Where The Independent leads the BBC follows

We were discussing on the open thread how The Independent disgraced itself overnight with the following headline:

It was, of course, three white men. These three white men:

The Independent subsequently edited it to remove the word 'black' but should never have posted it in the first place.

And guess what's happened now? 

Here's a tweet from BBC Pidgin: 

They've now deleted it and sent out a new one [without an apology]. 

Here's a flavour of the reaction:

Lord of Adders Black: Will you be issuing an apology @bbcnewspidgin for trying to stir up racial tension by stating the people shot by Rittenhouse were black? You’ve deleted it but it’s been stored for posterity. You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you? It’s the sort of behaviour I’d expect from The Independent and you wouldn’t want to be associated with that shower.

Lamentable. 

No room for antisemitism in the Labour Party etc....

In 2016 we wrote about Maxine Peake, when she played the feisty heroine in “Three Girls” 

“I can’t imagine hard leftie, pro-Palestinian Maxine Peake playing anything other than a passionate Social Justice Warrior. It will probably be all about the struggle against those heartless authorities who wouldn’t listen. Not about the grooming gangs with a warped attitude to females.”

Peake has also played a feisty character in “Shameless” and a feisty barrister in Silks and she is a real-life feisty agitator in that hypocritical, “literally a communist” (and probably well-remunerated thank you very much) feisty, actressy, opinionated way that is prevalent amongst actors whose careers the BBC disproportionately promotes. Unlike, say, Laurence wrongthink Fox, whose career has plummeted. (apparently) 

Several references to Peake in the Spectator have greeted the connected news of Rebecca “Wrong-Daily’s” sacking (for retweeting Peake’s innuendo-laden remark that blames the IDF for putting that nasty ‘restraint technique’ into the innocent little heads of the US police) by declaring that they’ve never heard of Maxine Peake or that she’s a rotten actress. 

I beg to disagree with such a mean spirited sidetrack.  I’d say she’s as good an actress as any of the other hard-left, opinionated Corbynista actresses that abound in “BBC drama” circles, and perhaps better than some. However, her political opinions certainly don’t do much for her image, and by association, certainly don’t do much towards redressing the BBC’s reputation as a lefty echo-chamber.

In which not only does Maxine Peake blame the death of the George Floyd on Israel, but the Independent sees fit to tell readers that this might indeed be the case. https://t.co/0tsDmqpGY8

— Nick Timothy (@NJ_Timothy) June 25, 2020

I jumped to the conclusion that Starmer had been looking for an opportunity to sack Long-Bailey, and I think he has taken advantage of that ill-judged tweet rather prematurely. It might come back to bite him on the bum, because, unfortunately, the argument that there was nothing actually “untruthful” in Peake’s accusation in the Independent article will gain traction, simply because the elasticity within left-wing antisemitism stretches in a wider and more complex and convoluted manner than (the typically superficial) public opinion can cope with.

It doesn’t matter if the allegation that the  IDF ‘trained’ George Floyd’s killer has been debunked. It doesn’t matter if the only link between the IDF and US cops was that “100 officers attended a conference hosted by the Israeli consulate eight years ago” or that it was for “a seminar about counter-terrorism”. No-one who’s got the bit between their teeth cares one jot about such a trivial discrepancy. The current antisemitism within the BLM movement and within the left-wing establishment is so ingrained I’m increasingly pessimistic about the future.

I’ll just assume Starmer doesn’t think much of Long-Bailey, (and I don’t blame him) but if he claims sacking her was done to demonstrate his virtuous determination to rid the Labour Party of antisemitism, I simply don’t believe him.

Update:

Hard-hitting article in the Spectator. Does Israel train America’s police forces? by Dominic Green.

“…… the bigger the big lie is, the more believable it becomes. So of course rioters in Los Angeles smash Jewish stores and spray ‘Free Palestine’ on a synagogue in the name of George Floyd. Of course Twitter seethes with ignorant and malicious claims that Israel trains American police in how to kill black people. The radical left have been teaching hatred of Jews and Israel for decades, and the mainstream left has pandered to those groups and their obsessions.”

Fine and Not Fine

A comment from MB first thing this morning...

Monkey Brains19 May 2019 at 01:19  

Horrific Fake News reporting from the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-48323573 

Read that and weep after you look at the videos showing exactly who initiated the violence - this is just one: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mnHzF70Now 

And note the BBC won't even admit to the existence of a group called the "Muslim Defence League". Just remember that when you hear the 1000th reference to TR being the founder of the EDL. Fake News BBC won't even admit to there being an MDL.  

And remember - if Baroness Warsi gets her way you will go to prison if you criticise the "Muslimness" on display in the video...intimidatory shouting of "Allahu Akbar" on the streets of a once peaceful Britain. As the video guy says "No one disses our religion"...that's pretty much what the Warsi Definition means.

...had me checking that very BBC report.

Compare it to even The Guardian and The Independent's reporting of the same story and you'll see the BBC failing to report vital but uncomfortable elements of the story that even the left-leaning papers evidently felt obliged to report - most obviously the heavy involvement of the group called the "Muslim Defence League", who the BBC didn't even mention. 

If even the Guardian and the Independent can report their name and their involvement why can't the BBC?

And the Guardian and the Independent are also honest enough to make it fairly clear that the anti-Tommy Robinson crowd were at least as bad, if not worse, on the violence front. The BBC article, in very stark contrast, clouds that in so much linguistic mystery that its readers might easily assume that the violence came mainly from TR's side. 

Indeed, the BBC article as a whole is worth using in a secondary school/university English language course to show how language can be deployed to appear neutral while being very far from neutral.

And here's the thing: Despite being fairer, both the Guardian and the Independent pieces are unashamedly biased against TR. As neither paper is required to be impartial, that's fine. But the BBC, which is required to be impartial, is even more loaded against TR - despite following forms of language that cover their bias in a thin veneer of 'impartiality'. And that's not fine. 

Less than half the story

Avan Najmadeen

The BBC News website has a report in its Stoke and Staffordshire section headlined Man jailed for life for murdering wife in immigration row. 

Failed Iranian asylum seeker Dana Abdullah stabbed his estranged wife Avan Najmadeen to death "in a row over immigration", the BBC report says. 

Reading it you are told that the murdered lady had "refused to support his application to remain in the UK".

Read on through the piece's 15 paragraphs though till you read the very last paragraph and you'll find, almost as an afterthought, something startling: 

Other motives for the murder included Ms Najmadeen "starting a new relationship and converting to Christianity", Det Ch Insp Downing said.

And there the BBC report ends.  

Weirdly, the Independent has an extra angle on this that the BBC omits altogether. Its headline is Dana Abdullah: Illegal immigrant paedophile who murdered his estranged wife is jailed and its report begins by calling him "a convicted paedophile and illegal immigrant".

Why does the BBC's report omit the fact that this Iranian illegal immigrant is a convicted paedophile? 

The Independent goes on to say, "Stafford Crown Court heard Abdullah had threatened to kill Ms Najmadeen before, claiming she had “dishonoured” him after converting to Christianity". 

As so often, the BBC gives us half the story on these kinds of story and arranges the rest of the story with the utmost care.

Nazanin

Alan at Biased BBC has ferreted out a 1st November report from the Independent that, in the light of everything that's followed on the Boris/Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe story, makes for fascinating reading. 

It shows how uncontroversial and widely-welcomed Mr Johnson's remarks were until, a few days later, they suddenly became controversial and widely-reviled. 

The game-changer was an Iranian judicial decision (if it can be dignified with such a term) to bring her back to court on the basis of Boris's remarks. 

Partisans here are getting fired up, and - weirdly - Brexit seems to be the dividing line. 

Michael Gove has now found himself attracting flak too for his comments about the case on this morning's Andrew Marr Show. Mr Gove was defending Boris Johnson and, in doing so and in responding to a question from Andrew Marr ("What was she doing when she went to Iran?"), replied "I don't know". And when pressed ("You say that you don’t know what she was doing. Her husband is very clear that she was there on holiday with her child") replied, "Well, in that case I take exactly her husband’s assurance in that regard". And when Andrew pressed again ("So was she training journalists?") replied, "Well, her husband said that she was there on holiday, and her husband is the person who should know."

To some he was merely being honest; to others he was compounding the lie about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. 

The fired-up Brexit Partisan brigades then began amplifying it all - "You're jumping on an anti-Brexit bandwagon", "No, you're a bunch of nasty right-wingers determined to protect Johnson at all costs", etc.

And the BBC, whose lead reporters have been vocal and unequivocal (especially on Twitter) in their criticism of Boris Johnson over this, splashed their news website for a while today with:

Ah for the days when the likes of Lord Palmerston could order in British forces and daringly rescue distressed damsels like Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe from the clutches of foreign tyrants!

I do hope this turns out well for her and her family. And soon.

*******

Meanwhile, on the 'complaints from both sides' front, here's James O'Brien - occasional Newsnight presenter - complaining about The Andrew Marr Show, and the programme's editor (as he does) then responding to that criticism:

James O'Brien doesn't strike me as the sort who'll ever let someone else have the last word, so this is bound to go on until even Rob loses the will to live and gives JO'B the final say. 

Islamic Vikings - an update

All credit to the Independent for updating its readers over the much-reported claim that the Vikings wore Arabic words for 'Allah' and 'Ali' in their burial garments, thus suggesting a strong Islamic influence on Viking culture.

They followed up the story with "a leading expert" in medieval Islamic art and archaeology, who has rubbished the claims saying that there's no Arabic script present at all.

It's a fascinating read and, to my mind, places the Swedish researchers (and the media who reported their claims) firmly in the dock.

The BBC's article on the original story was particularly uncritical of the original claims and overly triumphalist for Islam, but the BBC (unlike the Indie) hasn't yet provided an update. 

#fail

Sammy Wilson - not a Tory

It's interesting the lengths some will go to to discredit criticism of the BBC. 

The Independent has the headline, "Many MPs who complained about BBC's coverage of Brexit are 'hardline Euro-climate sceptics'". It cites a "report" by the pressure group DeSmog UK claiming that 18 of the 72 MPs who signed the letter condemning the BBC's Brexit coverage are 'hardline Euro-climate sceptics'.

Well, for starters, the DeSmog folk are just the kind of trustworthy analysts who think that Sammy Wilson of the DUP is a Conservative MP:

“Within this group of hardline Euro-climate sceptics are also Conservative MPs, David Nuttall, Andrew Bridgen, David Davies, Richard Drax, John Redwood and Sammy Wilson – these men have voted consistently against measures to prevent climate change and have previously rallied against the BBC’s coverage of the topic,” DeSmog said

and the Independent is the kind of (online) newspaper that fails to correct them over that.

The Independent is also the kind of (online) newspaper that misuses the word "many" in its headline. Given that a simple bit of subtraction tells us that if 18 out of 72 MPs are part of this "hardline Euro-climate sceptic" tendency (as DeSmog and the Independent claim) then that means that 54 out of 72 MPs (probably) aren't - and that's "many" more than those who are. 

The headline should, therefore, have read:  "A few MPs who complained about BBC's coverage of Brexit are 'hardline Euro-climate sceptics'".

New man

Last night I watched Gareth Malone  (great Choir reunion: Episode 1.)

Now before opining on matters I know nothing about, as we keyboard warriors are apt to do, I thought I’d better see what I could find about Gareth Malone on t’internet.

Or as they say on agenda-driven documentaries these days “I wanted to find out (whatever it is)” when they really mean they wanted to ferret out confirmation of a pre-existing bias. 

I was searching for evidence of hypocrisy, insincerity, lefty luvvyism and cynical manipulation by TV commissioning editors and producers to boost ratings through over sentimentalised emoting. (you know, featuring characters with the heartbreaking back-story, the overcoming of crippling shyness/ stammering / disability - i.e., triumphing over adversity. 

There you have the pre-existing bias with which I approached Google.

One thing I will say about Gareth. Over the past ten years he has sported a wide and eccentric variety of images,  outfits and hairstyles. The worst look, since you asked, was the beard, but I’m not a fan of beards. Luckily he was clean-shaven for the latest episode. 

Despite the elephantine presence of all the factors I mentioned in my last but one paragraph, I enjoyed watching Gareth’s early programmes, though the shine has worn off  recently. But I think, despite all those in-your-face, tricksy editing devices, there was a genuine message about the uplifting effect of the classical / pop choir. It did draw together people of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds, and succeeded in uniting them in one collective objective. And it showed how any of us might actually achieve quite ambitious aspirations through effort and self discipline.

So, anyway, what did I find?

Well, he’s not gay. A little camp, but who isn’t? He’s got a wife and two kids with retro names and at one stage he wanted to be an actor. He was trained at the Royal Academy of Music and I know how hard classical musicians train.

Here’s a really mean article in the Independent from 2012, boldly and exclusively stating that bears shit in the woods.

A “dishonest” reality show?  Whatever next?

But Mr Chaloner, 48, told Radio Times that, while he enjoyed singing, the filming was "a pain in the arse". He said: "The programme makers knew exactly how they were going to play this. They'd put different people in different stereotypes in order to display how we all come together in an example of wonderful musicianship. 

"They would play on me being a surgeon, pretending that I'm some sort of Lancelot Spratt-type character [the fearsome chief surgeon from the 1954 film Doctor in the House]. I think it's dishonest, actually." Mr Chaloner added: "It will purport to show reality but it's not reality at all, I'm afraid.

Here’s where you push your tongue between your bottom teeth and your lower lip and go  “egh” like kids do to indicate you’ve just made a superfluous statement of the bleedin’ obvious. (Perhaps kids do something else nowadays, but that move was very effective)

In other words, of course “reality” TV does this, as any fule kno, and you do have to take it into consideration when watching - but  really, by pitching this piece in this way, the Indy was doing the exact same thing. Sensationalising / cherry-picking for the sake of it. In fact if you persevere with this article you’ll see that it ends up admitting that the programme did what it set out to do - brought people together and made them happy.

Anyway, I couldn’t find anything particularly interesting about Gareth in my research. He wasn’t a drug dealer, a member of StWC or a friend of Hamas, and his military wives thing indicates that he’s not institutionally pacifist.

But you know what? (I really hate that expression, so I threw it in for an experiment) There was something that really really disturbed me about that otherwise uplifting episode. In the original programme - about ten years ago - one of the featured schools (Lancaster School in Leicester)  had a particularly difficult group of boys to win over. The beat box boys. Too cool to sing in choirs. However, Gareth won them round as you knew he would. 

beautiful boy

Imran (“I do my own thing” ) had a beautiful voice.(31:49)  At 37:02 he sings,  and at the Albert Hall at 39:39

Back to the present. Gareth tracks him down on YouTube.  He’s a beat box singer. And...now he’s a devout Muslim. Still with a beautiful voice, but unfortunately he can’t join the reunion.

Personally, my baggage makes me think that is shocking. It’s appalling. But, should the fact that Imran (who’s decided to change his name to Khaled) has travelled in what I see as the wrong direction, be something that Gareth would find troubling in any way at all? 

New man

Here’s the conversation that took place on the phone.

GM:

Hi, it’s Gareth Malone.

I/K:

Wow.

GM:

I found your music really moving. Really wonderful What have you been up to? `

(Voice over) “Now 23 and a senior care officer, Imran has changed his name to Khaled, as a devout Muslim his faith has helped him leave his troubled schooldays behind him”

On film, still handsome but with straggly beard:

I/K:

“I feel like I became a better person, so when I was 16 I wanted to give that better person a new name. I didn’t feel I was Imran any more, and to become Khaled, so in the really big transition I have been so caught up in, my ego as to where I feel like i’m at now, where I just kind of focus on spirituality and God and things like that.

Voice-over: “But Khaled has never forgotten his time with Gareth.”

Imran/Khaled, watching a clip of his younger self with Gareth:

I/K:

“Here you can see that I was a teenager working out where I fitted in life, so his role that he played in me. embracing singing more, was definitely a vital one, and who knows if I’d still be singing today if it wasn’t for what he did.”

Voice-over:

“Despite his enduring love of music, Khaled’s beliefs mean he doesn’t feel he can sing in the reunion choir.”

Khaled, (first on film, then cutting to Gareth’s conversation with him on the phone:)

“Choirs don’t come from Islam. They come from Christianity. Most choirs sing in churches. Not all of them but the majority of where it stems from. Unfortunately I don’t think I’d wanna be...”

Gareth, on the phone:

“That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine”

I/K:

“Indecipherable.....I wish you  the best that could possibly happen”.

GM:

“Alright, all the best, it’s so lovely to hear your voice. Bye bye Khaled, Bye.” Gareth hangs up, with a sad face, shaking his head.

To camera: 

GM:

“Wow” My goodness. That’s not the boy that I knew. That is the most dramatic change of everyone. I mean I know some of them have grown beards and cut their and got muscley ... but he has changed to the core. And you could see it there, and I’m so happy that he’s gone down - that he’s gone down a positive route. He’s found religion and it’s given him something that’s given him focus in his life.”

Oh dear. Gareth is so happy that Imran with the lovely voice has turned into Khaled the Muslim whose faith has prevented him from doing something he thinks is associated with Christianity, and in which he must not participate. 

Well, I’m not happy about it, and I’m not really happy that Gareth is happy about it, and I don’t know if the happiness genuine on Gareth’s part, or if it’s that manipulative editing that  the BBC producers use to promote political correctness, inclusivity, social cohesion and to assert that the divisive practices of devout Islam are an asset to a country formerly known as “Christian.” 

On the positive side at least his religion hasn’t taught him that all music is unIslamic. What a waste of musical ability that notion is. I’d hope Gareth would agree.

Howard Jacobson on free speech

On a related subject, I must just recommend a superb article in the Independent by Howard Jacobson.

The attacks on Germaine Greer over her dismissal of 'transgenderism' and on Martin Amis over his dismissal of Jeremy Corbyn are its pegs, but the piece is essentially a plea for the benefits of free speech, especially to those who don't like what they're hearing - and we can't get enough of those at the moment:

It isn’t only in the name of free speech that the views of an itchy polemicist should be tolerated – and I say itchy polemicist promoting thought, not itchy ideologue promoting violence – but because provocation is indispensable to the workings of a sound, creative culture. The loser, when silencers have their way, is not the provocateur but the provoked. To be easily offended is to be shut off from the invigoration of that argumentative give-and-take we call liberty; not to understand the poetics of provocation is to miss out on the joys of living in a literate and robust society that excels at satire and burlesque. 

We hear too much of “phobia”. Attach “phobia” to any cause you care for and you have ring-fenced it against the words of the critic and the devious antics of the clown alike. Nothing is to be mocked; everything – except the act of critical dissent itself – is sacrosanct. Thus have we created for ourselves an impoverished world of touchy fools who understand no mode of address other than the internet’s yes/no, like/dislike, thumbs up/thumbs down discourse of the dumb.

What the papers say

Now I’ve done my review, I need to do a review of the reviews of it that have appeared in the press. Andrew Billen (Times/paywall)  is one of those (rare) reviewers who sometimes sees things from an independent angle. He isn’t completely taken in, as the other somewhat gullible reviewers often are in the mainstream press. 

For example, his review (July 6th) of “A song for Jenny”, (one family’s experience of their daughter’s murder in the 7/7 terrorist attack on London)  bucked the trend. 

The Guardian’s  verdict of that drama was so gushing that I hastily skipped to the comments below it. The Guardian’s commentariat seem to have woken up recently. Many of them spotted the flaws in this production. It’s a brave person who dares to criticise such a project, but once the first arrow is slung it’s less risky. 

Here’s one example:

“What happened that day was horrific and I totally sympathise with all concerned and am relieved that no-one from my family was caught up in it.
That said, this drama was unbareably (sic) awful; stilted acting, twee set pieces, clichéd, melodramatic, and utterly thrilled with itself.
The BBC has lost its way, maybe because society has lost its way.”

That commenter took a small hammering for that, but still.

The Telegraph’s Michael Hogan was even more gushing than the Guardian. Since the Telegraph has recently started morphing into the Guardian, I hesitated briefly before skipping. 

One commenter said:

I'm sorry and, to be fair, I only watched the last 20 minutes of it but I found it to be trite, manipulative and self serving. I would give them a trowel if they were going to lay it on any thicker.

Someone said he had no business commenting on something he’d only watched 20 minutes of, and the majority of Telegraph commenters  seemed to have been ‘deeply moved’ by the programme.

Andrew Billen was the only MSM critic that had anything critical to say. After the obligatory expression of sympathy for the real characters in the tragedy, he admitted that he thought the drama was ‘unsatisfactory.’ His article was headed: Big issues drowned in sentimental song.” (£) There you have it. Now for his take on Children of the Gaza War.

Andrew Billen's review of Lyse Doucet’s film was short and comparatively sweet.  It started with praise, and continued with descriptive text. Then he said:

 ”What was annoying was that Doucet’s film was scrupulously balanced by her visiting Israeli children traumatised by Hamas’s rocket attacks on their homes - yet still unerringly pointed to the propaganda victory that Israel has awarded to the Palestinian cause.
Israel would never have attacked if its citizens had not been attacked first. Hamas doubtless deliberately sheltered its rocket launchers in civilian areas and next to schools. The fact remained that only one of the 500 dead children was an Israeli child and holes in the walls of a kibbutz are no match for what we saw of the tragic remains of Gaza City.”

So he found some of the omissions annoying! He inferred that none of this would have happened if Hamas had not willingly instigated it. This needs to be said loud and clear. What is everyone afraid of?

Now to the Telegraph.  Harry Mount was won over by Lyse. Despite initially confessing that he was on ‘red alert for some Israel-bashing’ Harry’s antenna were not very effective last night. In fact they must have been switched off altogether.

“But Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, is more on the ball than that. She was even-handed in her interviews with Palestinian and Israeli children caught up in last summer’s 51-day war – when rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, and Israel responded with massive force. More than 500 children were killed in those 51 days, and thousands more traumatised. One 12-year-old boy saw his brother and three cousins killed on a Gaza beach by a rocket from an Israeli gunboat. His 1,000-yard stare, and husky voice – old beyond its years – were haunting.
The simple words of children were all the more affecting. “We didn’t know the beach was dangerous,” he said. Those poor souls murdered on a Tunisia beach last month must have thought much the same.”

This received a well deserved bashing of its own in the below the line comments.

"The simple words of children were all the more affecting. “We didn’t know the beach was dangerous,” he said. Those poor souls murdered on a Tunisia beach last month must have thought much the same."
Equating Israelis and Isis terrorists is wrong on many counts. Not even mentioning that on the previous day there were accounts of rockets being fired from the same spot on the beach and that the figures were not identified as children but assumed to be running cometant (sic) is something that should be mentioned in this article. The impression given is that the Israelis murdered the kids intentionally as the Isis terrorist did in Tunisia. Fact: There is no war and there was no war in Tunisia more than there was a war on 7/7 in London or 11/9 in NY. Fact: there was a war during the beach attack in the Gaza strip and in Israel.”

said one person.

'When we grow up, we're going to kill them' The arab/muslim dreams of death and killing.The Jew/Israeli about life and how to make it better for his/her children. Hamas in Gaza build terror tunnels and couldnt give a g'dam for their people. Israel builds bomb shelters to keep its people safe.”

said another.

The Independent. Sally Newall’s review was brief and descriptive rather than overtly judgmental. The reviewer’s choices of which quotes to reproduce in her article was quite sufficient to show clearly which side she identifies with.

The only btl comment at the time of writing is telling:

“When the BBC momentarily departed from its Zionist bias, in one of its token gestures like this programme, and actually mentioned the plight of the Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk refugee camp, Doucet said they were descended from those who'd fled the fighting between Arab armies and Israel in 1948. An absolute distortion of the truth. They were driven out by Israeli terror, and they have lived in pain ever since. There is no balance between a bully and his victim. The BBC's reporting on Palestine is an exclusively Zionist narrative, in contrast with the excellent Al Jazeera. Doucet would do well to get some training from AlJ.”

Blimey. The commenter was using a thoroughly British name, too.

Oddly enough, the Guardian hasn’t reviewed it yet.