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| Jenny Hill |
I've read plenty of comments (on several sites) in recent days about a BBC News website piece by BBC Germany correspondent Jenny Hill on the German reaction to the election of Donald Trump:
It's the implicit linking of Donald Trump to the Nazis there that has aroused people's anger. Many find it outrageous.
It certainly looks outrageous. The question about Jenny Hill here then is: Was she making that link or merely reporting it?
In other words, it would be absolutely fine for a BBC reporter to explain why Germans are reacting so badly to the victory of Mr Trump if, in the course of her reporting, she finds lots of Germans making that Kristallnacht/Trump victory parallel (however far-fetched others may find the comparison). If she has quotes from such people saying that very thing then all the better.
The worrying thing about this article, however, is that Jenny Hill, having made that highly provocative link in the first four paragraphs of her piece, provides no evidence whatsoever that people in Germany are actually making such direct comparisons, and she gives us no direct or indirect quotes to show that she's merely reporting what people in Germany are saying rather than giving her own view.
So, was this the German people speaking through Jenny Hill or Jenny Hill speaking through the German people?
Please read it for yourselves. What do you think?
There's only one reason to mention Kristallnacht at all. This is heading towards incitement to violence. The BBC Groupthink is strong in this one. Marr did the same thing today at the end of his interview with Marie le Pen, and here it is on the other side of the Corporation's news output, the same narrative.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC flat out stirs now at every turn, and is still getting away with it.
DeleteGiven the BBC just missed out a key word on criminal deportations in their latest misreporting of a Trump statement, what do you think?
ReplyDeleteJenny had a piece on the Today program this morning, from Germany ahead of Saint Obama's visit. She chose a few vox poxs with local Germans about how they are so disgusted and worried that Trump is a racist, sexist and so on. Jenny didn't go so low this time as to introduce a Kristallnacht analogy, but still the tone was all gloom, doom and foreboding.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a news item. She was in fact "reporting" how selected Germans (her selections, of course) have heard the BBC portrayal of Trump. And that's all.