Jerusalem’s Light Rail. “I did it my way”

I hesitate to post more verbiage about the previous item, but I’m going to mention something else. 

Having read Adam Wishart’s  responses to his critics on Twitter, in particular his insistence that the film, including the editing, was “his take” on the subject, I was surprised to see this item, which was published on March 16 on NPR.

It’s called “A Rail Line That Crosses Jerusalem’s Divide, But Can’t Unite It.”

I hadn’t noticed it before (we can all be a bit slapdash sometimes) but I came across it on Google while looking (again) to see if any other blogger or indeed any bona fide writer had critiqued Adam Wishart’s Panorama film.  

To say that his film was closely modelled on the NPR article would be an understatement. Furthermore, comparing the two, line by line so to speak, brings Adam’s negative spin into sharp focus. There’s a sound clip too, which I urge you to listen to. 

Not only does the narrator (Steve Inskeep I believe) provide some of the background and context absent from Adam’s film, but he includes some different characters and unlike Adam, hasn’t sought out the opinions of any extreme ‘fringe activist’ Israelis.  Adam's omissions are as relevant as his selections. 

I know it's a big pain to click on links, and on a better day I would summarise the NPR story to save you the bother. But this time, especially if you're an ITBBCB sceptic, I do recommend you make the effort.

Supporters of Adam and the BBC might say - no doubt will say- that the NPR broadcast is biased.  I didn't think so; but of course they'd surely ay the same thing of me.

Incidentally, Honest Reporting provides some of the political background that I avoided tackling. I leave that to those with the specialised knowledge. I saw what I’m more familiar with, let’s call it cinematic jiggery-pokery or psychological manipulation. 

Talking of BBC Watch, Hadar makes a pertinent point here in her piece about the (non) Mystery of the Death of Arafat, which I think applies to much of what we write about here as well:

“There are few, if any, publicly funded bodies as influential and far-reaching as the BBC. Its content reaches nearly every British household and hundreds of millions more around the world. The information it produces is used by policy-shapers, decision-makers, academics and educators and passed on to the next generation because it is considered to come from a respectable, reliable source.So when the BBC repeatedly and knowingly amplifies baseless conspiracy theories, they are legitimized and mainstreamed into public consciousness and – to borrow a phrase from Mr Cameron – the BBC too becomes part of the problem which British society is so urgently trying to address.”

You can replace ‘amplifies baseless conspiracy theories’ in the above with a more general term, say, ‘disseminates misleading, one-sided  reporting’ and you have it.