I am given to understand that the art of being a successful confidence trickster lies in the ability to identify what their victims really, really want and then plausibly appearing to offer it to them.
This con artist knew exactly what his ‘mark’ wanted and he offered it up to them on a plate:
The BBC was forced to apologise yesterday for a story claiming that tens of thousands of victims of the Bhopal gas disaster and their families would receive compensation from a $12 billion fund.
A man purporting to speak for the Dow Chemical company told the BBC that its Union Carbide subsidiary, which owned the chemical plant when the gas leak killed 3,500 people immediately and later up to 15,000, would be liquidated and the proceeds used for compensation….
The programme was aired twice on BBC World and followed up on Radio 4 and BBC News 24 causing Dow Chemical’s shares to fall 3.4 per cent in Frankfurt before it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax.
When the victims of con men recount their tales of woe, it nearly always results in the same charge: ‘How could you have fallen for that’? The answer is always the same: the victim believed what they were told because they wanted to believe it.
On the face of it, a claim that a major global concern was going to fall on its collective sword is wholly implausible. At the very least it is the kind of claim that begs for verification; verification that could easily have been sought by means a quick and expedient telephone call to the company’s headquarters and which would have resulted in dismissal.
But that telephone call was never made because the apparent admission of guilt by Dow Chemicals had set BBC hearts-a-flutter. In their minds, Dow Chemicals is guilty, regardless of any facts to do with the Bhopal disaster. Dow is guilty of profiteering, of raping the planet, of making evil chemicals, of being a multinational corporation, of being big. All of a sudden they get an iron-clad confession from the Beast itself: an unimpeachable confirmation and reinforcement of everything that BBC journos believe as Gospel.
They sought no corroboration for the claim because they wanted it to be true. They needed it to be true and, like lovesick adolescent girls who swoon for the duplicitous declarations of love from disingenuous paramours, they gladly opened their legs.
This grubby little incident is a snapshot of everything that is wrong with the Fourth Estate and the BBC bit of it in particular. It is not they are negligent or dishonest but neither are they objective and therein lies the problem.
There’s an old American saying: “You can’t cheat an honest man.”
David Carr is right to pick out the skulking silhouette of the BBC with his laser beam. This week has seen something a Bhopal-fest on BBC Radio 4, with both drama (in other words fiction) and documentary (in other words fiction) lovingly crafted to stroke and pet the BBC listener’s prejudices against Union Carbide/Dow, in general, and capitalism, in particular.
I’ll yield to no one in my contempt for US ‘corp com’ androids, (most whom could take up pimping children as a more ethical career), so I understand why a BBC journalist might mistrust the sort of answers they get from the marshmallow-brained morons who guard the portals of American corporations. But this sort of blind, malice towards the very notion of “making a profit” is just childish, undergraduate idiocy.
GCooper, don’t you mean “Dow in particular and capitalism in general”?
I still don’t get the surprise at the total lack of objectivity in the media. Why was this presumption ever made? The so-called “professional journalists” could not be more unprofessional when it comes to facts that challenge their narrow belief system.
The BBC is also ignorant Dow did not own Union Carbide at the time of Bhopal,strangely the Indian government was a major stakeholder.
I’m wondering if the BBC will be more inclined to make the verification phone calls, and if the guys that pulled the stunt (website claiming responsibility is http://www.theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/) will be so eager to peddle what is basically anti-globo loonbattery if both they and the BBC are slammed with lawsuits for demonstrable fiscal damage done by this escapade.
Normally, I’m not a litigation fan, but I’m less a fan of willful stupidity by a publicly funded organization.
I’m also not a huge fan of self righteous and self important ‘activists with a message’ that manipulate such a mess via a bunch of sanctimoneous twits as the BBC, thus playing a cruel game with the emotions of hundreds of thousands of Indians, not to mention the monetary losses to Dow’s investors their stunt incited. All well and good when they were tweaking the noses of bloviating WTO types – but this crossed the line into the realm of yelling fire in a theater – their actions had a measureable negative impact, and was carried out deliberately.
Somebody, somewhere, made a lot of money out of that. This may goes deeper than humiliating the BBC.
Oh, what a silly mess. While I will say that WindRider and Thon have good points, it struck me immediately that almost anyone in a mood to make some mischief could easily take advantage of the media’s (self-induced) soft spots with a bogus story, thereby humiliating them even further.
Oh, what a silly mess. While I will say that WindRider and Thon have good points, it struck me immediately that almost anyone in a mood to make some mischief could easily take advantage of the media’s (self-induced) soft spots with a bogus story, thereby humiliating them even further.
Sorry!
Danny Taggart writes:
“GCooper, don’t you mean “Dow in particular and capitalism in general”?”
I did. Sorry.
It is not they are negligent or dishonest but neither are they objective and therein lies the problem.
I dunno, I think that there is too much “objectivity” in the press in the U.S. I would perfer it if we returned to the period in the 19th century where the press was a conduit for particular party viewpoints, and it was declared on the masthead which political ideology a media source was allied to. Thus we could have the “CNN Democrat,” the “Fox News Republican” (and hope beyond hope) the “MSNBC Libertarian.” 🙂
You’re are dead right that the basis of such cons is telling people what they want to hear. However, I think this goes on much more often than the well publicised incidents such as this one would lead you to believe.
The BBC are obviously at fault here – an announcement that significant should have been checked thoroughly. The cons that are easier to pull off are the ones people expect. Ones like “Safety systems were the responsibility of our Indian subsidiary.” A fairly bland, reasonable, statement about something boring like the structure of international corporations. Also completely untrue, in the case, of, for example, Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant. Didn’t stop all the papers printing it at the time. I guess they got conned.
Every day corporate and governmental press shills lie in bland, plausible ways to minor reporters covering boring stories, and the minor reporters can’t be bothered to check the facts because it’s hard, the story isn’t looking too promising, and there’s another press office willing to give them a free lunch in return for something that might be more interesting.
Even in my narrow field of computing, I see a company lying through its teeth to a journalist on a monthly basis “We have no plans to discontinue this product”. “We fully support the XYZ standard”. Whatever.
One of the good things about blogs is that they tend not to repeat this pr flak stuff verbatim, and so tend not to fall prey to it. That said, if you look at the ‘truth rate’ of a blog like drudge report, it’s actually pretty poor.
I fell for the compensation story – I was dumb.
As for the other B.B.C. stuff – lots of contradictions.
On one show they state that Union Carbide did not make money from the plant. But on the flagship “Today” show on Radio Four the B.B.C. man said that Union Carbide “made profits” by ignoring the regulations.
Trying to have it both ways.
Of course (as others have pointed out) the plant was not controlled by Union Carbide anyway, the government backed local partners had the upper hand.
But it was stupid (at best) for Union Carbide to get into to bed with them in the first place.
It would be fine that the BBC is biased if it weren’t for the fact that we have to pay a TV tax to fund it. If it were a private corporation and we had the choice of whether or not to pay to watch it that would be fine.
Or as Dumb Jon so eloquently put it:
Paul,
Well, you only have yourselves to blame for that. Get rid of state-owned media and you won’t have that problem. Luckily in the U.S. even NPR and PBS are largely privately funded (thus the bi-annual begging ceremony they go through). Maybe you should think about making the BBC beg for its supper…
Mr David ‘Juan’ Carr writes in such a frenzy of vitriol that you can almost sense the spittle hitting the screen. Typo heaven! Can we learn more from the great man about the correct procedure when raping a plant? This worries me.
Can I add furthermore that I detect a hint of misogyny in Mr Carr’s ravings? A clearer picture emerges almost daily…
I wonder how interesting it would be to see who bought shares in Dow just after the story broke (and the shares took a hit)?
Just a thought…
Percy Thrower writes:
“Mr David ‘Juan’ Carr writes in such a frenzy of vitriol that you can almost sense the spittle hitting the screen”
You see, this is where you BBC-indoctrinated lackeys betray your lack of education and perspective. David Carr is a genuine satirist, a la Swift. Pointed as a needle, sharp as a scalpel and calculatedly uncomfortable. Vitriolic? Undoubtedly. But rabid? I don’t think so.
If it’s spittle hitting screens you want to witness, I’d suggest you listen to the histrionic ravings of a Radio 4 Marxist half-wit like Marcus Brigstock. Or read some of the Indie’s commentators.
Percy… I seem to recall a 1970’s film about a transplanted penis called Percy.
I wonder why.
Apparently the perpetrator of the hoax is one Andy Bichlbaum, one of the ‘Yes Men’, a comedy double act who are evidently well-known for this sort of hoax. Up until now, the BBC has approved saying, for example, that “…not only do The Yes Men make their point brilliantly, but following the merry pranksters around as they carry out their hoaxes makes for hilarious viewing.”
More ironic appreciation in this BBC article.