Coats off to Hugh!

If there's one thing I dislike more than BBC bias it's people being shamelessly dishonest about BBC bias, from whichever side.

Despite a few 'aberrations', I've mostly stuck to slagging off veteran BBC reporter Hugh Sykes here at ITBB. 

I do think his bias shows in his reporting, and have tried to prove it (hopefully successfully).

Hugh is a prolific Twitterer and his recent tweets (like his less-recent tweets) have left me in no doubt whatsoever as to where he's coming from: the bien pensant Islamophile Left.

He's BBC to his fingertips after all, so that's hardly surprising.

Regular readers will know that he's not embarrassed in the slightest about appearing to be biased on Twitter for, as he told our friend DB, he himself believes that he hangs up his biased social media opinions (like a coat) at the door whenever he reports for the BBC. 

(The BBC's editorial guidelines on impartiality and social media are, of course, Hugh's sternest critics, contradicting him. Not that they've actually ever protested about him!)

His tweets about the Sisi coup against the Muslim Bros in Egypt, for example, which were extremely prolific and which I read avidly at the time, left me in absolutely no doubt that Hugh was very much against the anti-Islamist coup there.

And yet here he was today on Radio 4's Broadcasting House reporting from Algeria, and reporting that Algerians are, by and large, glad about their own military coup against the Islamists (who won the first round of an election in the 1990s) and happy that the Islamists are now being firmly kept down (in the interests of security)...

...and, moreover, that, when it came, they dreaded the 'Arab Spring', and believe that "sometimes a military coup can be a preferable option - especially if it's against Islamists who are only using democracy as a temporary mechanism to gain power" (as Hugh put it):

Abdul (an economist): We were the first. People tend to forget that. That explains a lot of it. The first revolution was here in Algeria.  

Hugh Sykes: And the first coup against it! 

Abdul: Yeah. If someone says, 'I take power. I have a Godly right to keep if forever' then people don't accept. 

I've still seen no sign (on Twitter) that Hugh recognises the relevance of that for Egypt and General (now President) Sisi's coup there against a Muslim Brotherhood which also appeared to be "using democracy as a temporary measure to gain power" and which seemed to feel it had "a Godly right" to keep power forever. Or its relevance to Hamas in Gaza.

However, all credit to Hugh doing what he said here and hanging up his opinions with his coat. A fascinating report.