Sunday 8 February 2015

Missing words


The BBC's over-sensitivity to the sensibilities of Muslims can make them look really odd at times.

Their own big scoop today is a Radio Two interview with Prince Charles, and his comments (on the programme) have been widely taken up by other news outlets. 

Yet if you read the account on Sky News (Prince Charles: UK Youth Extremism 'Alarming'), you find a words that you don't find in the BBC's own account (Prince Charles says radicalisation of young people 'alarming'). Here are two paragraphs from Sky's report:
Prince Charles said preventing the radicalisation of Muslim youth was a "great challenge" and something that could not be swept "under the carpet".
He expressed particular concern over the threat posed by young Muslims coming into contact with extremists online, describing it as "frightening".
Nowhere in the BBC account, however, will you see the words 'Muslim', 'Muslims' or 'Islam'.

Prince Charles used them, but the BBC has simply chosen not to report them in the context of its lead article. 

Why? Well, pace Rotherham, surely simply because the BBC journalists behind this piece are being overly politically correct, avoiding explicitly linking those words to the dangerous words 'extremism' and 'radicalisation'. 

Can there be any other explanation?

4 comments:

  1. The response we usually got from a lurking journalist about this pretty common charge against the BBC would be that as Charles was in a Muslim country the reader should naturally draw the conclusion that he was talking about Muslims without needing it spelled out for them. And I would object to that because the BBC has no problem spelling it out when it's something like the Tea Party movement or another nominally right-wing group they hate and fear.

    I'm probably stretching a bit, but one could almost read the parts of that BBC article about the persecution Christians are facing in the Middle East and put that together with the Prince's remarks about apparently non-denominational radicalism and easily draw the wrong conclusion about who was getting radicalized.

    We know from the head of BBC Arabic's admission that they are worried about offending their very significant Muslim audience who agree with the motivations and goals behind Islamic terrorism. At the very least the BBC is worried that far too many Muslims who watch and listen to the BBC are magical thinker types who think the Jews are secretly behind every atrocity and would get offended at the notion that peaceful Muslims could ever do anything wrong. I imagine not a few Beeboids harbor the same suspicions.

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  2. This story is all well and good but what about the "tipping point" today. 10,000 Muslims demonstrate and congregate to demand that Britain follow Islam in its concerns and policies. Ober 100,000 Muslims presumably signed a petition to require the UK government act in an islamic way. State TV seemed pretty excited by this power display. Are we? People talk of the "moderate" majority of Muslims. Well, that's a large number of people that are pretty cool about the death of cartoonists and French police and even cooler about ISIS. How many banners proclaiming "Not in my Mame". Are we cool about that and why do we accept the BBC treating it like a news story; this is serious politics.

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  3. This story is all well and good but what about the "tipping point" today. 10,000 Muslims demonstrate and congregate to demand that Britain follow Islam in its concerns and policies. Ober 100,000 Muslims presumably signed a petition to require the UK government act in an islamic way. State TV seemed pretty excited by this power display. Are we? People talk of the "moderate" majority of Muslims. Well, that's a large number of people that are pretty cool about the death of cartoonists and French police and even cooler about ISIS. How many banners proclaiming "Not in my Name". Are we cool about that and why do we accept the BBC treating it like a news story; this is serious politics.

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  4. The BBC even devoted a large part of "Songs of Praise" yesterday with an interview with Charlie (Prince not Hebdo ).
    It was difficult to make out what he was saying as he speaks such slovenly indistinct english but I did catch him reminding us of the massacres of muslims in Bosnia.
    I also wonder why the BBC is so obsessed with Gospel Music ?

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