[Media-watch] FW: BBC EDITORS ARE MANIPULATING THE NEWS AGENDA FOR BLAIR

[david Miller]

-----Original Message-----
From: inkchair at pro-net.co.uk [SMTP:inkchair at pro-net.co.uk]
Sent: 16 May 2003 14:18
To: copy at pa.press.net
Cc: greg.dyke at bbc.co.uk; stephen.sackur at bbc.co.uk; press.office at bbc.co.uk
Subject: BBC EDITORS ARE MANIPULATING THE NEWS AGENDA FOR BLAIR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: 16/03/03

BBC EDITORS ARE MANIPULATING THE NEWS AGENDA FOR BLAIR

Ian Henshall, publisher of the website www.dumpblair.co.uk and Chair of INK,
the umbrella group for the UK's alternative media, is calling for the BBC
to remove correspondent Stephen Sackur from Iraq.

He condemned Sackur's long and hysterical report on the 10.00pm tv news on
Wednesday that the discovery of many dead bodies in Iraq this week, the
presumed victims of a 1991 massacre by Saddam Hussein's regime, proved that
the regime was `evil beyond limit`.

Sacker's statement is an affront to the victims of far worse atrocities,
Henshall said. It flouted the the BBC's legal obligation for impartial
reporting.

"How would the BBC now describe the Holocaust or the US decision to bomb
Nagasaki?"

Furthermore, Sackur made no mention of the fact that the Iraqis died as a
result of the 1991 decision of the US to do nothing when the uprising
President Bush Sr. had called for was ruthlessly crushed. Neither did Sackur
mention that the Iraq regime was installed by, and for most of its life was
an ally of, the US.

Henshall said that Sackur was by his own admission a biased reporter in
Iraq.

"He has stated on air that his wife is an anti-Saddam Iraqi exile and that
he loathed the regime."

BBC management, responsible for the decision to place Sackur in Iraq,
recently removed the highly commended and brave Andrew Gilligan after he was
publicly targeted by a Blair spokesman, Henshall stated. Gilligan spent the
war in Baghdad and confirmed that despite statements from Blair the market
bomb which killed fifty people was indeed from the so-called coalition.

Henshall accused BBC editors of making the sinister decision to give more
coverage to Sackur's Iraqi graves story than the spectacular and devastating
bombs which went off in Saudi the same day, killing or injuring many
Britons. He said the Iraqi graves story had little news value, as the BBC
had given full coverage to the regime's undisputed human rights abuses for
many weeks.

Henshall added: "Now Tony Blair is arguing that the war is justified not by
the highly controversial legal pretext given of enforcing international law,
little examined by the BBC, but by the deposed regime's human rights abuses,
now
conveniently highlighted by BBC editors and Sackur in breach of their legal
obligation to report impartially. Sackur must go."

Offered the opportunity, the BBC press office did not contest and refused to
comment on the facts in this press statement.

Media enquiries: 020 7561 0683, today only.

>From Ian Henshall, publisher of Crisis Newsletter, www.dumpblair.co.uk and
www.911dossier.co.uk. He is chair of INK and proprietor of The Tea and
Coffee Plant. INK is the umbrella trade organisation for the UK alternative
press, but comment is written in a strictly personal capacity. To get future
Crisis Newsletters or be removed, email to inkchair at pro-net.co.uk. For INK
administration contact steve at inkadmin.fsnet.co.uk.