ALISON BANVILLE takes to task the BBC flagship programme over its investigation of British foreign aid diversion to extremist groups in Syria
Tag: BBC
BBC Panorama: on location with ISIS
BBC’s Ian Pannell and Darren Conway have recently been reported to the UK National Counter Terrorism Security Office over concerns that they entered into a business relationship with salafist jihadi group Ahrar al-Sham during the production of Saving Syria’s Children.
Trump, ‘fake news’ and the war on dissidents
As the saying goes, the corporate media would have had to invent Donald Trump if he didn’t already exist. He has become the perfect foil to allow the system to relegitimise itself.
Preferred Conclusions – The BBC, Syria And Venezuela
The goal of a mass media propaganda campaign is to create the impression that ‘everybody knows’ that Saddam is a ‘threat’, Gaddafi is ‘about to commit mass murder’, Assad ‘has to go’, Corbyn is ‘destroying the Labour party’, and so on. The picture of the world presented must be clear-cut. The public must be made to feel certain that the ‘good guys’ are basically benevolent, and the ‘bad guys’ are absolutely appalling and must be removed.
Email to Emily Thornberry: BBC Panorama crew ensconced with al-Qaeda linked jihadi group
Robert Stuart has been single-handedly undertaking ‘analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports, contending that sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a school in Urm Al-Kubra are largely, if not […]
‘Propagandising For War’ – Gareth Porter Responds To The BBC Today Programme On Syria
A report published by the London School of Economics last month found extreme levels of bias in BBC reporting. The ‘impartial’ BBC’s early evening news was almost five times more likely to depict Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a negative light. In the time period studied (September 1 – November 1, 2015), no headlines on this key news programme presented […]
BBC Deobandi ‘investigation’ was authored by editor who secretly briefed Whitehall
Interviewee says BBC’s reporting misrepresented him. The BBC has exclusively confirmed to INSURGE intelligence that a news report claiming to have discovered widespread extremism amongst Muslim Deobandi communities in Britain, was produced by a BBC editor who had secretly briefed Whitehall officials in February. An INSURGE investigation published on Wednesday revealed that the BBC’s portrayal of Deobandi mosques in the […]
Watchdogs to Attack Dogs: Western Liberal Media Failures on Syria
Why did the western liberal media (WLM) engage with such passion in the US-led ‘humanitarian war’ against Syria? Have western journalists shown any recognition of their own moral and, at times, criminal responsibility for the consequences?
Cameron fiddles while England drowns
It would appear that the government is not taking climate change seriously enough and therefore are not preparing adequately for it. Perhaps Prime Minister David Cameron is taking his cue from the BBC’s Weather’s Sarah Keith-Lucas who appeared to be unaware that the mild and wet conditions throughout December in the UK are related to climate change.
The Illusion of Western News
Out of Yemen’s 24 million population, nearly half are in dire humanitarian conditions from lack of food, water and medicine, according to the United Nations. The suffering is aggravated by a sea and air blockade of Yemen by the Western-Arab military coalition.
Due to Western involvement in a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Yemen, one might think that Western media would be at least giving some coverage. Well, not if you watch BBC, CNN or France 24.
From ‘sexed up’ in Iraq to silenced in Afghanistan, cowing of the BBC continues
Of course, the BBC has always been an instrument of the British state, established by statute in 1928 and run by a governor appointed by the Prime Minister. As Seumas Milne has pointed out: “There is no point in romanticizing a BBC golden age. The corporation was always an establishment institution, deeply embedded in the security state and subject to direct government control in an emergency…[with] around 40 percent of the staff… vetted by MI5.”
‘Let’s Bring In Our Pentagon Spokesman’ – Bombing Syria
For indeed the unwritten rule informing this type of journalism is: if you want to get close to the ‘defence’ establishment, you better be close to the ‘defence’ establishment: ideologically, sympathetically, ‘patriotically’.
A near-perfect example of this industry-wide perceptual bias has been supplied this year by BBC diplomatic editor, Mark Urban.