Attack on BBC’s “dangerous mindset” is childsplay
This blog has argued consistently that the recent onslaught from the right on the BBC, launched by its report on “impartiality” in June, was a continuation of Blair’s assault on the media over coverage of the war on terror, which is rarely actually mentioned by name. Now the Financial Times has published an article by one of its leading commentators that neatly confirms the truth of this argument.
If that wasn’t enough, Philip Stephen’s extraordinary article (Oct 5) demonstrates another theme of this blog – namely, the connection between Islamophobia in the media and pro-war reporting.
Stephens launches a scathing attack on CBBC, the BBC’s TV service for 6-12 year olds, accusing it of a politically correct “pseudo-liberalism”, a “perverse and dangerous mindset” that leads it to be biased in favour of al-Qaeda. He singles out a page on the CBBC website which discusses the events of 9/11 and offers it as proof that the BBC is soft on terrorism:
“The BBC’s omissions, the careful juxtaposition of alleged cause and effect, and the choice of language invite the conclusion that there is moral equivalence between a US presence in the Middle East and the random slaughter of innocents.”
This is Stephens’ cue for a lot of self-righteous guff about al-Qaeda, wheeling out the tired canard of neo-cons the world over – that Bin Laden is the new Hitler and al-Qaeda the new Nazism. You can see what’s coming next… Because the BBC doesn’t support the USA (Stephens would have us believe), it is on the side of the terrorists:
“From a studiously neutral standpoint, it becomes entirely logical to condemn abuses perpetrated by the US, while glossing over the bestial violence of its enemies. … The most the BBC will offer by way of judgment on al-Qaeda-inspired jihadis seems to be as follows: ‘Although they claim to be on a holy war, many Muslims say what they are doing is very wrong.’ That is just not good enough. Impartiality cannot throw out universal values.”
Stephens’ argument is fairly easy to tackle at a factual level.
The page on the CBBC website that gives him such offence is part of a package on 9/11. The previous page of the package describes al-Qaeda as “a militant Islamic group” and points out that Bin Laden laughed and boasted about the attacks – which the package makes clear killed 3000 people – and spoke of his joy. Twice the package makes it clear that al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation.
The implication seems really quite abundantly clear that al-Qaeda is a dreadful organisation that takes pleasure from mass killing. It is hard to detect any “moral equivalence” at work. CBBC is aimed at young children, after all. Is that really the place for red-faced, table-thumping outrage? Moreover, there is certainly no trace of moral equivalence in CBBC’s treatment of the Iraq war (here and here), while the BBC’s adult package on al-Qaeda is completely different.
So Stephens has taken a children’s website and used it, out of all context, to pin all the crudest right-wing slurs on the BBC ’s coverage of war and Islam. Perhaps this was an original piece of research on his part? Sadly, no. It was taken from The Sun on September 11, 2007.
So the Financial Times, the country’s most serious liberal organ, is reduced to taking crumbs from Murdoch’s table and regurgitating them as pseudo-intellectual outrage. How are the mighty fallen.
The only reason the FT could get away with publishing such an article is because of the prevailing climate in politics and the media which screams at every opportunity that the BBC is “left wing” and a sucker for liberal causes. We need to fight back. The conference on November 17 at the London School of Economics must become the beginning of a real campaign to defend the BBC, and to silence those who use the media to make excuses for war.
“Scribbler”
P.S. I have just watched the stunning documentary “Taxi from the Dark Dide” broadcast on BBC 2 late on Monday (Oct 8th). There could be no better rejoinder to Philip Stephens.
