Before they slip into the blogstream wake, I would like to note some comments on the BBC's Arabic Service. Apparently, if you think that The Beeb is bad in English, it's nothing compared to their Arabic service, where they have seemingly abandoned journalism to enter the Arab press 'beauty contest'.
Here are are couple of interesting posts from an Israeli blogger who speaks fluent Arabic:
THE BBC AND THE JEWISH CONSPIRACY (Yet again???)
I was walking to work this evening and thought it might be interesting to listen to some of the Arabic radio stations and hear what is being said about the war in Iraq. I eventually found a very interesting station that I thought might be Syrian. It was certainly broadcasting anti-war propaganda, including an interview with a man named Chalabi who was the head of some institute in London, who claimed that the entire war was instigated by the Zionists in Washington for their benefit. The suggestion went unchallenged from the interviewer.
So far so good; all standard stuff for the Arabic media. But wait a minute... this anti-Zionist channel turned out to be none other that the BBC's Arabic service, broadcast on 640 medium wave!
In case you've forgotten, the BBC is funded by the British goverment, and according to its charter, it is required to provid honest and accurate news reporting. In case you think that this was a single incident, I subsequently heard another story about Palestinian children suffering in the occupied territories (no mention of Jewish children killed by Palestinian terrorists).
Of course I expect this kind of reporting from the Arabic media - but this was not the Arabic media, this was the supposedly open and honest BBC. It seems that the BBC's Arabic service requires close monitoring to check that it doesn't breach the BBC's charter.
and a couple of days later
ONE IRAQI'S TESTIMONY
This morning I had the happy opportunity to go to a family celebration, and to catch up with a Baghdadi family's views. My cousin's wife, who is in her late 30s, was born in Baghdad, and at such family events I usually end up discussing Arabic with her father, a kind and gentle man who was grew up in that city and left it as when already an adult.
The father told me he simply couldn't understand the Germans and Russians: why were they supporting Saddam Hussein? Saddam had destroyed Iraq, and imprisoned its people. They had no freedom, and were suffering terrible tyranny. He had murdered thousands upon thousands of people: people who were living, breathing, feeling, happy people. They had been treated like animals. How could this be? How could people behave like this? And how could the West support this dreadful man and protect him in this way? Didn't they care anything about the people who were being murdered by Saddam's regime?
He also told me that although he seldom speaks Arabic these days (though I heard him conversing with family members), he listens to the Arabic service of the BBC. Without my prompting him, he said that he also couldn't understand how the British could be broadcasting such lies against their own forces. The BBC service is dominated by Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists, he told me. Can't they find any moderate Arabic-speaking broadcasters who could present fair coverage? He wanted to write to the British government, but, well, he just didn't know how. But how could this be? How could this be?
ribbityfrog.blogspot.com
Barbara Amiel reviewed various media coverage, and gave particularly low marks to the BBC's Arabic service:
But if the ordinary BBC news service has departed from any pretence of objectivity, the very bottom rung is occupied by the BBC Arabic Service, funded by the Foreign Office, which is to say the British taxpayer.
No one would want the BBC to turn into a Radio Free Europe or Voice of America. That approach to broadcasting, while legitimate, is the tool of a specific political agenda. But given the censorship in the Arab world, one would hope for a BBC approach similar to its glory days in the Second World War - truthful information in areas denied the listeners by their own media.
This is not what they get. The BBC Arabic Service appears to rule out any criticism of Arab leaders or their regimes. Apart from some cryptic and occasional references in news reports, there is no critical discussion and analysis of public policy issues such as human rights, health, housing and illiteracy. There is no discussion of government priorities, government corruption or the activities of the security forces and police. When Saddam Hussein was "re-elected" with a 100 per cent vote, the election was reported as if it were a perfectly normal exercise in democracy.
The very rare exceptions to this often carry anti-West motives: a programme last December 10 included a member of the Iraqi opposition, Hamid Al-Bayati, but the interview with him was turned into an attempt to prove that the opposition was created by foreign enemies of Iraq.
The British report on human rights problems in Iraq, released last December, was reported in the context of its having been written to justify an attack on Iraq. (An exception was a programme broadcast a few days after the release of the report, which contained genuine criticism of human rights in Iraq. The moderator, however, was firmly pro-Saddam and began with a quotation attributed to a British newspaper that threw doubt on the veracity of the whole report.)
opinion.telegraph.co.uk |
