Less than half the story

Maren and Louisa

I didn't want to post about this, but just look at this report, now in, from the BBC News website. 

It begins:

Morocco tourist murders: Video appears genuine - Norway police

A video appearing to show the murder of one of two tourists killed in Morocco is almost certainly real, Norwegian police have concluded.

The bodies of university students Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen were found on Monday near a popular tourist spot in the Atlas mountains.

The men in the video claim the murders were in revenge for events in Syria.

Police say four men arrested this week appeared in a separate propaganda video recorded before the murders.

Nine further arrests were made on Thursday and Friday for "suspected links to the perpetrators of the terrorist act", Moroccan officials said.

The women's bodies were flown from the Moroccan city of Casablanca to Denmark on Friday.

Ms Jespersen, who was 24 and from Denmark, and 28-year-old Norwegian Ms Ueland had been studying outdoor activities at the University of Southeastern Norway.

They had arrived on a month-long holiday in Morocco on 9 December and had travelled to the foothills of Mount Toubkal, North Africa's highest peak, 10km (6 miles) from the tourist village of Imlil, south of Marrakesh.

Their bodies were found in their tent.

Both women had taken full precautions ahead of their trip, Maren Ueland's mother said.

Thousands of Moroccans are expected to pay tribute to the women on Saturday, in a vigil outside the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Rabat.

I read that after clicking on The Times's website tonight (astonishingly, published before the latest BBC report). It begins:

Islamists held over murder of backpackers in Morocco 

Three more men with links to radical Islam have been arrested on suspicion of murdering two Scandinavian backpackers in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, as footage purporting to show the killings “in the name of Allah” was shared on social media. A fourth man has been in custody since Monday.

The killing of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, has damaged Morocco’s reputation as a relatively stable country, free of the terrorist threats to tourists elsewhere in the region.

The Danish intelligence service was working to authenticate the video posted on social media. It shows a knife-wielding man railing against the “enemies of Allah” and saying that the act was revenge for “brothers” in Syria.

“The video and preliminary investigation according to the Moroccan authorities indicate that the killings may be related to the terrorist organisation Islamic State,” the Danish security service said. “This is a case of an unusually bestial killing of two totally innocent young women.”

Separate footage emerged yesterday of four men, apparently Moroccan, sitting in front of a black and white flag and pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State. One is wielding a large knife. Morocco’s chief prosecutor said last night that the four men who had been arrested featured in that second video.

Which tells you more? 

Can there be any clearer example of how different media outlets report stories in vastly different ways, influenced by their respective outlooks on the world? And how certain media outlets are much more forthcoming as far as the facts go than others? 

Seriously, please read and re-read the above passages and compare and contrast.

Here, one outlet (The Times) uses the word 'Islamists' in its headline. It then uses 'radical Islam' and quotes “in the name of Allah” in its first paragraph. A "knife-wielding man railing against the 'enemies of Allah'" appears in The Times's third paragraph. The world "Islamic" appears in its fourth paragraph, and in its fifth. 

The other outlet (the BBC), in contrast, seems to be deliberately going to gargantuan lengths to avoid mentioning any words connected to 'Islamic', 'Islamist' and 'Allah' in the early paragraphs of the report.

It's all "the men...", "the men...".

We get a hint from the BBC when the report says "The men in the video claim the murders were in revenge for events in Syria", but it is just a hint. 

And, going on, we get (for some reason) "Thousands of Moroccans are expected to pay tribute to the women on Saturday, in a vigil outside the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Rabat".

Only in the 12th paragraph of the BBC report do we get the word 'Islamic' in connection to Islamic State, with paragraphs 14 and 15 further mentioning the Syria connection and the IS connection. 

And there's none of the 'Allah' quotes featured in The Times here. 

We're in the all-too-familiar realm of BBC censorship again here. 

It's as if the BBC is trying to lead us little ones by our tiny little hands when it comes to reporting this kind of story. 

Having well-intentioned it is, such censorship is dangerously insulting.