A photo by Sopes from the south of France yesterday
It looks to have very much died away now, but the US liberal media's early spasm of fury at President Biden for leaving Afghanistan was much remarked upon by their critics.
One piece, which I can't now place, observed that the last time the US liberal media very briefly put aside political partisanship was when their bogeyman Donald Trump bombed the Assad regime in April 2017 to their great approval.
It made me think about how Jon Sopel shocked many by strongly and repeatedly attacking Joe Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan.
I've now just accidentally come across one of our posts here at ITBB from April 2017. It took me aback on re-reading it because I must admit I'd half-forgotten it, even though I wrote it. As now with Jon Sopel, so then too: the BBC marched arm-in-arm with their US liberal media equivalents.
Most strikingly, the Washington Bureau Chief of the BBC, Paul Danahar, responded to a tweet announcing 'US launches military airstrikes in Syria' and wrote:
It should have been done by Obama. Those opposed to Trump should not oppose this just because he did it.
As a point of view, that couldn't be clearer.
And many of his staff - from Katty Kay to Kim Ghattas to Barbara Plett Usher - joined in the chorus of approval.
Looking back, isn't that a truly remarkable thing for the supposedly impartial boss of the BBC's US news output to state publicly?
-----------------
And it's striking that this same Paul Danahar has just been promoted to the post of BBC Foreign Editor, replacing Andrew Roy.
We've quite an archive of pieces about him. Being opinionated isn't something that's new as far as he goes. He presided over the BBC's Middle East coverage [i.e. was Jeremy Bowen's boss] before taking charge of the BBC's US coverage, and was just as free with his views then.
The comic stylings of the BBC's North America editor-turned-stand-up comedian, Jon Sopel, continue to tickle the funny bones of his admirers.
He was soaking up the applause last night for his gag on the News at Ten about Rudy Giuliani "clearly having a bad hair dye", even though he'd obviously nicked the rib-tickler from his similarly impartial colleague Nick Bryant.
In fact, whole swathes of Paul Danahar's American team appear to prefer being stand-up comedians.
Anthony Zurcher is another one, favouring the dry Jack Dee-style one-liner. (He even has his own stage name, The Zurch.) He's one of his latest zingers:
Boss Danahar himself leads from the top, though his punch-lines are more, er, subtle, eg:
President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is again using a press conference make a number of unsubstantiated claims of coordinated, widespread fraud in the US Election. In one positive development for his team it appears not to be outside a gardening center.
Mr Danahar certainly wasn't impressed by Rudy Giuliani's performance yesterday, also tweeting "Rudy Giuliani's press conference today on ‘voter fraud’ was one of the wildest, most unsubstantiated diatribes I’ve ever listened to and I say that as someone who has sat in a room with Col Gaddafi for three hours."
I'm presuming that Mr Giuliani kept his wind to himself though.
Meanwhile, this morning's Today programme allowed Justin Webb to join in. He was talking to the Guardian's beauty columnist Sally Hughes (Q: Why doesn't the BBC have a beauty correspondent, or is that Jon Sopel?) and dealing with the substance of the former mayor of New York's press conference - the hair dye tricking down his face, of course. Sally was telling Justin that she though it was "a very temporary form of hair dye, so either a wash-in-wash-out sort of a dye" or "a spray-on kind of root touch-up product" and Justin replied:
So he hadn't done it properly? Because you ought to be able to. I mean, with proper hair dye you should be able to go into a hot room, shouldn't you, and fulminate about Venezuela?
Sally from the Guardian chuckled and Mishal Husain (not a bundle of laughs herself) guffawed. It's the way he tells 'em!
I wonder if they'll ever have such fun about any member of the Biden administration, even once?
PIERS MORGAN:BBC news chief who failed to get interview with President Trump announces there is no news in rival network’s exclusive interview that’s currently making news around the world... methinks the green-eyed monster’s blurred his vision! Update: And 'Big John' Simpson (aka Old Simpers) agrees with Paul.
'Some say' the BBC's World Affairs Editor was sneering at the ITV man without having watched the interview. See if you agree with 'Some' here:
I only saw a minute or so of Piers Morgan's long interview with Donald Trump, but apparently he didn't get round to challenging him on pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Lots about the Royal Family, though, I'm told.
And, Further Update, it's still going on:
PIERS MORGAN: Hi John, I challenged him repeatedly about climate change. Maybe try watching it before spewing your usual pompous, jealous old BBC bore act - it’s not a good look for a guy who hasn’t had a big interview this Millennium. Love Piers x JOHN SIMPSON: Poor old Piers.
Still, eventually Old Simpers got round to watching it and replied to someone else saying:
Hi @anneshine33. I've seen the full Piers Morgan-Trump thing, & you're right, it's not as godawful as the previous ones. But so many huge questions left unasked - not just the Paris Agreement. If only Emily Maitlis could have grilled Trump instead! Not a chance, of course.
President Trump,the politician, will brush off his ostracism from the US political establishment, symbolised by his absence from McCain’s funeral. But I suspect for Trump the man, who has always wanted the respect of his peers, his absence & isolation will sting him greatly.
And if you were wondering what Paul's take on Trump/McCain is (as you surely were), then you need wait no longer:
Remarkable moment at John McCain's funeral as his weeping daughter rebukes President Trump, the only major political figure not present, saying “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great" bringing applause from the congregation. President Trump,the politician, will brush off his ostracism from the US political establishment, symbolised by his absence from McCain’s funeral. But I suspect for Trump the man, who has always wanted the respect of his peers, his absence & isolation will sting him greatly. John McCain memorial is, probably by the design of the man himself, a rallying cry against what in life he saw as the Trump era’s assault on the cornerstones of America life: public service & duty.
I haven't seen much of the BBC's coverage of the Trump administration's military strike on a Syrian regime airbase but I'm getting a strong sense from the Twitter feeds of many familiar BBC reporter that the US military action is going down well with the (duly impartial) BBC.
Here's a small selection, beginning with the the BBC's Washington bureau chief, Paul Danahar:
...a point that Newsnight presenter James O'Brien has already taken on board:
And for the first time ever, I've actually seen BBC reporters re-tweeting criticism of Stop The War types opposed to US military action - including Hugh Sykes:
John Sweeney is also among those BBC reporters re-tweeting Arab appreciation for President Trump's actions (and not - for once - re-tweeting Arab criticism):
...as is Katty Kay:
Others, like Kim Ghattas, are following their earlier tweets criticising the lack of action (by persons unspecified) over the last few years:
...with attacks on those critical of last night's strike:
Others are tweeting about editorials that back the action (and not tweeting about editorials which criticise the action), such as Ian Pannell:
...while others are placing a positive gloss on the politics of the military strike, such as Barbara Plett:
Others are even hoping that President Trump might go even further and do something even better, such as Laura Bicker:
The BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, has tweeted nothing about the strikes yet. Nor has the BBC's World Affairs editor John Simpson.
How much of any of this is feeding into the BBC's actual reporting I can't yet say (as I've not had time to check it out), but a definite BBC point of view is emerging on Twitter.
There are also, naturally, plenty of digs at Donald Trump for his past flat-out refusal to back military action in Syria, though even here - as with Quentin Somerville - there are surprising defences of Trump:
As for my Twitter feed in general, it's been fascinating seeing nearly all the anti-Trump types backing the strikes and nearly all the pro-Trump types opposing them - and Trump.
The BBC - along with several other media outlets - was refused access to the latest White House briefing by Sean 'Spicy' Spicer and is now seeking 'clarification':
The BBC's Head of Newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, tweets:
In other news, Jon Sopel tweeted the following yesterday:
The responses he received included the following:
It *is* the Russian flag......
Similar? Do you know what a Russian flag looks like @BBCJonSopel?
That must be a setup, no?
Handed out by Huff Post journo I hear. No wonder Trump doesn't want @BBCNews in his press briefings.
The story behind it is reported here. Russian flags were handed out to the crowd by "a political prankster". The organisers of the conference then confiscated the flags.
I trust the intelligence of our readership not to need to spell out why the Viewpoint article on the BBC News website by the BBC's former Middle East editor, now U.S. bureau chief, Paul Danahar, is indeed a 'point of view' - a strongly-argued point of view which places most of the guilt, as left-wingers are prone to do, firmly on the shoulders of U.S. and U.K. colonialism for the present plight of Iraq.
Yes, he glances at the partial culpability of the present [Shia-dominated] Iraqi government, but it is only a glance. For it is us, the wicked West, who are mainly to blame - in the opinion of this senior BBC editor.
Who isn't to blame, according to Paul Danahar? Well, Saddam Hussain's regime, al-Qaeda and Iran for starters. Iran doesn't even get a mention in this piece.
No sentence from this article sums up Paul's point of view better than this one:
The Arab nationalism of Saddam Hussein's Baathism was a reaction to the selfish audacity of colonial rule.
Purely left-wing cant.
And that it is cant is shown by this brilliant article/lecture on Baathism from the left-leaning New Republic:
You're all busy people, no doubt, but if you have a few spare minutes please read that piece by Paul Berman. It's a world away from the knee-jerk, left-wing anti-imperialism of the BBC's Paul Danahar.
Paul Danahar was a biased BBC Middle East bureau chief. Now he's the Beeb's U.S. bureau chief. Lord 'elp America!
Paul Danahar’s appearance at the Frontline Club on October 15th is the subject of articles at BBC Watch and Daphne Anson whose blog contains a video of the the whole session.
Given the prevailing scale of expectations, where the bar is set from low to lowest, his throwaway observation about ‘understanding’ Israel caused a minor sensation.
In honour of his book “The New Middle East”, Paul Danahar answers questions posed by Sam Farah of the BBC’s Arabic service, and afterwards from members of the audience.
His style is Bowenesque, as I suspect is his interpretation of Middle Eastern affairs. The analysis has a cartoon-like simplification, perhaps to suit the Q & A format. For example as Hadar points out,“his claim that the focus of the Arab-Israeli conflict has shifted from being “about land” and “about borders” to “about God” sounds decidedly sloppy. It ignores the fact that the ideology of Israel’s enemies is the motivating factor behind their rejectionist position, and always has been.
Just before the end, Danahar made some uncharacteristic comments on the subject of understanding Israel.
He said something like: You can’t understand Israel and why the Israelis do what they do if you view it only through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One might think throwing a fairly modest crumb at the Zionists was the least he could do, if only to demonstrate that he had something to show for all the time he spent as chief of the BBC Jerusalem Bureau; but since his stance, particularly on Gaza, had been patently “BBC”, it came across as an act of unprecedented generosity.
Or is that to misdescribe it, in the manner of Mehdi Hasan describing Tommy Robinson’s career move a volte-face? I think it was neither an act of generosity nor a volte-face.
Danahar showed precisely where he and his protégé Jon Donnison stood when he relayed unadulterated Palestinian rhetoric on Twitter at the time of the infamous killing of the toddler Omar Masharawi.
The consensus is now that the missile that killed the child was not an Israeli shell, after all, but a Palestinian rocket fired at Israel, which fell short. This was confirmed by the UNHRC, an organisation not noted for its sympathetic attitude towards Israel.
Having only seen the video of his performance at the ‘left-leaning’ Frontline Club, (and not read the book) I turned Amazon’s “Look inside” feature.
A cursory skim confirmed my hunch that (while we’re on the subject of prisms,) Danahar and the BBC view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the same prism, moral equivalence and all. In the introduction Danahar seems to minimise the religiosity that dominates the Arab World and exaggerate the “Just like us” theme that is ever present in the BBC’s M.E. reporting. At the same time he magnifies the threat in Israel from an ominous-sounding and ever increasing ultra orthodox menace. Thus, a superficial kind of moral equivalence is laid down.
Expanding on “you have to live in Israel to understand it” he says growing religiosity and nationalism in Israel puts the country at risk of becoming less democratic, and concludes: “Israel has swung sharply to the right”. The election did not bear that out.
On his current Twitter feed he’s busily promoting the book and saying it has been well received. He might mean the reviews on Amazon, one of which begins: “I started this book with trepidation because of course it couldn't possibly compete with Robert Fisk, 'The Great War for Civilisation' could it?!" (He thinks it does) Robert Fisk?
The impression is that the analysis is of the Jeremy Bowen school; whole concepts are extrapolated from strings of anecdotes, which I guess is a valid journalistic approach. This review in the Telegraph is positive, with reservations, and I am willing to hear that my negativity is motivated by my own wishful thinking, and that I’m talking crap. I haven’t read the book. I have merely cherry-picked and, if you like, extrapolated a whole concept from odds and ends. Such as:
This is copyrighted material so I can’t reproduce too much of it, but in the chapter entitled ‘The Problem’ Danahar revisits the tale of Omar Masharawi. He still seems to believe his death was caused by an Israeli airstrike, although by calling it “a stray missile” he does seem to concede that it wasn’t deliberate, as in another example of Israel’s predilection for killing babies.
“The family and human rights groups said it was an Israeli airstrike. Privately, at the time, so too did Israeli officials. Publically (sic) four months afterwards, the IDF said it could not confirm or deny whether it had hit the house. Then in March 2013 the UN human rights Council said it was probably a Palestinian rocket falling short. The next month an investigation by the Israeli Military Advocate General reached the same conclusion. Jehad dismissed the UN claims as ‘rubbish’ as did Hamas. Like much else in this corner of the ME the cause of the fireball that ripped through the family home was fodder for the competing lobby groups and they argued viciously over it. But the effect of the missile was indisputable.”
The Israelis’ initial response mirrors their self-damaging reaction way back at the time of the Al Dura incident. The Israelis should be mindful that their initial (often apocryphally self-incriminating) responses will always be taken down for future use as evidence against them.
I think Paul Danahar was very foolish to use the bereaved family’s understandably subjective opinion, based on nothing but wishful thinking, to rationalise his own ‘gut feeling’ and his contemporaneous, unprofessionally rash Tweets. Even more foolish was he to reference the opinion of Hamas.
The emotive language (fireball that ripped through the family home) sort of tries to guild a wilting lily. He forgets that ‘emoting’ like that, and all that furious publicising of ‘those’ images can turn into an own goal when the tables are turned. That’s why he’s forced to keep digging in the way he has done here, and notice that the spelling has automagically morphed to a benign ‘Jehad’, from the original 'Jihad' with its unpalatable associations. Simon Plosker:
"Speaking to the BBC in the aftermath of a UN report exonerating Israel from killing Jihad Misharawi’s 11-month old son, his brother and sister-in-law, Misharawi chose to believe the latter option. Misharawi, perhaps unsurprisingly, restated his belief that Israel had killed his family and claimed that Hamas would have apologized if it had been responsible. As ludicrous as this explanation may sound, is it that surprising coming from a grieving Palestinian father?The BBC reports Misharawi stating that nobody from the UN had talked to him as if this is further evidence of the UN being less than thorough in its investigation. Misharawi is clearly not a munitions expert with intimate knowledge of the forensics involved. So why should the UN regard him as a key witness and why should the BBC regard this as relevant?[…]In the BBC’s usual worldview, the United Nations is regarded as a pillar of propriety and virtue. A UN report (and there are many) criticizing Israel is the definition of truth… unless it states the opposite. Why is it that only when a UN report exonerates Israel and blames Hamas is that report not to be trusted?"
I think I might have mentioned that I haven’t read the book. Maybe Danahar is more accurate in print than in person. Oh, wait, that was from the book.
One almost wonders...no surely not...could the newly acquired, against-the-grain “understanding” of Israel’s position be a way of artificially whipping up a controversy?
Some tales that demonstrate the BBC’s confused approach to Jews and Israel.
They didn’t make much of Yom Hashoah, but a few new holocaust stories have appeared on the BBC, so perhaps this is their way of commemorating.
There was Dorit Oliver-Wolff on Saturday Live, and Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schlosson the website talking to Stephen Sackur about her war-time experiences.
But heartrending/heartwarming holocaust stories are nothing new for the BBC. It’s the Jews that defend themselves the BBC is less keen on.
Another Donnison Tweet leads us to Lyse Doucet’s interview with Daniel Levy, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Paul Charney, the chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and by Dror Moreh, the director of 'The Gatekeepers'.
It’s obvious that the BBC will like this documentary for the very reasons Paul Charney warned against, i.e. that criticisms of Israel’s political policies expressed by the six former heads of Shin Bet in the film would be used as a tool by Israel’s detractors to further their ongoing delegitimization of Israel.
Donnison’s Twitter page also contained a Tweet by his colleague and award nominator Paul Danahar, which led to this interesting article by HRW on a topic also covered, in a weirdly sanitised form, by the BBC.
Interestingly, no details are spared in the HRW piece, and I well remember Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, causing concern amongst many people by ingratiating herself and her organisation with the Saudis during a fund-raising mission, by highlighting HRW’s battles with "pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations." yet having nothing to say about Saudi Arabia’s own human rights abuses.
“ The way we have been wording our paragraph on when the fighting started is causing endless complaints. It’s the specific reference in time which is upsetting people.We have been saying:The conflict began last Wednesday when Israel killed a Hamas military leader, saying it wanted an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. More than 110 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed.To a lot of people, the conflict was already raging, and they interpret that as blaming or putting undue emphasis on Israel.Can we please use the following form of words which gets round that:Israel launched its offensive, which it says is aimed at ending rocket fire from Gaza, with the killing on Wednesday of a Hamas military leader. More than 110 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since then.ThanksRaffi Berg
Middle East desk
BBC News website
+44 203 614 xxxxraffi.berg@bbc.co.ukhttp://www.bbc.com/middleeast
and another:
November 22, 2012 at 6:48 pmPlease remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border. Israel maintains a blockade around its borders with Gaza, as well as a naval blockade. It also controls Gaza’s airspace.We’ve mistakenly said “around Gaza” in a number of recent stories, which has generated complaints.Raffi Berg
Middle East desk
BBC News website
+44 203 614 1824raffi.berg@bbc.co.ukhttp://www.bbc.com/middleeast
These rather odd comments indicate at least that Raffi Berg is willing to listen to his critics. He also wrote this, which didn’t go down very well with BBCWatch
His article about Israeli ‘Frankness’ is quite nice as it happens, and most likely well-intentioned, but it also plays into the hands of people who consider superficialities to be the most significant pointers to ‘a peoples’ fundamental character. How many times have I heard people praising the inhabitants of various Islamic states, poverty-stricken and wealthy alike, for their tradition of hospitality and generosity to strangers, and extrapolating from this that as a people they must be blameless for everything else.
How many times have I heard tales of the rudeness of Israelis, whether at home or abroad, from people who extrapolate from this that Israelis must be solely to blame for the tribulations of the Middle East. They don’t get it, and the little bit at the end of the piece about “Sabra”, which comes from the name of a cactus fruit - prickly on the outside but tender within - characteristics which arguably best define Israelis, will probably be lost in the rush to condemn Israel yet again. For that reason, i.e., the likelihood that such things will only be half understood, and as such used as tools by Israel’s detractors, articles like this are risky. In the current climate these things need to be strongly counter-balanced with an equal amount of positive stories. We’ve a long way to go....
Update. See this post for a full explanation. http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/nice-but-dim.html
The post I referred to above that appeared on Biased-BBC was not put there by Raffi Berg. It was posted by "Soothsayer" in order to make a point. I assume it was an internal memo.
Sue: I
know I’m stuck in the dark ages, lagging behind the rest of the world,
out with the in crowd, uncool, you’ve guessed it - I haven’t got a
Twitter account. I won’t bother to make excuses. I just haven’t.
Anyway that doesn’t
stop me spying on other people’s Tweeting activities, because at the
moment on Twitter, it’s where all the best bias hangs out. It’s not only
who you Tweet to, it’s also who Tweets to you, and the timbre within
those 140 characters can sometimes resonate with meaning.
The spotlight has
fallen upon the tweeting habits of the BBC staff since the Jon Donnison Tweet fiasco, when he was caught out making a specific error, which was
both extremely awful and at the same time a little bit understandable.
It was awful because he must have wished very much indeed to publicise a
picture that would inflame the public’s already widespread anger at
Israel, and in his haste he forgot to check the picture’s credentials.
Perhaps if he’d discovered his mistake he’d have found a genuine one to
promote instead. After all, children were indeed killed in Gaza; showing
the wrong picture could, to some people, in a following wind, be
regarded as symbolic rather than actual. It’s that old “we know it’s
happening anyway” excuse.
So Donnison’s
downfall was not because of the slippery, biased ongoing Tweeting, it was
more or less on a technicality. But it was quite a big technicality,
assuming that the BBC’s integrity and credibility depends upon the
veracity of BBC related reporting.
The equally transparent political partisanship of Paul Danahar has also been in the headlights.
Both Paul and Jon
(not Ringo) were summoned to Israel’s Government Press Office under the
possible threat of having their press accreditation revoked or withdrawn. However,
nothing was withdrawn, and it seems they weren’t even made to apologise.
We’ll probably never know what was said, but Paul and Jon were adamant
that it didn't include ‘sorry’.
Their Tweeting habits reveal who their friends are, and where their sympathies lie.
An solitary observation here, a reply there, a link somewhere else, or a brief conversation is unlikely to provide conclusive proof of one particular individual’s prejudice, but look at the whole picture. Stand back. Can you tell what it is yet?
We all know that war, abuse and injustice bring about personal tragedy to someone, somewhere. Death and destruction should be reported, there’s no doubt. But what the BBC should not do is concentrate on one mawkish aspect of the horror of war in an obsessive manner - and here’s where the word disproportionate really comes into its own - while ignoring or showing a distinct lack of interest when the same, and worse, is known to be happening elsewhere. In Syria, where the number of civilian casualties is enormous, the particular image that exposed Donnison’s failure of judgment, scruples and journalistic rigour was used in error! Can’t anyone see the irony?
Even if the moral justification (‘we expect higher standards from Israel‘) for such selective journalistic focus was valid and sincere, merely showing images of dead and injured children is still a cheap, lazy and exploitative way of propagandising. It makes me, and anyone else who dares point it out sound callous just for saying so. It’s lazy in that it is a substitute for examining the real moral justification behind the conflict, and effectively dispenses with the need to maintain appropriate impartiality.
Craig: From your link it looks as if Judge Dan at IsraellyCool has been 'blocked' by Paul Danahar for this tweet yesterday:
@pdanahar I couldn't help but notice you only share articles from @haaretz. Is that a @BBC job prerequisite? or are you just biased?
His article about it is called 'Truth Hurts, Doesn’t It, Paul?
It certainly is the truth and that 'blocking' does indeed seem to show that it hurts. The evidence? Looking back over Paul Danahar's tweets since the start of November and noting down all the mentions/links he gives to non-BBC media outlets produces the following list:
6.11.2012 Huffington Post
8.11.2012 Mediaite
Associated Press
10.11.2012 Ha'aretz
11.11.2012 Ha'aretz
13.11.2012 The Atlantic
14.11.2012 Ha'aretz
16.11.2012 Ynet
The Daily Beast
17.11.2012 Enduring America
The Daily Beast
18.11.2012 The Foreign Press Association
Ha'aretz
The Times (London)
Ha'aretz
Ha'aretz
Ha'aretz
19.11.2012 Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Post
20.11.2012 Jerusalem Post
The Times of Israel
The Economist
Reuters
Ha'aretz
Ynet
Ha'aretz
21.11.2012 Ha'aretz
22.11.2012 +972
Ha'aretz
Ha'aretz
24.11.2012 Huffington Post
The Guardian
Washington Post
Ha'aretz
25.11.2012 Egypt Independent
New York Times
New York Times
Ha'aretz
26.11.2012 Jerusalem Post
New York Times
27.11.2012 Ha'aretz
Ha'aretz
28.11.2012 London Review of Books
29.11.2012 Ha'aretz
This results in the following tally of mentions/links:
Ha'aretz - 17
Jerusalem Post - 4
New York Times - 3
Huffington Post -2
Ynet - 2
The Daily Beast - 2
+972 - 1
London Review of Books - 1
Egypt Independent - 1
Washington Post - 1
The Guardian - 1
The Times of Israel - 1
The Economist - 1
Reuters - 1
The Times - 1
Mediaite - 1
Associated Press - 1
The Atlantic - 1
Enduring America - 1
The Foreign Press Association - 1
Sue: Ha'aretz is the leftie paper which is not very supportive of the Israeli
government, so it's like the BBC quoting the GuardianI suppose.
Craig: Which they also do a lot. Wikipediagives people a good idea of where Ha'aretz stands, for those who aren't too familiar with it. The reference to the BBC here made me smile:
Haaretz describes itself as broadly liberal on domestic issues and international affairs.[30] Other describe it alternatively as liberal, centre-left, left-wing, or even hard left. According to the BBC, it has a moderate stance on foreign policy and security issues. David Remnick in The New Yorker described Haaretz as "easily the most liberal newspaper in Israel", its ideology as left-wing and its temper as "insistently oppositional." The newspaper's op-ed pages are open to a variety of opinions. J.J. Goldberg, the editor of the American The Jewish Daily Forward, describes Haaretz as "Israel's most vehemently anti-settlement daily paper". US weekly The Nation describes Haaretz as "Israel's liberal beacon," citing its editorials voicing opposition to the occupation, the security barrier, discriminatory treatment of Arab citizens, and the mindset that led to the Second Lebanon War. Aijaz Ahmad, writing in Frontline, described Haaretz as "the most prestigious Israeli newspaper".
Just to add a little something though about those four mentions of The Jerusalem Post, Sue. Three of them are digs at the paper's reporting:
RT @sharonudasin Does anyone have pets who are freaking out because of the rocket sirens? If so, please contact me today for a story. #jpost
for balance @sharonudasin also tweets: 'happy to interview #Gazans whose pets are freaking out from Israeli fire'. #jpost
