You know you can trust the BBC

First of all, let me declare a certain lack of interest: I do not pay TV license and have not done so for decades for the very good reason that I do not have a TV set. I have not had a TV set for a good many years and have not missed it one iota. But I do look at the BBC website and read their news and other stories. And I do sometimes listen to the radio though more in the Proms season than at other times.

This story did catch many people's eyes: Around 50% 'hold authoritarian views'. Tsk, tsk I thought or would have done if I had not had a number of debates with people who think what is acceptable about what is authoritarian and populist. For the first paragraph says:

As much as half the adult population may share a political world view researchers describe as "authoritarian populist".

Do they, indeed? And what constitutes "authoritarian populist"? You'll never guess.

They favour rolling back the state and are negative about immigration, human rights and the EU, a study claims.

I am sorry. Rolling back the state is authoritarian? Being negative about the EU is authoritarian populist? Being against unlimited immigration, particularly of people who behave like this is somehow illiberal, which is what authoritarian populism is?

This study boasts it is the first systematic empirical analysis of the prevalence of a "mind-set" it dubs "authoritarian populist" in Britain.

Wonderful. A groundbreaking study, apparently, that cannot even define its own terminology. What is so depressing is the BBC's apparent agreement with it.

This time even the BBC noticed

There is a reasonable argument that this time round Hamas has overplayed its hand. Not that we don't see the usual fanatical and usually quite ignorant anti-Israeli comments but, as this piece on Bloomberg points out, the voices that usually pressurize that country have been mooted somewhat. It also places the blame for this round of fighting firmly on the Hamas leadership, who have stirred up Israeli reprisals without endangering themselves very much. Well, perhaps, the day will come when the Palestinians will finally realize who their real enemy is and go after the leaders.

It seems that Hamas is being blamed by the Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as well. Then there is this curious clip that indicates a certain dissatisfaction with Hamas on the part of Arab states and, above all, leaders. The speaker is the Egyptian journalist, Abdel Bari Atwan. More on the Egyptian media here. There have been other similar pronouncements and a certain lack of enthusiasm for Hamas and its fight.

That has not prevented a number of very violent demonstrations in the West, which degenerated into torchings and riots (a picture from Paris but there are many more) and were accompanied by vicious anti-Semitic and Judaeophobic slogans that invoked positively Hitler and the Holocaust, expressing the wish that it will now be completed by Islamists. (One can't help laughing at the thought of these losers, for what else have the Palestinians been all this time, completing what Hitler did not manage but the intentions and slogans are nasty enough.)

Naturally enough, we have seen many pictures of dead Palestinian children, something that we are used to though some of us have been asking questions about those pictures for some time. Remember Green Helmet Guy? Similar stories were uncovered by other bloggers but these were left severely alone by the MSM though little by little some acknowledged the word Pallywood. Come to think of it, remember the whole saga of Mohammed Al-Dura?

So what of the various pictures of the children and the "innocent civilians" of Gaza? Well, something odd has been happening. As the Blaze points out, no less than the BBC found that a number of them have been recycled from previous wars in Gaza, from Iraq and from another war of which we hear next to nothing from these angry twitters and Facebook posters, and that is the far more ferocious one in Syria.

Here is the BBC's report on the subject. If these people have lost the BBC they are in a bad state.

So let me end this posting with a picture of a singularly unfortunate lady who seems to have been wounded in Syria and in Gaza in precisely the same way, in the company of the same old lady. Some people have no luck. (Ignore the comment on the green strip, which is superfluous in my opinion.)

The answer is no

Lord Stoddart of Swindon put down a Written Question about the BBC:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of the Pollard report, they have any plans to withdraw the BBC's Royal Charter when it is next due for renewal.

To which HMG in the shape of Lord Gardiner of Kindle replied:

The current BBC Charter expires on 31 December 2016. It remains the Government's position that a Royal Charter is the right vehicle for the BBC, which is established for many good reasons, at arm's-length from politicians.

That will be a no, then.

Precision in language matters

It is deeply distressing to hear somebody who is highly regarded as a writer in whatever field using language imprecisely. I caught the beginning of Private Passions on Radio 3 today and they were repeating a programme from some years ago in which Andrew Graham-Dixon, the highly regarded art historian and critic (as well as public intellectual) was to choose his favourite pieces of music. (Yes, it probably is a supposedly more intellectual version of Desert Island Disks. I rarely listen to either.)

He started with a Wagner piece and burbled about it (there really is no other way of describing it) saying very brightly though ever so slightly sheepishly that  this is a revolutionary piece of music and, of course, Wagner was a revolutionary, which is important to remember as he is presented as a kind of neo-Nazi, which he was not really.

Wagner was not a Nazi of any kind though some of his ideas were lifted and greatly simplified by the Nazis. Would he  have liked that? Who can tell? The sheer vulgarity of Nazism might have appalled him. Or not. I have no views on that subject. BUT he could not have been a neo-Nazi. That, Mr Graham-Dixon is completely wrong. Neo, as you ought to know, being an art historian of some repute, mean new or young or, perhaps, renewed. At most, Wagner could  have been a proto-Nazi (which  he was not).

Furthermore, the idea that a revolutionary is something wonderfully good and as the Nazis were bad the two are mutually incompatible is tosh. The Nazis were revolutionaries. Their early history is as revolutionary as that of any other socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, anti-constitutional group. They were great believers in street violence and acquiring power through that, an idea that was taken up by many others in the twentieth century, not least by Mao and the various urban guerrillas.

A highly regarded art historian and critic ought to be aware of all this and not misuse words in this ridiculous fashion.

Last few comments

I promise not to write about the American elections throughout Tuesday. No point, really, Over here we shall have no results before Wednesday, in any case, and if predictions are correct, we might carry on chewing our fingernails till well into Thursday or, God forbid, even after.

However, let me leave you with a few thoughts about the way news have been handled on this side of the Pond, which includes Britain and Europe. Der Spiegel is tying itself into knots, which is very pleasant to watch. No matter who wins, America will lose, they cry, as it has been destroyed by "total capitalism". One could say that even in its bleak hours, America is doing better than Europe that does not have "total capitalism" but I suspect Der Spiegel knows that.

American power had declined, they add in another article though why it should have done so under the great and wonderful President Obama is hard to tell. But, never fear, their coverage is even-handed. Why they even have an article about what Romney's foreign policy might be. Of course, it is really an interview with President Clinton's less than successful Secretary of State, Madeleine Allbright, but one can't have everything. Specifically, one can't have an interview with Condi Rice about Obama's existing foreign policy.

Interestingly enough, my friend Michel Gurfinkiel writes about exactly that, though with reference to the French media.

“Yesterday, we followed Barack Obama’s campaign,” a young woman [on RTL, one of France's main radio channels] said. “Today we turn to Mitt Romney’s campaign.” All right. Except that “following Romney’s campaign” amounted, incredibly, to an interview with a certain Dr. Gordon, who explained that most Americans were grateful to President Obama for having introduced Obamacare. Especially those women who otherwise would have been deprived of any access to birth control. Some journalist at RTL then explained that Romney would abolish Obamacare. And the report was over.

They don't even notice, he adds and neither does the public. (I may say the same thing about the British media and the British public who are astonished that anyone could be so mad, insane and evil as to support a challenger to Obama.) Gurfinkiel gives an interesting and accurate analysis for this ridiculous adoration of a highly incompetent incumbent:

Sympathy for Obama is rooted in the deepest layers of the French collective psyche, right and left. He is supposed to stand for a tame, less dominant, less assertive America; and France, like many other former great powers — from Russia to China, from the Hispanic realms to the Islamic Umma — is driven by resentment against Anglo-Saxon dominance at large, and American great power in particular. That was, after all, Charles de Gaulle’s core political legacy (much more than the need to tame Germany) and the not-so-secret rationale for his Faustian alliance with both communism (Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese) and Islam. In the 1960s, when de Gaulle actually presided over France, a sizable part of the French opinion understood that a powerful America had in fact helped France to be reborn, to remain free in the face of communism, and even to become a great power again (just like Germany or Japan). That current never materialized into a sustaining political force, however, and it gradually ebbed away.

He then explains what exactly motivates this French psyche, how journalists abide by it and why it has become so all-encompassing. Read the whole piece.

Finally, we come to our own BBC. Well, OK, not all our media is quite as bad as the BBC but this one really takes the biscuit. In all solemnity they published an article by the old-style Marxist Martin Jacques, erstwhile editor of Marxism Today and at present "a visiting senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, IDEAS, a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC". Oddly enough, the BBC does not see fit to mention this, especially not the position in Beijing.

His "point of view" is that China is more democratic than America but it is framed as a question, which is described even by John Rentoul (not someone on the right of the political spectrum) as being the best QTWTAIN he has come across for a long time.

It would appear that Mr Jacques has been giving a whole series of talks published on the BBC websites in which he has proved to his own and his masters' satisfaction that the Chinese government enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western elected one and there is greater satisfaction with its performance as described by people who are not allowed to criticize the party. (The last phrase is my own.)

I would expect nothing else from and old-time Marxist propagandist. Sadly, I probably expect nothing else from the BBC either.

Ironic?

This morning I received an e-mail from the producer of yesterday's Start the Week, apologizing, among the thanks because the edited version of the programme, due to be broadcast yesterday evening was cancelled to leave room for an old interview with Eric Hobsbawm. How ironic, I replied, that a programme that was at least partly about the crimes and horrors of Communism should give way to one about a life-long apologist for it.

A safe pair of hands

The BBC has appointed the safest pair of hands as its new Director General. George Entwistle, whose name we shall be hearing rather a lot, is a former editor of Newsnight and is, in every way, a BBC insider.

As Director of Vision, Mr Entwistle was in charge of all BBC TV channels. Insiders say he has strong credentials as the de facto “editor-in-chief”, with a current affairs background at Newsnight, Panorama and On The Record. But he was criticised last month for overseeing botched coverage of the Diamond Jubilee river pageant.

The BBC was ridiculed in Parliament for “dumbing down”, after presenter Fearne Cotton showed viewers a sick-bag emblazoned with the Queen’s face.

Mr Entwistle was also deputy editor of Tomorrow’s World and The Culture Show. The 49-year-old father-of-two studied at Durham University, before starting out as a sub-editor at magazine firm Haymarket.

He moved to the BBC in 1989 as a broadcast journalism trainee and becoming assistant producer on Panorama within a year.

What could possibly go wrong? Maybe I should ask it another way: how could it possibly go right?

Will the new Director General pay any attention to the constant stream of criticism that is directed at the BBC that rose to a crescendo after the Jubilee river pageant coverage? Will he read the excellent report by Brian Dennis Sewell, recently published by the New Culture Forum that shows with a good deal of evidence that the BBC shows institutional bias in a great deal more than just the news coverage? Somehow I doubt it.

This is, of course, excellent news. For some time now I have been arguing that like the EU, the UN, the whole system of quangos and many other institutions of that kind, the BBC is beyond reform and this appointment proves that it is, indeed, so.

Watch this if you can

If you can get BBC4 try to watch this documentary on Thursday evening about the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who was one of the very few Western journalists to write the truth about Stalin's collectivization and the deliberately engineered famine that accompanied it. For that, he was vilified by Walter Duranty, had his reputation destroyed and was banned from the Soviet Union. He went to the Far East and was murdered by bandits in Mongolia under very odd circumstances.

I am a little puzzled by the implication in the blurb that he may have been a spy (whose, exactly) and would like to find out what the BBC says about him though I cannot watch it myself (not having a TV set).

As a matter of fact, there has been a "rehabilitation" of Gareth Jones going on for some time. There is a site that is devoted to his life and work, which discusses the strange death of the genuine investigative journalist and quotes the stories he sent back from Ukraine. Even Wikipedia gives a reasonable account of his life. However, all contribution to the telling of truth is welcome.

Radio 4 this evening

This might be of interest to readers of this blog. Analysis, about the only reasonable and radically different programme on the BBC will be discussing Eurogeddon this evening at 8.30. The blurb says:

Chris Bowlby examines whether the eurozone will disintegrate or become a closer political and economic union. He considers the effects of both scenarios, and the implications for borders and cash movements.

If you miss it, fret not: the programme will be available on iPod and on line indefinitely.

A moderately happy birthday to the BBC World Service

The BBC World Service (formerly, when I was working there full time, the World and External Services) was celebrating its 80th birthday yesterday. The video shows some of the amazing features of Bush House, its home since 1940, which they will be leaving this summer, to relocate in Broadcasting House, whence they had been driven by a German bomb.

The move from Bush House has been discussed for years, if not decades. It makes a great deal of sense both from financial and technical point of view. Still, it is a sad thought when one thinks of the historic events that took place in that building and the many broadcasts that went out from there at so many historic moments. I have many personal memories of the place but am looking forward to seeing the new equipment in the new Broadcasting House that is never going to be as attractive but may be more useful.

Needless to say, it being the BBC, there was a row about the birthday celebrations with the highly regarded former managing director John Tusa protesting at what he saw as the ridiculously wrong decisions taken about the invitation list.

Let's all mock Mark Thompson

For the man is ridiculous and has not understanding of what he is saying. The Christian Institute reports (and it has not been denied though nobody from the BBC is saying anything)

The head of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has admitted that the broadcaster would never mock Mohammed like it mocks Jesus.

He justified the astonishing admission of religious bias by suggesting that mocking Mohammed might have the “emotional force” of “grotesque child pornography”.

But Jesus is fair game because, he said, Christianity has broad shoulders and fewer ties to ethnicity.

What he really means, we must assume, is that you can mock Jesus all you like and while many people of differing ethnicity might feel upset and besmirched, they are unlikely to blow Mark Thompson up or cut his throat. Does he actually know anything about Islam? For his information it has no more specific ties with ethnicity than does Christianity and is mocking ethnicity really the worst thing one can do? Does he even realize how appallingly insulting and patronizing to Muslims that statement is?

Last minute information

I do apologize for the shortness of this notice but I knew nothing about the event until an hour or so ago. As it happens I have to be at the Bruges Group meeting this evening but anyone who is more interested in Russian affairs than in Robin Harris and Simon Heffer talking, might like to know that there will be a demonstration outside Pushkin House starting at 18.45 (actually, people might be able to get to both events) as the fourth part of the BBC programme about Putin and the West is being previewed there.

From what I can gather even from sympathetic reviewers (no TV in my house, you see) the programmes have not gone out of their way to show various aspects of the Putin regime but then they did have to get various officials to give interviews. The fact that their main consultant Angus Roxburgh has spent some years working on PR for the Kremlin helped them to get to these people. (In parenthesis, let me add that Mr Roxburgh was a failure. The Kremlin's PR is rubbish.)

The BBC Russian Service interviewed the makers of the four-part programme and here is the text of that interview in Russian and in English. Worth a quick read if you want to see examples of true disingenuousness.

We lost the propaganda war

The title refers to the Cold War, on which I have been meditating recently, what with the death of Vaclav Havel and the release of the new, completely inadequate version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. While militarily and politically the West won, in the more insiduous field of propaganda, it lost. We can see that in the neurotic anti-Americanism that makes people support some of the most oppressive regimes and ideologies in the world, in the continuing support for the once and future President, now Prime Minister Putin because he appears to be anti-Western, and, above all, in the refusal to face up to the truth about Communism. If you have any doubts about this, have a look at this interview the BBC conducted about the events of 2011 with their historian of choice: the life-long Communist and Stalinist (as long as it was the party line) and denial of Communist crimes, Eric Hobsbawm. I suggest you keep a sick-bucket somewhere close to hand.

Makes sense to the BBC

In BBC-speak people who consider that they and others should look after themselves and their families whenever possible and help other people in their own way with their own money, if necessary, are absolutely selfish. Being unselfish is wanting to pay higher taxes (or wanting other people to pay higher taxes) that can then be used and abused by highly paid but seriously victimized officials to make people do what is good for them in the eyes of those officials. Makes some kind of a logical sense and can be the only explanation why the BBC should misrepresent the National Social Survey as Philip Booth explains. Read the whole posting.

Looking forward

The BBC put up the following about what is to happen in the House of Lords on Tuesday:

Over in the Lords (from 2.30pm), peers have their first day of detailed committee stage debate on the Protection of Freedoms Bill. But watch out, too, for a question to ministers from Ukip's Lord Willoughby de Broke, on the suggestion that the EU Commission should have the power to scrutinise the budgets of member states, and penalise them if they go astray.

Should be an interesting if brief debate.

We don't give in ... except when we do

This evening I ambled along to the two rallies outside the Royal Albert Hall and got there towards the end. There were two groups, one anti the Israel Philharmonic, brandishing Palestinian flags and the usual slogans; one in support with Israeli flags, Union flags and even a St George's flag as well as some Irish symbols. But it was all quiet. So I went on to do some shopping and got home to find that the concert had been disrupted by people shouting abuse in the first half during the violin solo when Radio 3 had interrupted its live broadcast. Then Radio 3 went back and, it seems, the protesters were not weeded out as they started screaming abuse again. Radio 3, once again interrupted its broadcast and decided not to continue with it, but to play the same pieces on music in recordings but not ones made by the Israel Philharmonic. In essence, the BBC gave in to the thugs. Something to be proud of?

Oh, and may one point out to the BBC and to the Evening Standard that bags are not searched in order to wean out political protesters. That can't be done. Bags are searched because anti-Israeli protesters have been known to blow themselves up, taking many other people with them. Is there some problem these people have with telling the truth?

The Telegraph reports that the concert went on in the Hall, that some members of the audience tweeted back to the BBC to say that the "protesters" were shouted at to stop and that part of the concert will be broadcast on Wednesday, September 7 at 2.30 pm. Will they have it on iPlayer as usual? We don't know.

How do I get a job like this?

International Relations and Security Network (ISN) a highly regarded think-tank in Zurich has put up a piece about the ongoing OSCE Summit in Kazakhstan. Solemnly it tells us that there are differences between all the members that appear to be irreconcilable.

I'll say there are differences. The President of Kazakhstan talked of a need for another reserve currency in the world without specifying which; Secretary of State Clinton called on the organization to take a greater share in matters of security in the area including Afghanistan, without specifying how they were to do that; President Medvedev huffed and puffed at the very idea of force being used, something that Russia would never dream of doing; and Nick Clegg who was despatched instead of William Hague, spoke about the need for human rights in all OSCE members. And that was just the first day.

It so happens that yesterday I took part in a discussion on the OSCE and its future with two experts, one from Russia, one from Kazakhstan on the BBC Russian Service. Not one of us thought that there was going to be any kind of a break-through for the OSCE in this Summit though the chap from Kazakhstan thought that the country and its leader had got a good deal of kudos from the meeting and, anyway, having a forum in which all these people can meet and talk was quite a good thing. He did not specify in what way it was a better thing than more low-key negotiations between two or more countries.

The Russian expert droned about the pointlessness of OSCE, citing its history of non-achievement and generally expressing the view that such disparate countries cannot achieve much in the same organization. He was going to go on to the subject of UN and the pointlessness of having members like Burundi in it but was interrupted by the programme anchor.

I was then asked my opinion on OSCE's present and future. Unusually, I agreed with the other participants. There will be no break-through and, in any case, nobody knows what sort of breakthrough is needed or wanted. After all, even Clinton and Clegg were talking about two completely different aims, never mind everyone else. But there is, I added, an inertia about all international and transnational organizations. Once they exist they just go on existing. Partly, there are too many people who have a vested interest in their continued existence but largely it is the unthinkability of somebody standing up and saying: the OSCE has never achieved anything and will never achieve anything. Let's disband it. But think how useful that would be.

There are now only two questions to ask. First is why on earth did we send Nick Clegg to Kazakhstan? The second is how do I get a well-paid job with some think-tank to write solemn articles about the bleedin' obvious.

Hmmm!

The BBC News staff are on strike. Or so I am told. As I never listen to the Today programme I would not have noticed. News is available from many other sources and the BBC spin on things is not essential. What I cannot understand is why this should matter to anyone.

Bwa-ha-ha!

Oh this is too funny for words. The BBC has been misreporting the Middle East for years as its own (unreleased but leaked) report acknowledged. It has refused to acknowledge the truth about the Gaza flotilla or its participants and still refers to those heavily armed thugs as "humanitarian aid workers". As Charles Krauthammer says, there is no humanitarian disaster in Gaza (well, apart from its bloodthirsty, oppressive government run by Hamas.

There’s no one starving in Gaza. The Gazans have been supplied with food and social services, education, by the U.N., by UNWRA, for 60 years, in part with American tax money.

Second, when there are humanitarian needs, the Israelis allow — every day — food and medicine overland into Gaza. The reason that it did not want to allow this flotilla is because, as the spokesman for the flotilla said herself, this was not about humanitarian relief. It was about breaking the blockade.

And the reason the Israelis have a blockade is because they only want to allow humanitarian supplies and not weaponry. Look, the proof of that is the fact that if you look at a map of Gaza, you'll see that Israelis only control three sides of this rectangle. There’s a fourth side on the Egyptian side. So it is an Egyptian-Israeli blockade.

Well, the BBC does not see it that way.

Yet the BBC's supine attitude is not good enough for some people.

Protesters demonstrating against the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship have attempted to storm the BBC in Manchester.

More than 800 people marched through the city centre and down Oxford Road, where the crowd surged at the BBC's entrance, smashing its front doors.

One man climbed to the top of the building to plant a Palestinian flag and there were at least three arrests.

Protesters said they were also angry about the BBC's coverage of Israel.

One can't help feeling for those BBC inmates. Just what exactly do these demonstrators want, they might ask. What sort of coverage would satisfy them?

Man bites dog

According to the BBC, Human Rights Watch has rejected claims made by Hamas that it did not target Israeli civilians during the war in Gaza in December 2008. Goodness me, are you trying to tell me that Hamas does bad things and is not just the rightful expression of the Palestinian anger/misery (delete as applicable)? Now all Human Rights Watch and the BBC have to do is acknowledge the constant shelling of Sderot from Gaza, where the allegedly poverty-stricken people seem to have no trouble in acquiring rockets and explosives.