[Media-watch] Recent news items regarding BBC

[Darren Smith]

Some of these might be new to this list...

* War reporting 'changed forever' says BBC (Guardian)
 
* Downing St in BBC 'bias' row (Observer)

* BBC complains of Pentagon lies (World Socialist Website)

* BBC boss admits 'daily' mistakes in Iraq (Guardian)




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http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,926367,00.html
Guardian
War reporting 'changed forever' says BBC

Ciar Byrne
Monday March 31, 2003

The war in Iraq has changed the face of war reporting forever, but it
will be a long time before the full implications come to be realised,
according to the BBC's director of news Richard Sambrook.

Mr Sambrook has also argued that the system of "embedding" journalists
with the military in the Gulf was necessary to ensure their safety, but
that other journalistic methods must be used to give a fuller picture of
the conflict.

"War coverage will never be the same again. We can't put the genie back
in the bottle. But understanding the implications will take a long time
- we'll review it, the MoD will review it. But war coverage is changed
forever," he said.

"There are all sorts of issues; the proximity of journalists, the fact
that people at home can see their sons in the middle of a war, the
possibility we might end up with a death live on television, which I
sincerely hope never happens," he told the Independent.

Mr Sambrook defended the system of "embedding" journalists, on the
grounds of safety, following the death of ITN's Terry Lloyd, who was
killed while operating independently of the military.

The BBC does have "roving reporters" operating in northern Iraq,
including John Simpson, as well as journalists in Baghdad - Rageh Omaar
and Andrew Gilligan. However, the corporation does not currently have
any correspondents working "unilaterally" in southern Iraq.

"Other than in Baghdad and in northern Iraq, it's extremely difficult
for us to work independently on safety grounds - as the death of an ITN
team showed - so we are inhibited from independent journalism in a way
that we weren't during the first Gulf war," Mr Sambrook said.

"We need to be a part of the 'embed' system to understand what's going
on and to have that access to the military. But that in itself is not
enough. You need to have other ways," he added.

Mr Sambrook suggested that the BBC offered better analysis than its
24-hour rival Sky News.

"There's started to be a gap between us and Sky. We do more of the,
'Brian Hanrahan sit back, where-are-we, what do we know, what don't we
know?' than Sky does. We have presentation from Oman, from Doha - a
greater reflection of Arab perspectives than Sky," he said.

The BBC news director described the Arab satellite TV channel
al-Jazeera, which has come under criticism for showing pictures of dead
and wounded Iraqis and British and American soldiers, as "a perfectly
straightforward Arab television news channel which is still learning".

"They have different values and a different tolerance for gruesome
pictures and so on. They have to pay heed to their - principally Arab -
audience," Mr Sambrook said.

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http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,925864,00.html

Downing St in BBC 'bias' row

Downing Street was today embroiled in a serious clash with broadcasters
over the reporting of the war in Iraq

Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer

Downing Street was today embroiled in a serious clash with broadcasters
over the reporting of the war in Iraq, amid claims that round-the-clock
coverage was distorting the public's view of events.

Simmering tensions on both sides over the policy of 'embedding'
journalists with frontline forces spilled over in the midst of reports
that Cabinet Minister John Reid had accused the BBC of acting like a
'friend of Baghdad'.

The BBC's political editor Andrew Marr retorted last night that
ministers appeared to regard anyone trying to take a balanced view as
favourable to the regime, adding that the Government was "angry that
they can control where reporters go but what they cannot control is what
they see".

Although Number 10 is wary of making official complaints to broadcasters
for fear of being seen as heavy-handed, sources close to the Prime
Minister have complained that the broadcasters are acting as if there is
a 'moral equivalence' between America and Britain and Saddam Hussein's
regime.

"On the one side is a dictatorship that allows no scrutiny of what it
does; on the other are democracies which have a policy of openness and
allow themselves to be questioned," said one senior Number 10 figure.
"You cannot deal with the two sides as if they are the same."

The claims were dismissed by broadcasting executives, who said every
effort was made to be balanced.

Even before war began, senior ministers were privately arguing that
journalists should stress more actively that reports from Baghdad were
monitored by the Iraqi authorities. Executives say viewers are given
clear 'health warnings' about Iraqi censorship.

The debate has been muddied by the fact that coalition forces have
disseminated wrong information - such as reporting that the vital sea
port of Umm Qasr had been "taken" on nine occasions before it was
actually secured. The argument over Tony Blair's claims that two British
soldiers, Sapper Luke Allsopp and Staff Sgt Simon Cullingworth, were
"executed" also soured relations.

Marr said he was not complaining about the encounter with Reid last
week, but added: "News technology has moved on since the Falklands war,
when you could control what is sent back to London." He said ministers
"seem to think anyone taking a balanced view is a friend of Baghdad".

However, in an interview with the Observer, Jack Straw, the Foreign
Secretary, said he had wondered whether it would have been possible to
evacuate 300,000 troops from Dunkirk under the scrutiny of 24-hour
rolling news.

"Twenty-four-hour news actually changes the reality of warfare. The
media is changing the reality of warfare, it is not just reporting on
it," he added. "It compresses timescales."

The row holds echoes of past clashes: during the Balkans conflict,
Downing Street accused the BBC reporter John Simpson of being biased,
prompting furious rebuttals from the BBC

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/bbc-m29.shtml

World Socialist Website

BBC complains of Pentagon lies
By Julie Hyland
29 March 2003

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

The BBC has become so concerned at false and misleading information
being put out on the war against Iraq that it has stressed to its
journalists that they must clearly attribute military sources.

According to the Guardian, BBC news chiefs met to discuss the problem
after the broadcaster carried several reports later shown to be
inaccurate. The misleading reports were all favourable to the US/UK
forces and so their exposure has undermined the BBC?s claims to be
providing unbiased coverage.

On Sunday March 23, British military sources claimed to have taken the
port of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. Three days later, they were still
fighting to quell resistance.

The BBC then ran headlines with reports of the discovering of a chemical
weapons factory in An Najaf, which was later dropped.

On Tuesday, March 25, the British news was filled with reports of an
uprising under way in Basra, Iraq?s second largest city. Claims of the
?popular uprising? were first made by British military forces, but were
later found to be untrue.

On Wednesday, March 26, the British military were cited reporting that
?up to 120 tanks? were leaving Basra. The convoy was later found to be
just three-strong.

Numerous other examples can be cited, including the continuous
downplaying of the extent of popular opposition to the US/UK invasion
and the particularly cynical claim that the Iraqi regime was responsible
for the missile attack on a Baghdad market that killed 17 civilians.

A BBC spokeswoman confirmed that a meeting had been held to discuss
recent events.

?There?s been a discussion about attribution and it?s been reinforced
with people that we do have to attribute military information,? she
said. ?We have to be very careful in the midst of a conflict like this
one to be very sure when we?re reporting something we?ve not seen with
our own eyes that we attribute it.?

An unnamed ?senior BBC news source?, cited by the Guardian, went
further, stating: ?We?re getting more truth out of Baghdad than the
Pentagon at the moment.?

?We?re absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding
they?re not true. The misinformation in this war is far and away worse
than any conflict I?ve covered, including the first Gulf war and
Kosovo.?

Many news sources in Britain are now admitting that much of the key
information they are relaying has been proven to be inaccurate. But this
is often put down to the pressures of 24-hour coverage and the ?fog of
war?. For example, the BBC source cited by the Guardian went on to claim
that the misinformation was an accident, rather than deliberate deceit:
?I don?t know whether they [the Pentagon] are putting out flyers in the
hope that we?ll run them first and ask questions later or whether they
genuinely don?t know what?s going on?I rather suspect the latter.?

In truth, much of the British and US media is simply a propaganda tool
of their respective military forces. Some 900 journalists and reporters
are ?embedded? with US/UK troops, effectively functioning as part of an
act of armed aggression against the Iraqi people and paid to conceal
that fact. The concern expressed by the BBC?s top brass is that this
fact has become so obvious to millions in Britain and around the world
that its own credibility?and hence its considerable political influence
internationally?will never recover.


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http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,924747,00.html

Guardian

BBC boss admits 'daily' mistakes in Iraq

Jason Deans
Friday March 28, 2003

A senior BBC News executive today admitted that the reporting of allied
military claims in Iraq that later prove false, such as heralding the
fall of Umm Qasr at least nine times, had "left the public feeling less
well-informed than it should be".

Mark Damazer, the deputy director of BBC News, also admitted the BBC had
been making mistakes "on a daily basis" during the first week of the
Iraq conflict, but denied there was any deliberate bias towards either
the pro or anti-war camps.

"I don't deny for a moment that the accumulation of things that have
happened in the first week, such as the false claims about the fall of
Umm Qasr and the surrender of the Iraqi 51st division, have left the
public feeling they are not as well informed as they should be," Mr
Damazer said.

"But it's perfectly proper for us to say 'a British defence source has
said there's an uprising in Basra' and not report it as gospel truth. We
attribute wherever possible to a source. The secret is attribution,
qualification and scepticism," he added.

Mr Damazer said allegations by the anti-war lobby that the BBC had
become "shackled" by the government and military were "profoundly
ill-judged and unfair".

"Although it's unquestionably true that we make mistakes, and on a daily
basis, we don't only make them in [a pro-war] direction," he added,
speaking last night at a meeting of Media Workers Against the War.

Mr Damazer admitted one of the areas where the BBC had made mistakes was
in its use of language, but that it was seeking to put this right.

"If we have used the word 'liberate' in our own journalism, as in 'such
and such a place had been liberated by allied forces', that's a
mistake," he said.

"That is the wrong language to use without evidence of Iraqi people
feeling as though they have been liberated," Mr Damazer added.

He said it was also "not good" to open a news bulletin by announcing
that the death of two soldiers was the "worst possible news for the
armed forces".

Mr Damazer added that although the death of two soldiers was obviously
the "worst possible news for their families", far worse things could
happen on the battlefield with far greater loss of life, for which
language such as "the worst possible news for the armed forces" would be
more appropriate.


-- 
djs1 at stir.ac.uk

 DON'T ATTACK IRAQ!!! www.edinburghstw.org.uk