Jim Muir. This is not an example of egregious bias. Rather, the bias is almost subliminal, but in Jim Muir’s FOOC audio essay on the US’s recent assassination of “General Qassam Soleimani” he and Kate Adie seem to be taking impartiality to an absurd level. Jim Muir’s final summing up.
“…….There’s no doubt that Soleimani was an integral part of a proud regime. His only boss was the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many saw him as the country’s second most powerful figure.
Having lived for a period in Iran, at times Muir speaks almost reverentially of the Ayatollahs and their repressive and vicious regime. His discernibly 'disinterested’ description of Qassam Soleimani’s career encapsulates the BBC’s value-judgement-free attitude to this particular political and civilisational issue. His last sentence warns us of the upcoming threat we now face. ‘Be very afraid’.
“We can only guess just now what they will be, but there will be consequences."
My thoughts are that if there is one issue over which a value judgement and a degree of partiality would actually be appropriate for a British broadcasting corporation to express without restraint or equivocation, this is it. On this occasion, the BBC’s conspicuous ‘impartiality’ stands out like a sore thumb. British values, eh.
Contrast this with Kate Adie’s next introduction, in which she uses far from impartial language to describe the Catholic church.
“In Ireland the power and the prejudice of the Catholic Church, combined with the state, insured that a grim regime of retribution was waged against unmarried mothers and so-called wayward girls and sometimes unwanted troublesome daughters. For over two centuries they were sent to institutions where scandals of cruelty and neglect were common, but mainly ignored by the authorities. Even today a government commission is looking into allegations regarding some former homes, and one where hundreds of babies and young children were buried in the grounds. Its report is due next month and Deirdre Finnerty has been talking to a former inmate:
The mother and (illegitimate) baby scenario of less enlightened, more pious times certainly deserve harsh words, but, as they say, the past is a foreign country, while the Mullahs are operating their 'foreign' evil practices in the here and now.
