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.”
As the Vienna talks proceed over the coming weeks, the Western media will no doubt carry out more laundry services for Washington and its allies. High on the list will be attempts to misrepresent Russia’s political position on Syria with a view to cajoling Moscow into cutting off Syria’s Assad.
BSNews comment: this story is of interest but is somewhat ironic considering the role the BBC routinely plays in amplifying state/corporate propaganda: A BBC journalist has blasted the UK press after experiencing at first-hand the appalling way the media treats the public. In a moving blogpost, BBC Bristol presenter John Darvall blames the fact he is in the public eye and […]
Yemen is no stranger to conflict. Under the Obama administration, the country has been subject to years of lethal drone strikes, which Washington, for the most part, claims were targeted at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Washington regards AQAP as the most deadly branch of al-Qaeda. However, in practice, these drone strikes have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. […]
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.
With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990’s and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversaries expanded.
Putin was never taken in by the whole ISIS oil charade. He knew it was a farce from the get-go, ever since Financial Times published their thoroughly laughable article on the topic which claimed that ISIS had its own group of “headhunters” offering “competitive salaries” to engineers with the “requisite experience” and encouraged “prospective employees to apply to its human resources department.”
The ISIS “human resources department”?? Have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life?
This is our second look at the work of Robert Stuart, concerning the BBC Panorama documentary Saving Syria’s Children. ( here for our first instalment). When did the alleged chemical attacks actually occur? Why do accounts of the timing differ so widely?
The BBC loves to boast about how “objective” and “neutral” it is. But a recent article, which it was forced to change, illustrates the lengths to which the British state-funded media outlet will go to protect one of the UK Government’s closest allies, Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be one of its largest arms purchasers (just this morning, the Saudi Ambassador to the UK threatened in an Op-Ed that any further criticism of the Riyadh regime by Jeremy Corbyn could jeopardize the multi-layered UK/Saudi alliance).
‘The War You Don’t See’ (2011) is a powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of ’embedded’ and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq.
The presidents of Russia and China watch with amazement the immoral stupidity that has become America’s defining characteristic. At some point the Russians and Chinese will realize that no matter how patient they are, the West is lost and cannot be redeemed.
There is nothing in the “chilly” headlined piece that supports the claim made in the headline. Indeed not Russian or Syrian voice in it and all who are quoted have no more knowledge about the meetings than anyone who read the news agency reports. The whole thesis is taken from “chilly” air.
