"Cosmopolitan media bubbles of uniform opinion"

Glen Innes

(h/t D.B.)

There's a very interesting piece in The Journalist (not available online but readable here, if you enlarge the image) by former BBC foreign correspondent Steve Evans, the man who preceded Jenny Hill as the BBC's Berlin correspondent and who ended his BBC career as the corporation's Seoul correspondent. 

On leaving the BBC after 25 years in 2017, Steve moved to Australia and began work at a local paper in a small town in New South Wales. He describes it as "the hardest and also perhaps the most satisfying job" he's ever had. 

The small town in question, Glen Innes, is the sort of place that "would have voted for Bush and Trump and Brexit and then gone back and done it again". And he glad he went there. 

He writes:

I came to realise that I had lived in a media bubble for decades. I am reminded of the quote said to have come from the playwright, Arthur Miller: "How can the polls be neck and neck? I don't know anyone who's voting for Bush"... 

Small-town journalists have a contact with people that bigger-time journalists rarely do, and that is very valuable.  

Glen Innes is not a world of political correctness but it is a world of humanity and kindness. Its values are very different from those in the cosmopolitan media bubbles of uniform opinion, and it is all the better for that.

Steve's escape from "the cosmopolitan media bubbles of uniform opinion" at the BBC seems to have done him the world of good. Good luck to him!

Laughing at North Korea and sexist jokes

Steve Evans, the BBC's correspondent in Seoul, was on Today this morning talking about North Korea's latest fulminations against that U.S. comedy film which mocks its (very) big baby of a leader.

The North Koreans have gone too far this time though, way beyond minor things like mass executions, horrific gulags, three-generation family punishments, threats of nuclear war, and the like. Yes, they've said something racist about President Obama and not even the BBC feels it can be neutral in the face of that level of offensiveness. It's wrong, and BBC reporters like Steve Evans are saying so.

Steve himself enjoyed the film at the heart of the story. He thinks it's a good film. He laughed at it, and even admitted to laughing at what he described as its many "sexist" jokes - though he added that he probably shouldn't have done so...

...which is a very BBC way of thinking. Why shouldn't he laugh at sexist jokes? Why all the public hand-wringing?

Of course, there's a whole world of even more po-faced offence-takers out there just gagging to be offended (some, no doubt, at the BBC itself), so maybe his caution is understandable.

Cue some righteous academic on Twitter:

@BBCr4today - so #stevenevans is telling us that unintended #racism is deeply offensive, but deliberate #sexism is "a laugh" #TheInterview
— Dave Wibberley (@davewibberley) December 27, 2014

Hmm, not so sure comparing Barack Obama to a monkey [something the North Koreans apparently do all the time] is all that "unintended", especially given North Korea's obsession with racial purity. But then again I'm no North Korea-defending academic, so what do I know?

Still, in the spirit of the BBC's reporting of those UKIP supporters who say the kind of things right-thinking people (like those at the BBC) reckon ought never to be said, can we please start a Twitter storm to get Steve Evans sacked for admitting to laughing at sexist jokes, when (obviously) he should have remained as stony-faced as that Rosa Klebb-like auntie of Fatboy Kim throughout every single one of them, and then publicly registered his unqualified disapproval of them on Radio 4 like a good boy? 

No, come to think of it, let's not do that sort of thing. Ever.

Anyhow, here are some North Korea jokes which might not be to Mr Wibberley's taste but at least he can breathe a little easier knowing (in advance) that they aren't sexist:

"So, how's life in North Korea?"

"Well, I can't complain."

North Korea is back online after internet outage. Sources say South Korea changed the wifi password.

Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" has been banned worldwide following fears it may piss Adolf Hitler off.

So Kim Jong-un is claiming he personally hacked into Sony's servers in retaliation to them broadcasting a spoof interview. Is there no end to this Olympic gold Medallist's talent?

The bad news is that North Korea have built an atomic suitcase bomb that they could slip into this country. The good news: Ryanair lost it.

All the people of the lulled and dumbfound state...

So, Dylan Thomas was big in Germany. 

Who knew? Former BBC Berlin correspondent - and Dylan Thomas fan - Steve Evans, that's who, and his Cold War Poet tonight on Radio 4 was fascinating.

John Humphrys won't like the tense I'm using here, but to begin at the beginning:

1954. Dylan Thomas is dead. The BBC has already posthumously broadcast his wonderful radio play Under Milk Wood. Seeking to spread British culture to the parts of post-war Germany under British control (the north-west), they commission an Austrian Jewish exile, Erich Fried, to translate Under Milk Wood into German. He translates it within a week, as requested. It becomes Unter dem Milchwald. A top-class German cast is employed to perform it and North West German Radio broadcasts it in the very same year as its British broadcast. It's a big hit. Two more broadcasts on the station follow that same year. The other German radio stations follows suit.

There's a thirst for literature in West Germany - post-war, post-the-Nazis. Paper is hard to come by. Radio rules. 1,300 radio dramas are broadcast around that time (1954-5), including hitherto hard-to-come-by British, French and American literature.

The rough but lyrical poetry of Dylan Thomas even gets through to unfree East Germany, where a vibrant underground poetry scene flourishes, against the efforts of the Stasi, wherever it can, whenever it can. His innovative, unplain poetry - bursting the state's anti-formalist taboos -  actually seems closer to life than the closed, political, official poetry of the dour communist state. 

Some of Dylan's deeply personal, unpolitical poems even make it into official poetry collections - partly, it seems, because he came from Wales and the GDR censors, therefore, assume he's working class and a poet for the people. And it may have helped that Erich Fried, who has kept on translating Thomas into German, is a socialist who makes several visits to the communist East. 

Well, that's enough historical present tense writing for the time being...or is it?

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now.

Gay weddings, UK Muslims going to Syria, WWI, problems for the Catholic Church, Ramadan, the living wage and calls to scrap Christian assemblies in schools

This week's Sunday dwelt on many familiar themes - as you can see from the title of this post.

First was an interview with Rev Roberta Rominger, former general secretary of the United Reform Church, which looks set to become the first mainstream church to allow gay weddings to be carried out in their churches. Rev Roberta supports the idea. William Crawley asked her if she hoped such a move would encourage other mainstream churches to follow their example. 

Then it was onto the story of the 100+ imams and their open letter urging British Muslims not to travel to Iraq or Syria to take part in sectarian fighting and to offer help "from the UK in a safe and responsible way". Sunday sought to "find out what it means for Muslims who passionately want to take part in the humanitarian effort" by talking to one of the imams, Shahid Raza, and Atiqur Rahman, who has already been on a humanitarian convoy to Syria. They didn't agree over the issue.

Then came "the first part of [a] series examining religious responses to the outbreak of World War I", with Steve Evans reporting from Berlin on the reaction of faith communities in Germany 100 years ago. Germany was 2/3 Protestant and 1/3 Catholic back then. Both churches overwhelmingly backed the war, believing God was on their side. One guest said that the Protestants in particular saw the war as a way of getting their flock back. There were a few conscientious objectors, most of whom were Christians. The Jewish community volunteered for the army, wanting to become part of the German nation's war effort, but anti-Semitism soon reared its head in an ugly smear about them being under-represented in the trenches. The German military carried out a census among troops which proved that rumour to be a complete lie, but the census was then suppressed and the smear allowed to stand. 

Then came an interview with senior Vatican official Archbishop Rino Fisichella about the problems of recruiting young Catholics to a vocation in the Church in the wake the paedophile priests scandal. William Crawley focused on the issue of celibacy as a key problem, along with the scandals, the Church's "archaic" language and its old-fashioned values that belong to another age.

It was onto Ramadan next and a story that was bound to appeal to Sunday:

We hear from orthodox Rabbi Natan Levy who says he's frustrated at what he sees as a lack of engagement between Jews and Muslims in the UK, and is observing Ramadan to increase the understanding between the two faiths.

Rabbi Levy hopes to "turn strangers into friends". He is concerned about the "negative imagery" around Islam.

Then it was onto the living wage (last discussed on last Sunday's edition of the programme):

Nestlé has become the largest manufacturer to sign up to the living wage in the UK. It comes days after a report published by the Living Wage Commission urging action to tackle poverty. William Crawley speaks to the Commission chair, Archbishop John Sentamu.

The Archbishop, of course, supports the campaign. (No opponents were heard from this week).

Finally came the call to scrap Christian worship in school assemblies:

The National Governors' Association has called for the statutory requirement for non-religious schools to hold a daily 'act of collective worship mainly of a Christian character' to be scrapped. We report on the debate and ask why so many schools appear to be in breach of the legislation.

The NGA say the law is "meaningless" in a "multicultural society". 

Firstly, Kevin Bocquet reported from a multi-ethnic school in Manchester, when an assembly celebrating "diversity" was going on in conformity to the 1944 Education Act. The British Humanist Association's Andrew Copson (like the NGA) wants that law scrapped though. Various parents had their say (offering differing points of view), then the headteacher of the Manchester school, who doesn't feel it's outdated, and the churches oppose it too.  

Then came a discussion between Bishop John Pritchard and Gillian Allcroft of the NGA. Though Bishop John is keen for their to be a daily "space" when our Christianity heritage is drawn upon, both agreed that the word "worship" is a problem. The Bishop of Oxford wants it changed to "spiritual reflection". 

To summarise then (by repeating a paragraph from last week's post): Nothing much here then, is there, to undermined Damian Thompson's claim that "Radio 4's Sunday programme offers perhaps the most undiluted liberal bias to be found anywhere on the BBC"? I say not.

Unreasonable fruitcakes

Steve Evans in Warnemunde. Misunderstood?

Since writing the blog post ‘Unreasonable fanatics” the comment count on the BBC Watch/ Steve Evans thread has leapt into the stratosphere. Somewhere amongst them, someone wondered if, perhaps,  removing the commas altogether would help to clarify the meaning. See if you think it does.

(I’m sounding like Craig now)

It was a time when Jews who displeased the Nazis risked their lives.

Well, this (non) punctuation looks as though it means the Jews were okay in 1935 Germany, living the life of riley - but if they happened to ‘displease’ the Nazis by doing something.....Jewy - they’d better watch out.

This seems to support BBCWatch’s original point, because we now know that by 1935 Jews displeased the Nazis merely by ‘being’ Jews. There was nothing a Jew could do to ‘please’ the Nazis. Jews had no alternative, but to ‘displease’ Nazis. 

Perhaps at that time they did not yet risk their lives by just being Jews, only by disobeying requests by Nazis. Now, do the commas need to come back again? 

Two little commas sitting on  a wall one named Peter the other named Oborne. 

  

If only BBC Berlin correspondent Steve Evans had omitted the ‘who’ and added an ‘and’. If he’d said:

It was a time when Jews displeased the Nazis, and risked their lives (if they refused to sell their treasures to the Nazis) then he might have avoided all this fuss.

However, and it’s another however. At the beginning of the piece I’ve spotted something else that ‘displeased’ me. Am I imagining that there’s a slightly ominous undercurrent in that reference to ‘four years later’  - so, these Jews only owned the treasures for four years, as opposed to the Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg’s family’s ‘nearly three centuries’.  

Do I detect a sense of - what’s the term for lack of entitlement? Are we to suspect that the Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg was a more deserving owner than the ‘here today gone tomorrow ‘Jews?  I only say this because I’m spotting unfortunate things all over the place now.  

There’s a certain meme amongst antisemites which supposes that Jews are characteristically wealthy, and, in the manner of, say, large conglomerates that might come along and force smaller companies out of business with aggressive takeover bids, ‘wealthy Jews’ swan in and make purchases from poverty-stricken vendors in an exploitative, ruthless and greedy manner. This ‘trope’ is like the Jewish Lobby, which, in reality, is dwarfed by the Lobbying power of the opposition.  Jack Straw carries it further.

That’s my, perhaps over elaborate, explanation of why I found that bit disturbing.

What’s this? “a forced sale say their descendants today.” 

Say their descendants today? Well now, well now. In the words of renowned, strangulatedly posh art critic Brian Sewell, “The greedy Jews”.........would say that wouldn’t they?   Do they really deserve these German treasures?

Reports that include the qualifier “Say” as the BBC notoriously does with its   “Israel says” always cast doubt on what has been said, as if they only say it in the Mandy Rice-Davies kinda way.

So I’m part Tonge in cheek / part serious.

In particular what I take home from this is the difficulty of communicating in print. Clarity in print is the hardest thing to achieve. We all struggle with it.

I don’t think Steve Evans sets out to be a Jew-basher, but in true BBC fashion he feels sorrow for Hitler’s six million victims of the past, but identifies with the “pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel narrative” of the present. Some people reduce it to the following simplification: “The BBC only like dead Jews. Jews who strive to survive, not so much.”

Why might I think this? (Apart from his disdainful attitude towards BBC Watch)

Since Twitter kept coming up in the conversation I had a look at his twitter profile. A link to a glowing review of a Noam Chomsky lecture - remember Jane Bradley ?- augured badly.

And he’s a fan of Peter Oborne. The Peter Oborne with the  pathological fear of the Jewish Lobby, who alleges that Israel is the tail wagging the American dog. 

That’s not enough to make him an antisemite, is it? But, still, the BBC is full of Jane Bradleys, and people who can’t put together a coherent sentence (think complaints department) so goodness only knows what they know of Israel or what they really think about over-sensitive Jews.

Last, and arguably least, Steve Evans used the word ‘fruitcake‘ in one of his comments.  How significant is that? 

Unreasonable fanatics

Oh dear. There’s a spat - or maybe just a spatette - between BBCWatch and the BBC’s Berlin correspondent Steve Evans -  it revolves around a pause. No -  two pauses to be precise.

Largely responsible for all the fuss are the two commas that BBCWatch employed to denote two specific pauses, arguably to clarify a point. 

Here’s the sentence:

“It was a time when Jews, who displeased the Nazis, risked their lives.”

That was from BBCWatch’s transcription of a broadcast; the commas were there to denote pauses in Steve Evans’s delivery. 

Having listened to the item, which occurred towards the end of Wednesday’s News at Six, I can confidently state that Steve Evans’s delivery was full of pauses. In fact, he was deliberately using the pause for dramatic effect throughout the piece. As it happens, I think the pauses in question were a little misleading. It was potentially a case of two pauses too many. It was as if he got so carried away with pausing that he forgot to consider that they might subtly affect the subtext.

So, BBCWatch’s interpretation of the sentence, or perhaps, misinterpretation of it, was twofold. 

They concluded that either Steve Evans intended to downplay the Nazis’ antisemitism (implying that the Jews needed to do something provocative in order to displease the Nazis,) or he was using the term ‘displease” in an absurdly reductive example of the famous British understatement .

(Had I listened to the piece before reading this spat I would have disagreed with BBCWatch. Steve Evans’s excessive pausing gave me the impression that he didn’t intend to downplay the Nazi’s antisemitism.) However, in isolation, the sentence in question was ambiguous enough to have been have been interpreted in the way BBCWatch interpreted it. 

But it gets worse from there. 

After reading this harsh, perhaps unfair critique of his report, Steve Evans sent BBC Watch an e-mail, which BBCWatch posted on the blog as an Update.

  

The tone and content of the message sheds a different light on the matter. He begins in a sarcastic, dismissive fashion, which may or may not represent the BBC’s defensive attitude towards all criticism of its unfair Israel related coverage.

“I don’t normally spot your website but on a slow day I came across it.  Can I say that what you write about me and my piece is drivel.”

Okay, he’s cross and hurt that he’s been unfairly criticised. (We might know how that feels)

He continues:

 “It reveals a level of historical knowledge and awareness that would shame any moderately intelligent fifteen year old with half an interest in the events of the last century.”

He was referring to BBCWatch’s: 

” The crass description of a racist, persecutory, genocidal regime as “displeased” and the inversion of action and reaction in that sentence – which makes Jews the active party who “displeased” the passive Nazis – is both historically ridiculous and offensive.” 

He is assuming that BBCWatch is accusing him of minimizing the holocaust, and he is arguing that since the Nazis forced this sale in 1935 -  in the pre-war climate of antisemitism - his phrase “Jews who displeased the Nazis”,  was a reasonable, if cynical way of expressing the situation at the time. In fact it was a kind of understatement, which would have been obvious to most listeners, with the benefit of hindsight, i.e. our knowledge of the genocide that was to follow. It could have indicated the speaker’s sympathy with the Jews, which is the way (I hope) most listeners would have taken as read.

I think that is a reasonable argument.

A cacophony of unnecessary hyperbole often exposes little more than the difficulty of communicating in print, particularly when over-sensitive and clashing comments seem to be at cross purposes. 

At first I was inclined to think that (in this case) there wouldn’t have been such a protracted slanging match if they’d been debating face to face. 

Initially I thought it simply demonstrated the ease with which offence can be given or taken at the written word, i.e.,  in the absence of body language, tone of voice, facial expression, background, context etc etc.

However, once you’ve dug a hole with the aid of sarcasm and anger, you might as well keep digging, as they say on the internet; and he does, with his below the line contributions.

He manages to squander some sympathy by starting his comment with: “I’m probably a fool to comment here”. 

This insinuates that he thinks people who support BBCWatch are nowt but a bunch of fanatics who are incapable of being reasonable. If that is representative of the BBC’s attitude, then it reinforces some of the criticism of the BBC that is often made on sites such as this one. If it isn’t, then it risks giving that impression. (As does their continual insistence that they get almost everything "about right”)

     

By this time he’s lost his rag. 

“I never thought I’d get anything like a correction or an apology from you and I was right. You need to think before typing.”

I understand his frustration, and it’s unclear from whom he is (not) expecting an apology, but this probably begs one of those  ‘physician, heal thyself’ retorts. 

He later says the commas weren’t in the script, and that inserting them alters the meaning, which is fair enough. But the pauses were there.............. A commenter answered: “there is no other punctuation denoting a pause” (I know what he was getting at, but, hey, what’s wrong with the dash?)

I find Steve Evans’s response to that innocuous explanation, and his two subsequent comments, quite disturbing.......

“Now you’ve lost me. Over and out” (surely he could understand that the punctuation was there to transcribe the verbal to the written )

...and the final sentence:

““Over” means: can’t waste any more time on the paranoid drivel you’re website churns out.”

Which I see as disappointing confirmation of what I said earlier. That Steve Evans and perhaps the BBC as a whole regards critics of its Israel-related coverage, including websites like BBC Watch and, Heaven forfend, “Is”,  as a bunch of fanatics who are entirely incapable of being reasonable.