Party Conference Watch 2013: UKIP

So far Is the BBC biased?'s whirlwind tour of the Today programme's coverage of the 2013 party has covered the Greens, who received only about six minutes' worth of coverage on a single day but got a helpful interview with their party leader, free of interruptions and challenges. We've also covered the Liberal Democrats, who got two and bit day's worth of fairly extensive coverage, a good-natured interview with their party leader and generally positive coverage.

Next up came UKIP, whose coverage was held last weekend (as 'Bloomgate' broke). [Again, sorry for the delay!]

Friday's edition began (before 7 o'clock) with a 4-minute report by BBC political correspondent Robin Brant. We heard Robin asking Nigel Farage if he needed to step back so that the party wouldn't seem like such a one-man band, and from two 'talking heads' from Thurrock. The first, a lady in a video shop, said [on the subject of immigration], "If they want to come over here and work, yes, like if we went over to their country, we'd have to work and support ourselves". The second, a Muslim doctor, was stopped in the street by Robin and asked, "Is he brave or do you think actually Nigel can be a very divisive figure?" [something of a leading question that!], The doctor replied [again on the subject of immigration], "I think it's quite a nuanced argument though. I don't think it's a very black and white issue."

An 4-minute interview with UKIP MEP Roger Helmer came at around 8.45. John Humphrys interviewed him about the party's energy policy, particularly fracking. Mr Helmer advanced the case for fracking. John Humphrys posed questions from a standpoint sceptical of fracking. Fair enough.  

Saturday's edition gave over the prestigious 8.10 spot to a 9-minute interview with Nigel Farage. John Humphrys did the honours. 

If you recall the gentle interview with Natalie Bennett of the Greens, where she was allowed to make a positive case for the party, and the good-humoured, non-too-tough interview with Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems, then you will immediately spot the difference between those interviews and this one. Partly that can be explained by the presence of John Humphrys as an interviewer, but both Sarah Montague (who interview the Green leader) and Evan Davis (who interviewed the Lib Dem leader) can be tough interrogators when the mood takes them. 

The interview between John Humphrys and Nigel Farage was certainly was considerably tougher than either of the previous interviews with party leaders. [I counted 19 interruptions]. While Evan Davis kept saying that things were going well for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem conference, John Humphrys prefaced this interview with the words, "It has not going well for UKIP - and that's a bit of an understatement!"

What stood out though was the nature of the questioning. Breaking it down, these were the topics John Humphrys chose to ask Nigel Farage about - and the percentage of the interview devoted to each issue: 

1. Godfrey Bloom's suspension (7.3%)

2. How UKIP are seen as "loonies" and "a bit of a weird old party" (16.7%)

3. How Nigel Farage 'doesn't want' to be prime minister (7.6%)

4. How Nigel Farage is seen as "a bit of a joke figure", "a bit of a comic figure in lots of ways" (27.1%)

5. How "a lot of people think you're a bit racist" (13%)

6. How UKIP are seen as "anti-feminist" (3.8%)

7. How UKIP will take votes from the Tories and allow in Labour and the Lib Dems (21.2%)

8. Whether UKIP would do a deal with the Tories (3.3%)

Isn't that an extraordinarily negative set of questions? 

Over 60% of the entire interview was given over to questions predicated on the assumption that UKIP is a weird party led by a joke figure, a party that a lot people think is racist and sexist. 

Now, I suspect the Greens will not be happy that they got a mere 6 minutes or so of coverage on Today while UKIP got some 18 minutes worth of coverage in total, but they can at least console themselves that Sarah Montague's line of questioning didn't attempt to systematically rubbish them!

Is this evidence of anti-UKIP bias on the part of the BBC? Well, I think so.

Reviews of the programme's coverage of the Labour conference (just finished) and the Conservative conference (still to come) will follow. How will those parties fare? How will their party leaders face? Will anyone face as belittling an interview as Nigel Farage?

"And remember: you pay for this."

When I wrote the other day

The BBC are, as ever, calling the perpetrators "militants" and avoiding the use of the word "terrorists". That may make some people feel queasy (and angry), but they are going to keep on calling them that no matter how often people like us complain about it. They think they are right to do so. 

maybe I was being a bit too pessimistic. 

More and more people appear to be getting angrier about it, and the criticism is spreading into the mainstream media.

Take Damian Thompson's blistering blog post in the Telegraph yesterday:

Kenya terror attack: disgracefully, the BBC still won't call these murderers 'terrorists'

Let's get this straight. There is nothing wrong with using the term "militants" to describe the al-Shabab gunmen. But they are terrorists, by any criterion, and that word should also be used.

The Beeb won't do it, however. It virtually bans the word from reporting, lest it be used "inappropriately". Many BBC journalists, who are overwhelmingly on the Left, support the causes for which armed gunmen fight in, say, Palestine. Therefore there's no question of describing Hamas as a terrorist organisation. This I can just about understand, given that Hamas is also a powerful political party, though I don't agree with the policy.

But in what universe are Islamists who spray women and children with bullets in a shopping centre not terrorists? The BBC may say: we have a rule and we have to apply it universally. This is nonsense. That's what editors are for.

But hang on. On re-reading a BBC report, I see that it does use the T-word:

Kenyan officials said earlier that three "terrorists" had been killed, and that 10 people had been arrested.

Those inverted commas are more contemptible than not using the word at all. And remember: you pay for this.

I couldn't agree more with that. The top-rated comment below the line sums up what seems to be the growing mood of disgust:

Amazingly, comments are allowed.

Your sentiments are entirely right. ( I remember when Palestinian terrorists held up women and children, and killed indiscriminately, yet the Left seems to support them whatever their bloody, murderous past.)

If the BBC has 'cleansed' the word in their reports this weekend, then some explanation should be expected, pretty quickly.

Have just heard the 1pm BBC Radio 2 News - no mention of Terrorists, but ten or so references to the "ISLAMIST MILITANTS"!! UNBELIEVABLE Orwellian double-speak!

Whoever wrote that news bulletin should be named and asked for some respect for all those murdered by those revolting, sick terrorists. They were not 'killed' by militants, but MURDERED by Islamist terrorist thugs.

Even a juggernaut can be turned around, and I must be less pessimistic. The BBC can be shamed out of this absurd and shameful policy the more people like us complain about it, especially if more people like Damian Thompson complain about it too. When MPs and ministers start complaining, things could start moving. I shall write to my MP.

The Story of the Jews (Part 4)

Chagall, Russian Wedding

Simon Schama's The Story of Jews is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the best things the BBC has done in years.

A good deal of the credit for that goes to Simon Schama himself. As a story-telling historian, few can match him. 

This week's episode, Over the Rainbow, took us from Eastern Europe to the United States and back again - from the Pale of Settlement to The Wizard of Oz, and then (leaving a lump in this viewer's throat) to a village in Nazi-occupied Lithuania - homeland of Simon Schama's own family, on his mother's side. Just one Jewish survivor lives there now, surrounded by his own carvings evoking the lost world of Lithuania's Jews. 

The early stages of the programme vividly conveyed the extraordinary variety and vitality of Jewish life in the Russian Empire (at that time including Lithuania, of course) - despite the oppressive restrictions imposed upon the Jews who lived here and the extraordinarily vicious pogroms periodically flung against them. Simon Schama's enthusiasm for this vibrant and diverse culture was infectious, and he fairly threw himself into his descriptions of it.

It was out of this rich culture that much of the best of American 20th Century popular culture sprang, as large numbers of Jews fled the increasingly savage anti-Semitism of Europe's east for the chance of a better, freer life in the United States of America, and brought the many strains of their culture with them, transplanting and transforming them, giving us many of the crowning glories of Tin Pan Alley (Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, etc) and leading and shaping the creation of Hollywood.

The programme opened in the ruins of Zvonárska Synagogue in Košice, Slovakia [above], where the sense of desolation and absence was tempered somewhat by "the rainbows coming through the [stained] glass." "Out of the dust burst the colours", said Simon. And so did the memories, as he imagined the former congregation gathered there. In the spring of 1944, all 15,700 Jews in Košice were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz, but "this wasn't a place that sat passively waiting for its death sentence."

And it was that final thought which spurred the first part of the programme, as Simon Schama conjured up the "thriving, confident, noisy" Jewish life which existed right across Eastern Europe before the Holocaust - "a world that lives and breaths, and dances and sings". And the switch of focus to America was then viewed in this light:

"That this world somehow flourished despite all the pounding storms that would come its way is an escape act so epic that it counts as one of histories all-time redeeming miracles. Even when systematic annihilation overwhelmed the people the world that had nourished them survived. This is the story about how this unique culture of faith and ferment, of poetry and music, of the search for deliverance from brutality and oppression did not get pulverised by the hammer of history. It just changed its address." 

The story of the Jews living in the lands ruled by Tsarist Russia is, perhaps, less familiar to us in the West - or at least it is to me - so I was particularly struck by this part of the programme.

Eastern Europe used to be the home to over 5 million Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, the largest population of Jews in the world. They came from France and Germany, fleeing persecution, around the 13th century, and settled in the huge, tolerant Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom. The Polish kings allowed the Jews to prosper, using them to collect their taxes. The carve-up of Poland at the end of the 18th Century saw most of the Jews falling under Russian rule. Russian merchants took against this new competition, and the Russian government expelled the Jews from all their main cities and restricted them to the Pale of Settlement.

We heard what life was life in the shtetls (little towns) of the Pale, and it was often harsh. Jews were forbidden from the cities, the professions and the universities and not allowed to own land, and Jewish boys as young as twelve were forcibly conscripted into the Russian army for up to 25 years.

Yet they formed real, solid communities, looking inward, out of necessity, towards the treasures of their own culture, they did a remarkable range of jobs and they certainly knew how to celebrate a wedding!

We heard of the emergence of Hasidic Judaism, with its ecstatic, joyous mysticism [an especially fascinating section of the programme], and of Odessa, the city where Jews, modern Jews, who found the shtetls too claustrophobic, could find a place. Among them Leon Pinsker, whose proto-Zionist pamphlet Auto-Emancipation urged the Jews towards independence and national consciousness, and mooted a Jewish homeland - possibly in the Holy Land.

That pamphlet was published in the year following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by the left-wing terrorist group The People's Will. One of the plotters was a Jewish girl, and within a month a tidal wave of pogroms (from the Russian word meaning 'destroy') began across the Pale of Settlement. These waves kept on coming, culminating in the massacres of 1903-1905 - massacres so extreme in their violence that many Jewish intellectuals despaired of ever obtaining equal rights in Tsarist Russia. They also noted that non-Jewish leftists didn't rush to their side. Some, including Pinsker, founded Hovevei Zion (The Lovers of Zion) in response - the first Jewish nationalist organisation.

It was at this point that things got a little confusing (for me) as Simon Schama's narrative would, I suspect, lead many viewers to assume to the organisations that comprised Hovevei Zion sprang up after 1905. Similarly, those viewers might also have assumed, from the way Simon described it, that Auto-Emancipation was published after the latest pogroms in Odessa (also around 1905). As far as I'm aware though (as I wrote earlier), Auto-Emancipation was published in 1882, just after the 1881 pogrom in Odessa, and Hovevei Zion societies first arose at that time too.

This was the period when many of the Jews of the Pale decided enough was enough, and began leaving for 'the Golden sanctuary', America.

They joined an earlier wave of Jewish emigration to the United States, dating from the 1850s, when Jews from Germany arrived in the country and began working their way up, building railroads and great businesses, becoming mayors of cities, achieving the dream. Their extraordinary success was illustrated by the magnificent Temple Emanu-El of uptown New York.

Most of the new wave of Jewish immigrants, though, ended up in the "mega-shtetl" of New York's Lower East Side. "Of the 2.5 million Jews landing in America between the 1880s and the 1920s, more than 60% of them began their new lives here, stuffed into a patch of land just one-and-a-half miles square. This lot were deeply different from the uptown Jews of Temple Emanu-El - proletarian, drenched in old world superstitions or radical politics and - worst of all - Yiddish! And, in the many ways, the New World was just a high-rise version of the old world they'd left behind."

It was this world to which Simon Schama devoted the next portion of the programme - especially the fusion of shtetl idealism and popular art - focusing on Yip Harburg, the left-wing lyricist behind that "anthem of the Great Depression", Buddy, can you spare a dime? (which may have helped Franklin D. Roosevelt defeat Herbert Hoover in 1933) - its tune based on a Jewish lullaby.

"What America had taught the Jews is the dream that they could be both Jewish and part of the wider culture in which they lived - a dream that was impossible in the old world of Russia - did actually have a chance of working out."

And it was to the dream-world of Hollywood - most of whose great studios were owned by the boys of self-made Jews - that Simon Schama took us next - and Yip Harburg too.

Harburg wrote the words for "the song that would come to define the Golden Age of Hollywood" - Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz ("this universal song of hope"). The song ended up in the film almost by accident, having failed to appear in the 'book' and striking the studio as unsuitable to be sung by the character of a young girl, but getting in because of Harburg and composer Harold Arlen's enthusiasm for it.

Then came the lump in the throat moment.

"I wish the story could end there," said Simon Schama, "with the collective success of America's Jews and the dream-world of Oz, but it didn't. Remember the date of that triumphant night at the Oscars [for Harburg and Arlen]. 1940."

It was to Plungė in Northern Lithuania we were taken, and to the fate of the three million Jews who had stayed behind. There was Jakovas Bunka, the last Jew in Plungė and his carvings of Jewish figures from before the Holocaust, and his memories. In 1941 the shtetl of Plungė was emptied of Jews in the most unspeakably brutal manner imaginable. Unspeakable? Well, Simon said, "As the grandchild of a Lithuanian Jewish family, I need to tell you what happened."

Which he did. Heartbreaking. You must watch it for yourselves - and for Simon Schama's closing words.

*******

Next week will be the final episode, contending with the Holocaust itself and the State of Israel.

I will be watching.

James Naughtie: Mr Impartiality?

Last Wednesday marked the start of a year's worth of BBC coverage of the September 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

Leading Radio 4's coverage of the story will be Today's very own Scotsman, James Naughtie. He will still be doing Today, as well as presenting a twice-weekly stint on Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland, and acting as Radio 4's chief reporter on the story. So a busy year for him then.

Last Wednesday's Today kicked things off Jim's big year, and gave Radio 4 listeners their first chance to here how even-handed James Naughtie would (or wouldn't) be in reporting the story. 

Jim is known for his Freudian slips (if that's what they are). There was Jeremy...er...Hunt, of course, but also his classic "If we win the election..." to Ed Balls in 2005 (hastily amended to "If you win the election"), suggesting (to many) where his sympathies lie.

Would his interviews with two leading figures from either side of the independence argument on that morning's Today demonstrate that James Naughtie is likely to be scrupulously unbiased over the coming year - barring Freudian slips?

Please listen for yourselves to both interviews:

The interview with Alistair Darling, Labour (anti-independence)

The interview with Nicola Sturgeon, SNP (pro-independence)

If you have listened to both interviews, you won't need me to tell you that they were very different types of interview. The one with Alistair Darling was gentle, almost cosy, nearly a fireside chat compared to the tough, interruption-laden scrap with Nicola Sturgeon which followed. 

That was down to James Naughtie, and the tone he chose to adopt with each guest - collegial with Mr Darling, antagonistic towards Ms Sturgeon.

You would have thought that he would have sought to showcase his even-handedness on this of all programmes. He chose not to.

It doesn't bode well, does it?

The public has spoken

It happened again. 

Sunday Morning Live put a question to its audience - "Do Muslim veils deepen divisions?" - and the audience gave 'the wrong answer'.

Samira Ahmed said they'd had "a huge response". 

The result? 

95% said 'yes, they do' and just 5% said 'no, they don't'.

After the result was given, Samira read out four e-mails on the subject (which she'd presumably had handed to her, as she was too busy presenting the programme to have chosen them herself). They didn't reflect the result of the public vote. Two said 'yes' and two said 'no'. 

Something about men in Dover

Following on from PJ Media's analysis of the BBC's coverage of the (still ongoing) siege in Nairobi (discussed earlier today), I see that something similar is happening with the latest breaking news story concerning Islamic terrorism...

I spotted a Sky News headline a little while ago, which they are ranking as their third-most important-story. The headline couldn't be clearer:

Terrorism Charges After Two Stopped At Dover

And nor could the lede and nut graf:

Two men have been charged with terrorism and firearms offences after being stopped in Dover, Scotland Yard said today.

Mohommod Hassin Nawaz, 29, of Dirleton Road, Stratford, east London, and Hamza Nawaz, 22, of the same address, are accused of attending a terrorist training camp in Syria.

The BBC home page places the story much lower in its running order - in ninth place - and chooses this far-less revealing headline:

Two men charged after Dover arrest

...a boring snoring headline if ever there was one. 

Once you click on it you get a more revealing headline:

Two men charged after terror arrest

However, check out the lede and the nut graf here, and compare it to Sky's.

Two men arrested by police in Dover on Monday have been charged under the 2000 Terrorism Act, Scotland Yard has said.

The men, aged 29 and 22, have been charged with conspiring to attend a place used for terrorist training and for the unlawful possession of ammunition. 

 Sky's account tells you so much more about the story. 

The BBC's account doesn't even mention Syria, and you have to wait until the sixth paragraph of the BBC article to be told the tell-tale names of those arrested.

PJ Media, with their headlines, ledes and nut grafs, are clearly onto something, and the BBC seems to be at it again, obfuscating over matters of Islamic terrorism.

It's not good enough, is it?

Four Four Jew

That other feature on  Sunday  deserves a post to itself, as it was quite interesting.

Using David Cameron and Ed Miliband's statement that the use of the word 'Yid' by Spurs supporters isn't anti-Semitic as a peg, the BBC's Bob Walker went to Four Four Jew, a new exhibition at London's Jewish Museum charting the historical links between football and the UK's Jewish community. 

He talked to Jo Rosenthal, the exhibition's curator. She said the story

...began with the establishment of youth clubs by the settled, wealthy British Jewish elites in Britain who saw all of these working class immigrants arriving to major urban centres, like the east end of London, like Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and wanted to turn them into British citizens. And the youth clubs and the sports clubs that were established were a big part of doing that. The idea was that by getting these young lads to engage with the national game, to be sportsman-like, to play on the football field with their British contemporaries, the idea was that through that they'd be making the point that (a) Jews wanted to belong to their host society and (b) were showing that they weren't weak, and bookish and uninterested in sport.

A debate within the Jewish community ensued, as thousands joined the youth clubs. Jo highlighted a pamphlet called The Plan for Inculcation of Judaism in the Youth Clubs which worried about whether Jewish boys knew more about football and boxing than they did about studying or the synagogue.   

Jewish attendances at professional matches rose steadily. In 1965 kick off at one Arsenal match was even delayed to accomodate fans marking the Jewish new year and the club later apologised for playing a match during Passover.

Anthony Clavane of the Sunday Mirror - and author of Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here? - said that clubs like Spurs earned their large Jewish following from their use of the public transport system [trams and trains were acceptable, driving in combustion-engine powered vehicles unacceptable] and a clever use of the rules relating to the Sabbath [beginning matches at 2 o'clock, allowing time for synagogue and chicken soup.]

In spite of all of this there were only a handful of professional Jewish players, and some of those faced anti-Semitism. Mark Lazarus of QPR was one such player, facing anti-Semitism from parts of the crowd and some players. He didn't stand for it though, and put his boxing skills to use at times!

Nowadays, Bob noted, anti-Semitism tends to take the form of Holocaust-related chants directed at Spurs, and Spurs supporters. The response from Spurs supporters though "is becoming increasingly controversial" - approvingly chanting "Yiddo" at their favourite players and calling themselves "Yids". [Not being Jewish myself, I can't tell quite how offensive this is to some people. It certainly doesn't appear to be meant to be offensive, quite the reverse, but Bob noted that "many Jews find {those words} highly offensive".]

The Football Association wants the chants to stop, saying they could be a criminal offence. David Cameron (and Ed Miliband) disagrees - as does Darren Alexander of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust, who says 

Personally, as a 42-year old Jewish male, I find it laughable. I think over a period of time the meaning of words change. I actually find it empowering. Now when Spurs fans use it it's a positive term. It's not to the detriment of any Jewish person, or anyone else. It was something in the late '70s and early '80s that was thrown at us. We've turned it around, and we've used it as a positive.

Spurs are now asking their fans if the word should be banned.

David Conn of the Guardian followed, saying that he believes that the original impulse to be part of the community still spurs on supporters, even today:

Obviously now Jewish people are well established and much more comfortable and more integrated, but I think a lot of Jewish people do still live in a Jewish community and a lot of them have a predominantly Jewish social life. Supporting a football club and going along to it takes them out of that and makes them feel like a part of the general population in a wider community. It was obviously much more fierce an experience in the past but I think that is still part of it now, and I think that's been a big part of it over the years.

Sunday Sunday

It's a bit late today, and I know you've all been waiting with baited breath, so...

This morning's Sunday began with the massacre in Kenya, concentrating on al-Shabab - who are they and what they want - with the BBC's guy there [and rather him than me], Mark Doyle. 

Guest presenter Shelagh Fogarty then talked to Labour's Stephen Timms about the Labour Party and faith. He thinks there's something of a left-wing tendency among believers in the UK - unlike in the USA - which could work to Labour's advantage. This follows last week's interview with Lib Dem minister Steve Webb about the Liberal Democrat Party, and faith.  Presumably next week it will be an interview with a Conservative MP about the Conservatives and faith. [Failure to do that would look terrible for them, bias-wise].

There then came a report  about Bishop Edward King Chapel at Ripon College, Oxfordshire - the first religious building to be shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.  This is what it looks like:

The burqa/niqab debate didn't pan out in the pre-announced way. There was no niqab-wearing Muslim student after all, merely Dr Sara Silvestri from City University, London. She's not in favour of 'banning the niqab'. Maybe they realised that having such a one-sided debate [as the one planned] wasn't a wise move, bias-wise. 

Dr Silvestri said the issue of 'Muslim women and the veil' is "not really a big probably", it's "a phantom" people bring up for "ideological" reasons to take attention away from bigger issues. Shelagh echoed that straight back to her, "Almost as though I have this big problem I can't solve, so I'll go to this small thing that isn't really a problem and turn it into one." 

That discussion was prefaced by an interview with the BBC's Switzerland correspondent Imogen Foulkes, who I only ever seem to hear when there's a story about 'racist' or 'Islamophobia' in the country. [Does nothing else happen there?] A Swiss canton is holding a ballot on whether to ban the burqa, and local Muslims are feeling aggrieved about it. The supporters of the move are all "right-wing" - if Imogen's account of the story is accurate. We heard from one such aggrieved Muslim, but from no supporters of the move. Imogen Foulkes sounded even less keen on banning the burqa than Sara Silvestri [though Sara isn't the one who's supposed to be an impartial BBC reporter].

There was also a chat with Paddy Agnew of the Irish Times about Pope Francis and his views on the Church, which panned out much as you'd expect, and the programme ended with another discussion [and there have been a few in recent weeks on the programme] about Northern Ireland with Rev Norman Hamilton, a Presbyterian minister in North Belfast, David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent for the Independent and the Rev Alistair Smyth, Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.

There was another feature, but I'll deal with that separately.

Just like that!

OK, a little light relief is needed, courtesy of Tommy Cooper.

A man walks into a bar with a roll of tarmac under his arm and says: "Pint please, and one for the road."

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says "Sorry we don't serve food in here."

A jump lead walks into a bar. The barman says "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

Deliberately obscure BBC reporting about Kenya?

The conservative PJ Media website has posted a blistering hatchet-job on the BBC News website's reporting of the massacre in Kenya. 

The author admits he's frozen a moment in an ever-shifting news stream, analysing a single variant of repeatedly updated report - and you can see all the variations in this article at NewsSniffer - but he spells out his evidence that the version of the BBC article in question is, at best, badly-written and, at worst, deliberately obscure and misleading. 

The claim being made is that the BBC deliberately misreported these attacks by using an obscure and potentially misleading headline, an inadequately-informative first paragraph [lede] and follow-up paragraphs [nut grafs] which are hardly any more informative. None of them, the author writes, "mention terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, the reason for the attack, that non-Muslims were targeted, nor any other of the truly germane facts about the incident."

Studies have shown that most news consumers only read the headline; the few that continue on to the body of the story only read the first paragraph or two. Only a small percentage of news consumers get further than that into the full text of the article. And it is this key detail that the BBC is relying on. They purposely suppress the crucial information from appearing in the headline, in the lede, and in the nut grafs, knowing full well that most people will stop reading after that point.

Only later in the article do some of the other details emerge.

In traditional news style, an article is supposed to be structured as a metaphorical “pyramid” of information, with the most important facts stated as concisely as possible at the very top, and with each sentence more details and more elaboration are added.

But in the postmodern BBC “biased reporting style guide,” the pyramid is intentionally inverted, such that the details you want to obscure are hidden so far down in the article that no one will notice them. The only reason to include these details at all is so that, if later criticized, you can truthfully claim that you reported “all the facts.”

But why would they do that?

One likely answer is fear: They’re afraid that if they make Muslim terrorists “look bad,” then the infidel reporters (or their offices) will be targeted. But I think the answer is a bit more complicated: The progressive worldview promoted by the BBC and their ilk rests on the notion that first-world nations are oppressors and third-world people are victims, and any incident — such as this one — which undermines this hypothesis must be suppressed. Thus, any time Islamic fundamentalists commit an act of violence, the Western politically correct media does its best to ignore, shrug off or (as we see here) intentionally misreport what happens.

And the next time someone asks for evidence of media bias, send them a link to this essay.

I was watching this story unfold across several media outlets yesterday evening - Sky, the Telegraph, ITV, France 24, etc - and I would certainly say that, though the the BBC gave most of the basic facts of the story, it also left the most unsaid, especially as regards eye-witness accounts of the explicitly sectarian angle to the attacks. It mentioned them almost in passing, and didn't dwell on them. 

I noticed that at the time but wasn't particularly bothered as I was more concerned at the time to find out what was actually happening, which I was finding from reading lots of different news sources.

Sky, and sundry others, featured headlines and articles leading with and concentrating on the sectarian angle. The BBC didn't, and you had to read quite a long way through the BBC's article to find even a short eye-witness account that backed up that angle to the story. 

Only when an al-Shabab spokesman contacted the BBC to say that his Somali Islamist organisation was behind the terrorist act did that angle come to the fore in the BBC's (online) reporting, though even then that concentrated on the grievances of al-Shabab over the African Union's military involvement in Somalia. 

It cannot but have been a deliberate choice on the BBC's part to shape their online report in such a way, even at the risk of giving the impression that they were intentionally downplaying the violent religious motivation and the vicious sectarian bigotry behind the attacks - and, of course, PJ Media thinks that 'downplaying' those things is exactly what the BBC was up to.

Though I'm less inclined to engage in mind-reading than some, I do think that the BBC treads over-cautiously whenever there's an Islamic motive behind an outrage, and that it does actively tailor its articles to play that angle down. It often leaves its readers groping in semi-darkness as a result, and having to go elsewhere to get the full picture (something, I suspect, most BBC news website readers are unlikely to bother doing). 

The BBC would probably regard this as sensitive, responsible reporting - not pushing the 'Islam-is-to-blame' angle before they can be absolutely certain that really there is such an angle to the story, even when much of the rest of the media has been pursuing that angle for hours, and already accepts that there is such an angle. It leaves the BBC looking behind the curve on so many occasions, and looking as if they've got something to hide too. As here.

Terrorism returns to Kenya

The latest, sickening atrocity by Islamic terrorists looks as if it's comparable to the depraved attacks in Mumbai in 2008. 

A hostage situation is still going on, following the targeted murder of dozens of innocent people in a busy shopping centre in Nairobi - the victims (including children and elderly people) selected simply for being non-Muslim.

The confusion in some of the reporting as events unfolded yesterday is entirely understandable. It hardly needs saying that it takes time for journalists to get a handle on a massacre as it's happening, and that fresh details keep emerging. 

One detail emerged just around midnight, if the BBC's online reporting is anything to go by. An update at 23:50 (BST) added that the mall "is at least in part Israeli-owned", thus adding another layer of bigotry to the motivation of the terrorists. 

From the New Year bombing of the Norfolk Hotel in 1980 [by an Arab group 'protesting' against Kenya's allowing Israeli troops to refuel in Nairobi], to the 1998 embassy bombings [by al-Qaeda] and the 2002 attacks in Mombasa [targeting an Israeli-owned hotel and an Israeli-owned plane], Kenya has had more than its fair share of mass, murderous terrorism.

The BBC are, as ever, calling the perpetrators "militants" and avoiding the use of the word "terrorists". So, too, are ITV. That may make some people feel queasy (and angry), but they are going to keep on calling them that no matter how often people like us complain about it. They think they are right to do so. 

Decent people around the world are now holding their breath and hoping against hope that the hostage situation ends much better than it seems likely to end. Hope is all we've got at the moment.

A Thousand Years of Blagging Politicians

Talking of Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems and plastic bags...

The plastic bag was first invented in 1957, as a sandwich bag. By the 1970's it had already replaced the paper bag as our favourite way of carrying shopping.

Radio 4's More or Less quoted Mr Clegg saying, "We all use plastic bags. I do. Everyone does. I think everybody feels that maybe we use too many plastic bags. You might use them for twenty minutes walking back from the shops, but they take a thousand years to degrade."

Do they really? And what's the source of this 'thousand years' claim?

To find out, Tim Harford talked to Ming Tien, Professor of Biochemistry at Pennsylvania State University. 

Prof Tien had no idea where the claim came from, saying that he himself would never make a statement of that kind "as you could never prove it". ("Who's going to do an experiment for a thousand years?", he asked rhetorically.)

The programme then asked Nick Clegg's office for a source for the 'thousand years' figure. The reply came: 

"Scientists agree that it takes a long time for plastic bags to degrade fully. The exact time will depend on the environmental conditions. Typical estimates range from several decades to centuries." 

As More or Less didn't find that a satisfactory answer, they asked again and got this reply:

"There is extensive peer-reviewed literature on the persistence of plastic materials in the environment. Below is a link. Plastic Degradation and its Environmental Implications, with Special Reference to Poly(ethylene terephthalate), Polymers Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1, pp18 available at http {fade out}....[actually, as I've found it for you, should you want to read it, it's also available at www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/5/1/1/pdf] 

"Gosh, lots and lots and lots of referenciness!", said Tim. 

Still, More or Less didn't give up. They decided to read the paper, and guess what? They found no mention of the figure of a thousand years. 

So they contacted one of its authors, Dr Hayden Webb. He pointed out (in Tim's words):

"First, there's no fixed definition of what it means for plastic to degrade. Second, that different environments will have different effects on plastics. And third, that..well..the study wasn't looking at the plastic that goes into bags. It was looking at the stuff in soft drink bottles, which is a totally different compound. 

"So zero support for Mr Clegg's 'thousand year' plastic bag." 

Fancy that then, a politician spouting nonsense, and a government department trying to bluff its way out when challenged!

I do like More or Less.

Party Conference Watch 2013: The Liberal Democrats

I promised to monitor the Today programme's coverage of the party conferences this year to see if any evidence of bias emerges.

The Greens came first. Next came the Liberal Democrats. 

Their conference began last Saturday, but that day's Today (14/9) didn't spend much time on it.

The programme spent some two and a half minutes previewing the conference (from 7.12-7.14), though that discussion with chief political correspondent Gary O'Donoghue spent a good portion on that talking about a new government policy - the announcement of a five pence charge on plastic bags. Gary mentioned the Lib Dem advisor who said that only 25% of electorate would vote Lib Dem now and described  this as "a dangerous thing to do".

An interview with Ed Davey, the Lib Dem minister responsible for the new plastic bag policy, came later (from 7.32-7.37). The interview concentrated on the plastic bag issue, and didn't discuss general Lib Dem matters. Justin Webb asked him to explain the policy, asked him why he wasn't going as they've done in Wales, asked him whether this was a policy the Conservatives had resisted, asked him about whether George Osborne had resisted it, asked him whether paper bags were included, asked him if packaging was next on his agenda (as many people are upset about that), asked him whether companies should be charged for cleaning up waste packages (and pressed him on that)....[all, you note, questions pushing the policy on even further, rather than challenging it]...and, finally [and, for the first time, challenging the policy in some way], asked him whether there's an element of unfairness to the charge, in that poorer people who go shopping on buses might not have their bags with them, unlike richer people with cars. There were five interruptions.

The 8.10 spot wasn't a Lib Dem bit either, being given over to a general discussion about the party conference season, as John Humphrys talked to three former party advisers - Conservative George Bridges, Labour's Dan Corry and Lib Dem Miranda Green - about how their parties can try to connect with the electorate.

So Today's real Lib Dem conference coverage only began on Monday (16/9), with Evan Davis reporting from Glasgow. [Yep, another BBC star joining the rest of the gang in Glasgow].

A couple of minutes was spend with the BBC's political correspondent Vicky Young at 6.33 speculating about why "such an eminent economic commentator" as Vince Cable wasn't speaking in that day's economic debate. 

Indeed, the BBC's correspondents dominated much of that day's coverage, with Nick Robinson speculating about the day's events in the second hour and then coming back after 8.30 to give his post-match analysis of the interview with Nick Clegg at 8.10. There was also the BBC's Gary O'Donaghue reporting from the conference just before the 7 o'clock news and Evan Davis himself giving us his view of things just after the 7 o'clock news. 

Gary O'Donaghue's report concentrated on some in the the party's desire for 'distinctiveness' from the Tories. 

Evan Davis reported on Nick Clegg's revived position - "The only really funny thing about Nick Clegg now is how strong a position he's appeared to carve for himself, despite all the knocks....Calamity Clegg he once was, but he's turned into calm Clegg." We heard what Evan himself described as "a party political broadcast" for Nick Clegg - from Evan himself, from some non-Lib Dem students, from Sir Ming Campbell and even from Tim Farron. Then we heard from the Social Liberal (ie. left-wing) faction and got the less favourable take on Nick Clegg.

Evan's interview with Nick Clegg, which can be heard here, was good-humoured. Evan Davis and Nick Clegg got on well. Evan teed it up by saying how good a position Nick Clegg was now in. Yes, there was some ribbing over Vince Cable, but Mr Clegg emerged unscathed. They talked about the recovery, the 50p top tax rate, and then (briefly) the Lib Dem's falling membership figures - which Evan soon generalised to all political parties, about which they chatted for a surprising amount of time. Nick Clegg's popularity was the final topic. Evan can be a sharp interviewer, but this was a gentle, even soft interview. I counted a mere eight interruptions in 12 minutes (low by Evan's standard). Evan should do this more often. 

The programme ended with a couple of journalists talking about the Lib Dems - Isabel Hardman of the pro-Conservative Spectator and David Clegg of the pro-Labour Daily Record. "We've been running a relatively upbeat story from the Clegg point of view", began Evan, accurately. David Clegg gave the counter-story, saying that Scottish Lib Dems are angry and that the polls are bad, and wondered what the point of the party is. Isabel Hardman stuck to the more upbeat take taken by Today. 

Tuesday's coverage (17/9) included more BBC-on-BBC discussion, with talk of tax rises and the lifetime of the coalition between Evan Davis and Gary O'Donaghue at 6.35. 

Then came another discussion about the future of the coalition (at 7.17) with Olly Grender, former Lib Dem communications director, who wants the coalition to go right up to the general election. This was a good-natured chat with Evan Davis.

There was a further interview with a Lib Dem politician at 8.34, when Evan interviewing Danny Alexander on the subject of tax rises v spending cuts following the next election. The party is saying there will be more tax rises ("on the wealthiest"). This was more of the sparky kind of interview associated with Evan Davis, with plenty of interruptions (seven in just over 5 and a half minutes), but it wasn't a hostile one - and drew a "you've been honest" comment from Evan. He then quoted some of Vince Cable's attacks on the "ugly" rhetoric of the Conservatives and asked him if he agreed. Danny did indeed agree "on some issues", such as immigration.

The programme closed with an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson and Peter Kellner of YouGov (not a Lib Dem). Peter Kellner describes today's UK politicians (in general) as "pygmy politicians", but said the Lib Dems have an opportunity as a result - to say big things about modern politics (such as about the environment), and convince people over time that such big things count, and that they count. 

*****

The coverage overall (basically two days-worth - as Saturday's doesn't really count), gave a decent amount of time to the Lib Dems, without weighing down the programme with wall-to-wall Lib Demagoguery. Evan Davis approached the party in a good-natured way, and I would say gave them pretty favourable coverage, on the whole. I think we can safely say that the Lib Dems won't be complaining about BBC bias as a result of it.

The test of BBC bias for the rest of us will come when we see how Labour and the Conservatives are treated in comparison. Will they fare as well?

Honest Reporting

TrueToo, in the comments at CIF Watch, recalled a truly remarkable piece of BBC reporting from 2006 by Frances Harrison. 

Frances was the BBC's Iran correspondent at the time and had a particularly unpleasant news story to report. 

The piece, entitled Where Holocaust denial is welcomed, was a powerful denunciation of the Ahmedinejad-fronted theocratic regime's courting of all manner of white supremacists and convicted Holocaust deniers at a notorious conference held in that year.

Frances Harrison placed the Gordian knot of BBC 'impartiality' firmly at the forefront of her From Our Own Correspondent report:

In the BBC there's a lot of talk about impartial broadcasting. I've always wondered how that would work if you were the BBC correspondent in Nazi Germany reporting on Hitler.

Would you not have to take sides? Well I got closer than ever before to this problem reporting on Iran's Holocaust conference.

I have interviewed suicide bombers, sexually-abused children, raped women - I have seen the devastation of war and the tsunami.

But I have never reported on anything like this.

It's quite clear from her report, that Frances's mind was well and truly boggled at the vicious carnival of anti-Semitic clowns and Nazi apologists parading before her - all at the invitation of the Iranian government - and she succinctly ripped apart the Iranian government's confused, dishonest and frankly disgusting position over the conference. 

It may be seven years old, and Ahmedinejad may (thankfully) have gone (hopefully never to be heard of again), but it's still a remarkable, bold piece of BBC reporting - a world away from faux impartiality.

******

Frances Harrison no longer works for the BBC.

******

[Note, however, the BBC website sub-editors obfuscatory caption beneath the photo of the slogan 'The world without Zionism' in that article: Iran frequently plays host to those who criticise Israel. 

That wasn't Frances's point. 

Her point was: Iran frequently plays host to anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. 

That's typical of the BBC website at the time, and since].

Counterpoint

As argued before, the fact that the BBC gets complaints from both sides isn't proof that the BBC is impartial.

That point duly made...here are two Twitter comments on the subject of bias that were made at almost exactly the same time today:

ChrissieSilverSurfer ‏@ChrissieOAP  2h. @BBCNews showing UKIP conf @SkyNews showing @Ed_Miliband on soapbox speech in full.#BBCbias at it's worse

james cooper ‏@vicarjim4  2h bbc at labour party confernece not started yet. is that bias or has ED offered them more money. do they know UKIP conference on now?

Veiling the argument?

Not wearing a niqab

I see that Radio 4's Sunday will be discussing what certainly seems to have been the 'hot topic' of the week (other than red squirrels making a bit of a return) - namely the Muslim veil controversy:

Shelagh Fogarty explores where it [a national debate on the subject] may lead with Dr Sara Silvestri, from City University, London and Mirina Paananen, a student at the As-Suffa Institute in Birmingham.

Given that Mirina Paananen, a Muslim convert who wears the niqab, is against 'banning the burqa' and that Dr Silvestri is also against 'banning the burqa', it seems unlikely that we're going to get much in the way of strong disagreement here. 

I suspect that those hoping to hear a less one-sided debate will have to go elsewhere - somewhere , perhaps, like Harry's Place, where Sarah AB's thoughtful take is prompting a good deal of interesting discussion below the line. 

May I be excused?

Jimmy Perry, co-creator with David Croft of Dad’s Army, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and Hi De Hi! (to name but a few of his popular triumphs) has just turned 90 and the Daily Telegraph pays tribute to him today, asking "Is there anyone living in Britain today who has contributed more to our Gross National Happiness than Jimmy Perry?"

Here's how he first sketched out his ideas for Dad's Army - that most golden of comedies from the days when the BBC produced such things:

“I had one of those exercise books with multiplication tables on the back, and scrawled down the characters when I was on the train from Victoria.” 

And here's the inspiration behind Private Pike:

“Well he was partly based on me and partly based on all the other young men I met in the Home Guard. The phrase ‘You stupid boy’ was what my father said to me when I told him I wanted to be a great actor or comedian.”

And, of course, Private Pike was the character who inspired one of the best of all TV jokes:

Pike: Whistle while you work! Hitler is a twerp! He’s so barmy, so his army! Whistle while you work!

U-Boat Captain: You’re name will go on the list! What is it?

Mainwaring: Don’t tell him Pike!

U-Boat Captain: Pike! Thank you! 

Here's a clip from one of my favourite episodes, We Know Our Onions:

Jimmy Perry is pleased that the Beeb still repeats Dad's Army, but is disappointed about the lack of repeats for It Ain’t Half Hot Mum:

“It was David’s and my favourite,” says Perry, who is cross that it is now associated with “blacking up”. “All Michael Bates (who played the bearer Rangi Ram), wore was a light tan. He wasn’t blacked up! Michael spoke fluent Urdu, and was a captain in the Gurkhas.” As to charges of homophobia, Perry points out that shouting at soldiers that they were “a bunch of poofs” was what Sergeant-Majors did in the Forties. “That’s how they talked. ‘What are you?’ ‘We‘re a bunch of poofs!’ That’s how it was! It was the reality.

The BBC's response rather mirrors that of Sergeant-Major Williams: "Oh dear. How sad. Never mind." 

Nigel Farage and that Hitler moustache: Coincidence or conspiracy?

Who's that, dressed up as a Nazi at university?

It's shadow chancellor Ed Balls, of course. 

Is he embarrassed by the photo?

“Of course I’m not embarrassed by it. If I had the choice again, would I do it? No. Is there a difference between being 20 and being 40? Yes.

"I went along with it for a laugh. In retrospect I wouldn’t do it again.”

Now, I'll admit I'm not a fan of Ed Balls, but one thing's for sure - he's not a Nazi. 

And nor is Nigel Farage. 

Newsnight's former Tory-Basher-in-Chief, Michael Crick, now at Channel 4 News, has obtained a letter [via whom, and for what ulterior motive?] from a period in the UKIP leader's past, which doesn't even come from his university days but from his school days - a letter from 32 years ago, when he was just 17. 

Apparently, he said some racist and fascist things at the time. 

Michael Crick has also got hold of some comments from some anonymous types from Mr Farage's teenage years, saying that he also sang Hitler Youth songs. Nigel Farage himself says that latter accusation is "silly".

Scroll down though Michael Crick's (smear) article and you'll find this:

Terry Walsh, who was then deputy master at Dulwich (ie. deputy head), says Farage was well known for provoking people, especially left-wing English teachers who had no sense of humour.

The former master of Dulwich David Emms, the man who appointed Farage and received Chloe Deakin's letter, says he has no memory of the meeting or the letter. But he agrees with his former deputy: "It was naughtiness, not racism," Emms told me on Wednesday.

Near the end of his (smear) piece, Michael Crick anticipates the obvious reaction of many readers - what you might call  the 'Ed Balls Defence' - but keeps up the (smear) smear anyway:

Many will argue that it is irrelevant what a teenager did at school more than 30 years ago, but Ukip has a problem showing it is not racist.

Well so says Michael Crick. 

I could say in response:

Many will indeed argue that it is irrelevant what a teenager did at school more than 30 years ago, but Labour has a problem showing it is not communist.

After all, as many of you will already know, Peter Mandelson (Peter Mandelson!) was a member of the Young Communist League; Alistair Darling was a Trotskyist; and Alan Johnson considered himself Communist Party of Great Britain. And that's just for starters. 

********

Now, here's where things take a bizarre turn. 

The BBC, of course, decided to follow Michael Crick's lead and took the opportunity provided by Nigel Farage's UKIP conference interviews to ask him about his 'racist' and 'fascist' past.

BBC Breakfast (not available to listen again, as ever) was one such programme.

The bizarre bit came when a pixel on the screen froze during the interview, resulting in this image:

A BBC TV sportscaster then tweeted it to the world:

...for which he duly apologised shortly after:

Olly Foster ‏@OllyFoster10hApologies for my previous tweet. An error of judgement on my behalf.

That inopportune Hitler moustache provoked a feeding frenzy of unfriendly glee from UKIP's opponents, naturally - plus plenty of coverage from the online newspapers.

But it has also provoked a good deal of anger from the BBC's more conspiracy-minded critics. 

According to Trending Central, it was no mistake:

Yet another example of the BBC’s hatred of UKIP showing its ugly and biased head.

The BBC is a very adept organisation and no one with any intelligence will see this as a “coincidental mistake”.

There needs to be an investigation into this disgraceful visual attack of Mr Farage. UKIP should consider suing the BBC for defamation.

In politics there is no such thing as a coincidence.

And according to Autonomous Mind, 

If anyone believes the BBC had nothing more than an unfortunate and accidental pixelation error, they must believe in the tooth fairy, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and a fat man in a red suit with flying reindeer, who can get down chimneys to leave presents every December…

I'm not overly given to conspiracy theories myself (even about the BBC) and certainly don't believe in either Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster (though kids, yes, Santa and the Tooth Fairy really do exist!) and remain much more willing to entertain the possibility that this unfortunate pixelation might really be an accident, but it's one heck of a coincidence, isn't it? 

Now, if there's one thing my interest in maths tells me it's that coincidences aren't (generally-speaking) anywhere near as unlikely as most people suspect. The chances of a Hitler moustache-shaped pixel freezing somewhere between Nigel Farage's mouth and nose during an interview where he was being probed about his 'Hitler Youth' youth may not be as vanishingly unlikely as you might think...yet it still seems like one heck of a coincidence, doesn't it?

The obvious question here is: Is it even possible though to deliberately engineer a Hitler moustache-shaped pixel to appear precisely where it did during that a live interview? If it's impossible (and just a random glitch), then there's no conspiracy whatsoever. If it's easier than we might think, however, then the conspiracy option re-opens. I haven't a clue about such things, I'm ashamed to say. Have you?

Plus, why go to all the trouble to fleetingly 'paint' a Hitler moustache on Nigel Farage's face when no one would notice it? Except for...erm...a BBC broadcaster who then tweeted it to the world, provoking a mass of interest, including online articles form most of the mainstream UK newspapers. 

As I say, 'bizarre'!!


Update 21/9 The BBC has issued a statement:

"The big screen is owned by MediaCity UK, not the BBC. The fault has been reported to them and they are working to rectify it as soon as possible."

The Independent helpfully reminds its readers of this classic moment from Father Ted:

Double-take

Here's a comment about the BBC, and BBC bias, which may have many of you shaking your heads - perhaps because you're nodding along in agreement but also perhaps because you can't quite believe you're agreeing with the man who said it:

“The pay of senior executives is a scandal. They are all of a type too, Oxbridge, glorified civil servants. They go in after university and they stay there for life. It’s incestuous, it’s cushy, it’s well-paid and it’s unchallenging. And they replicate themselves, the Clives and Samanthas. The argument used to be advanced that they had to pay these huge salaries so they wouldn’t go to ITV or abroad. Well, if so, let them. I think the quality of BBC programming is at an all-time low, or at least an all-time low in my experience. And the recent farce involving Mark Thompson and the BBC Trust exemplifies the incompetence. The Trust should be sacked tomorrow but don’t turn it all over to Ofcom, which is degrees worse.”

“And it’s undeniable there is bias, and it’s that smug, condescending kind. Now I don’t mind if someone is overtly biased, I can deal with that, the viewer can discern it, but what I can’t stand is this pretence of impartiality. Bias, of whatever kind, starts with the decision to choose a subject and how to handle it. I am all for varied opinion, controversy, but I can’t stand the pretence that it is even-handed and must be so because it is sanctified by the BBC.”

The words of George Galloway MP.