If William and Kate's Caribbean tour was “a PR disaster”, as the BBC's royal correspondent Jonny Dymond claims, there's a question to be asked about how much the BBC and its royal correspondent contributed to making one, especially with largely negative reports like this:
Another question might be whether the following tweet, in reaction, is true:
Only in this country would the ‘national’ broadcaster lead with such a negative headline on a overall successful royal tour!
A third question might be whether the bad blood between Prince William and the BBC is getting out of hand and / or bringing out the BBC's anti-monarchism.
Due to a recent air of resignation that has come over me, call it despair, fatalism, submission, if you like, I confined the following allusion to last Sunday’s Sunday Morning Live into one solitary passage in a piece concerning that appalling Emily Mailtlis interview.
The BBC’s default position on Israel is even more obvious when you don’t watch too much TV. I keep catching breathless announcements about Prince William’s visit being ‘the first time a ‘Royal’ has gone to the Palestinian territories.” And then some quip about Israel objecting to the term “Occupied” - “but that’s what it is,” opined Sunday Morning Live’s whining, metropolitan media-bubble-inhabiting guest and part-time antisemite Christina Patterson. Sorry for the “smear,” but that’s what you are. She’s as ignorant now as she was back in 2010, and just as opinionated with it. But so are most of the BBC’s contributors.
Of course, I knew it deserved its own platform, and lo and behold, here it is. Not only is there a link to the programme in question, there’s a transcription of the offending dialogue.
To summarise, the topic was reviewed by two pro-Palestinian pundits, one of whom has a record of publishing false and defamatory comments about Israel. Together they spun Prince William’s Middle East adventure out of all recognition, presenting it as if it were a royal declaration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. This one-sided and ignorant interpretation of the event took place under the auspices of a supposedly ‘thought-provoking’ religiously themed TV programme.
It was presided over by a couple of lightweight TV anchors who were clearly out of their depth.
This kind of thing is nothing out of the ordinary. It’s mainstream, it’s overwhelming and it accounts for the aforementioned air of resignation.
Funny thing is, Baroness Warsi cites Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment as a way of discrediting him. Whereas in the sort of societies she aligns herself with, imprisonment is cited as a symbol of heroism.
I think the cure is working. You know, the cure for blogging that I mentioned the other day. It’s not like giving up booze (how would I know?) and I don’t think it’s like giving up smoking, admittedly a hazy memory from another life.
By the way, I’m referring to watching television. You don’t have to be fanatical about giving up and you don’t have to pursue it relentlessly, in an all or nothing fashion, afeared of slipping back into the abyss through one careless glimpse.
Watching the occasional news bulletin or snippet of Newsnight isn’t going to lure you back to your old square-eyed habits. In fact the opposite. Snippets and snatches almost seem to throw the flaws into the spotlight. Breakfast time programmes churned out on the BBC and the commercial channels are abysmal. Trivial, gossipy, shallow, unimaginative and sickly. Don’t watch any of them. Just don’t.
On a supposedly deeper level, Emily Maitlis’s interview with the Hungarian minister of foreign affairs Peter Szijjarto was astonishing. Newsnight must have missed the memo about the BBC’s charter, something to do with impartiality, apparently. So they say.
Emily Maitlis might well think Mr. Szijjarto represents the epitome of right-wing, racist, intolerant, fascistic, nationalistic, supremacist xenophobia. But really, whose views do the viewers want to hear? Are we more interested in observing Emily Maitlis’s opinions than Mr. Szijjarto’s?
Certainly, Emily Maitlis revealed her opinion of Mr. Szijjarto. In fact, we couldn’t have learned any more about what she thought if she simply handed the baton to the interviewee. She might as well have. I imagine anyone could get the hang of making exaggerated gestures of disapproval while constantly interrupting the answers. But ‘interviewing’ is supposed to be a craft. The idea is to draw out the interviewee, not browbeat them into defensive obfuscation. Not that Mr. Szijjarto was browbeaten, nor did he obfuscate. This was the most unsatisfactory interview I’ve seen in ages, but hey, I haven’t been watching many.
The BBC’s default position on Israel is even more obvious when you don’t watch too much TV. I keep catching breathless announcements about Prince William’s visit being ‘the first time a Royal has gone to the Palestinian territories.” And then some quip about Israel objecting to the term “Occupied” - “but that’s what it is,” opined Sunday Morning Live’s whining, metropolitan media-bubble-inhabiting guest and part-time antisemite Christina Patterson. Sorry for the “smear,” but that’s what you are. She’s as ignorant now as she was back in 2010, and just as opinionated with it. But so are most of the BBC’s contributors.
The other day I intended to update my post with some remarks about Peter Oborne’s Daily Mail article on the same topic, but I deleted it instead, thinking ‘what’s the point?’
Needless to say, Oborne’s take on the royal visit was exactly as one would expect from a notorious anti-Israel obsessive. People with overtly antisemitic attitudes are to be seen and heard on the BBC much of the time, and appear to be highly regarded. They even get to host The Week in Westminster with their chummy but sneering round-ups of, well, the week in Westminster.
And to finish my point, I’ll just mention the debate that took place yesterday (Saturday) in Westminster Hall. The topic was “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians” or unarmed protesters demanding the right of return. (You know, the one that Jeremy Corbyn called for the other day.)
Funnily enough most of the MPs who expressed their utter condemnation of Israel were from the Labour Party. Why, anyone would think some sort of party briefing had been circulating.
I strongly recommend it. What? you don’t subscribe to the Times? I’m not cheeky enough to paste all of it into this blog, but perhaps this excerpt will tempt you.
William of Arabia, aka the Duke of Cambridge, heads out to dusty Ramallah today to meet the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. It’s a remarkable encounter for the second-in-line to the throne and not just because the Palestinian is a nasty piece of work (doctoral dissertation: “The secret relationship between Nazism and Zionism”). The sheer political sensitivity of an official trip to modern Israel and to the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank is such that no member of the royal family had ever undertaken one.
A shift in geopolitics has made the visit possible — and a cultural change in the Foreign Office, which has for many decades advised the royal household that it is better to don the appropriate headgear and butter up Arab autocrats than engage with the gritty detail of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. The fear of giving offence to princelings has been the defining trait of the so-called camel corps of Britain’s Arab enthusiasts within the Foreign Office. It has, with flanking assistance from oil men and aerospace executives, become an almost institutional lobby that sees Israel as the troublemaker of the region and Arab leaders as deeply misunderstood.
By the way, although I first read it in the newspaper, I looked online to see which way the comments were swingin’ At the time of writing they’re mostly supportive. Good.
As far as I’m concerned, it puts a certain gentleman in his place. (Link: see latter part of 3rd paragraph)
“This brings to mind the advice that a former British Ambassador to Amman gave to Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s.
"It is presumably in the national interest to do what we can to counter Arab fears and suspicions that the leader of HM opposition is already a prisoner of the Zionists.”
The gentleman in question is charming enough. I met him at a friend’s house. He has a great deal of admiration for Yassir Arafat and holds the kind of Arabist views that Oxbridge-FCO types imbibe from birth. With the exemplary manners of his ilk, he held forth on the topic, undeterred by not being particularly au fait with the facts. (at least not of the ‘other’ side of the story) Self confidence carried him through.
Our hostess had mischievously seated him next to me at dinner. All I can add is that his adulation for Arafat remained undiminished despite having slight reservations about being expected to kiss the corrupt, malodorous old rogue. Anyway, I imagine he would have his own views about the Royals visiting the region. The BBC of course remains impartial.
