What to do when in Rome?

Did you hear Danny Savage talking about those refugees again on FOOC?  

The tale about the ham sandwich? 

The poor Syrian lady picked the meat out of her sandwich and handed it to her husband, who brought it over. 

“Jambon?” he asked. “Yup” I said.

“Quite what anyone is thinking, giving out ham sandwiches to a field full of Muslims is beyond me ....Cock-up rather than conspiracy I think .... well-meaning people not quite thinking things through”

 emoted Danny into the mic. Thoughtlessness that knows no bounds! Inconsiderateness! Gross effrontery! Impudence!

So the old adage ‘when in Rome”’ has at last been modified. It’s more PC. Now it goes: ‘when in Rome, the Romans must do what we do.”

Care home staff stopped residents eating pork pies

Did you read in the Times (and the Telegraph ) about the care home workers in Bradford (where one quarter of the population is Muslim) who wouldn’t let the old folk have their favourite pork products? No bacon sarnies, no pork pies, and definitely no jambon. 

Staff were made to revise that policy. 

“All staff have been reminded that their own lifestyles and cultural preferences should never influence the person-centred support they provide to service users”.

Ah. That must have been what Danny Savage was thinking of, though probably “not quite thinking things through”.  When refugees are being fed and looked after, they’re ‘service users’ and the host country must not let their own lifestyles and cultural preferences influence the person-centred support they provide.

Can we revive the old adage after all? Confusing, innit?

"I've felt like crying"

A couple of days back, I posted something about Danny Savage's BBC News at Six report from the Greek-Macedonian border, which I felt to be clouded by emotionalism.

I didn't actually expect to see Danny Savage there at all. He's usually the BBC's North of England correspondent. Looking at his Twitter feed, however, it's clear that the BBC chose to dispatch him to Greece (a couple of weeks ago) in order to help them cover the migrant crisis.

Less than two weeks into his new assignment, he appeared on this morning's From Our Own Correspondent to give his impressions of what he's seen over the past few days (an episode with the title - closely echoing Evan Davis's choice of words on Newsnight - "Trapped in a Dead-End").

His piece, concentrating on the plight of the migrants, ended with these words:

At times over the past few days, as I've looked at young families stranded without cover in the fields by this border, I've felt like crying.

Having seen his BBC News at Six report, that really doesn't come as a surprise to me. 

This suggests that Lyse Doucet's neat distinction between compassion in reporting (of which she approves) and emotion in reporting (of which she doesn't approve) is getting blurred.

Journalistic objectivity seems to be going out of the window.

Women and children first

Last night's BBC News at Six really took the biscuit.

They could have reported the violence in Calais and on the Greek-Macedonian border in a neutral fashion, but didn't. 

On the Greek-Macedonian border, a largish group of migrants smashed down part of the border fence, defended by a small number of Macedonian police. Stones were thrown in one direction, tear gas in the other. In Calais, the authorities' softly-softly approach to clearing 'the Jungle' was thwarted and stones being flying in one direction, water cannon in the other - and it's widely reported that far-left activists led the violence. 

Here, however, is how the BBC News at Six began reporting the story last night, with the emphasis being on violence from the authorities: 

George Alagiah: Europe's migrant crisis turns violent. Security forces resort to harsher tactics. Hundreds of refugees are tear-gassed as they crash through the Greek border into Macedonia.

Migrant: It's like a disaster, and they don't open the borders, Macedonians, they don't open the borders, and people are coming more and more.

George Alagiah: And in Calais more clashes as the authorities try to clear parts of the refugee camp known as 'The Jungle'. We'll be asking what these flashpoints mean for Europe's politicians.

And then backdrop to the newsreader showed three panels: one showing the police fully 'tooled-up' and taking action, the other two showing nothing but women and young children:

Danny Savage's report from the Greek-Macedonia border - and his later discussion with George Alagiah - laid particular emphasis on the effects of the Macedonian police tear gas on migrant children:

Today on a European border children were tear-gassed.

At no point did the BBC reporter even so much as hint that those aggressive migrant men smashing their way into Macedonia, throwing stones at the Macedonian police, should have perhaps made some effort to keep these young children out of harm's way. 

And the closing image of his report lingered on the 'Madonna and child'-like image of a smiling young woman and her sweet, sleeping baby:

...as Danny Savage talked of "growing desperation on this European frontier".

In another passage from the same report, Danny Savage says "a guard fires tear gas directly at a migrant. On the other side of the fence the man in the blue jacket is hit by that cannister". What he doesn't say is that alert viewers can also see with their very own eyes that the man in the blue jacket is no innocent. He has just been aggressively throwing stones at the Macedonian security forces.