As children, many of us grew up trusting John Craven’s BBC Newsround for a simple understanding of the news. Youngsters are, of course, particularly susceptible to taking television and other media reports at face value. That is why it is particularly disturbing read this report in the Daily Mail:
Britain’s former spy chief accused the BBC of “parroting” Al Qaeda propaganda to children as young as six. Dame Pauline Neville Jones, who is also a former BBC governor, is infuriated at the stance the corporation’s Newsround programme took on the September 11 attacks.
She accused the flagship children’s news bulletin of feeding an “ugly undercurrent” which suggests the terrorist outrage was somehow justifiable. Newsround is aimed at viewers aged between six and 12.
On its website it answered the question concerning 9/11, “Why did they do it” by saying: “The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al Qaeda – who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks.”
After the public complained, the text was amended.
Dame Pauline, however, was probably unaware of Childrens’ BBC Newsround’s scandalous behaviour as highlighted by the Biased BBC blog. It appears that a particularly offensive version of the 9/11 page appeared for a full five years on the Newsround website from October 2002 until it was changed around June 2007. This version (screenshot below) stated:
A lot of countries don’t like the way America gets involved with arguments in the Middle East.
They think that the US unfairly helps Israel in its conflict with Palestine. Israel and Palestine have been arguing for many years over who owns what land.
America is seen to be sympathetic towards Jewish Israelis, so some Arabs and Muslims think America does not like or understand them.
Perhaps even worse, however, is the way in which the BBC attempted to excuse and mislead complainants regarding changes to the offending webpage. See the full story of Biased BBC’s efforts to hold the BBC to account, which also offers an effective case study of how activists and bloggers can effectively bring pressure to bear upon the BBC.
ESSENTIAL READING: THE SUNDAY TIMES IN GAZA
Kudos to The Sunday Times’s Marie Colvin for venturing into Gaza to report on the effects of Hamas extremism on the local population:
Young men show you bruised limbs and welts on their feet; every girl wears a hijab head covering and, for the first time, women wear niqab – Saudi-style face coverings that reveal only the eyes. And people whisper.
Welcome to Hamastan.
Ahmed Al-Naba’at, 24, sits in his courtyard in an oversized Barcelona shirt. He looks too young to be the father of the three young children who toddle barefoot round the tiny dirt courtyard. His feet still hurt. Hamas came for him at 2am.
About 30 armed men, their faces masked but wearing the black uniforms and badges of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, had surrounded the house. They covered his eyes and took him away in a car.
“They took me somewhere, I don’t know, a room,” Naba’at says. He has high cheekbones and the near-black skin of his Sudanese ancestry. “They were screaming and beating me, punching me, slapping me on the face,” he says. “Then they tied my legs together and started falaka” – a traditional Arabic torture where the soles of the feet are beaten with sticks. “I relaxed.”
He sees the surprise in my face. “I thought they were going to kill me,” he explains. “When I realised it’s just falaka, I thought, okay, it’s just torture.”
Read the full version of this courageous piece of journalism here.
ESSENTIAL VIEWING: BBC PANORAMA ON HIZB-UT-TAHRIR
While the BBC is generally seen to be almost apologetic towards terror, ocassionally the corporation is capable of producing material that digs deeper into the causes and consequences of Islamic extremism. Tonight (Monday 1 October, BBC1, 20.30 BST), Panorama talks to a former member of the Muslim extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir which campaigns for an Islamic state.
“The cell thought that democracy was incompatible with Islam, that the state of Israel should be destroyed, and that Shariah law should be imposed over the entire world with violence being used to achieve this.”
