Correcting and Clarifying

 

For fans of the BBC's Corrections and Clarifications page, here are the two latest arrivals:

BBC News Persian, 19 October 2018

In 2018 BBC News Persian published an article (in Persian) which used an inappropriate word to refer to homosexuality. This word should not have been used and the article has now been corrected. We apologise for the offence caused.

11/02/2021

Quite a time lag there! 

Dateline London, BBC News Channel, 16 January 2021

We suggested that under the Oslo Accords, Palestinian healthcare is ultimately the responsibility of the Israeli government.

Although there is a wider dispute over the issue, the Accords - which Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation - give the Palestinian Authority oversight of public health under the principles of self-determination.

09/02/2021

It was presenter Shaun Ley making that error. He even added a "very clearly" to the thing the BBC has now had to clarify. 

BBC Persian accused of “twice promoting the homophobic views of the Iranian regime”

Peter Tatchell wrote to Tim Davie, Fran Unsworth and Jamie Angus last week accusing the BBC's Persian service of “twice promoting the homophobic views of the Iranian regime”.

In one instance, on its website on 28 December 2020, BBC Persian published a post calling LGBTs “faggots”, compared them to opium addicts and people who commit incest and implied that they are an “abomination.” 

On another occasion, BBC Persian mockingly referred to “so-called” LGBT+ Pride and apparently attempted to out an Iranian interviewee. This was broadcast on its TV channel on 6 July 2019.

He also called for an inquiry “into persistent allegations that BBC Persian is infiltrated by staff who are apologists or possibly agents for the Iranian dictatorship” - an accusation I saw being made by Iranian activists on Twitter last year. 

The Telegraph reports that the online piece has now been amended with a correction stating: “In an earlier version of this article, a word was used to refer to homosexual relations in the historical context of Iran that is not among the terms that the BBC uses to describe sexual orientations and was therefore inappropriate.” But, apparently, the video is still available online.

The BBC said: “A freelance opinion piece has been updated with an acknowledgement on our website. We will provide a full response to Mr Tatchell in due course.”

Wonder who wrote that “freelance opinion piece”? An 'A. Khamenei, Tehran' possibly?

#IslamicRepublicOfBBC

A while back I spotted a large-scale, strange trend on Twitter and dipped into it. 

Its hashtag was #IslamicRepublicOfBBC. 

All the tweets on it accused BBC Persian of being biased in favour of the Iranian regime.  

It now appears that this is a regularly-trending hashtag, but the question is: does it reflect widespread anger among Iranians and the Iranian diaspora against the BBC, or is it a concerted attack on the BBC by a tiny clique of anti-regime activists? 

In other words, is it a genuine Twitterstorm or a fake Twitterstorm? 

Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Durham University, who several of the people I follow on Twitter also follow, has laid out evidence that it's largely an arranged campaign from a small number of right-wing, royalist, anti-regime accounts. 

His findings aroused the interest of the UK's Ambassador to Iran Rob Macaire, who replied,"Maybe someone should get all the people in the govt here who attack BBCP for being ANTI regime, and put them in a room with all the people in this Twitter storm accusing BBCP of being PRO regime. They could have an interesting conversation, about...eg...balanced journalism?". 

Neither Prof. Jones or Ambassador Macaire are going down well with the people supportive of/behind the trend, but - if the professor is right - well, they would dislike their posts, wouldn't they? 

*******

Ironically, in looking into this, I glanced down Professor Marc Owen Jones's Twitter feed and, within just a few more tweets, found him bashing the BBC himself.

This is what he tweeted yesterday:

And what was it that provoked him into Orwellian imagery exactly? Well, this: 

 

Hmmm, I rather suspect that George Orwell wouldn't have sympathised with Prof. Jones here.

*******

Looking further (as the professor himself is wont to do on Twitter), you find that his Twitter feed (unsurprisingly) reveals him to be a 'citizen of nowhere' who doesn't like Brexit.

It also reveals that he doesn't like Israel, and he's previously criticised the BBC for its "customary" pro-Israel bias - a criticism he repeatedly makes of the corporation. (He got into a short Twitter spat with Camera UK/UK Media Watch's Adam Levick last December). 

And - almost inevitably following that - he's repeatedly criticised the BBC for having an anti-Corbyn/pro-Conservative bias too. 

Hmmm, maybe he has an agenda himself? Should we. therefore, re-open our minds on that #IslamicRepublicOfBBC hashtag, or should we simply park that as 'still being likely to be true, despite the professor's own biases'? 

Probably the latter I think, but what do I know? 

John Simpson and the Persians

Not a fan of John Simpson (feeling doubtless mutual)

The 'mad mullahs' in Iran are certainly mad if they thing the BBC is out to get them. 

But as they (the 'mullahs') probably are, they (also the 'mullahs') apparently do.

So, for those interested in such things, here's a transcript of John Simpson's Today talk this morning.

(Watch out for the bit when the famously impartial BBC's World Affairs Editor says BBC Persian's news reports are "scrupulously fair". He, of course, is completely sure of that, being completely free from bias himself.) 

Even though it's effectively banned in Iran and constantly under attack and the authorities do whatever they can to prevent the signal getting through, BBC Persian still has a weekly audience of 12 million people in Iran - something like one in five of the adult population. Its news reports are scrupulously fair, which is why so many people there watch them. But the service also broadcasts plenty of entertainment - Top Gear, for instance, gets a big viewership. 

Since the authorities in Iran can't stop people watching BBC Persian they've turned to other ways of undermining it. More than 100 current members of BBC Persian staff are affected by what the BBC's lawyers call "a concentrated campaign of persecution". Their families in Iran are randomly picked up and interrogated. their passports have been confiscated, their assets frozen. When family members die there's no question of BBC staff being able to go back for the funeral. The danger of being arrested is far too high. 

Rana Rahimpour

One of the main on-air figures on BBC Persian, Rana Rahimpour. has spoken out about the problem:

Rana Rahimpour: This nightmare is always with us. Every time a parent dies we get together in London and hold a service in memory of our colleague's loved one in Iran. We do this to offer support to a friend facing painful loss simply because it's too dangerous for him to go home and mourn with those gathered around the grave.

Iran regularly accuses the BBC of being part of a more general British government plot to undermine the Islamic Republic and bring about regime change in Iran. So far it hasn't publicly responded to the press conference held about the problem last weekm but Iranian state television has since broadcast a claim that BBC Persian employees have written to President Trump asking him the strengthen the American economic sanctions against Iran - an accusation that does't have any basis in fact. 

The BBC and Iran go back a long way. BBC Persian Radio started out in 1940. It was a wartime service. It was intended to broadcast the British view of the war at a time when the then-Shah had strong sympathies with Hitler and the Nazis. The Shah eventually resigned in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, but people have long memories in Iran and when I first started reporting there in 1978 during the revolution that eventually brought down Reza Shah he refused to let me interview him or even meet him because he told the then-British ambassador the BBC was all part of the plot against him. Yet the Islamic revolutionaries who overthrew him promptly took the same line. The BBC was their enemy too. 

Nowadays we know that all sorts of senior figures in the Iranian government watch and listen to the BBC, but the basic suspicion still lingers. No use explaining that the BBC is independent of British government control. Iran, you see, has a much-repeated proverb, even today: If you trip over a stone in the street be sure an Englishman left it there. 

Not a fan of John Simpson (feeling possibly less mutual)

BBC Persian started television broadcasts in January 2009, shortly before the disputed general election in June that year which ended in violent clashes in the streets and threatened the very existence of the Islamic state government. The authorities managed to put down the rioting only by using the utmost force. In their minds the two things - the BBC's television broadcasts and anti-government riots - were inextricably linked.

Nothing though seems to stop ordinary Iranians watching and listening to the BBC. Or wanting to work for it. At the press conference called to draw attention to the persecution of BBC Persian journalists someone asked about recruitment to the service. "It's higher than ever" was the response.