Rod Liddle is on fine form in The Sunday Times this morning, accusing the BBC of "radical chic attitudinising" for broadcasting Raja Shehadeh's Where the Line is Drawn as Radio 4's Book of the Week this past week.
Sue described the same Book of the Week earlier this week as "unadulterated pro-Palestinian propaganda in the form of the creepiest passive-aggressive grievance-mongering" and having heard it myself now I know she's got it spot-on.
Responding to the chap at the BBC Press Office who sends out a weekly bulletin about what the BBC's up to, Rod replied:
The BBC responded with "a two-line reply" stating that its coverage is "impartial". (What a surprise!)
Rod's point isn't that Raja's "lamentations" shouldn't have been broadcast, it's that "the other side will simply not be put". This one-sided Book of the Week will never be balanced by an opposite point of view. There will never be a pro-Israel Book of the Week giving the Israeli side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The 'radical chic' BBC are, Rod says:
...naive middle-class liberals who believe the Palestinian cause is unequivocally just and there is no real argument about that. Which is why, when Hamas rains 200 rockets and mortars down upon Israel, you hear nothing on the BBC. You hear about it only when Israel responds.
Rod's piece ends with a powerful question and a powerful answer:
It's well worth reading in full (if you can, as there's a paywall).
BBC Press are a smidge defensive on certain issues.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/bbcnewspr/status/1022466792541839361?s=21
https://twitter.com/junkkmale/status/1023481550875308035?s=21
DeleteHope I don’t fall foul of ‘guidelines’.
Do you have a link to the weekly bulletin? A search of their MEDIA CENTRE for weekly bulletin brings up no result. Tried searching for press releases but it brought up stuff from 2012. Looked at something called Programme Information which seems to be highlights of the week's programmes but it had no reference to the book that I could find. Is the bulletin a tweeted thing or what?
ReplyDeleteBy way of 'balance' the Book Of The Week just two weeks previous was Stay In Your Lane which seemed to consist of two young black women telling the white listeners how racist they are.
ReplyDeleteAnd when you go to their MEDIA CENTRE the first thing that greets you - hits you, more like - is a huge garish THE BIG BRITISH ASIAN SUMMER https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre
DeleteAs people have pointed out elsewhere the BBC have a highly racist version of what it means to be "Asian" - no Japanese, Filipinos, Thais, Chinese, Tibetans, Nepalese, Vietnamese or Malays need apply.
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/celebrate-the-big-british-asian-summer
Of course it's the usual, slightly patronising "curry and chips on shoulders" recipe for presentation of Indo-Pakistan culture to the rest of Britain. However, I am intrigued by one programme coming up in this season that we're all supposed to be looking forward to so much:
"Lost Boys: What's Gone Wrong For Asian Men"
Hmmm...now I wonder where they are going with that one?
Some excusatory socio-economic mumbo jumbo I expect. Certainly the -ahem - Rotherham-Rochdale-Oxford-Cardiff-Luton-Newcastle-Leicester-London thing doesn't get touched on anywhere else...so it would be v. like the BBC to smuggle something into this programme.
Are we allowed to point out that Britain isn't in Asia....?
DeleteAs Mr. Hunt has found out, the bbc knows its Asians.
DeleteExcept when they don’t.