Monday, January 30, 2017

Foghorn politics.

Anything strike you as odd about this article on the BBC web site?   I had to look at it a couple of times before it clicked.  This is not a news item.  This is a view by a journalist, and given it was prominent on the BBC web site, the view of the BBC.

I should say from the outset that I do not agree with the ban imposed by the USA.  It is a remarkably blunt weapon to deal with a serious problem. Indeed, it is probably totally counterproductive as argued by Shashank Joshi. An own goal.

But that's not my beef here.  It is about the BBC web site.  Read it again.  It includes a politically biased value judgements in the use of the words "condemn" and "fails".

First, look at the headline.  It is biased in favour of the position that the President's policies on refugees are wrong and therefore should be condemned.  Now, you and I may think that President Trump is wrong and are free to say so.  But this is obviously a political position that the BBC are adopting.  It is one also being made by the losing side in the recent US Presidential Election.  This is a political position.

Secondly, it is biased in favour of a position that the PM should intervene in the democratic process of the USA to the probable detriment of trading relations.  Again, this is clearly a political position.

With no balance in the debate, not even parenthesis around the words “condemn” and “fails” we are left reading material that is nothing short of propaganda against US and UK government policies.  It seeks to influence a view rather than introduce a debate.

Mrs May told reporters: "The United States is responsible for the United States' policy on refugees”. And she is right.  Those who try to suggest otherwise are simply trying to cause trouble.  There are more appropriate ways for Mrs May to express her views than by the public foghorn that her detractors would wish her to use.

How would we like it if anther government condemned our democratically elected government?  No, we wouldn’t like it, would we?

As George Galloway - of all people - has so shrewdly remarked, the Clintons and Obama governments are responsible for a million deaths in the Muslim world.  But BBC wants to demonise President Trump for some flying restrictions.  Five of these countries in the Trump list Obama sanctioned the bombing of.  Where then was the outrage?

It does strike me that if the Democrats didn't like Trump's platform, all they had to do was field a credible candidate with a popular manifesto.  But as we know, the Democrats were too arrogant for that.  And if they think Trump is a problem, which indeed he may well be, it’s a problem of their own making.  

Shame on them.

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