Joobo the King of Wisdom

Stephen Pollard: "So Whose Side is the BBC On?"

British journalist Stephen Pollard writes in The Daily Mail of London that the BBC is now wholly on the side of the Islamic terrorists - and against the West and innocent people.

So whose side is the BBC on?

For years, the BBC has been infected by a left-liberal bias. Its reporting, for example, of the arguments over the future of the EU has made out that those in favour of ever-greater European integration are peace loving sages, as opposed to those who believe in self-government who are, by definition, xenophobic bigots.

That bias, real as it is, has often been subtle. Let the BBC’s reports wash over you without paying full critical attention and you might not even notice it.
But the distorted way in which the BBC has reported the terrorist murders in London is of a different order of magnitude altogether.

In the immediate moments after the murders, it seemed as if something might have changed for the better. The murderers were, rightly, described by BBC reporters as terrorists. The BBC’s website had a page with the headline, “Bus man may have seen terrorist”. The story began, “A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the terrorist bomb attacks in London.” Another page referred to “the worst terrorist atrocity Britain has seen.”

The use of the word terrorist was surprising, but welcome. Surprising, because in its coverage of terrorism in Israel, the BBC has consistently described the suicide murderers who blow up buses, with the specific intent of murdering as many Israelis as possible, as ‘extremists’ or ‘militants’. The word terrorist never passes correspondents’ lips.

So to see the BBC describe Thursday’s murderers as terrorists looked like a rare example of the corporation using accurate descriptions of terrorists.

It did not last long. By Friday, those web pages had been edited to excise all references to terrorism. The first page had a new headline: “Passenger believes he saw bomber”. The story was changed to: “A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the bomb attacks in London.” And the second story now read: “the worst peacetime bomb attacks Britain has seen.”

No mention of terrorism was anywhere to be seen.

But for all the warped values which led to such changes, the edits merely affected the BBC’s own words. What the corporation did to the Prime Minister’s words in the House of Commons on Monday, however, was simply shocking.

Mr Blair told MPs this: “It seems probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists…” The BBC’s report of Mr Blair’s statement is a wilful distortion: “Those responsible…, probably Islamic extremists, would be hunted down.” The Prime Minister referred to them specifically as terrorists. But the BBC deliberately left out that most important word.

And it did not even report Mr Blair’s conclusion: “Together, we will ensure that though terrorists can kill, they will never destroy the way of life we share and which we value, and which we will defend with the strength of belief and conviction so that it is to us and not to the terrorists, that victory will belong.”

There were, presumably, simply too many references to terrorists for the BBC to concoct even a distorted report.

In the BBC mindset, the murderers are not terrorists. As its Editorial Guidelines puts it: “Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements. The word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”

The bombers, as the BBC insists they be called, merely have a different world view from the rest of us, you see. Indeed, the guidelines say, “we recognise our duty to protect the vulnerable and avoid unjustified offence or likely harm. We aim to achieve this by ensuring our output is not used to denigrate the beliefs of others.” How awful it would be if mass murdering Islamists were offended or denigrated by being called terrorists.

But terrorism is not a value judgement. It is recognised as a crime against humanity under international law. Professor Norman Geras defines it as “the deliberate targeting of civilians with a view to killing and maiming them and if possible in large numbers”. To describe Thursday’s bombers as terrorists is merely to observe the reality of human rights law.

This is, of course, about far more than labels. The refusal to use the word terrorist goes to the heart of the BBC’s world view, in which such murders are simply a response to the West’s provocation.

It is all our fault, according to the BBC’s ‘experts’. On Friday night, a Newsnight correspondent, Peter Marshall, informed us that “What the war on terror was supposed to prevent, it has brought about.”

That is the least of it. Frank Gardner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, has been lauded for his return to work after being shot by terrorists – oh, excuse me, militants - in Saudi Arabia. His undoubted bravery ought, however, not to prevent his analysis of Thursday’s events from being exposed for what it is.
Speaking on Radio 4 on Monday, Mr Gardner declared that Western policies in Muslim countries, and ‘harassment’ of suspected Islamists in Britain and Europe, was ‘offensive’ to Wahabis. But what Wahabis find offensive is the very existence of the West, which they are committed to destroying.

He then remarked that that it was extraordinary that they planted a bomb in Edgware Road, since this was a Muslim area. Yet not only did they not plant a bomb there (it went off in a moving train), they have as long a track record of murdering Muslims as they do of killing apostates.

Mr Gardner concluded that it was “doubly tough for Britain’s Muslims…it’s more of a blow for them than for everyone else”. Really? The relatives and friends of the victims might disagree with that.

There is much, much more of this sort of thing – not least the ludicrous BBC series, The Power of Nightmares, broadcast at prime time, which sought to prove that, in the words of its producer, the threat of global terrorism, “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media”.

Last Thursday did not happen, it would seem. It was all an illusion.

If the BBC was just another broadcaster, forced to compete for an audience, we could choose whether or not to support it. Instead, each of us is forced, under threat of imprisonment, to pay for it to broadcast its distortions of the threat we face. We have had to put up with this bias for too long. It is time the BBC was held to account for its behaviour.

Amen.