive and hostile anti-India bias due to the BBC's alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist stance.[71]

[edit]Alleged anti-American bias

In October 2006, Chief Radio Correspondent for BBC News since 2001[72] and Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to "correct" it in his reports, and that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it "no moral weight".[73][74][75]

In April 2007, Webb presented a three part series for BBC Radio 4 called Death To America: Anti Americanism Examined in which he challenged a common perception of the United States as an international bully and a modern day imperial power.[76]

American conservative news commentator Bill O'Reilly has repeatedly sought to draw attention to what he calls the BBCs "inherent liberal culture."[77]

[edit]John Redwood's deregulation proposals

The BBC has been criticised for the way it covered Conservative MP John Redwood's policy group's deregulation proposals. Prominent political blogger Iain Dale criticised the organisation for leading news reports with the Labour Party's response to the proposals, rather than the proposals themselves, and claimed the BBC was "doing Labour's dirty work".[78]The BBC denied the charge.

British newspaper The Sun also alleged the BBC reports showed bias, criticising the organisation for including embarrassing footage of John Redwood badly singing the Welsh national anthem from the early 1990s. The paper argued that the coverage "was a mockery of impartial journalism" and "could have been scripted by Labour ministers".[79] The BBC later apologised, but denied showing bias.[80]

[edit]The Secret Agent Documentary

On Thursday 15 July 2004 the BBC broadcast a documentary on the far right British National Party where undercover reporter Jason Gwynne infiltrated the BNP by posing as a football hooligan.[81][82] The programme resulted in Mark Collett and Nick Griffin, the leader of the party, being charged for inciting racial hatred in April 2005, for statements which included Griffin describing Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith," Collett describing asylum seekers as "a little bit like cockroaches" and saying "let's show these ethnics the door in 2004." Griffin and Collett were found not guilty on some charges at the first trial in January 2006, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the others, so a retrial was ordered.[83] At the retrial held in November 2006 all of the defendants were found not guilty on the basis that the law at the time did not consider those who follow Islam or Christianity to be a protected group with respect to racial defamation laws.[84] Shortly after this case, British law was amended to outlaw incitement to hatred against a religious group (see Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006).

The BNP believe this was an attempt to "Discredit the British National Party as a party of opposition to the Labour government."[85]

After the second trial, Nick Griffin described the BBC as a "Politically correct, politically biased organisation which has wasted licence-fee payers' money to bring two people in a legal, democratic, peaceful party to court over speaking nothing more than the truth."[84]

[edit]Barbara Plett's tears for Yasser Arafat

During the BBC programme From Our Own Correspondent broadcast on 30 October 2004, Plett described herself crying when she saw a frail Yasser Arafat being evacuated to France for medical treatment.[86] This led to "hundreds of complaints" to the BBC, and suggestions that the BBC was biased.[87][88] BBC News defended Plett in a statement saying that her reporting had met the high standards of "fairness, accuracy and balance" expected of a BBC correspondent.[89] Initially, a complaint of bias against Plett was rejected by the BBC's head of editorial complaints. However, almost a year later, on November 25, 2005, the programme complaints committee of the BBC governors[87] partially upheld the complaints, ruling that Plett’s comments “breached the requirements of due impartiality”.[89][90] Despite initially issuing a statement in support of Plett, the BBC director of news Helen Boaden later apologized for what she described as "an editorial misjudgment". The governors praised Boaden's speedy response and reviewed the BBC's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[87]

[edit]Jerry Springer: The Opera

In January 2005, the BBC aired the Jerry Springer: The Opera, ultimately resulting in around 55,000 complaints to the BBC from those upset at the opera's alleged blasphemies against the Christian religion. In advance of the broadcast, which the BBC had warned "contains language and content which won't be to some tastes" mediawatch-uk's director John Beyer wrote to the Director General urging the BBC to drop the programme, saying "Licence fee payers do not expect the BBC to be pushing back boundaries of taste and decency in this way." The BBC issued a statement saying: "As a public service broadcaster, it is the BBC's role to broadcast a range of programmes that will appeal to all audiences - with very differing tastes and interests - present in the UK today."[91] Before the broadcast, some 150 people bearing placards protested outside the BBC Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush.[92] On the Monday following the broadcast, which was watched by some two million viewers, The Times announced that BBC executives had received death threats after their addresses and telephone numbers were posted on the Christian Voice website. The Corporation had received some 35,000 complaints before the broadcast, but reported only 350 calls following the broadcast, which were split between those praising the production and those complaining about it.[93]

One Christian group attempted to bring private criminal prosecutions for blasphemy against the BBC,[94] and another demanded a judicial review of the decision.[95]

In March 2005, the BBC's Board of Governors convened and considered the complaints, which they rejected by a majority of 4 to 1.[96] The subsequent refusal of the BBC to reproduce the actual Muhammad cartoons in its coverage of the controversy concerning them convinced many that the BBC follows an unstated policy of freely broadcasting defamation of Christianity which it would not allow in the case of any other religion.[97][98][99]

[edit]Climate change

The BBC has been criticised for hypocrisy over its high carbon footprint, in view of the amount of coverage it gives to the topic of climate change. Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxmanargues that the Corporation's correspondents "travel the globe to tell the audience of the dangers of climate change while leaving a vapour trail which will make the problem even worse".[100]

At the 2007 Edinburgh International Television Festival, Peter Horrocks (Head of TV News) and Peter Barron (Editor, Newsnight), said that the BBC should not campaign on the issue of climate change. They criticised proposed plans for a BBC Comic Relief style day of programmes around climate change. Horrocks was quoted as saying: "I absolutely don't think we should do that because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it."

Peter Barron was quoted as adding: "It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped."[101]

Peter Horrocks later outlined the BBC's position on the BBC Editors Blog ("No Line").[102]

The plans for a day of programmes about environmental issues were abandoned in September 2007. A BBC spokesperson said this was "absolutely not" because of concerns about impartiality.[103]

In January 2011, broadcast journalist Peter Sissons told the Daily Mail that "the BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots...and I was treated as a lunatic for daring to dissent".[104]