Al Jazeera TV and the BBC

[TomPierce]

A few months ago, Greg Dyke, the boss of BBC TV annouced that he had done a deal with Al Jazeera TV. This would give the BBC up to the minute access to middle east news. Or so he thought.

Al Jazeera's coverage of the war so far is of the kind that we could well do without. They are the same people who give air time to Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda.

Why would the BBC want to walk hand in hand with a TV station that walks hand in hand with terrorists, and films the parading of POW's - knowing that it contravenes the Geneva Convention.

[Banana99]

TV stations cannot contravene the Geneva Convention.

[FJC]

I think you're kidding yourself if you think the western channels are paragons of impartial reporting. Sky TV reported on Iraqi PoWs and showed their faces until the Americans compained about Iraqi war-crimes.

Al Jaz represents the views of a large proportion of the Arab world in a way they like their news (public executions are still common after all). It's up to western channels to decide if they're going to replay these pictures or not. I wouldn't have seen the pictures of US PoWs were it not for the western channels.

The media plays a vital role in spreading the truth about things we don't normally get to see. War has always been ugly, the difference now is that Mrs Miggins gets to see what her jingoistic support of an unpopular war leads to.

While we may complain that the media is in the wrong, nothing will change unless we complain to them or turn off. Al Jaz will get it's just reward if it found to have done anything wrong because it will be able to be prosecuted through any decent court, unlike the perpetrators of the actual war-crime.

[SiClick]

Al Jazeera is a credible News agency, that portrays information without the British and American Bias, ie Up until just before the American Servicemen were displayed on TV, The Americans were denying they had lost anyone. Al Jazeera aired the truth. I am not saying they were right to contravene the Geneva convention, but somewhere in between the bull**** that comes from the American propaganda machine, and the Iraqi propoganda machine lies the truth. The BBC adds more weight to the British/American version, Al Jazeera adds its weight to the Arabic version. You need to hear both versions to make a reasonable guess at what is the truth.:O

[sprucemoose]

Too right Al Jazeera doesn't have a pro-Western bias; it is at the completely opposite end of the spectrum.
I don't have the benefit of seeing the channel bar the excerpts shown in the UK, but all I have seen from them so far in this conflict are propaganda messages: civilian casualties and captured (or worse, murdered) coalition forces and kit.
They showed video of a downed Apache yesterday as news - but it looked a lot like the one that was lost and then destroyed on Monday, which perhaps they didn't mention?
I'm not affiliated with the BBC, but am uncomfortable with their link with Al Jazeera, which is nothing more than a mouthpiece for OBL, IMHO.

[Airbrake]

Whilst Al Jazeera has shown some extremely distastful footage, we are over looking the fact that this has been relayed into our homes by Western News agencys. These reporters are all after a scoop and will do almost anything to get it.

Many of us in the UK will have seen the recent front page pictures of 2 dead Iraqi soldiers in a trench containing a white flag. If they had been British or American nationals there would have been outrage, but only 24 hours later it has been forgotten about.

On the plus side, the fact that these POW's have been shown on TV means their families know they are alive, and their chances of going home at the end of all this are virtually guaranteed.

[Boy_From_Brazil]

I only get access to BBC World and CNN. From my perspective the BBC coverage is very biased towards the Iraqi perspective, almost to the point of being overly Politically Correct. At times I wonder if the BBC is actually British, maybe we should call it IBC! In my opinion CNN has the coverage about right, and is pretty well balanced.

[Eboy]

I always thought the BBC TV and radio were more professional and accurate than US TV or radio, including CNN. Bias? You may be right. I have not picked that up. About 3 nights ago General Barry MCaffrey (USA, Retired, from 1991 conflict) was on your evening news program ("News -- " something, I think) rebroadcast on our C-SPAN live in our afternoon. He called the BBC war analysis "quite astute" and criticized the "twit" doing analysis on a US network (did not say which one). I laughed out loud! One does not often hear the word twit on the BBC! Some public radio stations here rebroadcast BBC radio news. (BBC used to broadcast live the chimes of Big Ben at the start of the news, then they went and jazzed up the introduction -- I miss that.)

For news magazines, I have commented elsewhere that I think there is no better in the world than The Economist. I get it delivered to my office each Friday, and so do thousands of others in the Washington area. Analysis, balance, accuracy, including this war. Forget Time, Newsweek, and all the others. If I had only one news source, The Economist would be it.

[Tigs2]

Wake up everybody!!
Airbrake, I agree with your comments.
Everyone is getting so mad about the various coverage we are seeing of dead soldiers, parading of POW's etc. They(the media) are all as bad as each other. When we show disgusting things it's OK, when they show it - outrage! - and visa versa. It is all propoganda and you are all falling for it. I did not like the pictures of our dead british troops, or the parading of POW's. BUT! we did the same. The parading of Iraqi POW's, showing them lay down on the floor, full face shots whilst they are being searched. Thats pretty humiliating as well isn't it? They can be identified.

The pictures of the 2 dead Iraqi's in the trench with the white flag. Is that any less disgraceful than the photos of those two poor british lads yesterday? Even today in the tabloids they are calling the incident disgusting, and then blow me down, turn the next page in the same newspaper to see a picture of two US soldiers leaning over two dead Iraqi's in a bus. Faces and expression of death clearly visible(and identifiable). They are all a bunch of To****s who want to sell newspapers and get TV scoops. The politicians who will use any excuse to score propoganda will 'Spin' anything they can to make themselves feel justified are all w*****s. I have no problem with condeming Al Jazeera for what they show. :mad: :mad:

[I have control]

Having had the **privilege** of watching TV news coverage in the US this past year, believe me there is no mud you can sling at Al Jazeera that would not also stick to any news network in the USA - CNN and Fox being prime offenders.

[Tigs2]

Flt Lt P Prune

Please explain why you have deemed it necessary to edit the final line of my previous text which has totally taken my closing statement out of context? The final line after my Comments about Al Jazeera was

' But we have got to stop being a bunch of Hypocritical Self Opinionated B******s' If you took offence to the term B******s (a word used liberally on this site) then why did you not just eliminate that word?

This site has lost a lot of credibility over the last 14 days or so with the opinions of moderators dictating what can and cannot be said. You stated that you had been made a moderator as a precaution to ensure that sensitive material was not being divulged that would compromise the saftey of our troops. I agree with that idea completely, however, what you have just displayed does not adhere to that principle. My comment was not in bad taste, and was not a security risk. It was broad brush and aimed at all of us to stop and think about what we are bitching and moaning about. You are setting a trend, from which there is no turning back. This site WAS a forum for free speech. Nothing I said was politically biased to one side or the other.

So what are we really reading now on this site? Our words? or our words after you have 'fettled' them to suit the way that you would say things?

No doubt this post will be edited or deleted.

These are sad sad days for PPRUNE.

[LXGB]

Arab news Web site suffers hits

The Web sites of Arab news agency Al-Jazeera have been taken offline, with a denial of service attack one possible cause.


Full story here...

http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/industry/0,39001143,39122462,00.htm


:ok:

[Bubbette]

What is the al-jazeera website url?

[MarkD]

Tigs

if we lived in a world without lawyers, we could do without moderation.

"Free speech", if it ever existed on pprune, was only because the mods couldn't handle the load - now the mod team is larger, which in itself should be a better guarantor of freedom since you have a wider range of opinions as to the rights or wrongs of a thread.

as always, the option to set up a rival board exists - Danny won't stop you - but I wonder would it attract 60,000 signups? They can't all be sheep you know!

[tony draper]

I don't care what Al Jezeera says or shows, they do no more than I would expect from them, I am not funding Al Jezeera to the tune of 112 quid a year, I am helping to keep the feckin BBC lovies in frilly knickers and make up though, I strongly object to their bias.

[Vizsla]

Your redress is to make your complaint, it does not take many to get a censure published and apology by the broadcaster.

www.bsc.org.uk
Mail - [email protected]
Tel: 0207 808 1000
Fax: 0207 233 0397

[kbf1]

It is worth noting that the BBC were criticised by one of their own correspondents last week (can't remember who) for distorting the reports he was making from Kuwait to make them sound more critical of the coalition than they were intended to be. The Sun got a copy of the memo he sent back to London and printed it (Tuesday I think). The BBC has been going quite liberal/left-wing for some time, even before Gregg Dyke took over though it has got much worse since. Although I am not naturally left-leaning politically, if that is what people want then there will always be a media outlet to voice those views (The Guardian is the stalwart ultra-liberal paper), however when it is state TV that is paid for by ALL consumers irrespective of their political views it has a responsibility to be unbiased. The BBC has for some time been very pro-Arab (though I point out I am neither pro or anti Arab or Israeli, if only it were possible for the to reconcile their differences, but that is another topic) for the past few years and quite biased against every successive Israeli government since Perez.

It must be remembered though, that while Saddam is a pariah in the Arab world, many Arabs are uncomfortable with the war being waged against him and it can only be expected that Al Jazeera will portray that agenda. Whether the BBC should be using it's footage is debatable only in the context of the way in which it positions that footage. If it presents it as the Arab view of an incident after showing footage from CNN/Fox/ABC et al, then it presents a balanced view of cross-cultural opinion from which the viewer can draw their own conclusions. The onus of responsibility then becomes one of editing anything which could be deemed distressful, but if presented to balance one perspective against the other, why not use it? Freedom of speech should also incorporate the right to hear the opinions of an opponent.

[Tigs2]

MarkD
Sorry chum, don't quite no where you are coming from. I never mentioned the rights or wrongs of the threads. I was asking why a reply had been edited.

Guess your not really such a 'rebel' after all

[tony draper]

We have another example tonight of a hit on a market place, with a lot of civilian casualties, again we will probably have a long period of deafening silence from the military, and again the media will take this silence as to mean guilt.
If we had a attack in progress either fixed wing or Missile they must know within a couple of hours if it is possible we were responsible,or if it was indeed a Iraqi Sam hit.
Either way the silence from the military feeds the media bias, we had a long rambling commentry about civilian casualties by the guy on site in Iraq, and only a very short and grudging admission that it was possibly, a Iraqi home goal by the frontman in the studio back here.
I will say it again the military need to react much more quicky to these reports.

[Ali Barber]

The Al-Jazerra web site is http://english.aljazeera.net/ although it was still shut down from the Hackers attack this lunchtime.

I watch them quite a bit as their images seem to present a fairly balanced view, although at times some of the pictures might not be publishable before the watershed in the UK. I can't understand what they are saying so I still have to rely on Sky, CNN etc for words to go with the pictures. They show dead, wounded and POWs from both sides. They also carried the article on the RAF doctor conducting the clinic in Safwan (hearts and minds) and the arrival of Sir Ghalahad. They have got some bad press that is probably not justified and they are certainly well trusted (and, more importantly, believed) by the Arabic community.

You might be interested in what is on Iraqi TV as I also get that on my satellite. All the presenters are in dark green barrack dress uniform, but without ranks. Apart from news programmes, there is a lot of songs, usually by someone with a silver plated Kalashnikov and a supporting cast of non-silver plated kalashnikov toting singers and clips of Sadaam firing rifles in the air or pictures of the "magnificent buildings created under his enlightened leadership" (sarcasm before anyone tries to rip my head off). Failing that, it is music backing clips of the anti-war protests from around the world which probably makes compelling propoganda for the Iraqis that world opinion is with them. When the Iraqis hold a live press conference by the Defence or Information Minister it is rarely on Iraqi TV. It will usually be shown later, presumably edited to delete "US troops are 50 miles from Baghdad". The point of this is that the Iraqis do not appear to be receiving our propoganda/truth that we are coming to liberate them.

[moggie]

I don't care about al Jazeera bias, because from what I have seen on the BBC World service TV (and even more so on CNN) western news agencies are using their footage simply as another resource.

I don't feel that BBC World are being sucked into pro-islamic propoganda (of which there is plenty), any more than they are being sucked into pro-coalition propoganda (of which there is also plenty). I am impressed by the even handed way the BBC seem to treat information and I think their reporting looks pretty balanced.

I have access to Sky at work and apart from the apalling amateurish nature of their report (news channel of the year - my ar*e!) they really seem to be aiming for the Sun reader, gutter level with their tone.

Best thing of all - living overseas, I don't have to pay a licence fee to see BBC news!

[Ali Barber]

If anyone has tried the Al-Jazeera link http://english.aljazeera.net/ it is still in Arabic only. I found somewhere on the Web that said because of the huge amount of hacking it has suffered it will delay going live in English to mid-April.

[Sheep Guts]

Well this mob Jazeera are hypocrits. I think myself there are too many journalists in this theatre of war at the moment. 600 embeded with coalition units and 1600 freelance, whom I belive are hampering targeting of enemy targets by coalition forces. An example would be the Minitsry if Info which was missiled last night. Western Media were in the buliding and evacuated before the attack. So whats going on, is a hinderance to the coalition operation. Then there are the comments by Arnett an NBC reporter, who made comments on Jazeera about the fact that Coalition forces had paused and were rethinking tactics. I didnt think Mr. Arnett would be be privy to such important so called accurate info. His comments were broadcast all over the Arab States and Iraq. Maybe it would will look good on his resume for Al Jazeera or the Iraq Ministry of Information.The media are having a big affect on this war. and the U.S. and UK Coalition need to do something about it. I think before long there will be a n order for all freelance to leave the theatre.

[moggie]

And now the al Jazeera boys fall foul of the Iraqis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2911935.stm

Maybe they are not so much the Bad Guys pals we though they were?

[timzsta]

It is not just the military that will be learing lessons after this war I can assure you. Read in a television industry journal called "Broadcast" this week a piece written by Stuart Pervis (editor at ITN) about the death of Terry Lloyd. He said "we have always said no story is worth dying for, but did we actually believe it". No, I feel is clearly the answer, and they have paid the ultimate sacrifice for it.

The journos are learning fast that the battlefield is no place to be on our own, and that war is 99% boredom, 1% sheer bloody terror. The media have flooded Iraq with journos all hoping to be the one that gets the big story and sadly they have caused more confusion then they have reported news. The great 120 Iraqi tanks advancing out of Basra for example, was a journo getting carried away, led to mass media speculation of major battle. Turned out to be 3 tanks quickly dealt with by the Challenger IIs.

They journos are also learing that we dont want 24 hour graphic coverage of the war. We want some normality as well. We dont want to see dead bodies and POWs being interrogated live on cable networks thank you very much.

Was deeply saddened the BBC (Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation) decided no to show the programme about Ellen McArthur the yachtswoman last night, but replaced it with a special programme of reports from their brave warriors in the desert.