Where is Ukraine?

“BBC chiefs are lining up journalist and newsreader Clive Myrie to replace Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, The Mail on Sunday can reveal”, says the The Mail on Sunday.

My favourite Clive Myrie moment came five years ago when he appeared on Richard Osman's House of Games and had to locate Ukraine on a map of Europe. My flabber was well and truly gasted when, after TV presenter Angela Scanlon correctly marked her guess for where Ukraine is with a green dot, Clive, having given it time and thought, then revealed his orange dot for where he thought Ukraine is:

Clive had located it in Azerbaijan. He didn't win the point. 

“He reads the news. It would be embarrassing”, teased Richard Osman, quipping, “Clive, you know what, Ukraine hasn't really been in the news recently, has it?”

Everyone laughed.

A hae ma doots

 

(Didn’t know I was Scottish, did you?)  We’ve been pretty quiet on the BBC’s coverage of the War / Special Operation in Ukraine. The BBC is quite confident that it is one of the most - if not THE the most - reliable and unbiased sources of information on this alarming state of affairs.

As Jamie Angus says:

“Are we an arm of the Government? No, we’re nothing of the sort. We are an independent news broadcaster funded by the licence-fee payer. That’s why we’re so trusted and why the BBC Russian news information is so widely trusted…”

Ros Atkins asks:

So no discussion between the BBC and the government as to how the BBC covers this conflict?

Jamie Angus responds:

It’s not the government’s job or position to tell the BBC how to cover the conflict; our editorial independence from the UK government is assured….”

etcetera etcetera.

Anyway, as I’ve said over and over, whenever the press gets hold of a story about which one has empirical knowledge - ‘based on first-hand observation or personal experience’ - one knows only too well the vast potential therein for bungling, garbling the details and omitting crucial facts.

If I were to take the BBC’s reporting on Israel as a model, I would have to doubt that I am getting the whole story from the BBC on almost any issue, let alone this particular one. How can I believe it’s simply a case of Ukraine=good, Russia=bad, much as I’d like to? 

Listening to Jeremy Bowen, Fergal Keane, and Orla Geurin doesn’t fill my heart with joy and I’m not totally convinced that there’s an iota of genuine impartiality between them.

Sadly, the BBC’s record on all sorts of issues raises doubts and sets alarm bells ringing. It hasn’t turned me into an all-out conspiracy theorist yet, though I’m noticing that a few others are there already, or on the cusp. 

I must just be one of nature’s Doubting Thomases. I doubt everything, including myself.

More on Mark Easton

I may not be watching BBC News at the moment but I can guess what certain reporters are up in their broadcasts from their tweets - especially when they link to their own BBC One news reporting.

The BBC's pro-open borders/mass immigration home affairs editor Mark Easton - their most shamelessly biased reporter - hasn't been letting a world crisis get in the way of his agenda-pushing. 

In fact, he's latched onto it and exploited it. 

He's been plugging away relentlessly at one single thing for two weeks, trying to shame the UK government into opening our borders to far larger numbers of refugees.

He's been at this kind of thing for years - though this time he has genuine refugees to latch onto.

And now the poor Ukrainians are his convenient excuse for pushing his pro-immigration, open borders hobby-horse yet again.

Let's take a look at a licence-fee-funded arch-propagandist in action.

He uses every trick in the book here, using careful framing, loaded questions that aren't genuinely meant as either/or questions, editorialising hashtags, heart-tugging individual cases, etc. 

It's a masterclass in the art of biased agenda-pushing very consciously just-about covering itself so it can get away with it with BBC bosses:

• Feb 25: Should Britain offer sanctuary to Ukrainians fleeing the war? The Home Office says refugees should stay in the first safe country they reach. But Nottingham's Ukrainian community hopes the UK will agree to do more. #bbcnewssix 
• Feb 28: Asked today if Ukrainian pensioner refugee Valentina Rumyantsyeva could come to London on the Eurostar having been turned back on Saturday, the Home Secretary said 'yes'. But the UK Home Office has since told me she is still not eligible to join her daughter. 
• Mar 1: Someone from the UK Home Office contacted Ukrainian refugee Valentina in Paris after my piece last night promising she would get a visa to the UK. Still nothing in writing. But on what basis? The current rules mean she remains ineligible. Compassion or desperate PR? 
• Mar 1: UK government to ask the public to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee. Reluctant to put money into a conventional resettlement scheme, the UK Home Office is looking at #BigSociety to help out. Will it work? 
• Mar 1: "Leave to enter outside of the rules!" Valentyna Klymova, in the yellow beret, now has her visa to come to London. She is tired, relieved and delighted she has helped the UK Home Office become more generous to refugees. #bbcnewssix 
• Mar 1: Valentina has arrived at St Pancras, wrapped in the Ukrainian flag as passengers gave her a round of applause. #bbcnewsten 
• Mar 3: Ukrainian refugee Valentyna arrived in London on Tuesday to join her daughter, her visa stating she had 'leave to enter outside the rules'. But rules allowing other parents, grandparents, adult children and siblings to seek sanctuary here don't start until tomorrow. 
• Mar 4: On Tuesday Priti Patel said Ukrainian refugees with family in the UK could stay for a year. Today the UK Home Office increased the limit to 3 years, matching the EU offer (although EU doesn't demand family ties). Still playing catch-up? 
• Mar 6: The only UK visa application centre in Ukraine at Lviv has closed, according to the UK Home Office website. Guidance changing by the hour (see below) causing confusion consternation for those fleeing the war.
• Mar 6: In a letter to Priti Patel, French interior minister Gerald Darmanin says that 150 Ukrainian refugees have been turned back at Calais by Border Force officials, accusing the Home Secretary of a "lack of humanity" and a "completely unsuitable" response.
• Mar 6: Priti Patel has responded to Gerald Darmanin: “Let me just correct what has been said by the French government. The British government is not turning anybody back at all”.
• Mar 7: What did Priti Patel mean when she told The Sun “I’m urgently escalating our response … to create a humanitarian route” for Ukrainian refugees”? Downing Street insists nothing has changed but the UK Home Office says a new route IS being worked on. #confusion
• Mar 7: Ukrainian refugees stuck in Calais tell me there’s a gap as wide as the English Channel between the supportive rhetoric of the UK government and their experience on the ground.

The BBC and the Russian invasion of Ukraine [and an EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes glimpse of an ITBB discussion]

Craig: The BBC is being praised to the skies for its war coverage, and not only by itself and the usual suspects. Not that I've seen any BBC coverage, so I can't say if it's deserved or not, but lots of surprising people are singing its praises. It seems to be having a good war.

Sue: Well, I was half thinking that the BBC is ‘having a good war’, too. But with all its resources and long-standing infrastructure it would be surprising if it wasn’t. 

I haven’t watched it very much though, but sometimes the ad breaks on other channels drive one BBC-wards. I haven’t seen any of the Beeb’s opinion stuff, only the Myrie/Doucet reporting. I must say Lyse is getting more emotional than usual (and Clive is okay. A bit drained obvs.) 

I saw Konstantin Kisin's performance on Question Time (excerpts on YouTube.) It’s weird to see him on the dreaded BBC, especially when he’d only just said he’d stopped appearing on GB News because he felt he was being expected/required to opine on things he didn’t particularly know enough about. 

This unexpected invitation from the QT team must be partly to do with the new ‘impartiality’ pledges. 

Speaking of which I dread to think why they’ve let Jeremy Bowen loose on Ukraine. He will inevitably make comparisons with the M.E., (how he sees it - The bully against the oppressed, the brave Ukrainian-Pally resistance, the almighty Russian-Israeli aggressive warmongering.) 

I think I actually heard him make a reference to the M.E. in an aside on the Today prog, though I couldn’t find it when I searched. Can you imagine how the BBC’s new impartiality regulators let someone like Jez go to Ukraine with all that baggage? 

Craig: I've tracked down that Jeremy Bowen bit:

The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu talked about building your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across. In the Cuban Missile Crisis - the closest the world has come to nuclear disaster in 1961 - the deal there after the Soviets put missiles into Cuba was that the US move missiles out of Turkey. Now, of course, the things are not...you know, you can't directly transfer the idea, but the point is, there needs to be in all these crises, to finish them, a face saving deal. Otherwise, the two sides tend to fight until one side wins or both are exhausted, which is a catastrophe for the countries affected by that, as we've seen in the Middle East extensively.

BBC reporters like Lyse being more emotional than usual was one of the topic on Samira Ahmed's Newswatch this week, asking: How new is it? Does it help or hinder the viewer's understanding? 

The fact that it featured a particularly toe-curling example of heart-tugging purple prose from Fergal Keane [‘On platform 6, a father's farewell to his infant son. What cannot be held must be let go. Until another day’] shows where that kind of thing probably began at the BBC, with the likes of him and Orla Guerin - and Jezza Bowen, with his endlessly-repeated, embittered, personalised memories of a particular moment involving Israel and his unfortunate friend. 

Even John Simpson cried recently - though he told Samira Ahmed that he's not proud of doing so and it won't happen again. 

So, as you can see, I've actually watched a BBC programme now. 

Ukrainian affairs

Peter Hitchens has the BBC squarely in his sights in his Mail on Sunday column this week. 

I'm rather proud of having helped him, ever so slightly, by using TVEyes to track down all the broadcasts of the offending Orla Guerin report for him.

I suspected he was going after her usual mawkish, award-winning purple prose. But, no, he was concerned about something more specific. 

Given how relentlessly the BBC will focus in on fringe figures/groups, neo-Nazi swastikas, Confederate flags, etc, even if they are in no way representative of the group the BBC disapproves of, if they are reporting on people they disapprove of, he wonders how the BBC last week “repeatedly broadcast an entire news item, featuring a group of undoubted, shameless neo-Nazis, actually wearing SS insignia on their clothes – and not even notice?”.  

The report “starred a sweet old great-grandma” from Ukraine - a “doughty 78-year-old” woman, being taught to use a gun against the Russians by Ukrainian soldiers sporting shoulder-flashes displaying a Nazi emblem, the ‘Wolfsangel’”, used by the Waffen SS. Many wartime massacres were perpetrated by men sporting that jagged symbol. And their Ukrainian supporters proclaim their membership of the ‘Azov Battalion’ - a ‘paramilitary unit… known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and the use of Nazi symbolism’, lately absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard. 

Peter Hitchens asks: 

Is it really possible that, in the BBC’s vast and costly apparatus of reporters, editors, producers, fact-checkers and bureaucrats, not one person spotted the problem? If so, we are dealing with Olympic-level incompetence.  

But it is my suspicion that something else is going on. The generation that kept the BBC relatively impartial is fast dying off. Those who remain have accepted a large number of contentious opinions as facts. 

One of these opinions is the ridiculous cartoon idea that Russia is like Mordor in Lord Of The Rings, an utterly evil country ruled by a Dark Monster. And that Ukraine, its current enemy, is by contrast a shining Utopia, pluckily defending itself against the orc-like hordes of Moscow. This explains why the BBC were so keen to use this film, in which a Brave Granny Gets Her Gun. ‘Brave Granny Gets Her Gun From Some Neo-Nazis’ is not quite the same, is it? 

He ends by arguing that “if we are going to interfere in this very complex problem, then we are going to need to tell each other the truth about it”. Including the BBC.

UPDATE - Meanwhile, an old blog favourite has roared back in this morning, smearing away:

John Sweeney: Peter Hitchens says that Ukraine has "quite a few Nazis." So does UK. But President Zelenskiy is Jewish, something he does not mention. Peter Hitchens is Putin's man. Happy to debate this, Hitchens Minor, in person. I'm in Kyiv. And you?

Peter Hitchens: John Sweeney, you are incapable of debate, as you proved during the great panic with your repeated untruths. Why am I not surprised that you have attached yourself to the latest liberal fad?

John Sweeney: Vladimir Putin has the knout, the whip, the tanks and Peter Hitchens. Ukraine is a democracy. Once again, Peter, you're welcome to come to Kyiv and we can debate in person. But don't call a nation pro-Nazi when it has a Jewish President. Unless, of course, you are Moscow's man.

Peter Hitchens: I know you won't read my replies, because your mind is shut, but others might. I have not 'called a nation pro-Nazi'. Mainly I have pointed out that the BBC has failed to report that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine. My actual words: 'One of the roots of the Russia-Ukraine problem is, alas, the existence of some very crude and nasty factions of Ukrainian nationalism, many of them unblushing neo-Nazis. Of course there are plenty of perfectly civilised Ukrainian patriots, but bigoted racialist thugs have an influence way beyond their numbers in that country'. I am a British patriot and defend the interests of my own country, no other.

Razia Iqbal sticks up for Joe Biden

I saw a tweet last night from journalist and broadcaster Mike Yardley: 

Just heard a BBC presenter slapping down the ex head of Estonian's army for noting that Putin's threats to the Ukraine had parallels to the Hitler pre WW2. Why? This situation could quite easily escalate. It's brinkmanship at the moment, but that's still a very dangerous game.

That intrigued me so I hunted for the interview he was talking about and found it on Radio 4's The World Tonight. 

 

It was an extraordinary interview by the BBC's Razia Iqbal. 

It's a long time since I've heard her [because I no longer listen to The World Tonight] and she interrupted so loudly I feared I might not be hearing anyone of anything ever again as she almost burst my ear drums. 

Plus, she was remarkably rude to a man whose grasp of English was magnificent but not perfect. 

And as most of her interruptions were to stick up for Joe Biden it's as if she was channelling Jen Psaki and acting as Joe's spokeswoman, protecting 'her man'. 

A transcript can't quite do justice to the impact of her hectoring here, but it's worth a try anyhow:

------------------

 

Razia Iqbal: Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked the US president Joe Biden for his strong support in the face of Russian threats as the West accuses Moscow of preparing to invade, based on the serious military build-up on the border. While for Moscow any prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is a red line, Washington refuses to countenance any red lines being drawn by President Putin. And now Mr. Biden's announcement that a small group of larger NATO countries will hold talks with Moscow is causing concern on the alliance's eastern flank where members close to Russia are particularly worried that issues of security must not be negotiated over their heads. Let's speak to Riho Terras who is a member of the European Parliament and the former commander of the Estonian defence forces. Good evening.

Riho Terras: Good evening.

Razia Iqbal: What's your main concern about this planned meeting between President Biden, some of the big NATO members and Moscow?

Riho Terras: Well, I think that President Biden has given in to the blackmail of Russian president Putin who increased the pressure, military pressure, on the border with Ukraine. He was on the warpath, and now he's invited to talk to the important people, other heads of state of the big countries in Europe and the American president and...

Razia Iqbal: [interrupting] That's a pretty serious word. It's a pretty serious word 'blackmail'.

Riho Terras: Yeah, Well, how can we label it differently if President Putin is gathering his troops along the Ukrainian border and is on the warpath, and once you draw a new line in Europe, once you create a new security architecture which fits to his taste and doesn't care about NATO or an independent country, like Ukraine is?

Razia Iqbal: Are you concerned and that the smaller countries such as Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania have not been invited? Is that the issue, that you feel you should be at the centre of these discussions?

Riho Terras: No, I think the problem here, definitely the problem is, that the aim of Putin is to break the unity of our two alliances, the European Union and NATO, and if President Biden tries to invite only certain countries to the discussion and not the alliances as a whole and is not discussing the topic with his allies, that is exactly what Putin wants - to break the unity of NATO, which is our strength, which is our centre of gravity.

Razia Iqbal: [in a tone of increasing incredulity] Well, I mean, what evidence do you have that President Biden is doing any such thing? Even if he has this meeting, he has also been taking part in the meeting at in Riga recently, which, of course, suggested that he was deeply concerned and for him the red line over Ukraine, as it's being drawn by Moscow, is unacceptable.

Riho Terras: Why are all the other countries then excluded from the meeting? Why does he want to meet only with the big boys? If he...

Razia Iqbal: [interrupting, incredulously] What do you think is going to happen?

Riho Terras: It smells very much like Munich 1938, and the Munich agreement when Chamberlain came out to say...

Razia Iqbal: [interrupting, even more incredulously] Surely, surely you're not comparing this to the Second World War? That's, that's, that's...just absurd!

Riho Terras: To what extent is it absurd? This is exactly a country who is threatening another sovereign country with a military invasion and Ukraine is not at all on the discussion right now. [Mr Terras clearly meant 'in on the discussion' but Razia failed to pick up on that.]

Razia Iqbal: [incredulously] Well, but that's, that's clearly not true. Ukraine was obviously the top of the list in the summit, the video call summit between the two presidents. What is it that you think...

Riho Terras: [interrupting] Well the discussion was about Ukraine but the Ukrainian president was not involved in the discussion. That is exactly what is not acceptable...

Razia Iqbal: [interrupting] What, what...

Riho Terras: ...that the heads of state of the big countries are trying to divide the world.

Razia Iqbal: But, but... [incredulously] Do you not think that President Biden is going to do everything he can to make sure that the NATO alliance is one that is held together?

Riho Terras: Yeah, that means that the first thing is to discuss with the allies how to solve the problem...

Razia Iqbal: OK.

Riho Terras: ...and then, then NATO should be at the table of this discussion.

Razia Iqbal: Riho Terras, member of the European Parliament and a former commander of the Estonian defence forces, thanks for being with us.

Another legal disaster for the BBC (and long-suffering licence fee payers), thanks to libellous BBC reporting

Corrections and Clarifications

Mr Speaker might well advise the BBC's Paul Wood to take a soothing medicament, or a sedative, or to take up yoga, or to practise zen, restraint and patience, or to become Buddha-like after the awful week he's had.  

Little did I suspect, after name-checking him on Monday as "the BBC reporter most intimately associated with the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories", that the 'bad news' for him from Robert Mueller's report (seemingly debunking much of his journalistic work over the last couple of years or so) would be followed so swiftly by this second heavy hammer blow:

The BBC's report doesn't name the BBC reporter in question but The Graudian's report does. And, yes, it was Paul Wood. 

[Bold lettering required!]

His BBC News website/BBC News at Ten reports of 23 May 2018 (claiming that the Ukrainian president bribed Donald Trump's lawyer for access to the US president) aroused the wrath of the Ukrainian leader.

Mr. Poroshenko then sued the BBC for libel in the British courts and won.

Paul has, thus, landed the BBC - and, thus, BBC licence payers - with the bill for the Ukrainian president's damages and legal costs.

Oh dear, what a falling-off! In his days of reporting from the Middle East Paul Wood struck me as being one of the BBC's best reporters. And now it's come to this.

A spot of serious soul-searching is obviously needed from the BBC's Paul Wood.

And a spot of serious soul-searching is surely also needed from the BBC. Did they encourage Paul here? Could it be a consequence of institutional anti-Trump bias at the BBC?

Also, such flagrant lapses seem to becoming significantly more common at the BBC, so the Corporation needs to stop being so insufferably complacent and get a grip. 

Exposing Putin TV

I've not had much time to follow BBC-related matters in recent days, but I did spot a post by Gene at Harry's Place which praised a familiar BBC journalist - namely former BBC Middle East correspondent Natalia Antelava - for a piece she did from Ukraine.

This admirably debunked Russian media claims that Ukrainian bombing resulted in the death of a young girl. 

It certainly is a compelling piece of reporting and one that, on Twitter, has sent the Krembots into a state of malicious frenzy. 

It's a shame, however, that Natalia's determination to expose Putiwood (as it might be called) never extended, in her former life, into exposing the similarly emotive fakeries of Paliwood in Gaza and the West Bank.

Maybe she'll go back there one day and do the right thing.

A Potted History of Ukraine's Russian-speaking Minority

As part of Is the BBC biased?'s mission to inform, educate and entertain I thought I might transcribe the contribution of Anna Reid, ex-Economist writer and author of 'Borderland', to this morning's edition of Broadcasting House. 

Why? Because I found it very interesting and illuminating. (She didn't hide her own biases either, which is good.)

Ethnic Russians make up 8 million thereabouts out of Ukraine's total population of 46 million and they are concentrated in three areas - Donetsk in the east, next door to Russia; Crimea, down in the south; and Odessa to the west, next to the border with Romania - and all three regions were once part of something called the Black Sea Steppe, which was a great sweep of empty prairie which was fought over by all the neighbouring powers until Catherine the Great finally managed to prize it away from the Ottomans and called it 'New Russia'.

It is Crimea that identifies itself far the most closely with Russia. It's the only place with a clear majority of ethnic Russians. It's home to the Black Sea Fleet is Sevastopol. The Tsarist aristocracy built themselves summer palaces here and in Soviet days it was where every Stakhanovite worker and party apparatchik dreamed of retiring, and it's this patriotic Soviet elite and their descendants who still make up quite a big proportion of the population; hence it wasn't a great surprise when Putin was able to annex the peninsula almost unopposed.

Donetsk is completely different. It's a depressed industrial area and the provincial capital was founded in the 1870s by a Merthyr Tydfil ironmaster called John Hughes who sank the first mines o the invitation of the Tsar, and until the Russian Revolution the city was actually called Yuzovka after him. And when you drive through the countryside round about it looks a bit like you imagine 19th Century Wales looked - one minute you're passing slagheaps and pitheads and the next it's wooden cottages and plump ladies selling tomatoes from the side of the road. And the towns where the fighting is going on at the moment, like Sloviansk, have hardly moved on since the economic collapse of the '90s. And I got to a place called Yenakiieve just as a shift was ending at the local steel mill and it was like stepping into a Lowry painting. At the end of the main street these great brick chimneys loomed up and out of the main gates, which were still emblazoned with the hammers and sickles, this crowd of men was streaming in their filthy boiler suits with blackened faces and red eyes. And Yenakiieve's lucky because the mill is still open and the towns where the local factories closed are called 'dead towns'.

The split between Donetsk and Kiev isn't just about nationality. It's also about the new middle class - there are people who are are taking holidays abroad, using the internet - and the old left-behind working class. A third of all Ukrainians have never left their home province, and in the Donetsk region that's nearer a half. So for them Western Ukraine really does feel like a foreign country and it's not so surprising that Putin's utterly grotesque propaganda about Western Ukrainians all being a bunch of bloodthirsty fascists has traction.

Odessa is a port city. It's multi-ethnic. It was settled by a whole raft of different nationalities in the late 1700s and then it boomed all through the 19th Century, exporting grain to the Mediterranean and beyond. So Odessans see themselves as business-minded and as not being interested in politics and, hence, the dreadful shock at those deaths in the trades union building. When I got to that building a couple of days later the public was just being allowed to wander around freely and people were laying flowers here and there among the debris. One British journalist had stones thrown at him, but a man just said to me, sadly, "This is stupidity. Look, this is not Odessa".

Will Donetsk and Odessa go the same way as Crimea? That depends on Putin but I think, if left to themselves, not. First, neither Donetsk nor Odessa has a Russian majority, an ethnic Russian majority, and polls show a large majority of Russian speakers overall in Ukraine wanting the country to stay united, and a recent one by the Pew Research Center shows only 27% wanting regions to be allowed to break away. And this referendum, this pseudo-referendum, today will doubtless try to show that Russian support is much larger but from what I've seen what Ukraine's Russians want is not a change of passport but better government, a better standard of living, and even when you speak to the small minority of extremists - the guys with the baseball bats in the balaclavas - what they harangue you about, first and foremost, are the same things that all Ukrainians, and for that matter all Russians, complain about - unemployment, corruption, wretched pay and pensions, useless politicians - and it's these, not the language issues, not the nationality issues, that Ukraine has to fix if it's going to hang together. Will Putin give it time to do that? We don't know. 

When seagulls follow the trawler...

A famous French philosopher once said, 'When seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.'

Well, we here at Is the BBC biased? have been following Newsnight for much the same reason, though we're after bias rather than sardines (though I for one wouldn't object to coming across the odd sardine or two in the process.) 

Has Newsnight thrown lots of sardines into the sea this week?

The following posts will take it day by day. (They will come in dribs and drabs, as it's lovely and sunny outside).

Monday's edition featured a discussion of the 'Maajid Nawaz Affair', and pitted Mr Nawaz against the controversial "community activist" Mo Ansar and the controversial Huff Post UK' editor Mehdi Hasan. 

Mr Nawaz was 'in the dock', and the charge against him was that of being "unfair to Islam" - a charge clearly stated in Jeremy Paxman's introductory remarks. 

In fairness, however, Maajid Nawaz had just been allowed to present his own Newsnight report so it doesn't seem improper for him to be challenged by two people in the subsequent discussion.

Newsnight came in for some stick for reporting Mr Nawaz's original protest against the BBC's censorship of the Jesus & Mo cartoon [on The Big Questions] by itself refusing to show that cartoon for fearing of offending some Muslims. Newsnight chose to take sides, and took the side of those 'offended Muslims' against Maajid Nawaz. Editor Ian Katz said that there was “no clear journalistic case to use” the cartoon, and said that “describing” it was sufficient. He claimed that it “causes great offence to many, not just extremists” and said that to run it would be “journalistic machismo”.

Well, this Monday Ian Katz must have surging with testosterone as Newsnight did indeed finally broadcast the cartoon, with Mo visible for all to see. 

Clearly a change of heart on Ian Katz's part. 

The Ukraine-Russia discussion was certainly biased against Vladimir Putin, with the wife of Putin's arch critic, the Polish foreign minister, appearing alongside a Canadian liberal and an Oxford University professor, and the criticisms of the Russian leader and his policies came thick and fast. 

That, incidentally, is the second time Anne Applebaum has been on Newsnight (slamming Putin) in the past three weeks. It's ages since I've seen or heard Alex Pravda on the BBC; indeed, I'd quite forgotten his existence. He used to be on quite a lot around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As, of course, did Michael Ignatieff, who used to be BBC Two's furrow-browed intellectual of choice around that time, acting as a presenter on several BBC programmes. (He hasn't changed). 

The bit about Labour's poorly-received reaction to the Budget balances out criticism of Newsnight I read last week, when Ed Miliband's widely-panned performance in response to the Budget was buried under booze and bingo, and on Newsnight's strong emphasis on the "pensioners blowing their pensions on new lamborghinis" angle. Some (such as at Biased BBC) saw that as clear pro-Labour bias.

This edition tackled that, and the opinion polls showing Labour and the Conservatives being almost neck-and-neck, and Jeremy Paxman questioned Hazel Blears about whether Ed Miliband is any good. (She hasn't changed either).

Did that come about because Ian Katz spotted the charge of clear bias and decided to counter that this week? Or did it come about because The Guardian had published a letter from a bunch of think tanks calling for Labour to adopt a number of clear political positions - one of whom was featured in the report? We'll never know. 

The package did begin, however, with Jeremy Paxman repeated the programme's dig at "pensioners blowing their pensions on new lamborghinis", along with other Paxmanesque sneers at the measure.

A few sardines then, but not particularly tasty ones. There are far tastier ones to come....

Chicken Kiev, the BBC and Russia

My goodness, last night's Newsnight was quite something. 

Especially remarkable was the tone it adopted over the Russia-Ukraine conflict - particularly during Emily Maitlis's interview with the newly-appointed Ukrainian interim economic minister, Pavlo Sheremeta.

Mr Sheremeta (who seems a reasonable sort of chap, unaffiliated to any party) told her that the only way forward is for Ukraine to remain calm, try to understand Russia's objections, and de-escalate the conflict through purely peaceful means. 

Again and again, in response, Emily asked Mr Sheremeta about why Ukrainian forces have failed to respond so far. ("So Russia is ON your military bases. Do you call THAT negotiation?", "How far will you let Russia go before YOU take action?", "Let me just clarify then. It sounds from what you're saying, like you are ruling out any kind of military response to what is going on there now. Is that right?").

What was peculiar though was her use of an incredulous tone of voice whilst putting those questions to Mr Sheremeta. 

That incredulous tone felt completely misjudged to me. 

And it was more than just incredulous. It sounded almost gung-ho, as if Emily Matlis were Mrs Doyle from Father Ted saying "Go on, go on, go on, go on..." to the reluctant Ukrainian government minister. (We can only be grateful that she didn't start going, "bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk", and flapping her arms around like a chicken.)

This wasn't very responsible interviewing, in my opinion. 

And that wasn't Emily Maitlis's only dogged pursuit of an angle in this section of last night' Newsnight. 

Emily was also keen to pursue the story of the accidental breach of security outside Downing Street yesterday, when a document was glimpsed (by eagle-eyed cameramen) showing that Britain rules out military action and tough financial sanctions against Russia. 

She pursued it with both Mark Urban and Senator John McCain, and in the case of Senator McCain, seemed very clearly to be fishing for criticism of the British government. ("How do you respond then to Western powers who will rule out military engagement or, indeed, tough financial sanctions?", "Tonight we saw documents from the UK government, inadvertently, showing they were not for now supporting trade sanctions or closing the financial centre to Russians. Is that the right approach?").

Senator McCain described himself as "disappointed".

Let's move on.

Senator McCain (unlike the always level-headed Mark Urban) is gung-ho for action against Russia, and the other guest who was due to appear on the programme, John Bolton, takes a very similar line to Mr McCain on the present situation...

...so it was probably a good thing then that Mr Bolton bolted just before the interview began (due to a prior engagement), or we would have heard the same views twice.

John Bolton has long been one of Newsnight's go-to men. He's their 'robust U.S. right-winger of choice'. 

His near-presence took me back to the days of the Iraq War, when he'd play the part of the 'bad guy' in Newsnight discussion after Newsnight discussion, set against the BBC's 'good guy', Sir Ming Campbell. 

Sir Ming used to be on the BBC so often during the Iraq War that it's long been rumoured that he used to have his own bed in the Newsnight studio. (Clare Short was said to have used the same bed too - though not at the same time.) 

As there's war afoot, Sir Ming was Newsnight's natural first choice for a British guest. The call duly went in. Had Mr Bolton stayed put, they would have both been reunited. Which would have been super.

Naturally, Sir Ming doesn't like Putin one bit, but he was up against Newsnight's 'robust Russian right-winger of choice', Alexander Nekrassov - and Mr Nekrassov (a former Yeltsin advisor) has (from what I've seen of him) become more and more pro-Putin as time passes. 

And he's becoming something of a fixture on Newsnight too. (Being a keen tweeter himself, he'll doubtless appreciate the fact that the liberal Twitterati seem to have a collective nervous breakdown every time he appears).

There's no prizes for guessing who Emily Maitlis went after here. And strongly too.

Yes, Alexander Nekrassov got all of the disapproving challenges while Sir Ming was allowed to do his thing in piece (with one half-hearted devil's advocate question being asked, for 'balance'.)

Bad, bad Russia! - that sums up the tenor of Emily's questioning here.

Which leads me to reflect...(and please tell me if you think I'm talking nonsense!)...

People like me, thirty years ago, would often accuse elements at the BBC of being 'soft' on the Soviet Union - a 'softness' that stood in sharp contrast to the corporation's strenuous questioning of U.S. foreign policy back then. Some of us felt that the possible cause of that display of 'understanding' towards our enemy in the Cold War might have had its roots in the BBC's left-wing bias.

Nowadays, things could hardly be more different. It's as if the world has spun around 180 degrees. 

Now it's Russian spokesmen who are grilled by BBC interviewers and U.S. politicians (at least since the Obama administration came to power) who get the easier ride.

This tendency seems to have become a full-blown bias in the last few years. 

Whether it be over gay rights, or Greenpeace, or Pussy Riot, or its policy towards Syria, the BBC seems to have become openly hostile to the Russian government in a way which would have been unthinkable in the days of the old U.S.S.R.

I remember - and I now regret not blogging about it - a remarkable Newsnight debate last year based around Stephen Fry's calls for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics over Russia's new anti-gay laws. 

There were four guests - three anti-Putin and one pro-Putin. Kirsty Wark gave just one of them a hard time: the pro-Putin guest, our friend Alexander Nekrassov. So much so, that the debate became 'four against one', and it was perfectly clear where Kirsty's sympathies lay.

And, at around the same time, I recall both Paddy O'Connell and Eddie Mair giving Russian spokesmen a real going-over (Paddy hotly, Eddie icily) over the same issue - gay rights. (Alas, neither interview is available to 'listen again' now). 

There's, of course, a good case to be made that BBC interviewers should give pro-Putin spokesmen a severe grilling, especially over issues of human rights and - above all - if Russia is invading another country, IF those interviewers keep their own emotions and biases from becoming too evident during the interview [if we're sticking to the BBC's own take on 'impartiality', that is], but it does strike me as interesting that there really does seem to be a strong emotional bias against Putin's Russia on display at the BBC at the moment. 'Putinism' seems to offend them.

Do you agree?

Putin's calculating claim to be the leader of world conservatism last year, his outwitting of Obama over war in Syria (a war most people dreaded), his utter lack of political correctness, his machismo, his heavy-handedness with Greenpeace, all these things (and many more) seem to be winning him hordes of admirers (or half-admirers) across the right-leaning ends of the webosphere.

Whenever I read the comments at The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Daily Mail, Biased BBC, etc, I'm struck by the sheer width (if not depth) of such support for the Russian leader. (There are, of course, plenty of exceptions too).

That being the case, it's hardly surprising to find the largely left-leaning (or, at the very least, firmly non-right-leaning) BBC recoiling in horror at Putin and everything he stands for (or pretends to stand for).

The current crisis in Ukraine is raising tensions across the right-leaning webosphere though. Some are aghast that so many right-wing commenters are actively backing Putin's military intervention in Ukraine. (And something similar seems to be going on on the Left too.)

At this point I should tell you where I stand [as, on the blogosphere, everyone must have an opinon] but, frankly, I'm all over the place on this. The world is becoming a very confusing place.

A few years back, I was appalled at Putin's canny filleting of Georgia and its nice pro-Western president. Then it transpired that my black and white views were probably misguided. That nice president turned out to be corrupt and authoritarian and unpopular (albeit full of redeeming contradictions too), and maybe the people in the break-away regions (who Putin so cleverly exploited) did have some legitimate grievances at the way the Georgians had treated them after all.

That taught me a lesson.

Today's situation in Ukraine has parallels. It's 'shades of grey' all the way, and I feel deeply conflicted about it.

On the one hand, it's a case of Ukrainians (many right-leaning) crying out for democracy and probity in public office against a corrupt post-Soviet (former) president with a strong air of stupidity, venality and brutality about him, who imprisoned opposition leaders and grew increasing undemocratic, then rising up against him and being killed (in some numbers) by brutal state security forces, before eventually triumphing.

It's like 1989 all over again (and I loved 1989).

The Russian invasion is, therefore, a case of The Empire Striking Back, and Putin's claims that the new government is 'fascist' and anti-Semitic are clearly a calculated exaggeration.

Plus, and probably not incidentally, 'Russians invading places' is a concept I've spent decades holding to be, self-evidently, 'a bad thing', and the former KGB-man obviously also has a keen interest in permanently securing Russia's naval base in Crimea (especially given the closing of his 'Syria option') and keeping Ukraine tied into his energy policy.

On the other hand, those far-right, anti-Semites who spearheaded the violence against the Yanukovych government, and forced it out, do exist.

Despite Edward Lucas of The Economist's suggestion (can't remember where I read it) that such elements might be a Putin false flag, I've seen that Gabriel Gatehouse (BBC) report showing that such people really do exist (in some numbers) and I've followed Harry's Place (like Sue) enough to know that the nationalist Svoboda party does contain anti-Semites, and it now holds four government seats (including the defence ministry). I'm not comfortable with that. Svoboda (like Hungary's Jobbik) isn't just a Russian false flag. Such people exist, and there are more and more of them around.

Plus the new government did rise up against a democratically-elected government and then immediately passed (without any democratic mandate) a law restricting the use of the Russian language. Putin (and his people) might well regard that in an unfavourable light.

Shades of grey everywhere, eh? (And probably more than fifty of them).

tl;dr too, eh?

The Crimean Jewish Republic. ?.

After that facetious post about John Simpson - and the two critical posts that preceded it - it's time to get back onto po-faced blogging territory as we continue our long and arduous journey through today's edition of Broadcasting House on Radio 4. Plus it's bouquet time too.

It was more Ukraine to follow, with Paddy interviewing Ukrainian-born novelist Anna Shevchenko. 

Anna give Radio 4 listeners a potted history of Crimea, and a very interesting one it was too. 

Crimea has (she said) been the prize of ages, with the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans and the Russians seeking to secure it for their empires. 

Anna told us that there were plans (in the 18th Century) for Crimea to be the original Australia for British convicts, before a last-minute change of heart [and thank goodness for that. I prefer my Clive James in English rather than in Ukrainian/Russian.]

She also said there was a heavily-funded, American-backed aim in the 1920s to create a 'Californian Crimea'. [I wish she'd explained that more, as that revelation calls for a hearty 'WTF?']

Anna added, just as intriguingly, that there were also plans for a Jewish republic there. [More please!!]

We then heard some music - Eastern-sounding music played by Tatar violinists. 

Anna said the Tatars were inhabitants of Crimea since the 14th Century (contradicting the claim on this morning's Sunday that they'd been there since the 13th Century), until they were ousted by Stalin in 1944.  

Anna said the Soviets saw Crimea as an important naval base [as we know] but, even more, as a tourist resort - "the Cornwall of the Soviet Union", its "Golden Coast", full of children's camps, she said.  

Now, Anna was wonderful here but it's very unlikely she'd have been on BH unless she was on the pro-'revolution'/anti-Russian side of the argument, and I waited for the moment when her sympathies became apparent - and become apparent they most certainly did as she gave her own take on Russia's current activities in Crimea:

It's like having foreign troops here in Cornwall, outside the Newquay Airport. It's just absurd.

She went on to give the following crisp, brilliant summary of how Crimea came into Russia's hands though:

In 1783 Count Potemkin persuaded the Empress that she has to remove the wart on nose of the Russian Empire and achieve the total domination of the Black Sea, doing three things: first of all, not to allow the elections; stir the mutiny; and use military force if necessary. 

Now, whether she phrased that in such a way as to make the (partial) parallels with today seem more striking (or not), I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough to say. 

Still, it was a brilliant and pithy summary nonetheless, and kudos must be given to BH for inviting her on (whatever bias might lay behind their motives).

Ukraine if you want to. The BBC's not for Yanukovych

I was going to post something yesterday about Tuesday night's Newsnight and its coverage of the latest upsurge of political violence in Ukraine but ran out of time. Still, an extra day's wait gives me the chance to add Wednesday night's coverage to the mix. 

I'll begin with what I wrote yesterday...

We've noted before here at Is? the BBC's tendency to side with protesters during these kinds of uprising - and, indeed, specifically during the past few weeks of the Ukrainian protests. So it wasn't particularly surprising to note that all the programme's 'talking heads' (from the Chatham House expert in Allan Little's report to Jeremy Paxman's two interviewees) were sympathetic to the opposition.

The 'talking head' from Chatham House was Orysia Lutsevych. Her views can be gauged from an article she' written for the FT called Do not fail Ukraine in its battle for European values. Similarly, Jeremy's expert interview was Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University is another sharp critic of the democratically-elected pro-Russian President Yanukovych, who describes his regime as a new dictatorship. Jeremy's other interviewee was an opposition MP, Rostyslav Pavlenko of the pro-European Udar Party. You can guess his views.

The other (pro-Russian) side didn't get much of a look-in.

To repeat my earlier speculations, if we accept this as further proof of bias, is this because the BBC is (a) trying (and failing) to report impartially, (b) faithfully reflecting official British foreign policy objectives (being an Establishment poodle), (c) reflecting its own pro-EU, given that the anti-government protests are also strongly pro-EU, or (d) just being its usual excitable self about 'people power', protests and 'revolutions' - displaying its teenage student 'Woolfie Smith' side perhaps?

Well, last night's Newsnight again began with Ukraine, and there was another report from a BBC reporter embedded (so to speak) with the protesters, in the course of which we heard again only from the anti-government side of the Ukrainian political landscape. 

This surely isn't a good thing, given that all manner of opinion polls show a nation pretty much split straight down the middle (both percentage-wise and geographically). It would, therefore, be interesting if BBC reporters went out and tried to bring us interviews with those from the other half of the Ukrainian population too.

Still, we then did get to hear from the other side of the argument during this edition of Newsnight - namely Ukrainian vice prime minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, a softly-spoken ex-ambassador. Jeremy Paxman interviewed him and, though asking him questions that placed him 'in the dock', did so without undue aggression or much interruption, so there can be no cause for complaints there. 

I'm still sensing though that the BBC is getting far too close to one side of the argument, and I'm missing (in their Newsnight coverage at least) some things I keep picking up from elsewhere - i.e. that it's the extreme nationalist elements which are ransacking buildings and keeping the violence against the government going and that the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist camp is by all accounts, strongly imbued with anti-Semitic elements. Not all the anti-government protesters appear to be democrats. 

Yes, the government (who seem largely to consist of Spitting Image caricatures of Leonid Brezhnev) appears to be brutal, cack-handed and well-deserving of the boot (electorally-speaking), but the opposition may not be all they're cracked up to be either. 

There's a very interesting analysis from Alberta/Sheffield-based professor David Marples on the Current Politics in Ukraine website which reviews such concerns, and ends:

Unfortunately, it seems, the era of objective reporting, insofar as it can exist or ever existed, is over. It has been replaced by simplistic evocations of the virtues of Western democracy versus the perils of Russian authoritarianism, illustrated by the evil president (Vladimir Putin) and the bloodied journalist (Tetiana Chornovol) or opposition leader (Yuri Lutsenko). In taking such stances, Western observers insert their own beliefs as the best for the people of Ukraine. Their cause is our cause. But we need to adopt a broader perspective, one that encompasses the views of all residents of Ukraine. Revolutions are complicated affairs, and there is always more gray than black and white.

Something like that seems to be going on with the BBC, as far as I can see.