Does Anyone Else See The Humor Here?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Do you honestly believe there is no anti Israel slant at the BBC?

Not as far as I am aware from the World Service. And remember it was the BBC that broadcast Richard Dimbleby's unedited/uncensored report from Belsen in 1945. https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/richar...belsen/zvw7cqt

Individual reporters have been criticised for a degree of bias and certainly the Diana interview and its involvement with Savile were hardly its finest hour. On the other hand it was right concerning the dodgy dossier.

However, as I have noted to you in the past, for some the BBC is the Establishment mouthpiece and for others it is a nest of Marxists.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I mention elsewhere here that it could have been any news source.

And as you have acknowledged with your link the BBC is doing what it can to let the truth be heard.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/20...rn-to-bbc-news

Tim Davie, BBC Director-General, says: “It’s often said truth is the first casualty of war. In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust – and in a significant development, millions more Russians are turning to the BBC.

“We will continue giving the Russian people access to the truth, however we can.”

As part of its resilience operation to ensure news is available in Ukraine and Russia, the BBC has also stepped up services on other platforms. It has launched two new shortwave frequencies in the region for four hours of World Service English news a day. These frequencies can be received clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia.

Tim Davie paid tribute to journalists working in Ukraine and Russia, saying: “Brave and committed journalists – from a range of news organisations – are doing vital work reporting events in Ukraine. Not only those who have travelled there to report, but journalists for whom Ukraine is home, including our talented colleagues in the BBC’s Ukrainian service. Events are moving quickly. We want to ensure the BBC’s output continues to reach people in Ukraine, Russia and beyond. Trusted news has never been more vital.”

Remember also that this was the service that people in occupied Europe during WW2 risked their lives in order to listen to its broadcasts.

Nor did it ever censor Lord Haw Haw's broadcasts.

[Juvenal]

You may want to review the conversation starting here.

I looked at it.

I suspect as state actors they’re reasonably safe from any threat of arresting themselves.

The shuttering of independent broadcasting networks says the law is in effect. The reactions from family members in Russia detailed above says these English-language stories are not circulating inside of Russia. Neither RT nor any foreign news outlet is under an obligation to follow the Russian rules outside of Russia.

RT is Russian propaganda. Everything they write is intended to create a false impression.

[Ronson]

I looked at it.

I suspect as state actors they’re reasonably safe from any threat of arresting themselves.

I doubt they have the authority to arrest anyone, including themselves. But "state actors" get arrested all the time when they go off script.

The shuttering of independent broadcasting networks says the law is in effect. The reactions from family members in Russia detailed above says these English-language stories are not circulating inside of Russia. Neither RT nor any foreign news outlet is under an obligation to follow the Russian rules outside of Russia.

That is an assumption. As is mine, that they are pushing back against authority.

RT is Russian propaganda. Everything they write is intended to create a false impression.

I disagree. That is too black and white.

[rogue06]

Do you honestly believe there is no anti Israel slant at the BBC?

Not as far as I am aware from the World Service. And remember it was the BBC that broadcast Richard Dimbleby's unedited/uncensored report from Belsen in 1945. https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/richar...belsen/zvw7cqt

Individual reporters have been criticised for a degree of bias and certainly the Diana interview and its involvement with Savile were hardly its finest hour. On the other hand it was right concerning the dodgy dossier.

However, as I have noted to you in the past, for some the BBC is the Establishment mouthpiece and for others it is a nest of Marxists.

Your response has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. It's like responding "Four foot one" when asked who's your favorite singer.

[Ronson]

[/INDENT]
Your response has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. It's like responding "Four foot one" when asked who's your favorite singer.

Hers was a hodgepodge answer that included ancient history and non-Israel current examples of bias.

But I was talking about this stuff (partial list):

https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/...i-israel-bias/

bbc.jpg

[tabibito]

[/INDENT]
Your response has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. It's like responding "Four foot one" when asked who's your favorite singer.

So - I google for four foot one singer - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand

Suzie Q.jpg

Leather Tuscadero wasn't 4'1"

[rogue06]

So - I google for four foot one singer - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand

Suzie Q.jpg

Leather Tuscadero wasn't 4'1"

Suzi Quatro is tiny (probably 5' in heels) but nowhere that small.

[Faber]

Isn''t that Portuguese for "four?

[Ronson]

Isn''t that Portuguese for "four?

From Wikipedia:

Quatro was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Her paternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. Her family name of "Quattrocchi" ("four eyes", meaning "bespectacled") was shortened to Quatro.

[CivilDiscourse]

No it doesn't. That is your own bias [known to me from previous exchanges elsewhere] against the BBC.

However, do remember that for all the present faults across the BBC in general, the BBC Word Service is still regarded around the world as one of the most honest and balanced radio broadcasters.

It is now using shortwave to broadcast to Russia so that those who possess a shortwave radio can listen.

There's Humor/dark humor in the announcement two ways.

The first is that when Russia announced it would go after "fake news", BBC suddenly packed up and left. At a surface level, the humor is that BBC left because it would break the law, i.e. be fake news. Of course, as he said, this is applicable to any news source that followed BBC's course of action, and the context surrounding why the BBC left doesn't make it all that funny to me.

On a deeper level, I find the irony amusing. Here we have a news source that has previously published how to better censor disinformation and fake news getting caught up by the problem that gets pointed out about censorship. I.E. That for such a censorship regime to work, you have to be able to trust the censors. To me, it's a bit of Karma for all of those who are crying for facebook and others to step in and be censors.

[rogue06]

There's Humor/dark humor in the announcement two ways.

The first is that when Russia announced it would go after "fake news", BBC suddenly packed up and left. At a surface level, the humor is that BBC left because it would break the law, i.e. be fake news. Of course, as he said, this is applicable to any news source that followed BBC's course of action, and the context surrounding why the BBC left doesn't make it all that funny to me.

On a deeper level, I find the irony amusing. Here we have a news source that has previously published how to better censor disinformation and fake news getting caught up by the problem that gets pointed out about censorship. I.E. That for such a censorship regime to work, you have to be able to trust the censors. To me, it's a bit of Karma for all of those who are crying for facebook and others to step in and be censors.

Exactly. It is a case of be careful what you wish for.

Something folks should consider before asking someone to exert more control, whether Social Media or government, is what would happen if the "other side" had this power. If you don't like the answer, then you may want to reconsider your advocacy.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Granted, assuming Reuters did not edit Davie's comments.

ETA: OK, it was far lenghtier than the BBC tweet

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/20...rn-to-bbc-news

So this is what you deem to be “BBC bias”?

The BBC offered a qualified apology for the Oxford Street incident. It appears clear that a mistake was made concerning the Hebrew. However, no one can ever know if any slurs were made that went unrecorded. Teens being what they are it would not be inconceivable. The BBC has also apologised for earlier incidents as your links make clear.

The Wiesenthal Centre links to incidents concerning two former BBC reporters. However, the tweets were done privately and were nothing to do with the BBC. No organisation can police what its employees do in their private lives.

As the link states:

In her statement this week, Halawa acknowledged that the post was “ignorant and offensive,” but was written by a “young Palestinian woman tweeting in the heat of the moment as I witnessed horrific, undeserved deaths met with international media silence and used a popular hashtag at the time without thinking.”
She added that the tweet does not reflect her views and offered a “heartfelt apology for posting without thinking.

The incident with Nimesh Thaker was again via a private Twitter account and not something official from the BBC. Given your defence of free speech and your comments on another thread:

Can you differentiate between propaganda and truth? If so, then so can others

Along with your remark in the same thread concerning censorship that

but you approve of it when done in the west?

You seem to be the one who wants to censor [and certainly censure] two individuals in the west exercising that right in their private time.

From your links:

Thaker’s account tweeted that Israel is “racist” and a “white supremacist state.” After Jewish BBC host Emma Barnett spoke out about the British rapper Wiley’s incendiary tweets about Jews, Thaker’s account retweeted a message saying that Barnett was using “the same old ‘antisemitism’ excuse whenever people criticise Israel.”

While Israel is not “racist” some people do see its policies towards the Palestinians as racist and I know at least one contributor who has argued quite vociferously on this board and elsewhere that he considers Israel does exhibit racist behaviours towards the Palestinians.

Nor can it be denied that like so many countries Israel does have racist individuals and groups. The so called “La Familia”” group of Beitar supporters is racist as its behaviour towards the signing of Muslim players in 2013 showed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

From the Jerusalem Post in 2021 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/sp...s-court-667548

Three extremist soccer fans were banned Friday by the Jerusalem District Court from entering soccer games of the Beitar Jerusalem team, Sport1 reported.

Specifically, heads of the "La Familia" fan club will not be allowed to enter games played by their favorite team anymore, after they were banned by the club last month. [..] La Familia has come under attack in the past for its racist comments both during games and outside the court.
Last year, Around 1,200 people joined MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz), demanding Defense Minister Benny Gantz designate far-right soccer fan club La Familia as a terrorist organization.

Anyone who follows football [soccer to Americans] knows it is somewhat tribal. However, the views expressed by these individuals do not exist only when inside a football stadium and in the video the flag held up from the stands by Beitar fans stating “Beitar Forever Pure” has some rather distasteful historical connotations.

There is also a valid point about playing the anti-Semitism card. For some Jews inside and outside Israel it appears that any censure or criticism of the Israeli state in any of its policies or actions is immediately labelled “anti-Semitism” or if it comes from Jews as self-loathing/self-hating. Plenty of Jews inside and outside Israel do not support all of Israel’s policies and certainly those towards the Palestinians.

As to the comments about Israeli businessmen, I would refer you to the non-fiction work McMafia [2008] by Misha Glenny that formed the background to that drama series.

I offer you some quotes from one chapter of that work. He notes that between 1990 and 2000 Russian Jews:

[..]took the passport and ran. Soon hundreds turned into thousands, thousands into tens and hundreds of thousands until within a decade 1 million Russian Jews had pitched up in Israel, amounting to more than 15 percent of the total population.

The reasons for most of those Russian Jews moving to Israel were perfectly innocent however he continues that the Russian Jews often failed to integrate:

Israel, of course, is a country that has been built on immigration since its inception in 1948. The country boasts an impressive record in the absorption of large groups long before the former Soviet Jews came—the Moroccan and Iraqi immigration of the fifties and more recently the immigration from Ethiopia. But it had never dealt with anything on this scale from such a well-defined and powerful culture. The Moroccan, Iraqi, and Ethiopian Jews had no choice but to learn Hebrew and submit to Israeli culture in order to survive. But the Jews from Russia and Ukraine were very different—they came in huge numbers in a short space of time, and they had a strong Russian cultural identity that was often more ingrained than their Jewishness. [...]Russian immigrants in Israel very quickly established a complex society that developed in parallel to the existing community. The state showed little inclination to become involved with the Russians, nor really had the capacity to do so. So as the Russians poured in during this first phase of integration, the two communities barely interacted at all—language and culture led to a period of mutual exclusion.

The chapter goes on:

It was the police who first noticed something odd happening. “At the time, I was head of the intelligence in Jerusalem,” said the retired police commander Hezi Leder, “and we started getting reports from my colleagues in Haifa and the north of Israel of a dramatic rise in the amount of criminality among young people. These were kids who were thirteen and fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, but they seemed to be outside the education system. And they were almost all Russian.” By the mid-1990s, there were more than 700,000 Russians in Israel. Most were entirely honest, like Alexander Gentelev from Makhachkala. His was the familiar immigrant impulse from around the world—the search for sanctuary from a troubled environment and a better life for his children. “But if you have a million Russians here and just one percent is a criminal element,” explained the former cop Gil Kleiman, “that’s still a hell of a lot of bad boys!” Soon after Leder alerted his colleagues to the phenomenon of the youth gangs, police started to observe an increase in murders and assaults involving unprecedented brutality. The crime wave centred on Tel Aviv—or Sin City, as the tabloids refer to it—but almost always contained within the Russian-speaking community.

After discussing the particularly gruesome murder of Oleg “Karpits” Karpachov, Glenny continues:

More shocking than the circumstances of Karpits’s death was what Kleiman and the special investigative team discovered about the deceased’s world. They began to unravel a network of pimps, brothels, protection rackets, counterfeit documents, and kidnapping. Apart from the sleaziness of this underground community, its most surprising aspect was its invisibility. This was an internal Russian affair that never impinged on the rest of Israeli society. Except, that is, in one respect—the single largest business these street-level Russian syndicates were running was prostitution, and the clients were by no means exclusively Russian.

He then cites the rise in prostitution in Israel and notes the businesss-like way the Internet publicises prostitution with one Israeli magazine for men Blazer commenting:

“What can I tell you? You’ve got to hand it to organized crime for really being organized. They learned from Domino’s Pizza how to take orders. They asked me…with mushrooms? Without? I asked them…if it’s not too hard, a natural blond, tall, with basic command of Hebrew.”

Demand was rising rapidly, and the Russian underground in Israel knew how to supply it.

He then goes on to detail the suffering of young women trafficked to Israel with the promise of jobs as waitresses, hairdressers and so on.

It therefore appears that while not all Russian businessmen in Israel are gangsters, organised Russian crime syndicates exist and flourish in that country.

[Ronson]

So this is what you deem to be “BBC bias”?

I'll unpack all of that and respond to some/all of it as time permits.

[Ronson]

So this is what you deem to be “BBC bias”?

The BBC offered a qualified apology for the Oxford Street incident. It appears clear that a mistake was made concerning the Hebrew. However, no one can ever know if any slurs were made that went unrecorded. Teens being what they are it would not be inconceivable. The BBC has also apologised for earlier incidents as your links make clear.

The Wiesenthal Centre links to incidents concerning two former BBC reporters. However, the tweets were done privately and were nothing to do with the BBC. No organisation can police what its employees do in their private lives.

As the link states:

In her statement this week, Halawa acknowledged that the post was “ignorant and offensive,” but was written by a “young Palestinian woman tweeting in the heat of the moment as I witnessed horrific, undeserved deaths met with international media silence and used a popular hashtag at the time without thinking.”
She added that the tweet does not reflect her views and offered a “heartfelt apology for posting without thinking.

The incident with Nimesh Thaker was again via a private Twitter account and not something official from the BBC. Given your defence of free speech and your comments on another thread:



Along with your remark in the same thread concerning censorship that



You seem to be the one who wants to censor [and certainly censure] two individuals in the west exercising that right in their private time.

You are mixing all sorts of apples and oranges here. Nowhere have I advocated censorship. I post my opinions online all the time using pseudonyms (a favorite instrument of Benjamin Franklin, btw) which served me well when I worked for a newspaper. My byline identified me and my name became associated with the paper I worked at. For pragmatic reasons, I was not about to go online and espouse something that would jeopardize my job. I had the right to say anything I wanted online, but I chose not to because my employer also had the right to fire me.

From your links:

Thaker’s account tweeted that Israel is “racist” and a “white supremacist state.” After Jewish BBC host Emma Barnett spoke out about the British rapper Wiley’s incendiary tweets about Jews, Thaker’s account retweeted a message saying that Barnett was using “the same old ‘antisemitism’ excuse whenever people criticise Israel.”

While Israel is not “racist” some people do see its policies towards the Palestinians as racist and I know at least one contributor who has argued quite vociferously on this board and elsewhere that he considers Israel does exhibit racist behaviours towards the Palestinians.

Nor can it be denied that like so many countries Israel does have racist individuals and groups. The so called “La Familia”” group of Beitar supporters is racist as its behaviour towards the signing of Muslim players in 2013 showed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

From the Jerusalem Post in 2021 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/sp...s-court-667548

Three extremist soccer fans were banned Friday by the Jerusalem District Court from entering soccer games of the Beitar Jerusalem team, Sport1 reported.

Specifically, heads of the "La Familia" fan club will not be allowed to enter games played by their favorite team anymore, after they were banned by the club last month. [..] La Familia has come under attack in the past for its racist comments both during games and outside the court.
Last year, Around 1,200 people joined MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz), demanding Defense Minister Benny Gantz designate far-right soccer fan club La Familia as a terrorist organization.

Anyone who follows football [soccer to Americans] knows it is somewhat tribal. However, the views expressed by these individuals do not exist only when inside a football stadium and in the video the flag held up from the stands by Beitar fans stating “Beitar Forever Pure” has some rather distasteful historical connotations.

There is also a valid point about playing the anti-Semitism card. For some Jews inside and outside Israel it appears that any censure or criticism of the Israeli state in any of its policies or actions is immediately labelled “anti-Semitism” or if it comes from Jews as self-loathing/self-hating. Plenty of Jews inside and outside Israel do not support all of Israel’s policies and certainly those towards the Palestinians.

As to the comments about Israeli businessmen, I would refer you to the non-fiction work McMafia [2008] by Misha Glenny that formed the background to that drama series.

I offer you some quotes from one chapter of that work. He notes that between 1990 and 2000 Russian Jews:

[..]took the passport and ran. Soon hundreds turned into thousands, thousands into tens and hundreds of thousands until within a decade 1 million Russian Jews had pitched up in Israel, amounting to more than 15 percent of the total population.

The reasons for most of those Russian Jews moving to Israel were perfectly innocent however he continues that the Russian Jews often failed to integrate:

Israel, of course, is a country that has been built on immigration since its inception in 1948. The country boasts an impressive record in the absorption of large groups long before the former Soviet Jews came—the Moroccan and Iraqi immigration of the fifties and more recently the immigration from Ethiopia. But it had never dealt with anything on this scale from such a well-defined and powerful culture. The Moroccan, Iraqi, and Ethiopian Jews had no choice but to learn Hebrew and submit to Israeli culture in order to survive. But the Jews from Russia and Ukraine were very different—they came in huge numbers in a short space of time, and they had a strong Russian cultural identity that was often more ingrained than their Jewishness. [...]Russian immigrants in Israel very quickly established a complex society that developed in parallel to the existing community. The state showed little inclination to become involved with the Russians, nor really had the capacity to do so. So as the Russians poured in during this first phase of integration, the two communities barely interacted at all—language and culture led to a period of mutual exclusion.

The chapter goes on:

It was the police who first noticed something odd happening. “At the time, I was head of the intelligence in Jerusalem,” said the retired police commander Hezi Leder, “and we started getting reports from my colleagues in Haifa and the north of Israel of a dramatic rise in the amount of criminality among young people. These were kids who were thirteen and fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, but they seemed to be outside the education system. And they were almost all Russian.” By the mid-1990s, there were more than 700,000 Russians in Israel. Most were entirely honest, like Alexander Gentelev from Makhachkala. His was the familiar immigrant impulse from around the world—the search for sanctuary from a troubled environment and a better life for his children. “But if you have a million Russians here and just one percent is a criminal element,” explained the former cop Gil Kleiman, “that’s still a hell of a lot of bad boys!” Soon after Leder alerted his colleagues to the phenomenon of the youth gangs, police started to observe an increase in murders and assaults involving unprecedented brutality. The crime wave centred on Tel Aviv—or Sin City, as the tabloids refer to it—but almost always contained within the Russian-speaking community.

After discussing the particularly gruesome murder of Oleg “Karpits” Karpachov, Glenny continues:

More shocking than the circumstances of Karpits’s death was what Kleiman and the special investigative team discovered about the deceased’s world. They began to unravel a network of pimps, brothels, protection rackets, counterfeit documents, and kidnapping. Apart from the sleaziness of this underground community, its most surprising aspect was its invisibility. This was an internal Russian affair that never impinged on the rest of Israeli society. Except, that is, in one respect—the single largest business these street-level Russian syndicates were running was prostitution, and the clients were by no means exclusively Russian.

He then cites the rise in prostitution in Israel and notes the businesss-like way the Internet publicises prostitution with one Israeli magazine for men Blazer commenting:

“What can I tell you? You’ve got to hand it to organized crime for really being organized. They learned from Domino’s Pizza how to take orders. They asked me…with mushrooms? Without? I asked them…if it’s not too hard, a natural blond, tall, with basic command of Hebrew.”

Demand was rising rapidly, and the Russian underground in Israel knew how to supply it.

He then goes on to detail the suffering of young women trafficked to Israel with the promise of jobs as waitresses, hairdressers and so on.

It therefore appears that while not all Russian businessmen in Israel are gangsters, organised Russian crime syndicates exist and flourish in that country.

The point I made was simple: The BBC has been identified with anti-Israel sentiments for many years now - unlike other international news agencies. It is the preponderance of complaints that is the issue, and I am not interested in debating each case listed by the Times of Israel.