This isn't a post about BBC bias as such, merely yet another instance of a familiar complaint made against the BBC - that the BBC often arrives late at a story and then inserts itself into it, centre-stage.
Readers of The Times will have woken up today to read a report from the paper's crime correspondent John Simpson about the Mannan family from Luton's flight to Syria into the embracing (blood-soaked) arms of their beloved Khalifah. It was posted at one minute past midnight last night:
A family of 12 from Luton say they have arrived in Syria and have defended their decision to take three children into the war zone in a statement released through Islamic State militants, The Times can reveal.
The statement from the Mannan family, obtained from Isis sources, came with accompanying photographs showing Muhammed Abdul Mannan, the head of the family, smiling and pointing to the sky in an Islamic gesture and his wife in a full niqab.
The 500-word “press release” is an effort to use the arrival of the family — including a one-year-old baby — as a propaganda tool.
Within the past half hour (i.e. some ten and a half hours after The Times), the BBC News website has now published its own account of the story. It includes the following paragraph:
The statement, passed to the BBC by a Briton fighting with IS, said the family had arrived in a land that was "free from corruption and oppression" and had not been "commanded" to join by a single person but by the "Khalifah of the Muslims".
Well. it's exactly the same "statement" that The Times had nearly half a day ago - which The Times described as a "press release".
And The Daily Mail published the whole damn thing two hours ago. And even Harry's Place scooped the BBC website.
The other self-plugs by the BBC contained within that article are:
The BBC has not been able to independently verify if the statement, which includes two photos purportedly of family member Muhammed Abdul Mannan, is genuine.
Sisters Khadija, Sugra and Zohra Dawood and their children went missing on 9 June, and an IS smuggler has since told the BBC they have reached Syria.
What are they like!
P.S. On the story itself, I agree with Rod Liddle.
I also feel uneasy about giving IS propaganda such an airing.
