The BBC's 'DNA' - bloggers, genes, censorship and vandalism

First they ridicule you, then they patronise you, then they censor you, then they break your placards.

And that's not to mention all the evasive responses and hierarchical dismissals in between.

Who might we be speaking of here? School bullies? Smug politicians? High court judges? Thug police? Think, rather, the BBC.

First up, on the ridicule variant, the BBC's Andrew Marr on bloggers:

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."

One might reasonably assume that 'professional' journalists would be a little more diligent in their remarks. After all, Marr is, supposedly, one of the BBC's most 'respected' interviewers, renowned for his 'forensic, analytical skills'.

Besides his biased output, such ill-informed stereotyping of the blogosphere says much about the practice of lazy journalism within the mainstream media itself.

As the BBC's interviewer of choice over Blair's recent book launch, such comments illustrate Marr's true establishment loyalties and journalistic capabilities.

Marr will, of course, be ever-identified with this grand homage to Blair as Baghdad fell:

“I don't think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he’s somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.” (Marr, BBC 1, News At Ten, April 9, 2003)

Next, as if to reassure us of the BBC's authority as a fount of reliable reporting - unlike the 'seedy' blogosphere - we have Director of News, Helen Boaden, dispensing some patronising homilies about BBC objectivity and a correction to those who believe otherwise.

"Impartiality is in the BBC genes", Boaden instructs us:

"I always think that impartiality is in our DNA - it's part of the BBC's genetic make-up.

Anyone who thinks differently doesn't really understand how the organisation works and how seriously we take issues around balance and impartiality.

That's why, for example, we've planned our coverage of the spending cuts so carefully - to make the choices facing the government clear to our audiences and ensuring we cover the "whys and wherefores" of the spending review. It's how we always approach our reporting - whatever the subject.

The licence fee is the public's money so people are clearly fully entitled to their opinion on our coverage. And if they want to criticise it, of course they can and indeed will do so."

Well, that should all be clear to us lowly licence-paying, cuts-affected citizens. Perhaps Boaden will do a Horizon special to help us lay-persons better understand the BBC's place in the great Genome Map.

In truth, the BBC have slavishly followed the elite agenda on who is to blame for the economic crisis and what public service areas should be presented for cuts.

There's no inclusion in any of the BBC poll options asking if bankers and their neoliberal practices are to blame. Nor, for example, in BBC Scotland's options listing 'preferred' areas for cuts is there one specifically asking the wealthy to pay.

That's the carefully-limited extent of the BBC's 'genetically impartial' coverage of such issues.

Next up, the increasing resort to outright censoring of those public opinions.*

The BBC Online Editor, Steve Herrmann, has, apparently, been courting views about the new BBC guidelines on external website links. It's all part of that noble 'consultation' thing the BBC prides itself on upholding.

Except when it gets down to actually allowing real criticism on the BBC Editors blog, or the prospect of featuring serious external sites, like Media Lens, that really do take the BBC apart.

Again, complementing Boaden's wordy outpourings on fairness, this mock consultation and purging of dissent on BBC blogs points to the BBC's growing fear of rational criticism.

Finally, when all else fails, there's always the option of just smashing-up the props of those annoying dissenters. Thus, the BBC's chief political editor Nick Robinson has revealed what he truly thinks of open political argument by seizing and destroying the placard of a demonstrator holding up an anti-war message during his live piece to camera.

Robinson later expressed "regret" over his actions. But not without rebuking such protesters for invading the BBC's apparently inviolable space:

"I am a great believer in free speech but I also care passionately about being able to do my job reporting and analysing one of the most important political stories for years."

Again, all very noble. Yet, here's Robinson, on another crucial story, defending those all-important reporting duties:

"In the run-up to the conflict, I and many of my colleagues, were bombarded with complaints that we were acting as mouthpieces for Mr Blair. Why, the complainants demanded to know, did we report without question his warning that Saddam was a threat? Hadn't we read what Scott Ritter had said or Hans Blix? I always replied in the same way. It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking... That is all someone in my sort of job can do. We are not investigative reporters."

An apologetic admission of just what's expected of the 'responsible' BBC journalist.

In practice, from Marr to Robinson, Boaden to Herrmann, BBC journalists and editors display a remarkably similar tendency towards intolerance and control over serious public dissent.

Maybe there is something 'double-helix-like' in the BBC's establishment make-up, after all.

John

* Update on further censoring of comments at the BBC Editors blog.

Water

In support of this year's international blog day theme

Wonderful, this primal substance
arbiter of life and death
Affluent planet, parched for poorest
Taps and flows in private hands
Thieves have come, the well is stolen
Freedom's thirst remains unquenched
Egregious nature, flooded pastures
Indifference and damned neglect
Rising oceans, tides approaching
Age of stupid, sinking sense

John

Right to water

Media Lens on the Obama cave-in letter

Media Lens have just published a most illuminating Alert on the BBC's and wider media's 'oversight' of the Obama cave-in letter offering Netanyahu a wish-list of 'peace talk' guarantees.

The leaked letter is further confirmation of Washington's 'honest broker' posture and Israel's determination not to relinquish an inch of occupied land.

A short letter on the matter to the BBC's chief Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen:

Dear Jeremy

Beyond your cursory reply to Media Lens, I wonder if you might address more fully the BBC's disturbing failure to report the letter sent by President Obama to Mr Netanyahu detailing his inducements for an extension of the settlement freeze.

Don't you agree that its disclosure paints a damning picture of Washington's carefully-constructed role as "honest broker"?

Doesn't its omission also bring the BBC's own claims to honest and balanced reporting into serious disrepute?

Appropriate BBC coverage of Obama's offers and Netanyahu's outright rejection of them would help call into question the accepted narrative of America and Israel as bona fide peace seekers.

Can you see how proper journalistic illumination of this letter to the viewing public would help contextualise the real power relations and hidden agenda behind the current 'peace talks'?

Why do we have to rely on journalists like Jonathan Cook to convey such crucial details and assessment?

And, please, might you explain why this vital piece of information cannot be covered by the BBC just because you are on another assignment in Lebanon?

Aside from the apparently selective omission of such key evidence, what does this tell us about the BBC's position as a 'leading international news outlet'?

Regards

John Hilley

Brand desire

Those seeking some respite from the standard chat show fare might enjoy Russell Brand being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. From bland to Brand, from branded to candid, it's a rare vacation from the usual vacuousness of celebrity culture.

Beyond Brand's apparent notoriety, publicised and purloined by the same media that 'made' him, it's refreshing to find someone so personally immersed in brand vacuity yet so animatedly willing to dissect his own 'anointed' place within it.

It's also a measure of the BBC's own dumb-down journey that this kind of interview can only get a late-night Newsnight slot.

The interview with Paxman does, of course, provide Brand with an alternative kind of 'anti-fame' platform from which to promote his book and coming docu-film on the cult of celebrity - a new and developing 'non-brand Brand', perhaps. But underlying the comedian's actual motives and hyper-gesticulations lies a series of apparently sincere truths about our obsession with products and the ways in which fame, or the 'promise' of which, spins its cruel illusions.

Brand is, consciously or unwittingly, speaking 'street Chomsky' in his analysis of the omnipresent, media-driven message to consume, 'aspire' and deify celebs; a constant mind-directing narrative intended to keep us all stupefied, diverted, pacified and enslaved to market conformity.

Reminiscent of the same multi-faceted message explored in Starsuckers, Brand rails against the empty gift box of fame:

"We're presented with the attractive spectacle of fame to distract us from the mundanity of our everyday lives."

"It has absolutely no value of itself. It's a spectacle, an illusion, a distraction..."

The consequences of consumer culture and its failure to bring any meaningful form of contentment are huge, Brand believes. No one cares about grand narratives, like religion or communism, anymore, no one cares about big ideas. Instead:

"we've been fed this grey sludge of celebrity, glittered-up and packaged and lacquered and sent directly into our brains by the media that both you [Paxman] and I work for in different degrees."

His conclusion:

"Celebrity in and of itself is utterly, utterly vacuous."

For Brand, fame involves another painful compromise: the loss of privacy and anonymity; a sacrifice that has no worthwhile function, as opposed to being, or wishing to be, say, a great singer, dancer or basket weaver for its own sake.

Beyond that more meaningful quest for satisfaction from one's art, the famous are bound, he believes, to experience massive disappointment and "dissatisfaction".

Yet, beyond our gazing endorsement of mundane market rewards lies a cultural hinterland which, as in Brand's elucidations, can still be moderately educational and entertaining, a pleasing release from the stultifying tedium of celebrity angst.

Brand sees his own still-captive seduction, his own enduring abandonment, to the lie of fame and consumption, yet seeks something more elusive and enlightening from his inner explorations:

"I thing we should try to examine the things that we're using to make us happy, this pursuit of celebrity, of wealth, of status, this consuming of products, this ignorance towards ecological and economical matters, and aspire towards something more beautiful, something more truthful and honest..."

The politics of desire

Brand's articulations on the ultimate consequences of unbridled desire suggests a core truth about human experience and the kind of false expectations we harbour about our personal lives.

But the same might also be said of the mistaken forms of desire we invest in politicians and their political projects.

Recall, for example, the apparently burning desire in 1997 for an end to Tory rule in Britain, the deliverance of which brought us Blair, more neoliberalism, the Iraq debacle and over a million people dead - Brand's parody of the same media "narrative" over whether to choose 'this or that Miliband' suggests a continuation of that false politics of desire.

Then there was Obama, with larges swathes of the liberal world craving a messiah President; the re-making, no less, of brand America. With no appreciable improvements for the poor and an intensification of warmongering in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the gathering disappointment over Obama's performance might be measured in inverse proportion to the hyped media desire invested in his election.

Think, likewise, of the desire for an end to apartheid in South Africa, a 'liberation' which quickly gave way to resigned disappointment as a new elite plundered the wealth and ignored the plight of those still eking a living in the townships. The political arrangement may be better. But is it the desired result of so much struggle?

The paradox of social and political 'arrival' seems, so often, to be new oppression and deep psychological scarring.

Consider Israel. Having fled the murderous ravages of the Nazis, how content are present-day Jews living in a stolen land? The vital illusion peddled of a 'promised land' has not only resulted in the mass removal and subjugation of another people, it has, in the Zionist desire to occupy more land and punish more Palestinians, instilled greater fear, hatred and unhappiness in its own citizens.

Taking that question to its next potential stage, would the realisation of a so-desired Palestinian state provide the anticipated freedoms and progressive liberation craved by the Palestinian people?

The answer is, probably, no. A new Ramallah elite, already forming, sponsored by the corporate West, might well emerge and suffocate that higher social goal, just as happened in South Africa. Even if a Palestinian state is won, the poor will, likely, long remain impoverished in Balata and other refugee camps, just like the black townships.

Yet, the likelihood of new injustice does not invalidate or preclude the actual struggle against occupation and existing injustice. We don't just lie down and accept apartheid oppression because the potential deliverance from it may be underwhelming. Rather, the act of resistance should involve that same educational check on the potentialities of false desire and selfish attainment.

Comprehending the pitfalls of desire is not just about recognising our own illusionary ambitions, indulgences and disappointments. It's also about understanding the possible realities and let-downs of the all-promising political package.

That's where we might more usefully come to craft a more just deliverance based on political compassion rather than the technical constructions of states, borders and constitutions.

All the world, it seems, is now in thrall to the culture of celebrity and the packaging of dreams, most of which, the market ensures, will never be realised. Consumption is that never-ending cycle, the relentless search for an imagined contentment.

The urge to endorse the 'life-improving' capabilities of the political elite is as ideologically-driven as the encouragement to consume any other never-satisfying product. Yet, we remain conditioned to the same consumerist desire, the brand of political and economic hope they call 'liberal capitalist democracy'.

While brands Obama, Cameron/Clegg and Miliband invoke grand dreams of a 'free world', 'deliverance through cuts' and a 'new politics' for a 'new generation', Brand Russell offers in his small burst of whimsical humility, at least, some more realisable insight into the fabricated nature of desire, false consumer promises and the higher potential rewards to be had by mediating one's own delusional cravings.

Which all makes for a happier human outlook and a more moral-minded politics.

John

Washington to Hamas: no peace talk

It's International Peace Day and the self-proclaimed Middle East 'peace-makers' show no willingness to take the real and necessary steps towards a just solution. The lack of good intent and proper authority is most clearly evident in the decisive exclusion of Hamas, a glaring feature of the peace-denying process.

Further confirmation has emerged of past Hamas assurances to the US that it would accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 Green Line. But this inconvenient truth doesn't suit the Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas game plan of keeping Hamas isolated.

It's a staggering irony that the very party most immediately able to deliver any semblance of a serious peace - at least on the Palestinian side - is being consciously prohibited from doing so. It's all part of the same game plan to paint Hamas as nothing other than a vengeful terrorist entity, thus denying the true range of diverse and pragmatic discourse within its evolving ranks. Yet, whatever these policy issues, one doesn't have to endorse Hamas perspectives or practices to recognise their primary right to speak for the Palestinians they govern.

This most basic democratic principle has been rejected by Washington with curt, monosyllabic efficiency. As Sunday Herald journalist David Pratt notes:

"Asked just before the current talks began what role Hamas would have in the process, George J Mitchell, United States special envoy for Middle East Peace, replied with one word: “None.” How unbelievably redundant is such thinking. Is this as far as joined-up thinking goes among diplomats when it comes to breaking the deadlock on building a Middle East peace process?

Already, based on that one last remark, I can hear the clamour of response from some quarters insisting that it is impossible to talk to Hamas because they don’t want to talk, or recognise the state of Israel and would rather just “sweep it into the sea”. The fact is a way has to be found to engage with Hamas – not on the basis of liking or disliking them, but simply because, in pragmatic terms, Hamas, not Mahmoud Abbas, are the people who can deliver.

As Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah put it recently: “No serious analyst believes that peace can be made between Palestinians and Israelis without Hamas on board, any more than could have been the case in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein and the IRA.”"

All true. But, for Hamas itself, there's also strategic reasons not to be at these talks. These relate to the clear understanding within Hamas that, even with good Palestinian will, Israel has no serious intention of agreeing a deal even on the basic 1967 line.

Thus, why would Hamas want to be anywhere near these 'negotiations' when they indicate a balance of power unlikely to yield any useful results for the Palestinians?

Chief Hamas spokesman Khaled Mesh’al has laid out this thinking in a new policy statement:

"In all honesty and courage I say: negotiation is not absolutely prohibited or forbidden, be it from a legal or political perspective, or in view of the experiences of the nation and humanity, or the practices of the resistance movements and revolutions throughout history. However, it must be subject to equations, regulations, calculations, circumstances, contexts and proper management, for without these it becomes a negative and destructive tool.

Regarding the Palestinian case, we say that negotiation with Israel today is a wrong choice. A proposal was put forward to Hamas directly to negotiate with Israel but we refused. Some from among the Hamas leadership received a proposal to meet with a number of Israeli leaders, some of them in power, such as [Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Shas Party leader] Eli Yishai, and others belonging to the peace camp. Hamas has rejected these offers.

Negotiations today – under the current balance of power – is in the service of the enemy, and does not serve the Palestinian side. The conflict on the ground has not developed in a manner that has forced the Zionist enemy to resort to negotiation; it refuses to this day to withdraw from the land, and does not recognise Palestinian rights. Thus negotiation in such conditions is a kind of fruitless gamble.

In light of our weakness and the imbalance of power, Israel is using negotiations as a tool to improve its relations and polish its image before the international community, and using it to gain time so as to create new facts on the ground through settlement-building, expelling people, Judaising of Jerusalem and the demolition of its neighbourhoods. It also uses negotiations as a cover to distract attention from its crimes and to water down Palestinian demands. Israel is exploiting negotiations to normalise its relations with the Arab and Islamic world and to penetrate it, and to distort the nature of the conflict; Israel is the sole beneficiary of the negotiations as they stand.

Negotiations under the existing imbalance of power is a subjugation of the Palestinian side to the requirements, conditions and dictates of the Israeli occupation; this is not an equal process, for just as there is currently no parity in the field of confrontation, there is also no parity around the negotiating table."

Obama, Netanyahu and, most particularly, Abbas all privately recognise the truth of Hamas's prudent calculations. But they can't have Hamas at the table because that would require genuine signals to them that there's something worth coming to the table for. And that, of course, is contrary to the three-sided artifice of 'difficult-but-dutiful engagement' - with nothing at the end - currently going on.

All this, in turn, is well understood on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Laila El-Haddad illustrates the point neatly regarding Gaza:

"Ask any resident of Gaza what their thoughts are on the US-sponsored "direct talks" between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas's Ramallah government, and you're likely to hear one of three responses:

1) Surely, you jest;

2) Something's rotten in Ramallah;

3) Negotiations?

There is very little patience in Gaza for this latest set of talks. They are not only being conducted without a national consensus by what is broadly considered an illegitimate government, but they also completely marginalise the Gaza Strip and overlook the blockade and asphyxiation it has suffered for more than four years."

A rather more punitive political denial prevails in the PA-controlled West Bank where Abbas's forces have resorted to increased repression. Senior Al Quds Al Arabi journalist Abdel Bari Atwan contextualises the PA's violent crackdowns on groups protesting against the Abbas talks agenda:

"The problem is not confined to a group of thugs within the security forces who stormed the headquarters of the Forum, tore down banners and logos, and caused absolute chaos in the room. The problem is in the policies pursued by the Authority in recent years, particularly the confiscation of freedoms, control of Palestinian representation, and speaking on behalf of the people without any legitimacy or authority or both. This section of the security forces, whose members carried out this scandalous act hooliganism belongs to an apparatus whose members have been selected very carefully under the supervision of four intelligence agencies. Two of them are Arabs (Jordanian and Palestinian) and the other two are foreign (the Israeli Shin Bet and American CIA) and this was recorded in a lecture delivered by the principal Godfather, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, at an institute in Washington, when he said that the main objective of the current scheme was the creation of a new Palestinian; one who is devoid of national dignity and self-pride.

This group, therefore, has been raised on values, principles, ethics and morals that are alien to us and which we do not want to know. They have no relationship to the values, ethics and principles of the Palestinian people, and for which thousands of Palestinian, Arab and Muslims sacrificed their lives."

The repression is perhaps most acute inside some of the West Bank refugee camps, with PA forces purging activists and a younger generation drawn to more leftist ideals, such as those of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Meanwhile, the 20 percent of Palestinians comprising Israel's population, notes Ben White, remain firmly under Israel's apartheid grip, a seemingly invisible community for most of the media and present 'peace-talkers':

"This is the question that many Western media outlets won’t touch, and most politicians dismiss with platitudes. The Palestinians in Israel are forgotten, particularly in terms of the international community’s peace process, despite — or realistically, because of — the way in which their struggles relate to what happened in 1948 and the meaning of creating a Jewish state in Palestine. This is the conversation that needs to take place, and increasingly is, from academia to activists."

Beyond the 'still hopeful' posture being cultivated by Obama/Clinton/Mitchell - a way of preparing the Palestinians and wider world for Netanyahu's rejections and the inevitable 'heroic collapse' of the talks - the gathering realisation of the Washington charade is serving to build an invigorated Palestinian resistance. Electronic Intifada editor Matthew Cassell:

"Although not invited to the White House, the numerous grassroots movements across the Middle East present the best hope for bringing peace and justice to this region. And it's those increasingly popular movements that people around the world concerned with the fate of the Middle East should support. In the meantime, let the puppets and their masters walk on red carpets in Washington while the real change is made by those with their feet on the ground."

In sum, we're seeing a promising new bloom of political awareness and civil mobilisation pushing out and away from the contradiction of Washington's tired and deceitful 'diplomacy'. This is all contrary to the 'learned' readings of 'seasoned' media observers who only ever focus, obediently, on the 'latest talks round' or the 'critical issue' of the settlement freeze extension or Washington's sanctimonious promise to 'go-the-extra-mile-for-peace.' Rarely, if ever, do they take the trouble to consider - like Cassell and Abdel Bari Atwan - the real political dynamics on the ground, developments which, unlike the same old peace show now on tour, suggests encouraging signs of something useful in the making.

John Hilley

Boycotting Israeli goods: Sunday Herald letters exchange

A reply at the Sunday Herald letters page following this from Dr Denis MacEoin:

Sunday Herald, 12 September 2010
A senseless animosity

The boycott of Israeli goods by Muslim shopkeepers is regrettable (Anti-Israel Boycott by Muslim shops goes Scotland-wide). Mixing politics and religion in this negative way has already caused immense suffering across the Muslim world, notably in Iran, Pakistan, Gaza and Afghanistan. It brings to the surface a disturbing sense of motivation in anti-Israel sentiment and action. The first war to be launched against the new state of Israel was loudly declared to be a jihad and was fought in the main for religious reasons.

Today, Hamas, the Iranian regime, al-Qaeda, and millions of other Muslims declare their hatred of Israel and their wish to see it destroyed in religious terms: Jews are unbelievers who have no right to rule over territory that was once ruled by Islam. This is a longstanding legal ruling that has no place in the modern world. Few things have done more harm to the Palestinians across the years. By taking this stance, Scotland’s Muslims simply reinforce an animosity that does good to no-one, least of all themselves.

Dr Denis MacEoin

Newcastle upon Tyne

Sunday Herald, 19 September 2010
Boycott has but one motive

Dr Denis MacEoin’s letter castigating the boycott of Israeli goods by Muslim shopkeepers employs the usual confusion between a supposed attack on Jews and the denunciation of Israel as a state (A senseless animosity, Letters, September 12). Indeed, Dr MacEoin’s ill-informed lumping of an Islamic monolith, intent on seeing Israel “destroyed in religious terms”, only exacerbates the very animosity he claims to denounce.

Hatred does exist between Palestinians and Israelis, feeding hostility between Muslims and Jews. But any containment of such must address the core causes, rather than symptoms, of the conflict: Israel’s historic and continuous aggressions against a displaced and brutalised people.

The international Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign is driven by a singular concern for Palestinian human rights, not religious motives, a cause which many Jews of good conscience also support. That’s the kind of civil solidarity, helping to dissipate religious animosity, Dr MacEoin might better seek to promote.

John Hilley

Glasgow

My original letter to the Sunday Herald, which was edited for publication:

Dr Denis MacEoin's letter castigating the boycott of Israeli goods by Muslim shopkeepers ("A senseless animosity") employs the usual confusion between a supposed attack on Jews and the denunciation of Israel as a state. Defenders, outright or implicit, of Israel's illegal occupation and apartheid policies often resort to such 'don't mix politics with religion' warnings, part of the false, default-line 'antisemitism' intended to evade the key issues.

Indeed, Dr MacEoin's ill-informed lumping of an Islamic monolith, intent on seeing Israel "destroyed in religious terms", only exacerbates the very animosity he claims to denounce. Hatred does exist between Palestinians and Israelis, feeding hostility between Muslims and Jews. But any containment of such must first address the core causes, rather than symptoms, of the conflict: Israel's historic and continuous aggressions against a displaced and brutalised people.

Contra Dr MacEoin, "few[er] things have done more harm to the Palestinians across the years" than his kind of contrived concern over religious animosity while those same Palestinians endure daily Israeli violence and persecution.

Hence, the international Boycott, Divestment Sanctions campaign, similar to that effected against apartheid South Africa. BDS is driven by a singular concern for Palestinian human rights, not religious motives, a cause which many Jews of good conscience also support. That's the kind of civil solidarity, helping to dissipate religious animosity, Dr MacEoin might better seek to promote.

John Hilley
Glasgow

Exchange with BBC re Norwegian divestment from Israeli firms

Here's an exchange with the BBC regarding their questioning of Norwegian government official Gro Nystuen. The Today programme's Steven Evans had asked her why Norway's Ministry of Finance had decided to divest from two leading Israeli companies operating in the West Bank.

In my initial letter, I raised five points of concern over the interview, which the BBC's Sean Moss here addresses.

17 September, 2010

Dear Mr Hilley,

Thank you for your email of August 27 to Helen Boaden which she has sent to me. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding. For future reference, we would ask you to send any complaints via the webform at www.bbc.co.uk/complaints. As I think you are aware, the BBC has an established complaints procedure to ensure that correspondence is directed towards the appropriate journalist or programme. In this way, complaints are handled in the speediest, most efficient and effective way for our audiences and for our programme-makers.

In this case your complaint concerned the Today programme and I forwarded your concerns to the programme and to the presenter.

With regard to your first point, Today's online team hope they can clear up any confusion. They explain that the 'Listen Again' facility on the BBC 'Today' programme website is not comprehensive. Only highlights are included. The iplayer, on the other hand, is a complete version of the whole programme - available up to seven days after the transmission date. That would seem to be the most likely explanation for you finding the interview was available on one platform but not the other. I hope this is useful information.

With regard to the other points you have raised, Today's business news presenter Steven Evans has offered the following replies in response to your concerns.

On point 2, he says that it seems to be completely relevant to ask why a fund should boycott some Israeli companies on ethical grounds while not shunning Chinese companies which may well have close relations with a Chinese government criticised as repressive. Indeed, the interviewee indicated that relations with Chinese companies were also being examined.

On point 3, Steven Evans believes it was unnecessary to do as you suggest and "caveat .... remarks with an acknowledgement that Britain and most other Western countries actively engage in trade with China " . He felt that this would be stating the obvious and and, arguably, was not a relevant factor here anyway.

In his response to your point 4, Steven Evans says: "There is a left of centre government in Norway and some on the Right argue that the Left in parts of Europe is more critical of Western behaviour than it is of what might be deplorable behaviour by non-Western countries: the Left criticises European and American malfeasance more than it does, say, Cuba's or China's or South Africa's or Zimbabwe's behaviour, is the argument. I didn't endorse that view - I simply raised the point because I felt it was editorially legitimate to do so."

And to your point 5, the programme believes it to be a perfectly valid question to ask whether a fund financed from the production of oil is well placed to take the ethical high ground.

BBC journalists point out that it is the role of an impartial broadcaster to raise issues and different perspectives so that audiences can form their own judgements. To ask a question is not to endorse an opinion. It is to test a position - and that is a legitimate role for journalists and interviewers.

I hope this addresses your concerns and thank you for taking the trouble to write.

Yours sincerely,

Regards

Sean Moss
Complaints Adviser
BBC Complaints

Dear Sean

Thanks for responding and forwarding the views of Steven Evans. (I did also send my letter via the BBC complaints format.)

On point 1, I can only take your word for this, but it seems odd that the particular segment wasn't deemed worthy of inclusion by the Today team. It would be interesting to know why.

The argument by Steven Evans at point 2 is bogus. His entire line of questioning was framed around this contrived and drawn-out assertion of 'double standards', a selective diversion which disallowed any examination of the Israeli companies in question and the nature of their business in the illegal West Bank settlements. I'm reasonably sure that listeners would have been much more interested in that and the primary context within which the Norwegian divestment took place.

Likewise, on point 3, any question over Norway's dealings with Chinese companies (also now, as noted, under review) should, indeed, acknowledge that British and other Western governments deal enthusiastically with China. Indeed, why single out China's human rights violations when Evans could have cited the UK's own repressions in Iraq and elsewhere and the British arms companies (Norway has already divested from certain UK arms firms ) who help support such suffering?

On point 4, I'm not sure the Left have, in fact, been slow to criticise South Africa (see Pilger's excellent critiques of the neoliberal incorporation of that country, for one), Zimbabwe or, indeed, China which, to my leftist understanding, is a super-growth capitalist economy offering no credible model of a socialist, sustainable society. Why has Evans held it up as some 'special exception', supposedly close to the hearts of 'leftist' governments?

As for Cuba, please tell me how a non-aggressive country crippled by years of US sanctions and still able to run one of the best health services in the world should receive the same critical treatment as Israel, with its murderous occupation and apartheid oppressions?

Evans may claim that he's merely putting the point as seen from the Right, but he has a seeming blindness to the more staggering levels of carnage visited by America, with European compliance, around the world, even aside from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regarding point 5, yes, it's fair to ask about the moral credentials of a Norwegian fund derived from oil royalties. The question was whether Evans or any other BBC presenter would ever put such a point to a UK minister about this country's oil money.

You conclude:

"BBC journalists point out that it is the role of an impartial broadcaster to raise issues and different perspectives so that audiences can form their own judgements. To ask a question is not to endorse an opinion. It is to test a position - and that is a legitimate role for journalists and interviewers."

There is, in reality, no impartial balance or equal testing of different perspectives at the BBC. Differing views may - within a limited and controlled spectrum - be allowed. But, as countless examples of loaded reportage, language and interviews suggest, the questioning of leftist voices or/and those opposed to Western or Israeli actions invariably works on core assumptions of benign, if sometimes 'mistaken', Western conduct. It's a set of understandings hard-wired into the BBC's very own reporting guides - for example, Hamas (democratically elected) "rule", "run" or "control" Gaza, while the ConLibs "govern" Britain.

This interview by Steven Evans is a fine example of how that selective set of codes and intonations work in practice.

Sincerely

John Hilley