Tuesday 12 March 2019

Forgetting the victims



Under the headline Ex-jihadist jailed for murders in Jewish museum in Brussels Sky News reports:
A French citizen told a jury "life goes on" as he was jailed for killing four people in a Jewish museum in Brussels. 
Mehdi Nemmouche was sentenced to life over the murders of tourist couple Myriam and Emmanuel Riva, and two museum employees, Dominique Sabrier and Alexandre Strens in May 2014. 
Nemmouche staged the attack shortly after coming back from Syria, where he had been fighting with Islamist factions in the civil war. 
It was the first attack by a Western European who had fought with the factions, and raised concerns about jihadists returning to their home countries.
Under the headline Brussels Jewish Museum murders: Mehdi Nemmouche jailed for life BBC News reports:
A Frenchman who murdered four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014 has been jailed for life. 
Mehdi Nemmouche, 33, opened fire with an assault rifle and a handgun, killing three people at the scene. A fourth person died later in hospital. 
He had previously spent a year fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. 
A man who helped plan the attack and supply weapons, Nacer Bendrer, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
One thing that immediately struck me here was that Sky News listed the terrorist's victims in its second paragraph, while BBC News - in a long report - only mentions Mr and Mrs Riva in connection to their children's testimony in court and completely omits the names of the other two victims, Dominique Sabrier and Alexandre Strens.

A second thing is that where Sky notes that his attack "raised concerns about jihadists returning to their home countries", you won't find any such mention in the BBC's article. 

As for the obvious antisemitic aspect, Sky reports that "Two French journalists told a court they remembered Nemmouche as deeply antisemitic, sadistic and full of hatred", whereas the BBC only reports his disgraceful defence team's argument that he "could not be considered anti-Semitic because he wore Calvin Klein shoes - an apparent reference to Mr Klein's Jewish heritage".

8 comments:

  1. https://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/2019/03/guilty-frenchman.html

    I suppose the BBC felt it was too much of a stretch to describe him as blonde and Far Right...

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's stories like this which expose the fact that the BBC has a clear, rigid policy on suppressing certain facts, especially about Islamic terrorism. If memory serves, this was incident which Kevin Connelly did a feature on a couple of years ago without once mentioning Islam, but (incredibly) did mention the possible anti-semitism of catholic priests during WW2.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a common tactic of the BBC. Nicky Campbell is the worst for doing that. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction with him. It's the one religion you can be bigoted about without being called some phobe or ist. The Catholics' big mistake is not bagging a phobia or an ism of their own. A march on Parliament with placards would help as well. Last Sunday's Big Questions, about Islam, was notable for being the exception when Campbell didn't go on a rant about Catholics. Indeed, at one point during the Muslim bunfight when someone else referred to a different religion, he said that they weren't discussing other religions. Now, if they'd brought up Catholicism...well, who knows?

      Delete
  3. That is a shocking omission.

    The Sky report also refers to him as A French citizen where the BBC has him as A Frenchman.

    Can't believe I'm finding something to praise about Sky News.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure I understand the distinction you are drawing (or Craig's disappointment at the victims not being specifically named in the BBC article).

      Delete
  4. Anon on Anon. Given my replies always end up at the end no matter what, be funny if my posting came out as anon too. Or three.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A sadly prophetic headline.

    The BBC stormed past the sad victims in Christchurch to assign 'blame' where they felt best applied with indecent haste.

    ReplyDelete
  6. To your mates in the pub your headline would be .
    "They let this ethnic-Muslim back into France after he'd be fighting for ISIS and then he killed four Jews at a Jewish museum.
    You would not hide the ethnicities of the perp/victims
    ..but that seems to be BBC policy
    Along with their don't mention Islam rule.
    - The two other facts I included are also important, that he was let in, even though he was a jihadi.
    To me the names of the victims are not important and a thing for their own families.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.