"An expert body trying to put figures in the public domain in a politically neutral sense"

The Oxford Migration Observatory doesn't take kindly to being accused of bias. (It's like the BBC in that respect.) 

The Daily Mail ran a hatchet-job on them a few years ago. The paper quoted Labour MP Frank Field claiming it had been set up "to try to undermine’ MigrationWatch", that it was "trying to use the status of Oxford University to peddle Left-wing views on immigration", and that it was "a propaganda effort to change public opinion on immigration". 

The Oxford Migration Observatory advisory board promptly put out a statement in response rejecting such charges:

The Migration Observatory is neither 'pro-immigration' nor 'anti-immigration' and this is clear to anyone who visits its website, uses its materials or encounters its media output. We would invite anybody who has questions about this to visit the site, scrutinise it thoroughly and notify the Observatory if they find evidence of anything other than political independence.

I have to say that my experiences of listening to experts from the the Oxford Migration Observatory have led me more to Mr Field's point of view than to that of its advisory board. Regular readers may recall Radio 4's use of its director, Madeleine Sumption, for an extraordinarily biased series of reports on The World Tonight a couple of months back - and Madeleine Sumption certainly sounded pretty 'pro-immigration' to me. 

As befits a pair of organisations that get accused of being biased (in favour of mass immigration) but which insist they aren't, the BBC and the Oxford Migration Observatory seem to get along well. Their work is regularly and uncritically reported by the BBC...

....unlike that of MigrationWatch, which, even now, is kept at arm's length from the BBC, and sometimes gets the 'pressure group' or the 'anti-immigration' label shoved on it by the corporation - a sign of 'bias by labelling'. 

Just to remind you of how determined the BBC could be to undermine MigrationWatch, especially in its early days (when it was correctly predicting what no one else dared predict - least of all the BBC), please re-read an earlier 'Is the BBC biased?' post (from 2012) called 'Who got it right - Migration Watch or the BBC?' It offers a startling reminder of (a) how wrong the BBC got it and (b) just how unsympathetic some BBC reporters could be towards MigrationWatch.

The offending BBC reporter back in 2002 was BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani. And, as you're probably aware, he's still in place at the BBC. Indeed, he's been the main reporter on today's extensive BBC coverage of a new report of immigration since 2011 by...the Oxford Migration Observatory.

[Ah yes, 'bias by labelling'...

Bias by labelling — Bias by labelling comes in two forms.  The first is the tagging of one set of politicians and groups with extreme labels while leaving the opposing politicians and groups unlabelled or with more mild labels, or vice versa.  The second kind of bias by labelling occurs when a reporter not only fails to identify a liberal as a liberal or a conservative as a conservative, but describes the person or group with positive labels, such as “an expert” or “independent consumer group”.  In so doing, the reporter imparts an air of authority that the source does not deserve.]

Here's how Dominic Casciani began his discussion with John Humphrys on this morning's Today:

These figures from Oxford University's Migration Observatory, which are an expert body trying to put figures in the public domain in a politically neutral sense...

That description could have come straight out of an Oxford Migration Observatory press release, couldn't it? (And straight out of a textbook on media bias too!)

Now, Dominic Casciani could, of course, be completely correct about them, but in so (generously) describing them he's clearly trying to influence Today listeners into seeing the Oxford Migration Observatory as the voice of impartial truth - the migration-watching equivalent of the BBC itself.

If anyone ever hears Dominic describing MigrationWatch as "an expert body trying to put figures in the public domain in a politically neutral sense", please let me know. My hat stands ready to be eaten. And several pigs are on standby to take to the air.

*****

Dominic's discussion with John Humphrys (at around 6.33am) remained wholly uncritical of the Oxford Migration Group throughout, presenting them as careful academics and reporting their findings as being as close to the truth as we're likely to get.

Without naming names, however, Dominic suggested that certain other migration-watching groups might aren't believable. Now, who could he possibly be having a dig at there?

John Humphrys: And will this figure [the figure for the total number of immigrants living in the UK] strike people as being bigger or smaller than expected?

Dominic Casciani: I think there are lots of ways of calculating this. So some groups would put the figure higher, especially if you take into account the possibility of illegal migration which can't be counted. I think some people...other people would suggest this is overplaying it. 

Then he went on to say that his own research showed that the Oxford Migration Group had it "about right", thus placing himself with those "other people" who suggest groups (like MigrationWatch) are "overplaying it".

As they say on Twitter, #bbcbias.

BBC in the CAGE

Last night's This Week on BBC One handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. 

Let me repeat that: last night's This Week handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. 

Yes, Andrew Neil subsequently skewered Qureshi, exposing him as the slippery apologist for Islamic terrorism that he truly is, but still: last night's This Week handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. And then interviewed him at length.

The BBC also broadcast CAGE's press conference in full, after "beautiful" Enwazi was exposed. And CAGE representatives have hardly been off the BBC ever since. Their propaganda has been all over the place - from today to 5 Live, from the News Channel to BBC One's main bulletins. 

Michael Portillo really said it all:

I think, despite all his cleverness, that Asim comes over as an apologist for Emwazi, and I haven't been able to turn on the BBC all week without hearing you and seeing you, and just wonder what the BBC is doing, giving you all this airtime. 

I really don't know what the BBC is doing, giving you all this airtime.

And nor do I. 

The idea that - because of its commitments to free speech, democracy and impartiality - the BBC should not, in principle, completely exclude Qureshi & Co. from its airwaves is a reasonable one. 

However, leaping from that to plastering them, willy-nilly, all across the BBC, on programme after programme, and broadcasting their propagandist press conferences in full is a very different matter. 

The BBC is under no obligation whatsoever to do that and hardly any licence fee payers would expect them to do so, or want them to do so. 

The BBC, quite frankly, has gone CAGE mad. They need to stop pandering to such people NOW.

And on it goes

Oh FFS, here we go again, 'new' on the BBC website homepage [a new entry at No.5]:

Missing Syria girls' parents criticise police over letter

The parents of three girls feared to be in Syria say police failed to pass on a letter that would have alerted them.

Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, left their London homes last month and are thought to have joined Islamic State.

It has emerged they had been spoken to by police at Bethnal Green Academy about a friend who had gone missing.

The Guardian says the girls were given letters to take home, which they hid rather than showing to their parents.

The BBC. The Guardian. What the parents are moaning about. It's the police's fault. Blah, blah, blah.

The Islamic State vs the Assyrian Empire

Please forgive me the following rant, but I need to get it off my chest...

As someone who has loved ancient history since childhood, Islamic State's pious destruction of the relics of the ancient Assyrian Empire beggars belief.

The Assyrian Empire was one of the cruelest and most successful of the ancient empires. It declared a 'universal empire'. It aimed, through shocking, awe-inspiring deeds of extreme violence, to inspire terror in the hearts of its enemies and, thus, make conquering them a doddle. It killed and destroyed on an unprecedented scale, grabbing massive amounts of land and loot, seizing large numbers of women, and enslaving populations.

It sounds a bit like Islamic State - except that the Assyrian Empire also went in for awe-inspiring art, while the self-declared Caliphate merely goes in for YouTube videos (and smashing up awe-inspiring art, like some turbo-charged Turner Prize contender).

The ancient Assyrians were about power. Islamic State is about power and religion (Islam).

Their moronic, religious impulses may have primitive origins but their appetite for destruction also seems strangely post-modern. I remember curling my lip in disapproval at the jokey relish with which Tim Burton imagined the destruction of mankind's most magnificent works in Mars Attacks. 

It's enough to make you weep though, and I can hardly face reading about what they are doing.

It's good then that the BBC have been making this unforgivable crime against humanity their lead story online for much of the afternoon. 

Characteristically, however, their main report (and its accompanying video) remains noticeably shy about explaining the explicitly religious (i.e. Islamic) motivation behind these determined atrocities against our shared history (or, for that matter, giving much historical background at all). 

The periodic phases of iconoclasm in early medieval Byzantium and at the dawn of Reformation England are depressing stains on western civilisation. Such brief, pious forms of hysteria seemed to be (very firmly) confined to history but, thanks to (Saudi) Wahhabi-inspired Islamic revivalists, they're back with a vengeance.

The BBC really needs to get off its 'culturally-sensitive' backside and start properly explaining the danger we all face from these pre-modern/post-modern Muslim loons. 

"Anti-Semitism in the UK: Is It Growing?"

Tonight's The Report on Radio 4 took a scary look at anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom:

Anti-Semitism in the UK: Simon Cox investigates the changing face of prejudice against Jewish people after recent lethal attacks in Paris, Copenhagen and Brussels. With the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for European Jews to move to Israel, we look at whether there is more dangerous anti-Semitism online and on the streets of the UK. 

You might have been expecting to hear a lot about the threat from Islamists, but no...

The vast bulk of the programme was devoted to the far-right - from Combat 18 in the '80s and '90s to National Action and Joshua Bonehead in the 21st Century - and the programme did a good job of exposing these scumbags to the public eye (even though the Combat 18 bit seemed somewhat historical). 

It certainly didn't hold back from shaming these marginal creeps - even broadcasting some of the disgusting tweets sent to Labour MP Luciana Berger, and quoting some of their odious 'justifications'. 

Particularly shocking, however, were the experiences of Conservative MP Lee Scott. 

He receives regular anti-Semitic death threats - including ones that target him late at night in parliament after his staff have gone home. He needs a team of around five people to watch out for his safety when he makes certain public appearances. Here in Britain, in 2015.

Mr Scott's experiences came at the central point of the programme, midway through the section devoted to the far-right. 

In passing, however, it was mentioned that his abusers call him "an enemy of Islam". Quite who these Islam-defending abusers were wasn't speculated upon (Combat 18 leftovers? National Action? Bonehead? Someone else entirely?), and the focus on the far-right continued for a further nine minutes. 

With just five minutes to go, however, the (half-hour-long) programme suddenly changed tack. 

Presenter Simon Cox mentioned "a newer threat" to Britain's Jews. 

An advisor to the police and the government said that anti-Semitism is an "endemic", "deep-rooted", "engrained" problem in the Muslim community...

...at which point the fierce, 'brave' tone of the programme (towards the fringe nutjobs of the far-right) suddenly vanished, and the BBC's habitual, culturally-sensitive apologism took over.

Simon Cox quickly read out some of the excuses. He narrated the point that British Muslims have a harder time of it than British Jews, that they experience more attacks than British Jews [going, as statistical ignoramuses tend to do, for the bare totals and completely failing to relate them to proportions: i.e. to the much smaller proportion of Jews in Britain compared to Muslims], and that they suffer "Islamophobic" attacks on a "daily" basis. 

He also said that many might see the advisor's criticisms as "a misleading and inaccurate portrayal of their views". (The advisor, in response, conceded that their are plenty of positive examples of British Muslims behaving in a friendly fashion towards British Jews, but that the problem of Muslim anti-Semitism remains.)

And, having spent a mere three minutes on the dangers posed by Muslim Jew-hatred (despite Paris and Copenhagen - and in contrast to the 16 minutes devoted to the far-right), Simon then moved on, towards his closing remarks...

****

My closing remarks are this summary (which I emailed to Sue immediately after the programme, but which I know she won't mind me sharing):

'The Report' on Radio 4. It was about anti-Semitism in the UK. Most of it focused on the far-right. About three minutes were given to Muslim anti-Semitism, hedged with lots of caveats and several uses of the word "Islamophobic" - that Muslims are victims of more hate crimes than Jews, that they suffer abuse "daily". The anti-Semitism of the anti-Israel Left wasn't considered at all. 

Maybe I should just have left it at that.

Are we really to believe (pace the BBC here) that the main danger to Britain's small Jewish community comes from the rabid, marginal boneheads of the British far-right?

Update 6/3: Not a Sheep's take on this is well worth reading - and accords very closely with my own. His conclusions?:

So there we have it, a half hour BBC programme on the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK that manages just three minutes on the problem of anti-Semitism in the UK's Muslim community and counters that with the BBC presenter casting doubt on the veracity of those claims. Just another typical piece of BBC programming that protects Muslims from criticism even when that criticism is from a British Muslim expert. 

Also missing from this programme was any mention of the rise of anti-Semitism amongst the British left, especially at Universities and amongst the 'intelligensia'. But maybe investigating that source of anti-Semitism would be hitting too close to the BBC for their own comfort?

Top trumps

There are plenty of opinions in the media and blogosphere with regard to the wisdom or otherwise of Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to accept ‘that’ invitation, and to make ‘that speech’; likewise, differing opinions on the content of the speech. Many are thoughtful and interesting, some are insightful and some very disturbing. 

However the outstanding topic with regard to this blog is Jeremy Bowen’s unfortunate tweet. 

.“#NetanyahuSpeech He acknowledges Elie Wiesel in audience. Once again Netanyahu plays the Holocaust card. Don’t repeat mistakes of the past”.

He can’t take it back. All that remains is the BBC’s attempt at damage limitation.

Don't repeat mistakes!

From the Guardian:

“A BBC spokesperson said: “Jeremy was using Twitter and journalism shorthand whilst live-tweeting PM Netanyahu’s speech. The context of his comment is that a major part of PM Netanyahu’s critique of the proposed Iran deal was based on the spectre of another holocaust. Jeremy’s tweet was designed to reflect that context. He absolutely refutes any suggestion of antisemitism.”

What’s “The spectre of another Holocaust”?  Even the definition of the word spectre includes a reference to a (nuclear) holocaust.

Spectre:

• something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence."the spectre of nuclear holocaust"
• synonyms:
• threat, menace, shadow, cloud, vision; 

Yes indeed, the threat, menace, shadow, cloud, vision, widely feared, unpleasant dangerous. Precisely. 

So the BBC  is saying that the phrase Bowen used was intended to reflect Netanyahu’s genuine fear, sympathetically? “The Holocaust card” is a sympathetic phrase now?

The Holocaust CARD? I don’t think that excuse will suffice.

“ Once again Netanyahu plays the Holocaust card”.

“Once again?” Does ‘once again’ fit the BBC's excuse? Once again unequivocally means that Netanyahu is in the habit of ‘playing the Holocaust card.’ 

The Holocaust Card is a term is used by antisemites to disable all sincerely meant reminders of one particular lesson from history whenever and wherever it’s invoked. This cynical device is even employed by those who eagerly cite other lessons from history. “Look what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran/Persia,” they say to justify a position over meddling in (or keeping out of)  the political / military conflicts of other countries, which imply that history tends to repeat.

  

They ridicule references to the Holocaust, or dismissively call it the “Holocaust Industry”, and accuse Jews and Israelis of exploiting self-pity to justify - here comes another phrase - “What They are Doing to the Palestinians.” 

To ‘play the Holocaust card’ means that ‘Holocaust’ is a trump card, pulled out to finesse the opponent and justify the unjustifiable. 

If there was one situation that justifies referencing a lesson from history, it’s this one. 

Iran is teetering on the verge of being left to acquire the means to do what it openly wishes to do. 

If the Israeli PM needed a way to emphasise the fear and apprehension that Israelis are experiencing over Obama’s negotiations with Iran, what better way would Jeremy Bowen suggest? 

Poor Jeremy Bowen is offended.  He’s used a notorious phrase straight out of the lexicon of antisemitic discourse, which was specifically designed to offend Jews, and he’s offended by accusations that his use of an offensive phrase was offensive to Jews. 

Bowen tweets:

“Have been reading some recent tweets sent my way. Suggestions I'm an anti semite, or a denier of the Holocaust, are untrue and offensive”

Messages from his supporters include one from the BBC’s Julia McFarlane, (no stranger to BBC-bias blogs) She calls complainers ‘idiots’ and “not worth your attention”  “x” 

From one idiot to another, you’re playing the Idiot Card, and that’s not intended sympathetically.

The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda

At the risk of giving unwavering types another fit of apoplexy, I very much agree with this comment at Biased BBC:

flexdream

March 3, 2015 at 9:59 pm

Some in the BBC are doing the right thing. This interview with a jihadi turned British agent is excellent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mrj7f

It seems a genuine account. Without any self serving ‘muslims as victim’.
Well done the Beebers behind this. I hope it doesn’t blight their career prospects. And well done the brave spy who followed his conscience.

The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda was superb. The jihadi who came in from the cold was very brave. And the reporter behind it, oddly enough, was former Newsnight reporter Peter Marshall. 

(Peter Marshall's career has already been blighted though. Ian Katz unceremoniously dumped him from Newsnight a year or so ago). 

The BBC, censorship and a pair of 'p' words

The reporter most credited with exposing the street grooming scandal and the complicity of the authorities in covering it up, Andrew Norfolk of the Times, gives a characteristically full account of today's report into the "industrial scale" paedophile abuse going on in Oxford, mainly by 'Asian' (i.e. Pakistani) gangs (though here including North Africans, suggesting that being 'Asian' may not be the real connecting factor between the perps). 

Thanks to his report today I heard something I didn't hear on the BBC News at Six (because it simply wasn't reported) and didn't see in any of the BBC's online reports (because they haven't, as far as I can see, reported it) - namely one of the report's key recommendations:

The report does not suggest that concerns about “racial sensitivities” played any role in agencies’ failure to tackle the abuse, but calls for a national debate about the disproportionate number of men of Pakistani heritage involved in group sex-grooming offences across England.

“As has been found wherever this type of organised group abuse has been uncovered, the perpetrators have been mainly from an Asian heritage, with some from Africa or south-east European countries, and with a mainly Muslim culture.

“The association of group-based child sexual exploitation with mainly Pakistani heritage [men] is undeniable and prevention will need both national understanding. communication and debate, but also work with faith groups at a local level.”

Why didn't the BBC's News at Six mention that call? Reporter Alison Holt merely reported the bit about “racial sensitivities” not playing any role in agencies’ failure to tackle the abuse in Oxford - a telling piece of (self) censorship on her part.

I try to be fair-minded about the BBC but censoring such a key recommendation of this report, doubtless for reasons of 'cultural sensitivity', really is part of the problem. Meaning that the BBC is part of the problem.

P.S. Why is is that the BBC almost invariably avoids the word 'paedophile' in connection with its reporting of such stories when they involve Muslims?

Celebrities, Scots, Europeans, priests, policemen, doctors, etc, can be 'paedophiles', but members of 'Asian' grooming gangs, raping and abusing twelve-year-old girls, almost always (and I've found just one counter-example) turn out to be merely 'members of grooming gangs', never 'paedophiles'.

That's weird, isn't it? 

And if you doubt that then please do a search on the BBC website using the term 'paedophile'. 

Extreme 'cultural sensitivity' seems to be at play again, once more grossly distorting proper reporting by the BBC.

Of Hacking, Hypocrisy and Weasels

The BBC (and the Guardian) pursued the Murdoch empire relentlessly over phone hacking. 

You'll doubtless recall the countless lead stories on the website, the innumerable 'Newsnight' reports, the endless updates on 'PM', all those Robert Peston blogposts, etc, etc, etc. Pretty much every twist and turn in the story received massive attention from the BBC. 

Murdoch's Sky is, of course, the BBC's major rival, so they were never going to be a disinterested party. The outrageous thing was how little effort they made to hide the fact. 

Of course I could be wrong, and if the BBC reports the growing Mirror Group hacking scandal with the same obsessive focus as it reporting the 'News of  the World' scandal then I'll have to eat my words, won't I? The BBC will have proved itself to be disinterested as the Mirror Group isn't a major rival of the BBC in the way that News Corp is. We will have to see.

At the high court today the Mirror Group stands accused of phone hacking "on an industrial scale" - a scale dwarfing that at the Murdoch newspapers. 

According to the FT,

David Sherborne, barrister for the victims, told the High Court that the trial would look at the “size and scale of unlawful activity” at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), where he claimed phone hacking was carried out by “scores of journalists”.

He told the High Court that the “vast” amount of phone hacking carried out throughout the three national newspapers “makes News of the World look like a cottage industry and a small one at that”.

How is the BBC reporting this astonishing claim? Well, it is reporting it. It's seventh in its running order on the news website. And the BBC News at Six on BBC One reported it as its next-to-last story, 24 minutes in, just before the 'weasel riding on the flying woodpecker' story - and after two 'Jihadi Mohammed' stories, including more propaganda from CAGE. 

Hmm. Yes it's been a day full of of big, harrowing domestic stories - the report into "industrial scale" abuse by grooming gangs in Oxford, the report into the maternity unit scandal at Furness Hospital - but had this been a damaging Murdoch empire story then I suspect it would have featured a good deal more prominently, and not been merely the warm-up-story to the weasel riding on the woodpecker's back. 

Plus, David Sillitoe's report for BBC One didn't even mention David Sherborne's most striking claim: that phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers made 'News of the World' "look like a cottage industry and a small one at that". 

The same cannot be said for the Guardian, which makes that very point its main angle and features thestory far more prominently than the BBC. The Mirror Group is much more of a rival for the Guardian than it is for the BBC, of course.

Everyone seems to be behaving according to their own interests here, don't they? 

Incidentally, another of the Guardian and the BBC's go-to-men during the whole course of the 'NOTW' scandal, Labour MP and prolific tweeter Tom Watson, is unusually quiet on Twitter today. He's tweeted nothing about hacking at Mirror Group. [And neither for that matter has Robert Peston]. It's most unlike him not to tweet about hacking. What's gotten into him? Just what is it about the Labour-supporting Mirror Group that isn't exciting his righteous anger as much? 

Is the smell of hypocrisy hanging heavy in the air today?

This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know that you can hear us, Earthmen.

It's hard to escape the feeling that 'the voice of the BBC', veteran BBC reporter Hugh Sykes, is giving voice to the BBC's inner thoughts yet again in re-tweet after re-tweet today:

BREAKING: Netanyahu offered no 'viable alternative' to Iran talks, Obama says - AFP
— Conflict News (@rConflictNews) March 3, 2015

Sr White House official reacts to #Israel PM #bibispeech saying "The logic of the PM speech is regime change not a nuclear speech" #iran
— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) March 3, 2015

Obama: When we announced framework deal, #Netanyahu "made exact same speech" and none of the warnings came true. #Iran #Israel
— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) March 3, 2015

A leader of a foreign country criticising the US President from behind podium in the US Congress. #Fail #GOP
— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) March 3, 2015

I think we can tell where Hugh's coming from. (We can always tell where Hugh's coming from).

The Voice of the BBC speaks. Off the record of course, you understand. 

Woodputinweaselpecker

(h/t and h/t)

All You Need is Love

The closing words of tonight's Panorama were "Love at the heart of politics can only make for a better democracy". 

They were spoken, perhaps inevitably, by Fergal Keane.

There was sad music and hopeful music. And love. Lots of love. Plus Fergal cooing over a baby (belonging to a struggling single mum, naturally). And then more love.

The programme was the first episode in a four-part series called 'What Britain wants'. And what Britain wants, it seems, is love - a love that can come from family, from community, from social/political activism, from Islam.

The report came from the east end of London and, inevitably, touched on immigration. Immigration has brought "a real energy" to  the area, Fergal told us. But, sadly, there's always been intolerance. There were the blackshirts in the 1930s, and now there's tension between "Islamist hardliners" and "nationalist far-right groups". 

Looking on the bright side though, there's always political activism. Think of the anti-Iraq War protests, said Fergal. Look at 38 Degrees, putting love at the heart of politics.

And love can effect mainstream politics too, he said:

And there's hardly a more profound example of the power of love in a political campaign than this: a campaign that went to the heart of British ideas about love and family [the campaign for gay marriage]. Pria and Paula got married in Hornchurch, east of London. Until recently they were denied a right taken for granted by the rest of us. 

Then, to the strains of Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel (music much beloved of BBC documentary makers hoping to tug our hearts), Fergal continued:

In family, community, society, we've seen how love in its different dimensions can be a powerful unifying force. This young woman loves her religion and she loves Britain...

[Can you guess what's coming next?]

But there are some who feel alienated by the way she dresses and make assumptions about what she represents.

Cue Rabia, dressed from head to toe in a niqab, with only her eyes showing:

I'm born here, and I feel that I belong here. There's no reason why I wouldn't. But sometimes I do feel there's intolerance towards me and the way that I dress. It honestly is on face value [sic].

What shows Rabia as being different from certain other Muslim girls from her neck of the woods (the kind who might use their half-term holiday to fly off to help others behead non-Muslims) is that she invited a Holocaust survivor to speak at her local college. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, Fergal was telling us - especially if that cover is a niqab. 

And Rabia returned later to call for tolerance. And Fergal talked again of the need for love - as potentially-lonely old folk danced and laughed with friends, and hearts were warmed.

Altogether now: Love is in the air. Everywhere I look around. Love is in the air. Every sight and every sound...

Mathematical BBC Presenters in Numbers

After last night's preachy pro-EU mockumentary, BBC Four's main feature tonight attempted to preach a sermon on another of the BBC's main themes.

The programme was called Climate Change in Numbers, and it's been trying very hard to teach all of you naughty, naughty, naughty sceptics that the world really is warming, that there's not actually been a pause, that the 'gaps' in the data aren't important, that humans really are responsible, etc, etc. 

Instead of talking about that sort of thing though, I'd like to shift the discussion onto the kind of subject matter that BBC types usually like hearing about...except when it concerns the BBC.

Three mathematicians presented the programme. Two were older men, the third was a young and attractive woman (with dyed orange hair). 

Now, with all the thousands of older women involved in the global warming project here in the UK you might have thought a women in, say, her fifties could have chosen, but this is the sexist/ageist BBC, so that would be a 'no' then. 

The numbers tell us with more than 97% accuracy, therefore, that the BBC is sexist/ageist. And the numbers never lie.

(Plus - and get the smelling salts out for the BBC's diversity executives - all the presenters were white too. Tut, tut). 

Emwazi day

The whole of BBC News today is about Mohammed Emwazi. Everyone who ever came into contact with him since the day he was born has been interviewed on the television. 

He was quiet and hard-working you know (apart from the occasional paroxism when walking past the house of a Jew.) 

The BBC is mystified. It's trying to get to the bottom of where and how the studious young man was radicalised. 

If anyone hasn’t already realised, this wild goose-chase has been designed to make us think that Emwazi was a patriotic British citizen until the fateful day he bumped into the fairy Jihadi-mother that preys on hitherto moderate Muslims.  With one wave of her magic wand they’re howling at the moon and running off to join the Islamic State Ministry of Beheading where they are free to hack away at the necks of infidels for ever and ever.

Here’s what commenter Lamia had to say about Justin Webb’s ill-researched interview with Gita Sahgal about Amnesty International. An unrepentant Steve Crawshaw, deputy director of Amnesty International follows.

H/T Harry’s Place.

'Lamia'

You can hear today's R4 interviews with Gita Saghal and Amnesty UK's Director Steve Crawshaw here:

           http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...(starts at 01.09.15)

Crawshaw sounds shifty and most of all embarrassed through the phone call. You can actually hear the forced smile on his face. He claims Amnesty were 'shocked and horrified' by what Cage said about Emwazi last week. Why shocked? It's what plenty of people, including Sahgal, have been warning them about for years. The information has been easily available.The presenter did a mediocre job, no better. For instance, he didn't bring up the matter of Amnesty International's head Claudio Cordone endorsing 'defensive jihad' in April 2010 during the Sahgal affair, a phrase uncritically repeated by Amnesty UK at the time. That would have nailed Crawshaw's attempts to pretend that Amnesty has always completely and utterly repudiated violence against civilians.Amnesty's policy shift to support Islamist terrorism - for that is what Cage's 'defensive jihad' is, let us make no bones about it - was actually noted by John Tusa on the BBC website in December 2010 in an article asking whether Amnesty was having a mid-life crisis. Tusa wrote:More problematically, in a letter responding to supporters of Ms Saghal, Amnesty UK used the phrase "defensive jihad" as if the organisation itself condoned any violence that might be committed under its terms. Even supporters of Amnesty think the phrase was incautiously used.Throughout this time, Amnesty UK has played a straight bat, explaining that a full internal inquiry revealed nothing that required significant change in the way it behaved or presented itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

          Another institution investigating itself and finding it had no case to answer. Fancy that...And so, naturally, to the BBC itself: it has had several days and all weekend to get this important interview properly researched. In fact a decent researcher could do it quite comprehensively from scratch in about 10-20 minutes. Even better would be a researcher who actually has a decent memory and an interest in current affairs. I recalled and found that information in about 15 seconds. The BBC researcher and presenter couldn't even be arsed to search their own website.

Tusa's article was actually a decent one. At least he seemed to know his way around the subject and wasn't scared of asking awkward questions. The R4 presenter wasn't hostile to Sahgal but he seemed genuinely dumbstruck, and trying on air to get his head around what she was saying. He's a presenter on Radio 4 Today; he should have known about this years ago. It's his job.I am disgusted by Cage but then most of us here have been disgusted by Cage for the past decade. I'm not 'shocked' or 'horrified' by what they said about Emwazi, because it's what they were obviously going to say. 'Obviously' to anyone reasonably informed, that is.But I am really 'shocked and horrified' by how many people high up in our institutions are so uninformed and lacking in initiative. And I'm being really quite kind in assuming that that's all they are. As Gita Sahgal says in the interview of Amnesty, and this could be applied to many other organisations and institutions in our country: "I don't think Amnesty were naive. If only they were simply naive."I can only laugh with amazement when Radio 4 is cited as an excellent station. I find it pseudo-intellectual, ill-informed, and not very incisive at all. I could have conducted a more informed and penetrating interview with Steve Crawshaw, from memory, if I had been given about ten second's warning. The presenters on 'middlebrow' 5 Live are hardly amazing but they are far better at smelling bullshit, asking non-pc questions and demonstrating an awareness that most people are not 'BBC people', than the fumbling idiots on R4.

(emphasis mine.)

The 'A' word

It's the same old story...

The Times begins one of its top stories today like this:

Ten men have been charged as part of an investigation into child grooming and sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

The men, nine of whom are Asian, are accused of a series of serious sex offences against seven victims, aged as young as 13 at the time of the alleged offences, between 2005 and 2013.

ITV News begins its account of the same story like this:

Ten men have been charged as part of an ongoing investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

The men, nine of whom are Asian, are accused of a catalogue of serious sex offences against seven victims, aged as young as 13 at the time of the alleged offences, between 2005 and 2013. 

Sky News begins its take like this:

Ten suspects - including nine Asian men - are accused of a number of sex exploitation offences between 2005 and 2013

Ten men have been charged as part of an investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

The suspects were arrested after police launched an operation in May 2012 targeting older men accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls in the town and other areas of Greater Manchester.

Nine of the men are Asian. They are accused of serious sex offences against seven victims, at least one of whom was 13 at the time of the offences alleged to have taken place between 2005 and 2013. 

 The BBC, in contrast, avoids any mention of race in the main body of its report:

Ten men have been charged by police investigating child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

The men are accused of a catalogue of serious sex offences against seven females aged between 13 and 23 at the time of the alleged abuse, police said.

They were held under Operation Doublet, investigating child sexual exploitation of teen girls by older men in Rochdale.

The offences are alleged to have happened between 2005 and 2013.

They include rape, conspiracy to rape, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, sexual activity with a child and sexual assault.

'Complex investigation'

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said the investigation was not connected to an ongoing inquiry into historical abuse at Knowl View School.

Assistant Chief Constable Ian Wiggett said: "This investigation is one of a number of cases which comes under the umbrella of Operation Doublet, which is the continued investigation into child sexual exploitation (CSE) that arose following the 2011 investigation into CSE in Rochdale.

"The operation is an investigation into CSE in Rochdale and across other areas of Greater Manchester.

"So far, 65 people have been arrested as part of Operation Doublet and the investigation continues.

"This is an extremely complex and challenging investigation which started in May 2012. The investigation will continue over the coming months and further arrests are anticipated."

The charges have been welcomed by Rochdale's Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who has called for more action to expose historical sex abuse crimes.

Mr Danczuk said: "There have been some who have urged me not to campaign on grooming, but I believe that this news shows what can be achieved by keeping up pressure and pushing for change."

Only the list of suspects at the bottom of the page gives the game away.

The Great European Disaster Movie

I can't say I'll be watching it (though others will) but we're only a few minutes away now from the Storyville programme The Great European Disaster Movie on BBC Four. It has been widely trailed, and everyone from Nigel Farage to Dan Hannan has denounced it as a "pro-EU mockumentary". 

It is said to depict a terrible post-EU future with the far-right rampant, ISIS at the gates of Vienna, and Nigel Farage as prime minister of "Great England" busily deporting  immigrants en masse.

The programme has been written by Dateline London regular Annalisa Piras (their "voice of Italy"), whose pro-EU credentials are impeccable, and ex-Economist editor Bill Emmott, who's not as left-wing as Annalisa but just as pro-EU. 

The controversy has deepened because UKIP MP Mark Reckless has said that Bill Emmott told him that the BBC received EU money to finance the film - which, if true, is utterly outrageous. It's something the BBC denies though.

And Peter Hitchens gives an account of the behind-the-scenes frenzy at the BBC over the programme that rings true to me: 

Even the BBC sometimes grasps that it has gone too far. And 11 days ago, it went into a five-star panic over its plan to show a more-or-less crazy pro-EU film tonight.

I assume that, spooked by the derisive reaction to its laughable pro-Labour drama A Casual Vacancy, its chiefs suddenly realised that they had another embarrassment on their hands. The planned transmission was abruptly cut by several minutes, losing a large chunk about the migration wave across the Mediterranean.

And this helped make space for a post-programme discussion, heavily loaded with critics of the European Union, including me, former Chancellor Norman Lamont and Ukip MP Mark Reckless. This is really a figleaf to cover its naked bias, as you will see when you watch it tonight.

I took part because it seemed silly to miss any opportunity to make the case for British independence.

I'm very happy for Bill Emmott to make as many films as he likes for the BBC about the wonders of the EU.

The trouble is, you cannot imagine the Corporation giving anyone the chance to make a film about how miserable it will be if Britain stays in, and how good it will be if we leave.

For this programme is blatant propaganda. And the only cause for joy is that it's not very good propaganda. A doomed plane is zig-zagging across a divided, blacked-out Europe, bearing Angus Deayton and a little girl who has supposedly been deported from a xenophobic, cruel England because her mother isn't paid enough.

This provides the excuse for a patronising series of lecturettes from Mr Deayton.

Everything about it is run through with the stupid, ill-informed prejudices of the BBC. Opponents of the EU are portrayed as 'anti-European' nostalgists and haters of abroad. Opponents of immigration are portrayed as dislikers of immigrants. Things which are the EU's own fault, such as its self-inflicted economic crisis, are not blamed on the EU. Wild fantasies are explored in which a British departure causes everyone else to leave – though why they would, if it is so wonderful, I cannot tell.

Baseless guff, about how the EU has brought peace, is repeated unquestioned. In fact, to the extent that it has had any influence on war and peace, the EU has brought war, most recently thanks to its aggressive push into Ukraine.

Winston Churchill's Zurich speech of 1946, which it partly quotes, is a plea for continental Europe to unite, with Britain, the USA and the USSR acting as outside sponsors. Oh, and the Berlin airport for which the fictitious plane is originally bound closed in 2008, as anyone who knows Europe would be aware.

After the film's preview at The Frontline Club [h/t DB on Twitter], a member of the audience told the film makers:

It was ideologically and intellectually highly loaded. You have a number of prominent journalists, intellectuals… all very explicit and putting the case very clearly. And against that you have a very narrow-minded councillor from Margate who is scared of foreigners.

Annalisa's reply was:

We thought if we went into trying to give both sides of the arguments for all these very complex issues we wouldn’t have survived. We would have died in the process.

Result!

Further to one of yesterday's posts...

Thanks to pressure from Biased BBC's DB and, we might hope, our follow-up post...

Pegida UK-bashing BBC tweeter Hannah Bayman has now 'un-re-tweeted' her biased Yvonne Ridley re-tweet.

She clearly realised that it betrayed her bias too clearly. 

University challenge

Because the SOAS has just voted (73% - 27%) for an academic boycott of Israel I thought I ought to post this video. There but for the grace of God goes every UK campus. 

Je suis Molla

Alan at Biased BBC was struck by a remarkable article on the BBC News website - a piece about an Azerbaijani Charlie Hebdo from a century ago by Konul Khalilova, editor of the BBC Azeri service. 

If you've not read it yet, please do so. 

Given Azerbaijan's peculiar relationship to its Islamic heritage, the BBC can probably get away with publishing such things there but, interestingly, they also chose to share it with their general, worldwide readership. 

Here's a scene that looks oddly familiar:

The Gaza trilogy.

BBC Watch has posted the third in a series of critiques of Lyse Doucet’s reports on her  commemorative visit to Gaza.

This particular episode is the strangest of all, because it’s almost fact-free. You’d think that as the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent she’d have more to offer than a kind of nostalgic misery memoir. Yes, the rubble in Shuja’iya is pretty bloody shameful, (but it’s hardly a patch on the devastation we’ve seen in hundreds of other Middle East cities which haven’t been given the Doucet lamentation treatment)  (Kobane) Will Lyse be visiting soon to see whether it’s all put back together again? 

Not Gaza

Not Gaza

Not Gaza

It’s not just that she doesn’t allude to any aspect of Hamas’s culpability throughout the whole report. Not a whisper or hint that there’s a self-generated self-inflicted element to the situation.  Maybe she’s decided that she doesn’t need to examine any of the political shenanigans that led to all this devastation. After all, she’s reporting ‘what she’s seeing’ just as any disinterested visitor would do. 

But hang on. Isn’t she the BBC’s Chief International thingamajig? 

As Hadar says, the entire report is conjecture and emotion with a bit of ‘Israel says’ thrown in for good measure. 

We are quite accustomed to the BBC’s mawkish obsession with this subject and they won’t look at anything else that is going on. It's left to BBC Watch to remind us that:

“In January 2015 alone, 15,205 tons of construction materials were imported into the Gaza Strip. Since the end of the conflict, 50,000 tons of building materials have entered the Strip and more than 42,000 residents have purchased them.”

I understand that there’s an obesity epidemic there. Why doesn’t Lyse investigate that? 

The results showed that obesity and being overweight are highly prevalent among women in the Gaza Strip. Independent predictors of obesity in the population studied were increasing age, high income, and housewives. This finding is an important baseline for the monitoring of obesity and overweight cases in the future and highlights the need for community-based programs to combat this problem in Palestine.

Or this?

Silicon breast implants, botox, tummy tucks, and: 

"In addition, there has been a 300% increase in lip augmentation and beautification.”

I think the BBC’s audience deserves to see the bigger picture, not just snaps from Lyse Doucet’s memory lane disaster tourism.

And a brand new entry at No.24...

Except (possibly) for the young these days, it's certainly true that the BBC has permeated most of our lives to a remarkable degree. 

So much so that I doubt I'm alone in feeling a strange pang of regret that a BBC programme I've not listened to for 25 years is being moved. Yes, Radio One's Sunday chart show is moving to Friday night and, even though it doesn't really matter to me in the slightest, it seems oddly like sacrilege.

In my teens 5 o'clock on Sunday, after Sunday dinner, was the time to get my C60 and C90 cassettes ready to record all the new entries. "Number 36", sang the jingle-singers. 'Click', I went. 

Oh, the thrill of the chase! When would the DJ would start rabbiting over the end of the record? Would it be too soon? Oh the dread of that! 

Tommy Vance wasn't too bad, but Simon 'flipping' Bates? Grrrrr!...Oh how I laughed when he was caught out by Falco's 'Rock Me Amadeus' and all the fading 'euses' at the end faded into complete silence. Result! 

It's funny the things you remember, isn't it?

I remember the pleasure of hearing Tommy Vance elide the ending of Tears for Fears' Mad World into The Stranglers' Golden Brown in the end of year countdown (1982) - a coupling I would re-play on my tape recorder endlessly (or at least until the tape broke, which happened quite often). 

Another very clear memory was hearing Tommy Vance apologise for saying that Annie Lennox had "beautiful eyes". Some listeners had written in describing him as "sexist". So that sort of thing was going on even back then - I'm guessing around 1982-83. 

As David said in the comments the other day, he BBC has a legacy and connection to the public psyche spanning generations. Those hoping to rein in the BBC will have that to contend with for many more years to come.

The burning question (for the BBC)

Morning! @TherealNihal is asking - are British security services to blame for Jihadi John? Give us a shout - text 81869.
— BBC Asian Network (@bbcasiannetwork) February 27, 2015

A common purpose

On the 'Jihadi Mohammed' story...

Both The Andrew Marr Show (guest-hosted by Sophie Raworth) and Radio 4's Broadcasting House shared a particular focus: on the alleged failings of the British security services. 

Sophie Raworth's introduction stated:

Now, with the revelation that the ISIS terrorist Mohammed Emwzai was on a terror watchlist and had links to extremists going back many years, tough questions are being asked of the policy and the security services.

and later interviews pursued this path, with Sophie beginning her interview with Labour's Yvette Cooper with the question: 

In terms of Jihadi John, the terrorism threat, have the security services messed up?

Starting the paper review, Sophie and her BBC colleague Bridget Kendall also pursued this path, beginning with the Observer: 

Bridget Kendall: It raises so many questions. What do they know?...

Sophie Raworth: How long he was on the radar for.

Bridget Kendall: How long he was on the radar. Why it wasn't possible to do something about that. 

Paddy O'Connell, over on Radio 4, had a critical former MI6 spy and an academic for an entire discussion on the same theme, opening with this question from Paddy:

Harry Ferguson [the spy], did your former colleagues drop the ball? He was known to them for over seven years before he cropped up in his murderous videos.

Similarly...

And of all the possible angles the BBC News website (and the Radio 4 news bulletins) could have led on this morning, they chose to lead on the Mail on Sunday's 'world exclusive' [yep, the hated Hate Mail] - the chain of emails between the MOS's security correspondent and Emwzai. [The difference was that the BBC simply quoted Emwzai's complaints, while the MOS also included the reporter's take on the man - that he had a "persecution complex" and tended towards being "paranoid".]

Sky (initially) went with its investigations into the University of Westminster. And Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph has dug deep into the extremist CAGE - another piece of fiercely independent investigative journalism from the ex-BBC man that it's most unlikely he'd have been allowed to pursue at the BBC. Both angles the BBC could have also chosen to pursue (along with many others), but chose not to.

And these are only the latest manifestations of the BBC's dogged focus on the alleged failings of the security services.

Obviously, some questioning of the security services is needed, despite all of their excellent work in thwarting attack after attack after attack, but the sheer extent and relentlessness of the BBC's focus - especially when there are so many other angles to this story to cover - suggests a strong determination on the BBC's part to deflect the public's attention in a particular direction.  Don't you think?


Update: Pace my comments in parenthesis earlier about the BBC's reporting of the MoS emails, here's a Biased BBC comment:

Ember2014

March 1, 2015 at 4:08 pm

BBC News Ticker boldly saying (at the moment)

“Emails claim the IS British militant known as Jihadi John complained of persecution by the security services.”

That’s right no context: nothing about Emwazi’s paranoid mental state. Just a bold allegation presented as fact on the BBC ticker so that thousands of Muslims can read it and build their own fears about the security services.

Fears grow for missing TV presenter

Mysteriously, we were told that Andrew Marr was "away this week" at the start of this morning's Andrew Marr Show. 

I don't know about you but, given what's been going on recently, I found that highly alarming. Hopefully, he's not gone off to Syria to become a jihadi bride. 

If he has, will it because he's been radicalised by years of working at the BBC, having been exposed to its relentless propaganda? Well, if there's one thing I know from watching the BBC for so long, is that it's all down to British foreign policy and the failings of the British security services, so that's a clear 'no' then.

Viewers of the Andrew Marr Show will have spotted that he occasionally gets approached by senior figures in the security services. They sit themselves down opposite him and lead him to think that he's interviewing them whereas, in fact, they are actually interviewing him. 

Have they then tried to 'turn him' after the cameras stop rolling? Did that hurt his feelings and make him want to chop heads off (as you do)?

I hope and pray that Andy Marr is safe, and that he's not going to end up in Caliph Bagdaddy's harem.