THE BALANCE OF POWER: EXCHANGES WITH BBC JOURNALISTS (Part 1)

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 15 Oct 2009

MediaLens

In our previous alert (‘The Westminster Conspiracy,’ October 8) we described how the media’s insistence that journalists be ’balanced’, that they keep their personal opinions to themselves, is used as a tool of thought control.

Journalists who criticise powerful interests can be attacked for their ‘bias’, for revealing their prejudices. On the other hand, as we will see in the examples below, almost no-one protests, or even notices, the lack of balance in patriotic articles reporting on the experience of British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the credibility of British and American elections, or on claims that the West is spreading democracy across the Third World. Then, notions of patriotism, loyalty, the need to support ‘our boys’, make ‘balance’ seem disloyal, disrespectful; an indication, in fact, that a journalist is ‘biased.’

The media provide copious coverage of state-sponsored memorials commemorating the 50th, 60th, 65th anniversaries of D-Day, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of Arnhem, the retreat from Dunkirk, the Battle of the Atlantic, the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, and so on. Even the 200th anniversary of The Battle of Trafalgar was a major news item. Remembrance Sunday, Trooping The Colour, Beating The Retreat, the Fleet Review are all media fixtures. The military is of course happy to supply large numbers of troops and machines for these dramatic flypasts, parades and reviews.

On June 11, 2005, senior BBC news presenter, Huw Edwards, provided the commentary for Britain’s Trooping The Colour military parade, describing it as “a great credit to the Irish Guards”. Imagine if Edwards had added:

“While one can only be impressed by the discipline and skill on show in these parades, critics have of course warned against the promotion of patriotic militarism. The Russian novelist Tolstoy, for one, observed:

The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools, the churches and the press. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press.” (Tolstoy, Government is Violence — Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, Phoenix Press, 1990, p.82)

Edwards would not have been applauded for providing this ‘balance’. He would have been condemned far and wide as a crusading crackpot, and hauled before senior BBC management.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury recently offered the mildest of criticisms of the invasion of Iraq in a sermon in St Paul’s Cathedral, the Sun newspaper responded:

‘Archbishop of Canterbury’s war rant mars troops tribute.’ It added:

“The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday hijacked a service honouring the sacrifice of British troops in Iraq – to spout an anti-war rant.”

The Archbishop’s crime was heinous indeed, as the Sun explained:

“In an astonishing breach of convention, he then accused politicians of failing to think enough about the war’s human cost.

“Speaking from the pulpit of St Paul’s, Dr Williams said:

It would be a very rash person who would feel able to say without hesitation, this was absolutely the right or the wrong thing to do, the right or the wrong place to be. The conflict in Iraq will, for a long time yet, exercise the historians, the moralists, the international experts. Reflecting on the years of the Iraq campaign, we cannot say that no mistakes were ever made.”

We would be interested to see Williams’ case for arguing that invading Iraq might have been the +right+ thing to do. It could hardly be more obvious that invading was “the wrong thing to do” — it resulted in the virtual destruction of an entire country. It was also a monumental crime and not a mistake.

The Sun’s article was archived under “news/campaigns/our_boys”. As Tolstoy would have understood, the Sun is in fact a bitter class enemy of “our boys”. It is a rich man’s propaganda toy parading as a trusty pal of ‘ordinary people’. We wrote to Williams on October 12:

Dear Rowan Williams

David

We have received no reply.

My Pal Stan — Justin Webb And The General (And The Guidelines)

On October 7, the BBC published new draft editorial guidelines. It is worth paying close attention to section 4.4.13:

Presenters, reporters and correspondents are the public face and voice of the BBC — they can have a significant impact on perceptions of our impartiality. Journalists and presenters, including those in news and current affairs, may provide professional judgements, rooted in evidence, but may not express personal views on public policy, on matters of political or industrial controversy, or on ‘controversial subjects’ in any other area.

Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal prejudices of our journalists and presenters on such matters. This applies as much to online content as it does to news bulletins: nothing should be written by journalists and presenters that would not be said on air.

The Guardian noted that some industry observers are already referring to the last phrase as the “Jeremy Bowen clause”. In April, the BBC Trust partly upheld complaints over accuracy and impartiality made against Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor.

Bowen was censured for a piece he wrote for the BBC website in June 2008 on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He referred to “Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier”. He wrote that Israel showed a “defiance of everyone’s interpretation of international law except its own” and that its generals felt that they were dealing with “unfinished business”, left over from 1948. (‘Bowen “breached rules on impartiality,”’ The Independent, April 16, 2009)

A BBC committee ruled that Bowen’s reporting had partially breached the BBC’s rules on accuracy and impartiality. In reality, he was stating indisputable facts. Bowen was criticised for his “loose phrasing”, but the point we are making is that, if Bowen had made comparable comments about official enemies like Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Korea, no BBC executive would have given a thought to any lack of balance. Such reports continuously pass completely unnoticed. The truth is that media balance is a function of power. Indeed it might properly be termed the balance of power.

In the October 4 edition of the Mail on Sunday, Justin Webb, presenter of the BBC’s Today programme, wrote about the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, in an article titled:

‘Why my pal Stan has a terrorist’s false arm on his wall.’

To be clear, the title described the US commander waging this controversial and bloody war as Webb’s “pal”. Just this single sentence clearly contravenes the BBC’s guidelines on balance. And notice that it is inconceivable that a BBC journalist could pen an article with the title:

‘Why my pal Osama has a US soldier’s false arm on his wall.’

Webb explained the arm on the wall:

“The severed arm, I should say, is sticking out of the kind of ornate frame you might choose for a watercolour. The arm looks real but is actually a prosthetic limb. On closer inspection the oddity is compounded: the hand is clutching a mobile phone.

“The General enters the room and provides the explanation.

“‘The guys were fooling around,’ he says. ‘We went out to kill a sheik who had only one arm and we ended up getting the false arm but nothing else.’

“’That’s not it,’ the General adds, with a slight hint of wistfulness. ‘They just mocked that up for the joke. The phone was what gave his position away.’”
(the online title has been altered from the print original)

We wrote to Webb on October 13:

Dear Justin Webb

David

Webb also referred in passing to a particularly gruesome Nato attack:

“When German troops in Afghanistan called in an air attack on stolen oil-filled tankers last month, killing a number of civilians in the process, McChrystal had trouble raising some of his European colleagues on the phone.”

Presumably the number of civilians burned alive was unworthy of mention. Al Jazeera reported:

“Thirty Afghan civilians were among nearly 100 people killed after Nato aircraft destroyed two stolen oil tankers in the north of the country earlier this month, an Afghan government investigation has concluded.”
Webb replied on October 13:

David hello — and yes the title was unfortunate I agree. The entire piece was approved by the BBC but the sub editors then came up with that introduction. Having said that I certainly don’t agree that the piece supported any war or any individual — merely pointed out that he is a character, which he is. I expressed no personal view on the Afghan conflict, nor could you guess from the piece what my personal view is!

best jw

It says everything that the piece was approved by the BBC, which presumably perceived no lack of balance. Again, Tolstoy offered an example of the kind of thinking that is far beyond the pale for BBC journalism:

“Above all, they inflame patriotism in this way: perpetrating every kind of injustice and harshness against other nations, they provoke in them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that enmity to embitter their people against the foreigner.” (Tolstoy, ibid., p.82)

Comments that offer a penetrating insight into the disaster that is US-UK strategy in Afghanistan, both past and present.

Part 2 will follow shortly…

__________________________

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The first Media Lens book is Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media (Pluto Books, London, 2006).

GO TO ORIGINAL – DISSIDENT VOICE

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Comments are closed.