It's hard not to bang on, however much you might not want to, when the BBC programmes you are listening to are also banging on relentlessly.
This morning's Broadcasting House featured a lengthy report from Emma Jane Kirby on how France's young people are reacting to the massacres in Paris.
At least that was how it was introduced.
After a moving opening interview, however, it swiftly moved on to focus - at considerable length - on the grievances of France's Muslims, young and not-so-young.
[Precisely 70.3% of the report was devoted to this aspect of the story. Yes, I counted].
Muslim pupils at France's first Muslim school in "a deprived Parisian suburb", their teacher plus various experts and a group of students all expounded the point of view that France's Muslims are victims - the victims of French secularism, unemployment and politicians' (right and left) politicking at their expense.
A typical comment, towards the end, from an anti-capitalist philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, will sum it all up and spare you having to listen to it (if you haven't already heard it):
Those people who are the so-called jihadists in France don't come from Islam. They come from misery.
Everyone (after the non-political first interviewee) agreed with that. Everyone. No alternative views were broadcast. Not one.
It has to be said, however, that Emma Jane's report isn't unusual. Her BBC colleague Matthew Price has been broadcasting similarly-angled, similarly-loaded reports on Today ever since the morning after the Paris atrocity. I'm sure they both feel good about themselves for having done so.
Whether their biased reporting distorts their listeners' understanding of the real roots of European and British Muslim jihadism (and many jihadists. including the 9/11 to the 7/7 killers, come from affluent, well-educated backgrounds), however, is the real point here - and that probably depends, to some degree, on the extent to which people only get their news from the BBC.
So Stiegler is equating Islam with misery?
ReplyDeleteThat`s worth a fatwa...are you going to tell the local mosque or am I?
And he an "anti-capitalist philosopher"?
Is there any other kind these days-apart from Care In The Community refugees from the days of Pravda and Tass-Soviets without any Marxist/Leninist sticky back plastic to make a spine with!
Anything but Islam eh?
Outrageous bias - and not one that can be defended on a factual basis. If banlieue misery is the key factor, then why aren't Animists, Christians and others to be found in conditions of misery also resorting to international terrorism?
ReplyDeleteI sat through the whole of “Broadcasting House” with a growing sense of frustration. I too wondered how Emma Jane’s simplistic analysis stood up against the simple fact that a great many jihadists have come from affluent, even professional backgrounds with successful careers behind them. The question that kept coming to mind was, is she merely deluded or is she shamelessly using this crisis to promote her own leftist philosophy? I fear it is the latter.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just her. The same delusion or philosophy is going out across the BBC.
DeleteEmma Jane Kirby isn't a journalist, she's a campaigner for more Muslim immigration, having given us at least two 'moving reports' on PM alone this month.
ReplyDelete