Songs of Praise marks 9/11

And now for Songs of Praise on 11 September, which marked 9/11.

Sally Magnussen's introduction ran as follows: 

15 years ago today the world changed forever, the day we now call '9/11'. Terrorists flew planes in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. For all its shocking audacity 9/11 wasn't a one-off and its been followed by an increasing number of terrorist atrocities. But amid the horror there are stories of hope, and I'm in Central London to find them.

Her narration later continued in the same vein:

Terror attacks can effect anyone. That's what's so terrifying. While the grieving goes on for the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on 9/11, others have had to come to terms with more recent attacks, not least in France. Only a few weeks ago the lorry attack in Nice followed days later by the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in Rouen shook the nation and the world.

It's a painful truth that terrorist attacks occupy more headlines these days than ever. One man well qualified to take the long view is Terry Waite...

The terrible events of 9/11, commemorated in this garden in Grosvenor Square, unfolded exactly 15 years ago today....

In July the Nice lorry attack killed 86 people....

...and traumatised many more". [Image above used to illustrated that].

The programmes script - as you may have noticed - was striking in the extent to which it went very far out of its way to find 'the right form of words' that would completely skirt around the question of who committed the terrorist attacks mentioned in the programme. 

It was never explicitly said who was behind such attacks. The nearest the script ever came to apportioning blame was to name and shame 'terrorists' and 'lorries'. 

And then, near the end, came the one and only hint...and it was the bit I just knew would eventually come...:

Few of us know what to say after a tragedy, but some have responded with peaceful action. Parishioners at St. John on Bethnal Green invited local Muslims to join their Sunday service....

...and the vicar, Rev. Alan Green, duly said:

"It's been a great opportunity to be clear about our faith, but at the same time to be welcoming and to stand together in solidarity with Muslims too." 

And three Muslims agreed that peace is lovely and bonding is great. 

Cue Cardinal Nichols being optimistic and praying for peace and love - a prayer joined by others - with a final hymn of hope following.

The level of conscious story-shaping here, to avoid in any way casting any Muslims in a bad light, even for a second, was very plain to see.

Doubtless, the intentions behind such blatant manipulation were well-intentioned, liberal ones, but the effect was disturbingly patronising. 

It absolutely reeked of self-censorship and agenda-pushing. 

They were some pleasant hymns though.

Potpourri for a Wednesday night

Family matters (of the most pleasant variety) are almost entirely keeping me away from blogging at the moment (sorry!), and will continue to do so for a while yet...

...but I've got a little bit of spare time tonight to spew out a few thoughts about what little I've read, seen and heard of the BBC in recent days (and a thousand apologies for the stomach-turning choice of imagery there)...

...so here goes!...

******

I did hear a little bit of the BBC's 'migrants in Calais' coverage over the weekend in advance of that controversial ('as they say at the BBC') Songs of Praise. 

I heard, for example, a paper reviewer on Radio 4's Broadcasting House stick up for Songs of Praise and Labour peer Admiral Lord West (typically) strike a more balanced note. 

(I like Admiral Lord West, but as I've said before: How, in the name of Lord Hall (PBUH), can Lord West be a Labour peer?) 

No one, of course, railed against Songs of Praise on BH though.

Then I heard The World This Weekend with James Robbins, featuring a report stressing the need for 'compassion' towards the Europe-headed migrants followed by an interview with a lady refugee from Nazi Germany who was absolutely outraged at our unwillingness to take in the latest migrants en masse.

That certainly wasn't balanced. All the 'non-BBC' voices on TWTW sang from the same hymn sheet: all calling for 'compassion' towards the migrant waves; all wanting us to keep happily allowing those waves to keep crashing on our crowded shores.

That said, James Robbins asked the refugee lady a couple of 'impartial questions' about how people in the UK might feel about lots of migrants entering the country...

...but, that said (yet again), he mostly stuck to 'inviting' her to denounce the UK government (and politicians in general) over their 'anti-immigration' policies and language (raising "swarm" along the way). 

So that still clearly wasn't balanced.

 ******

What with that and all the other BBC reports I'd heard, seen and read in the past few weeks, I was feeling - by Sunday evening - thoroughly miffed-off with the BBC. 

The relentlessness of the BBC, advancing the migrants' cause at very point (as I saw it), was, therefore, truly wearing me down.

And then came that Songs of Praise...

******

That certainly was biased - and only added to my feeling that the BBC was trying to wear me down.

Despite Sally Magnusson's questions (see my earlier post), it projected a message of 'compassion' towards what Songs of Praise vox pop Giles Fraser (left-wing, pro-Occupy vicar) called his 'brothers and sisters' in that illegal Calais camp. 

Of course many on social media (many gladly proclaiming themselves atheists) claimed (approvingly) that its bias was entirely Christian in origin, pace the great English poet George Herbert:

Having been tenant long to a rich lord,
    Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,
    And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old. 

In heaven at his manor I him sought;
    They told me there that he was lately gone
    About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possessiòn. 

I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
    Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
    In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts;
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
       
    Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,
    Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

But the presence of Giles Fraser and the inclusion of no one but (Christian) migrants and their English and French supporters (some of whom challenged the anti-migrant sentiments of many/most Brits) unquestionably, to my mind, settled the issue of BBC bias here. 

This was biased BBC broadcasting. We were being preached to: Let the illegal immigrants in, sayeth the Lord Your BBC.

However, one of our earliest supporters here at ITBB, Damian Thompson (as some of your pointed out - and thank you), also gave the BBC a thoroughgoing slamming over this Songs of Praise (at the Daily Mail). 

As ever, I agree with most of what Damian wrote (and recommend that you read what he said), but I'm far too fussy not to note that where Damian wrote...

Sorry to sound cynical, but the script glossed over one rather inconvenient but unavoidable fact about the camp: it is overwhelmingly Muslim.

...I'd, earlier, noted:

In fairness to presenter Sally Magnusson, she did mention that the camp (despite the programme's focus on the Christians there) was mostly Muslim.

...and, re-checking the programme, it turns out that I was right about that. One of the first things Sally said (3:57 in) was:

The majority of people in the camp are Muslims.

Damian, as is the way with 'eye witnesses' reviewers, must have missed Sally's comments there.

Still, most of his points stand, and the process of erosion continued.

******

Yvette Cooper ("Aarrhhh RrrrrrrEd!")

It's Wednesday evening, and much of that already seems like last week's news. So what next?

Well, more of the same: Sue certainly caught ITBB 'favourite' Matthew Price in the act, 'clumsily' calling UKIP "far-right" (in an interview with Labour's Yvette Cooper on Today) :

You're taking about a radical agenda to attract people, but you lost a lot of your supporters to the Conservatives back on May 7th, and so you lost the centre ground. You also lost a lot of long-Labour voters to UKIP. So you lost a lost of people to the far-right-wing of British politics. 

Some Ukippers on Twitter, naturally, erupted at being so casually traduced. Matthew apologised on Twitter in response, deploying that 'I was merely being clumsy' excuse. (Yeah, right.)

And that seems to be that, bar all the fruitless complaints to the BBC. (No apologies on Today itself, naturally, just on Twitter, it appears).

Matthew said what he thinks about UKIP, in tandem with what he report about, say, immigration [and other matters], and the BBC spins on regardless, like a (laws-of-physics-defying) perpetual motion machine of bias. 

Matthew Price seems to me to be one of those 'BBC gifts that keeps on giving'. 

As BBC bias bloggers, parts of us, cynically, might very well feel glad that he's a gift that keeps on giving; but most of our parts would wish he wasn't (like, by repute, policemen regarding criminals).

******

So far, so not-so-much-of-a-potpourri...so here's a sudden flavour of something new:

I was driving home early from work on Monday afternoon, listening to Radio 4's The Food Programme. The programme's regular presenter, Sheila Dillon, was hymning her personal 'food hero': anti-capitalist campaigner Susan George. 

Sheila, worrying about big business, pollution, etc, was inspired by equality-loving Susan George to get into 'food journalism' - and, as a consequence, BBC Radio 4 has been savouring (and indulging) her leftist lip-licking longings for food-related 'issues' ever since, it seems.

This sounded like #OccupytheFoodProgramme from start to finish. (Only on BBC Radio 4?)

******

Though Tom Holland's abridgement of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War didn't and is still going swimmingly. His presentation of Pericles's funeral oration certainly stirred my innards. (Or was that the result of a curry?)

******

Those who complained to Feedback about Radio 4 daring to broadcast a one-off, sceptical piece about global warming from Quentin Letts will (possibly) have been relieved to hear 'business as usual' resumed courtesy of Stephen Fry (who famously knows everything about everything).

This week's Fry's English Delight tacked the issue of the British weather/climate, and the man who knows everything about everything about everything, Stephen Fry, was resolute on the point that UKIP spokesmen (repeatedly name-checked) are simply wrong about it:  UKIP and King Charles II are mistaken in their belief that God uses the weather to punish us....but we are responsible for long-term climate change.

If Stephen Fry, the man who knows everything about everything, is certainly about it on BBC Radio 4, who am I to be sceptical?

And, as we all keep being told, Stephen is omniscient - hence the wisdom of his jovial quoting of this limerick on QI immediately before the Savile scandal broke:

There was a young chaplain from King's / Who talked about God and such things / But his real desire / Was a boy in the choir / With a bottom like jelly on springs.

******

And that's that for the time being. Don't have nightmares.

"There's a wideness in God's mercy/like the wideness of the sea"

Well, the controversial Songs of Praise from the illegal migrant encampment in Calais was broadcast tonight, and I suspect viewing figures will have been well up.

The two items ran as described in the previous post. 

In the first we heard from some of the migrants and from Giles Fraser (so, yes, he was on after all). Giles described the migrants as being his brothers and sisters but avoided making any explicitly political points. 

In the second items we heard from Christian volunteers from England and France who had come to help the migrants.

In fairness to presenter Sally Magnusson, she did mention that the camp (despite the programme's focus on the Christians there) was mostly Muslim and she did caveat the stories told by the migrants by saying that their stories couldn't be verified. She also asked several times how the migrants and their helpers could justify coming illegally to the UK. So some nods to BBC impartiality were made - though no dissenting voices were heard from (i.e. nobody opposing the actions of either the migrants or their helpers).

The social media reaction has divided predictably. For example, Twitter has gone one way (lauding the programme for showing compassion) and the comments beneath the Daily Mail's article on the story have gone the other (damning it for trying to brainwash its audience into sympathasing with illegal immigrants).

I have to say that the hymn which immediately followed the second of the two items didn't seem to have been accidentally/coincidentally chosen.

It began, "There's a wideness in God's mercy/like the wideness of the sea", and its words (written in Victorian times) carried echoes of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and the English Channel in its imagery as well as, more generally, chiming uncannily with the sentiments expressed by Giles Fraser and the Christian volunteers throughout both Songs of Praise items.

It wasn't a newly-recorded hymn either, just randomly included alongside this item in this particular edition of the programme. It was lifted from an earlier episode of Songs of Praise, first broadcast in February 2013.

So it was chosen from the Songs of Praise archive and placed exactly where it was in this edition by those involved in making today's programme. For a reason, I'd say.