Pouring oil on the flames

Three CNN journalists - a reporter, a producer and a cameraman - were arrested yesterday while broadcasting live. Another CNN reporter reporting nearby wasn't. 

As CNN covered it live and reacting live they began speculating about a racist motive. The reporter who wasn't arrested is white, they said; the reporter who was arrested is "not white", they said. Soon they were tweeting along the same lines:

I don't quite swallow this whole though because I've watched the original clip in full and seen that both the arrested producer and the arrested cameraman are also white - something which, at the very least, surely complicates the insinuation of racism on the arresting officers' part.

CNN reporter

CNN producer

CNN cameraman

Other journalists added their 'likes' to this race-based take:

Is this an example then of a major broadcast media outfit unnecessarily racialising a story and other media outlets then falling in with their contentious - and possibly inflammatory - angle?

They All Stand Together

And, following on the previous post, here are two senior BBC journalists taking CNN's side following today's presidential press conference:

And this is the CNN statement which Andrew Marr and James Naughtie are publicly endorsing:

Pressing the press

I watched the entirety of Donald Trump's post-midterm elections press conference tonight - as you too can do here. 

(In fact I greatly recommend it. It was very entertaining: Be warned though. It's nearly an half and a half long - though it will fly by). 

I heard Sky News and Channel 4 (Jon Snow) asking questions, but where were the beauties of the BBC? There was not a single question from the "world's most trusted". (Some other news organisation got today's 'another beauty' from President Trump instead).

CNN's Jim Acosta and the President got into their usual verbal bare-knuckle fight. My Twitter feed divided between Stephen Pollard describing Donald Trump's treatment of Mr. Acosta as "vile, vile" and Tim Montgomerie retweeting Ben Shapiro saying that Jim Acosta "is a disgrace to his alleged profession". 

As you do, I naturally chose to check out what the face of the BBC in the USA, the main anchor of BBC America, Katty Kay, had to say on Twitter about it. Naturally, besides noting the length of the press conference, all she did was to retweet a Trump racism dog-whistle tweet from someone from CNN:

OMG.

And Anthony Zurcher took to adding emojis to his snarks at the US president, namely this very one:

Meanwhile, being more conscious of the need to appear impartial than either of those two partisan BBC hacks (no offence) his BBC colleagues, Jon Sopel, the BBC's North America editor, remembered to 'balance' his first re-tweet from Mr. Guardian/Radio 4...

with another from everyone's cup of tea Piers Morgan:

Ah, and watching Beyond 100 Days tonight and their take on the Trump press conference, well, Katty Kay and Christian Fraser have never heard anything like it, and neither has Barbara Plett Usher. 

Can Amazon Prime dispatch smelling salts to them overnight? If so, I'll add them to my basket and go to 'check out' straightaway. I feel I ought to do something to help them, poor things. Maybe a Radio 4 appeal is needed? 

More CNN-ed against that CNN-ing?

There's a story blowing around today that seems to be exciting a lot of interest - at least on social media and in the mainstream media. 

The bare bones of the story are that the anonymous Reddit user who posted that photoshopped WWE GIF of Donald Trump beating up CNN was subsequently tracked down by CNN and found to have posted racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic comments online. He apologised and deleted his Reddit account. 

But there's more...

According to CNN: 

After posting his apology, "HanA**holeSolo" called CNN's KFile and confirmed his identity. In the interview, "HanA**holeSolo" sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked to not be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family. 

CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. 

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Some have found that rather 1984-ish, with many accusing CNN of actively blackmailing a private citizen simply because he mocked them. (A corrected Winston Smith awaiting the bullet in his brain).

The hashtag 'CNNBlackmail' has 'gone viral'.

Brendan O'Neill at the left-libertarian site Spiked argues this point with particular force in a piece headlined "CNN has officially lost the plot". 

Criticise CNN and it will attack you and punish you; misbehave again and it will punish you even more, he says, adding it's "hard to disagree" that it is blackmail. 

He concludes:

It is every citizens’ right to rip the piss out of massive media organisations and their reporters, and they shouldn’t be made to ‘fear for their safety’ for exercising that right. 

Now there is no question in my mind that Mr Solo posted some things that many people will object to strongly. (The Guardian went into all the gory details a few days back.) I also object to some of them strongly, having now read them.

And if you live by the sword ('publicly trolling') maybe you should be prepared to die by the sword ('being publicly trolled by CNN')?

But the questions for CNN surely remain: 

Should a leading media organisation be hunting down an anonymous internet user and trawling through his dodgy social media back catalogue just because that anonymous internet has mocked them? 

Isn't that just being vindictive? 

And isn't it rather ugly behaviour from that media organisation when they then (appears to) threaten to reveal the 'offender's' identity if he fails to behave correctly in future? 

How isn't that blackmail? 

That said, CNN haven't revealed his name yet. So they haven't been as vindictive as they could have been. 

I'm trying to be fair here.

*********

Naturally, giving how 'CNNBlackmail' went 'viral, BBC Trending was soon on the case. 

Given how partisan so much of what's been written about this story has been it wasn't very hard to work out which side the BBC was on here. 

The whole article, by Chris Bell, is well worth reading, if only an English Language case study in detecting bias. 

For starters there's the headline. This could have been either 'Trump gif maker apologises for racist posts' or 'CNN accused of blackmailing Trump gif maker'. The BBC went with 'Trump gif maker apologises for racist posts', thus making the story about how bad the Trump gif maker is rather than how bad CNN is.

The article itself is an absolute treasure house of trick of the trade when it comes to biased reporting (conscious or otherwise). 

[Before that, however, came this gem: 

The creator of the gif has an offensive word in his username that we are unable to state, so we have removed the word and will refer to him as "HanSolo".

On first reading that I thought the worst and - that the 'offensive word' between 'Hans' and 'Solo' would be so beyond the pale {eg. the 'n' word} that not even asterisks could ever save it from eternal perdition, but - though I'm no swearer myself - even I think I can just about manage the word 'asshole' without fainting or having my monocle drop into my champagne glass in sheer shock and horror!]

According to the BBC's Chris Bell, it's only the alt-right pursuing this blackmail charge against CNN.

It's "media influencers" pursuing the blackmail "line" against CNN. It's "right-wing US internet personalities and Julian Assange". It's "right-wing online activists and conspiracy theorists". And the main "right-wing author and commentator" cited is described as "alt-right" and having been "instrumental in spreading false claims about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US election".

In other words, it's just right-wing nutters (and Julian Assange) who are backing the blackmail 'meme' against CNN here - even though, from the case of Spiked for starters, we know that's not the full story.

The CNN journalist behind the story, however, is given a full right of reply in this BBC piece. Chris Bell presents his take straight, without either criticism or editorialising. He's the hero here.

The thought criminal H**sAssholeS**o's abject confession is quoted at length.

I don't think there can be any doubt whatsoever about which side the BBC reporter is taking here. It's not Brendan O'Neill's for sure, but it is CNN's.

Chris Bell may be right, he may be wrong, or he may be partly right and partly wrong. But impartial he most certainly isn't. 

Fake News again

There is a certain amount of crossover between ITBB and Biased-BBC, and as you can see we were urged to cover the CNN Fake News story that Biased-BBC is featuring here. Pleased to oblige.

Notorious bad-girl Katie Hopkins has raised the matter with the BBC, as allegedly the BBC aired a clip from the staged footage during one of their news bulletins. (I missed it and it’s unavailable on iPlayer.) Katie is keen to know who provided the props.

The BBC is always jumping the gun - not checking the veracity of an item - when it suits the narrative (not so much when they’re oh so carefully (Martine Croxall) avoiding any premature and potentially libellous naming of the religion of peace in connection with an unfolding terrorist atrocity) but manipulated sound-bite type stuff is more at home on ‘BBC Trending’.

Anyway, footage of a London-based CNN anchor named Becky Anderson staging (or inventing) a feel-good news item has gawn viral. Or is she merely doing what TV journos do?

The film in question shows director Becky and her crew assembling a few hijab wearing women in front of the cameras, with ready-made placards and flowers. Does this prove that much of the news we get is stage-managed? Is the whole thing one gigantic, agenda-driven  fake?

You’ve all heard the story (maybe you haven’t) of a conversation between strangers sitting next to each other on a flight. A war had broken out in the vicinity of their departure. The two passengers sipped wine and chatted about where they had been and why. “I’m a producer from TV news” said the man, “covering the war.” “Then why,” said the other man, “are you flying away from the action, rather than towards it?”  “It’s fine” said the man. “I’ve got my crew there. They know what footage I want. I’m going home.”

Is that relevant?

The first question that occurred to me when I read about this peculiar CNN incident was: who on earth filmed this pantomime and why? (You can’t help wondering, can you?) It seems it was “Mark”.

CNN creating the narrative #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/nwxizDhTED

— Mark (@markantro) June 4, 2017

We all know that the camera never lies. It’s not the camera’s fault if the cameraman makes one or two adjustments to suit.  Faking /  tweaking / air-brushing; we’re all up to it - faking stuff - these days. You know the type of thing. The camera pans out to reveal that the “crowd” wasn’t a crowd after all. The edit changes the narrative. Pallywood as an art form; the art of hoodwink.

But the funniest thing of all is that in the end, if "Twitchy.com" is correct - and I haven’t verified it - the final bit of film is a massive let-down. It’s just a pointless rant by a somewhat unprepossessing, rather charmless woman, which is unlikely to have any influence on anyone whatsoever. If the BBC was hoodwinked by Becky Anderson's stage-managed ensemble, more fool them.

My message to the #LondonBridge attackers: You are a handful of twisted fools hell-bent on taking lives https://t.co/0v17H67El1

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) June 4, 2017

Do tell me if I've got it all wrong. Seriously.