BBC Blog Network

User Profile

StevenJMUK

Listed below are comments made by StevenJMUK between Saturday, 19th September 2009 and Saturday, 10th October 2009.

«Newer
Older»

Updated editorial guidelines 11:21pm on 10 Oct 2009 "For the first time, the public is being asked to comment on them in draft form before they are finalised."

I tried doing this on the relevant "Have Your Say" and despite the very short censorship queue, an entire day passed and the BBC were not able to get my post up before the debate was hastily closed. Making sure certain posts stay at the bottom of the pile and then hastily closing the debate seems to be standard practice with "Have Your Say".

My (unpublished/censored) post was as follows...

"Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, infamously said 'They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.'

He was right. Take a look at at Robert Parsons' BBC Report "Eyewitness: Grozny's ruined lives" to witness the fist shaking anger that is only permitted in the case of official enemies. He asks what right the Russians have to bomb Grozny. Can you imagine the BBC asking what right the US had to bomb Fallujah? It's almost laughable."

"So the new guidelines are really spelling out, in the impartiality section, a principle which has long been enshrined in the BBC's editorial code."

The BBC's interpretation of impartiality is very bizarre indeed. For example, protesters at the recent protests in Iran were described as courteous (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8111695.stm) with Iranian use of batons described as "wildly swinging wooden batons at anyone in their path" (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8111695.stm).

Contrast this with the BBC's G20 report where wildly swinging batons are instead described simply as "scuffles" between police and protesters (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7975597.stm). We know from miles of film footage that UK riot police have indeed engaged in the wild swinging of batons, but the BBC would never use those words.

During those Iran protests a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was shot by the authorities. The BBC had many full page articles on Neda including interviews with family members. Contrast this with protesters shot dead in Honduras who barely receive a paragraph. Those Honduran protesters were of course supporting someone, who like Chavez, is considered an official enemy by the mainstream media, i.e The democratically elected leader of Honduras, President Zelaya. The BBC have described protesters supporting Zelaya as fanatical.

"Recent events in Tegucigalpa, with hundreds of protesters chanting the president's name have proved that he has his fanatical supporters."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8125726.stm

So apparently, whereas it is courteous to protest against the government in Iran, it is fanatical to demand the return of a democratically elected leader in Honduras.

Going back to the issue of protests in the UK. If you ever saw the BBC describe British police as "wildly swinging batons" it would stick out of the web page like a sore thumb. The reason is that impartiality has become defined as "report carefully on Britain and it's allies, but take the gloves off when it comes to official enemies".

This practice has been going on for so long it's the norm and anything that deviates from this norm is therefore by practical definition biased and looks out of place. This is what happens when censorship becomes sufficiently ingrained. You don't need to stop one of your reporters from writing "wildly swinging batons" in a G20 report because they would never have dreamed of writing it in the first place. Not because they are self-censoring, but because using the same tone of reporting on ourselves (or allies) just looks out of place.

There are of course journalists who would be comfortable suggesting the British police have been brutal at a protest, but such journalists would not be employed by the BBC. It takes a long time to become an established reporter in the mainstream media. It's a long filtering process that naturally removes reporters who would truly be impartial, i.e. apply the same standards to ourselves and allies as we do to official enemies. Truly impartial reporting would be quickly slammed as biased, as bizarre as that seems. In the crazy world of the mainstream media, it is the biased reporting that is actually classed as impartial.
How would the Tories change Britain? 5:41pm on 08 Oct 2009 Fascinating. We give the banks hundreds of billions of pounds and the way to save money is now to cut the incapacity benefits of people too ill to work and make the rest of us work until we drop.

When the banks want more of our money, I supposed we'll have to start selling out kidneys. Why is it that we can find the money for greedy bankers but not sick or elderly people?
High Court rulings on the BBC and FOI 8:02pm on 07 Oct 2009 I really don't think there should be a journalistic exception at all. Certainly sources should be protected, but beyond that, why should things remain secret?

The culture of secrecy is as much about protecting bad/biased journalism as it is about protecting embarrassingly large pay checks. For example, if BBC journalists are instructed not to use the term "mercenary" (in favour of Private Military Contractor, a term preferred by the mercenary industry itself), should the public not be able to get that fact exposed?

Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, infamously said "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial."

He was right. Take a look at at Robert Parsons' BBC Report "Eyewitness: Grozny's ruined lives" to witness the fist shaking anger that is only permitted in the case of official enemies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/668080.stm

He asks what right the Russians have to bomb Grozny. Can you imagine the BBC asking what right the US had to bomb Fallujah? It's almost laughable.

Contrast Parsons' report with a report on a similar situation involving an ally. e.g. The US bombing/siege of Fallujah.

Fixing the problem of Falluja
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3989639.stm

The title itself "Fixing the problem of Falluja" probably tells you all you need to know about the massive difference in tone between the articles.

Although comparing reports on enemies and allies like this demolishes any BBC claims of impartiality, there are no doubt many memos floating around the BBC that would be even more damning. We will never get to see though, as long as the BBC is allowed to remain virtually exempt from the FOI act.
Iran: is a deal on the way? 6:12pm on 03 Oct 2009 "But if you look back at what sanctions did to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia as it was then) under Ian Smith, or Cuba under Fidel Castro (49 years and counting), it's evident that sanctions rarely do what they're designed to do."

The important point here is that governments are not always honest about what sanctions are aimed at doing, despite journalists accepting the official reasons without question. In the case of Iraq, declassified DIA documents reveal that the devastating effects of the sanctions on the Iraqi population were predicted well in advance.

e.g. "Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals and desalination membranes. Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were careful to boil water."

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html

Of course when stories of the suffering of the population emerged from time to time, politicians just claimed that it was because Saddam was withholding supplies. This was a lie. Western governments knew exactly what was going on. It is therefore likely that the Iraqi-population was a major target of the sanctions. There was perhaps a deranged hope that producing extreme conditions of disease and hardship would set up the necessary conditions for a coup against Saddam.

Setting up the conditions for regime change by making life very hard for the population has been used many times by numerous countries. Yet the horrific suffering of the population is either completely sidelined and/or blamed on the dictator. The people enforcing the sanctions are somehow immune from any blame at all and are certainly never held to account. You'll have a very hard time finding mainstream journalists asking any awkward questions.
We're closing the 5 live messageboards 5:55pm on 03 Oct 2009 The BBC have been restricting free discussion more and more over the years. They don't like the audience setting the agenda. They want to keep the discussion within the usual narrowly-framed spectrum. e.g. "Was invading Iraq the right thing to do, or was it a mistake?". Other possibilities such as "or was it a war crime" are excluded.

I remember all the promises when the old Have Your Say system was being replaced. We were told that our comments would be appearing straight away. Yet if you take one look at the Have Your Say discussions today (or indeed virtually any day) you will find they are all Fully Moderated (Pre-Censored).

Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing if BBC staff restricted themselves to censoring abusive posts, but the censorship goes far beyond that. Possibly the pinnacle of BBC Censorship occurred during a Have Your Say debate on Google's involvement in Censorship in China. It was a "Reactively Moderated Debate" and some posters started pointing out that the BBC also censors things. The BBC pulled those posts. Then more people posted complaining about the new censorship and the BBC removed those posts too. Eventually the BBC gave up and the top rated posts were all about BBC Censorship. Since that time "Reactively Moderated" debates have become very rare indeed.
Newsbeat and the BNP 5:01pm on 01 Oct 2009 "But others will understand that one of purposes of journalism in a democratic society is to explore and question"

So why do you not "explore and question" government motives for military adventures? The implicit BBC assumption is that they are benign and altruistic. The effective BBC view seems to be that questioning official government reasons would be biased.

These lofty goals that BBC journalists fire off are actually only applied in particular circumstances. "Explore and question" applies to enemies, not allies (or the home government) whereas being "Unbiased/impartial" applies to allies, but not enemies.
Ritula Shah on the UN, the IMF and the G20 4:16pm on 27 Sep 2009 The presence of permanent members of the Security Council amounts to nothing more than a dictatorship. The UN should be a pinnacle of democracy, yet at its summit we have the 5 nuclear powers setting the agenda to suit their interests and vetoing resolutions that go against them and also vetoing proposed Secretary Generals that might stand in their way.
Resetting the balance of power 04:20am on 25 Sep 2009 In response to my previous post, I can only say the BBC has not surprised me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8274046.stm

So we have rubber bullets fired at protesters in a democracy, and all the BBC can manage is...

"Near the venue, police fired rubber bullets at protesters on a march near the venue. The previous G20 meeting, in London in April, was marred by clashes."

No shock then that these rounds, which can kill/blind etc are being fired? No outrage. No excited reporters voicing disbelief at such tactics as was the case with the Iranian protests.

Who were the rounds being fired at? People throwing petrol bombs? or just angry protesters speaking their minds?

Does it have to take another protester being killed for the BBC to actually take any interest and question the use of such violent tactics?
Resetting the balance of power 5:51pm on 23 Sep 2009 Can we expect the usual awful coverage of G20 protests? i.e. The usual focus on the few troublesome protesters (e.g. "protesters threw missiles") while simultaneously disguising police violence with phrases such as "police scuffled with protesters".

Even when evidence of unnecessary use of the truncheon emerges, phrases such as "wildly swinging batons" are still avoided. The BBC reserves such emotive terms for reports on protests from countries like Iran.
New resource for citizen journalists 3:11pm on 19 Sep 2009 Citizen journalism really goes far beyond the local stories you mention. Citizen journalists have access to thousands of sources of information across the Internet. They may not have access to the same Reuters feeds as the professionals, but frankly that is probably a good thing (i.e. no more retyped or in some cases, copy and pasted Reuters articles).

I'm glad to see you put the term Good Journalism in quotes. Much of what goes on in professional circles is not good journalism at all. Lofty notions such as the BBC's famed "impartiality" are in practice applied only in certain circumstances. When reporting on allies you are careful and "impartial", yet when reporting on enemies like Russia, the gloves come off and professional journalists can get away with calling Russian troops brutal (Ref 1) or comparing government statements to Orwellian Newspeak (Ref 2).

You talk of the dilemmas of what a citizen journalist should and shouldn't report. It's worth pondering on this question.

What does a citizen journalist do when he sees pictures of white phosphorus use against Gaza plastered all over the BBC website? Does he write an article saying that it appears WP is being used, or does he, like the BBC, sit on it and avoid mentioning white phosphorus for a whole week?

I mentioned the reporting of Russian troops being brutal earlier. In the arena of citizen journalism, you have some citizen journalists who report on Russian troops being "brutal" in various conflicts (e.g. Chechnya) and some who report on US troops being brutal. This is certainly more balanced than the BBC which, while happy to refer to Russian troops as brutal wouldn't dare to call US troops brutal.

How does a citizen journalist react when he sees a whole city being destroyed by an occupying army? Does he focus on the suffering of civilians and question the right of the occupiers to conduct such devastating operations, as BBC's Robert Parsons did with his fist-shakingly angry report on the Russian assault on Grozny? (Ref 3). Alternatively does he instead write an "impartial" article like the BBC's "Fixing The Problem of Falljah". (Ref 4)

Enough about war though. What about other areas? e.g. Reporting on protests. In the world of citizen journalism there are plenty of bloggers reporting on Iranian police "wildly swinging batons" during the recent protests. However there are also plenty of citizen journalists who write in very similar terms about the swinging of batons at British protests such as those at the G20. This is in stark contrast to the BBC who wouldn't dream of talking about British police batons "wildly swinging" yet is happy to use those very same terms when describing Iranian police batons. (Ref 5).

Perhaps if professional journalists could write what they want without fear of being fired or losing out on promotion, things would be different. Then again perhaps they are already indoctrinated enough to believe that they are being impartial. After all, professional journalists go through a long selection process that the citizen journalist is not subjected to. It seems unlikely that someone who routinely wrote about US or UK troops being brutal, or British Police swinging batons wildly, would ever make it to be editor of Newnight (unless they dramatically changed their tune). Of course, someone writing the same things about Russian troops and Iranian police would have no problem finding employment at the BBC.

What of accountability though? You say that..

"If a conventional journalist gets it wrong, they are accountable to both their editor and their audience. Is the citizen journalist accountable to anyone other than himself?"

A conventional journalist may be accountable to their employer but are they really accountable to the public? With citizen journalism you can often post a comment directly on the article in question, pointing out any errors and potentially demolishing it. This is not the case at the BBC. (Have Your Say is really not the same thing). You can of course email the journalists in question, but if you even get a response at all, many tend to get quite defensive and most emails probably just get deleted. So how are they accountable to the public when they can just direct their emails to the trash bin? In addition to this, news articles on the BBC website are very often anonymized so you have no idea who has made the mistakes anyway.

Citizen journalism certainly has its problems, but it makes a welcome change to the filtered and selected hive-mind of the mainstream media.

References:

1. "Media coverage of the recent conflict is also far more restricted... [meaning] the Russian military is free to act with much greater brutality"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1292799.stm

2. "The Russians are calling it a peace enforcement operation, it's the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud."

BBC Newsnight, 11/08/2008

3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/668080.stm

4. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3989639.stm

5. "...wildly swinging wooden batons at anyone in their path. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8111695.stm

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

StevenJMUK