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I’m not dead!

· Media & Journalism

Despite taking a big one amidships with the Hutton Report, the BBC is still at it. If anyone happens to be watching right now, they are showing a ‘documentary’ about ‘How the Americans and British got it Wrong’.

The documentary consists primarily of every single photo or film clip they have of civilian deaths. Nearly every segment begins with the line ‘The Americans were fearful …’. I’m not exaggerating and given the calibre of writers at the BBC it cannot concievably be accidental. It is an intentional construction of a rhetorical framework.

These people hate us with a white fury I have difficulty fathoming. I finally had to just walk away from it.

I wonder if I can sue the BBC for Hate speech against Americans? Yeah, that’s the ticket. I have Rights too! The EU says so!

A reader has noted that I was completely incorrect and the show was actually on ITV\Ch4, not BBC. Mea Culpa. I was certain the TV had been set to BBC and the announcer’s style was so BBC that I just assumed it was. My apologies for this error.

January 31st, 2004 |

13 comments to I’m not dead!

  • Andy Wood
    January 31, 2004 at 10:55 pm

    Despite taking a big one amidships with the Hutton Report, the BBC is still at it. If anyone happens to be watching right now, they are showing a ‘documentary’ about ‘How the Americans and British got it Wrong’.

    I missed the documentary, but according to my copy of the Radio Times, it was on Channel 4, not the BBC.

  • Anthony C
    January 31, 2004 at 11:32 pm

    Yup, it was on Channel 4. I saw the last half of it and it was fairly dire.

  • Trent Telenko
    February 1, 2004 at 12:02 am

    I clipped the following from than article on the Free Republic.com:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1069054/posts

    “Dyke and BBC chairman Gavyn Davies, the broadcaster’s two top officials, quit and the BBC apologized to the government after the report was issued.

    Staff have expressed strong support for Dyke, and hundreds rallied outside BBC offices around the country when he announced his resignation.

    More than four thousand BBC workers’ names were listed in tiny print in a full-page Daily Telegraph ad backing Dyke Saturday, and the ad said more names would have been listed if there was more space.

    “Greg Dyke stood for brave, independent and rigorous BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for truth,” the ad said. “We are dismayed by Greg’s departure but we are determined to maintain his achievements and his vision for an independent organization that serves the public above all else.”

    BBC employees, anchors, reporters and contributors paid for the ad personally, it said.

    Some journalists have warned Hutton’s conclusions could impede tough investigative reporting. “

    The BBC, a government funded a cult, not a news organization.

  • Steven Chapman
    February 1, 2004 at 12:39 am

    It was Channel 4. I watched it, and was somewhat disappointed that it didn’t actually fulfil it’s own remit of looking at the progress of the war from both sides equally. Mostly it was over-dramatisation of a few American fuck-ups, with little about how the Iraqi civilians (you know – nost of the people who were actually there!) handled it. It did underscore the woeful intelligence-gathering abilities of western agencies, agencies whose pathetic uselessness was demonstrated on 9/11, and since then on a regular basis right up to the present day: endless false ‘terror alerts’, no WMDs to be found, assassination attempts against senior Ba’athists that only killed loads of civilians, etc.

    Even the footage was sanitised to spare our fresh, innocent eyes from the nasty-wasty aspects of the war-war.

  • Emo
    February 1, 2004 at 2:19 am

    N.B. Channel 4 and ITV are different companies. There are a few connections between the two – ITN supplies the news for both, for example. But it’s definitely incorrect to say the ‘documentary’ was broadcast on ITV.

    Channel 4 have a habit of broadcasting these preposterous propaganda bullshit fests – see also Dispatches: Killing Zone.

    ITV, on the other hand, rarely broadcasts anything that’s worth being outraged about, as it’s full of wall to wall dross.

  • hast
    February 1, 2004 at 3:17 am

    Best quote ever:

    Jeremy Dear of the National Union of Journalists claimed the Government was trying
    to intimidate the broadcaster and produce “a Pravda-style BBC.

  • Guy Herbert
    February 1, 2004 at 7:22 am

    Jeremy Dear in plausible assertion shock! Has the PM ordered an enquiry yet?

  • Julian Taylor
    February 1, 2004 at 11:26 am

    Would it not just be best to pull this entire posting? You got the BBC bit wrong and then commented that it was ITV whereas it was actually on Channel 4.

    Save your integrity.

  • Dale Amon
    February 1, 2004 at 12:41 pm

    Not really. The show was worth commenting on, and as for the rest, I don’t hide my mistakes like a certain Michael Moore does by pulling them after the fact. Just admit them and move on.

  • Lulu
    February 1, 2004 at 7:50 pm

    Well are you going to face up to the consequences of your mistakes (for eg your credibility?) or are you going to act like like, er, the BBC and not admit that they have any?

    Thank God you’re a blogger and not someone any of the rest of might might ever need to rely upon eg an ITN or for that matter, BBC journalist.

  • Trent Telenko
    February 1, 2004 at 8:29 pm

    I got this from the Jim Miller on Politics Blog. This isn’t Channel 4:

    Biased BBC, Example 2: This morning I woke up early and listened to more than an hour of the BBC World Service. In that time, I heard a report on the Iraqi intelligence failure that quoted two Bush opponents and no supporters, an interview with George Soros, who is spending millions to drive Bush from office, an interview with Robert McNamara, who recently helped with a movie that, thought the BBC interviewer, showed parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, a report on the GDP growth in the fourth quarter that suggested that 4 percent growth in the fourth quarter was disappointing, and a sneering reference to Bush’s intent to find out the facts about any intelligence failure. I know the speaker was sneering because in this article, the BBC uses the old trick of sneer quotes to discredit Bush in the headline. The president is not searching for facts, but for “facts”. And the BBC is not a news organization, but a “news organization”, in my opinion

    In none of these segments did the BBC quote anyone with a favorable opinion of President Bush. In fact, there was not a favorable sentence about Bush in the entire time I listened. I don’t know what rules journalists usually follow in Britain, but, in the United States, most think that telling both sides of a story is essential.

    The BBC omitted, perhaps from ignorance, perhaps from bias, some essential information on one of the people they quoted at length on the WMD intelligence controversy, Senator Bob Graham of Florida. It is true, as they said, that he has been a chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. It is also true, as they did not say, that he is a Democrat and had been running against President Bush, until he left the race.
    – 7:02 AM, 31 January 2004 [link]

  • Dale Amon
    February 1, 2004 at 9:19 pm

    The beauty of this system over older ones is the speed at which corrections occur and that the full sequence of error and correction and discussion and expansion is available as an open record.

    Only those who wish to appear infallible need fear it.

    I lay no claim to the Papacy.

  • Simon Jester
    February 2, 2004 at 1:36 pm

    Well are you going to face up to the consequences of your mistakes (for eg your credibility?) or are you going to act like like, er, the BBC and not admit that they have any?

    Other than admit his mistake – which Dale did 7 hours before Lulu posted – what consequences does she imagine should follow?

    And if she failed to notice the post immediately before hers – what consequences should follow her mistake?

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