A letter to 'The Times'

Here's a letter to The Times, published three days ago. It comes from former BBC reporter/producer Eric Abraham, and sums things up perfectly:

Sir, I read about the terminology used by Tarik Kafala, head of the BBC Arabic service, for the killers of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, with incredulity and anger (News, Jan 27). In line with BBC World Service policy he rejected the word “terrorist” for that of “two men who killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine”. What about using “killers” or “murderers”? But they inspired terror, so why not “terrorists”?

I am shocked at the climate in this country in which the most obvious term is deemed unacceptable through fear or misguided political correctness. Shame on you BBC.

Eric Abraham 

Former producer, BBC Panorama, London W8

BBC Arabic

The Independent's interview with BBC Arabic head Tarik Kafala reminds us that BBC Arabic "is now fully funded by, and accountable to, the UK licence-fee payer." 

And what are Arabic audiences getting from us licence-fee payers?

Well, besides BBC Arabic's radio service, begun in 1938, there's a 24-hour BBC Arabic Television news channel, launched in 2008. BBC Arabic's global audience (on TV, radio and social media) is now 36.2 million. It has studios in London, Cairo and Lebanon. Mr Kafala, a British-Libyan, heads a team of about 200 staff at BBC Arabic’s base in New Broadcasting House.

According to the Indie's Adam Sherwin, 

BBC Arabic is tasked with providing “impartial, balanced and accurate news and information” across a region where reports on the Gaza war provoke cries of bias from all sides and one viewer’s “terrorist” can be another’s “freedom fighter”.

Did BBC Arabic show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammad? 

Although BBC Arabic would not show Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, which its audience would find deeply insulting, an exception was made for the post-massacre edition of the magazine. “The cover has appeared … on a banner or on a newsstand, on our screens. We haven’t shown it in full frame or real detail,” Kafala said.

“We’re trying to minimise the insult while telling the story. We considered in great detail the risks to staff. We have people in Somalia, Yemen, Beirut and Libya. There were very strong editorial reasons for the BBC to show the cover because it was right at the centre of a huge international story.”

What does Mr Kafala think of the BBC's coverage of the so-called Arab Spring?

“Sometimes we can be quite conservative and not as fast or close to stories as our competitors,” Kafala admitted. Viewing figures fell when the Arab Spring began, as rival channels took sides, but its Egyptian audience has since increased by 6.5 million.

“For good or ill, we had to stand back at the BBC,” Kafala said. “But I think we have been vindicated editorially because our audience began to grow strongly when the story turned into something more nuanced than it had appeared.”

I have to say that my experience of experiencing the Arab Spring on the UK version of the BBC didn't strike me as "standing back" and "not taking sides", especially in its early, heady days when the BBC seemed very slow to spot the wintry possibilities of their happy-clappy, 'Bliss it was to be alive!' revolutions.  

And what of the BBC's reporting of conflicts like Gaza?

BBC Arabic houses journalists whose families may be at the sharp end of conflicts in Syria or Egypt, and sometimes they have to rein in their emotions. “How do you keep your distance from a story? In some individuals, it becomes an issue. They’re journalists, they have to keep the professional line,” said Kafala.

During the Gaza conflict, he was insistent that BBC Arabic must “reflect the outrage and the suffering, but to adopt it would be wrong”, a distinction that frustrated some staff.

"A distinction that frustrated some staff"?...

Well, that pretty much tells you all you need to know about the views of many of the BBC Arabic Services employees. (Not that we couldn't have guessed that).

That frustration obviously went well beyond the confines of BBC Arabic. Many a non-BBC Arabic Service BBC reporter blatantly chafed against this injunction not to "adopt" "the outrage and the suffering". Jon Donnision has never stopped doing so.

Loaded words

So, Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, believes the word "terrorist" is too "loaded" a word to use about the terrorists who carried out the recent terrorist atrocities in Paris. 

He tells the Independent:

We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is.

Terrorism is such a loaded word. The UN has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word and they can’t. It is very difficult to. We know what political violence is, we know what murder, bombings and shootings are and we describe them. That’s much more revealing, we believe, than using a word like terrorist which people will see as value-laden.

We avoid the word terrorists. It’s a terrorist attack, anti-terrorist police are deployed on the streets of Paris. Clearly all the officials and commentators are using the word so obviously we broadcast that.

As the Independent notes, however, Mr Kafala is only following the BBC's own editorial guidelines there.  

Unfortunately, there is no agreed or universal consensus on what constitutes a terrorist, or a terrorist attack. Dictionaries may offer definitions but the United Nations has again just failed to reach agreement. The obvious reason is that terrorism is regarded through a political prism.

We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly.  Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgements.  We try to avoid the use of the term "terrorist" without attribution.  When we do use the term we should strive to do so with consistency in the stories we report across all our services and in a way that does not undermine our reputation for objectivity and accuracy.

The word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened.  We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as "bomber", "attacker", "gunman", "kidnapper", "insurgent", and "militant".  We should not adopt other people's language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.

Of course, most people will think that all of this is a load of old nonsense. We have a widely-shared rule-of-thumb definition of what a "terrorist" is - "a non-state actor who uses murderous violence to achieve political ends" - and trying to hide behind alleged confusion at the UN is silly.

Yes, the UN (and others) may disagree about who should be called a terrorist in certain circumstances, but it's really not very difficult to agree that some people unquestionably do meet the common definition of the term - people like the men who did what they did in Paris. Deliberately avoiding calling them "terrorists" seems like absurd hand-wringing.

This is where we get into the familiar debate about where BBC 'impartiality' should begin and end again. Should the BBC's commitment to 'impartiality' be to an 'absolute' idea of 'impartiality'? Or should it only be impartial towards everyone who isn't an enemy of democracy? Should there never be any "value-laden" language from the BBC? Should no one be subject to adverse value judgements and "loaded" terminology from the BBC?

Mr Kafala doesn't think that the killers of Paris should be subject to "loaded", "value-laden" terminology, but plenty of  BBC staff seem be get away with using all manner of other "loaded, value-laded" terms. You'll doubtless be able to think of plenty of examples, but I'll just mention one - the growing use of the deeply loaded term "Islamophobic", which many BBC reporters are now using without inverted commas. When will that term be 'advised against' by the BBC editorial guidelines? 

At the risk of sounding like the BBC's new favourite, the Pub Landlord, a little bit of common sense is needed at the BBC. They are looking completely out-of-touch, ridiculous and ethically dubious over this. They need to think how bad this looks to people beyond BBC Arabic, especially to BBC licence fee payers.

Nice but dim

The BBC has presented Middle Eastern issues from a predominantly Arabist perspective for several decades, but when people observe the religiously fuelled turmoil that's erupting throughout the Arab world, the idea that the troubles behind the “Israel Palestine conflict” may somehow be related must surely occur to them sooner or later.  

The appointment of Raffi Berg as Tarik Kafala’s replacement as head of the BBC News website’s Middle East desk set off a reflexive response from the usual pro-Palestinian organisations. Events have shown that ‘pro Palestinian’ advocacy is actually ‘anti-Israel’ advocacy. The plight of the Palestinians is all but forgotten in the rush to hurt Israel with boycotts and bannings.

I imagine someone Googled “Raffi Berg” to see what dirt the wonderful worldwide web could unearth the moment the appointment was announced  

Lo and behold; up came a passing reference on this humble blog to two comments that had been posted on the Biased-BBC blog, apparently by Raffi himself, but with the handle ‘Soothsayer’. They concerned the phrasing and wording the BBC was using at the time of Operation Pillar of Cloud and dated November 22nd 2012

Why, one might have asked, use a moniker while at the same time signing off with full contact details? But such is the interweb. People do strange things there.

The comments in question appeared to be strangely and uncharacteristically sympathetic to the detractors of the BBC that inhabit the Biased-BBC blog. Mr. Berg actually appeared to be seeking the views of ‘Biased-BBC’s’ commentariat . Whatever next!

 “Can we please use the following form of words.....?” Mr B appears to ask. 

As the BBC reputedly regards  Biased-BBC as a hate site, and accordingly dismisses the commentariat as mouth frothing bigots and racists, this turn of events seemed most peculiar. One was bound to wonder about the credibility of those comments, but the fact that BBC employees had indeed engaged with the site in the distant past combined with my own stupidity and my natural generosity of spirit made me give them the benefit of the doubt. 

 However, if the whole thing was in fact a kind of whistle-blowing act on the part of some sneaky third party who had decided to post a couple of the BBC’s internal e-mails on a forum belonging to the opposition, (using the handle ‘soothsayer’) the whole thing would actually make sense. 

“Ah, I see” said the blind man, having missed the blindingly obvious. ” Now it all falls into place.” 

BBC Watch seemed to deduce the scenario straight away.

Some unidentified BBC persona, perhaps resentful at being advised to report Operation Pillar of Cloud in a fair and impartial manner rather than with the usual partisan anti-Israel  twist, “leaked” the e-mails by posting them verbatim on Biased-BBC, confusingly and mischievously omitting to clarify that they were in fact BBC internal memos.

So it’s likely that the posting wasn’t after all, Raffi Berg reaching out to the mouth-frothers, or in fact anything much to do with Raffi Berg - more’s the pity; instead it was either......: 

a) an anonymous attempt to reassure we Zionists that our concerns were being taken seriously, or 

b)  an anonymous attempt to insinuate that Zionist tentacles had reached the innards of the BBC, and reveal to the world at large what the wicked Zionist lobby had been up to.

If a) surely Soothsayer would have included a brief explanatory introduction such as: “See? we really do care what you think, here’s an internal memo to prove it.....”

So the more likely speculation is b) the tentacles.

Whatever it was, my somewhat obscure reference must have popped up on Google, and thus a molehill become a small mountain. One thing their hysterical reaction to Raffi Berg’s appointment shows clearly and unequivocally; some people get carried away with their own zeal. 

Tarik Rafala did make some attempt to appear impartial, and I daresay Raffi Berg will do likewise. We’ll just have to wait and see whether there’s any discernible  difference in tone on the BBC’s website 'going forward.'

 I can now sit back and marvel at my own stupidity for believing the unbelievable.

P.S. The author of the piece about Raffi Berg’s alleged pro-Israel bias that has been so widely disseminated on the internet is Amena Saleem.  The antisemitic comments it has attracted are staggeringly vicious and racist.

Amena is described as ‘a journalist and activist’ working closely with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in the UK.

Amena Saleem; sour and sad

In the picture she looks sour,  yet rather sad.  What a shame that people like this devote themselves to such a soul-destroying cause as the destruction of the Jewish state.

She sees Israel as an abomination, and Jews as inherently evil, instead of accepting that the Palestinians are the architects of their own misfortune and that Israeli Jews could easily be their salvation.

If people like Amena started appreciating Israel for the opportunities and prosperity its creativity and dynamism could bring to all the inhabitants of the region there would be no need for that sour face or all that bitter resentment. 

At the very least, by simply recognising  Israel’s right to exist and renouncing all violence against it, she and her co-PSCers could pack up their troubles in their old kit bags and smile smile smile.