And I'm sure this will be another case where a free market decision is called censorship. It's like everyone so aghast at Fox's ratings over here...well people have a free choice to watch what they want, this isn't Iraq for example.

And I thought that was just my impression....

So the BBC not believing what the Coalition are saying wouldn't have anything to do with the lies they've been fed in the past? Let's see a few:
* "The Coalition has found chemical/biological weapons"
* "Coalition forces have taken Basra"
* "Iraq has used illegal Scud missiles"
* "We'll be in Baghdad in four days"

Gee, I wonder why they're being sceptical?

Most of that was reported by the press, not by the Coalition...for what it's worth...

Simon -

Can you point me to anywhere where a coalition member said any of the four points you listed ? A web site, or newspaper or magazine ? Please include date as well.

I'm not asking for pointers to a non-participant or reporter's opinion, but for pointers to where a coalition representative said those things.

Thanks.

As noted above, Simon is confusing independent press reports with official coalition announcements. However, I should point out that:

* "The Coalition has found chemical/biological weapons"

This may well be true - there have been an awful lot of potential finds, and only a few have been definitively dealt with. Most mysteriously, the missiles found with apparent chem warheads have not dropped off the radar, so to speak.

* "Coalition forces have taken Basra"

Well, they have.

* "Iraq has used illegal Scud missiles"

Well, it has. Not every missile reported as a Scud has been one, but there have been a number of Scuds fired at Kuwait.

* "We'll be in Baghdad in four days"

Depending on when this was said, it may or may not have been true.

Simon:

One has to wonder, then, whether Lord Haw-Haw's comments should've been taken w/ the same seriousness as the Beeb, back in the last big war. After all, in '44, no doubt the BBC itself was reporting that the Germans were losing the war, yet the Battle of the Bulge happened. Allied forces repeatedly were "making progress towards Caen," even as the bocage campaign lasted nearly three months.

And for the Yanks, let's not forget that they "secured" Iwo Jima in some thirty days, yet fighting continued in the Meatgrinder and the Amphitheater for weeks afterward.

Just out of curiosity, though: Has the Coalition's news been more or less on-target than the Iraqi Information Minister's? If one is going to be skeptical, one could be skeptical of BOTH, but why only of the Coalition?

Or are you one who actually believes that there are no allied troops in Baghdad, that the airport is still in Iraqi hands, and that the Brits and the Americans are still miles away??

CERDIP,

Precisely. The media now reports without verifying facts or just reports outright specualtion using the all so powerful tools as "Some are calling this..." or "Critics wonder....." which they teach you not to do in journalism school, yet they must when you get to the newsroom.

The whole article refers to the news feed they receive from England. They changed the channel. I've been known to do that four or five times a minute on occasion.

They seem more upset that the BBC implied maintenance problems caused the Sea King accident at the beginning of the war:

The BBC suggested poor levels of maintenance played a hand in the deaths of seven fliers.

This is listed in the article before saying in very unspecific terms their belief that the BBC reports what Iraq says as gospel but questions what the British and Americans are reporting (not necessarily Coalition press releases, but reporting.

They also have a BBC reporter on board and have no problems with him.

I have seen laughable reports in the American media, which is why I tend to surf over to the BBC and SKY to try and get some balance.

The special effects are really impressive. I hear Industrial Light and Magic was secretly commissioned to produce the embeds. They're so LIFELIKE!!!

I monitor Sky News, CNN, MSNBC, Google News (which gives you a wide assortment of articles) News Now (like Google, monitors a wide variety of news sources, but updates more often, and has more non-US news sources) Reuters, AP, BBC...and rah-rah Fox News. They all have their biases...some seem to try to stay more in what I conceive as the center...if I had to only pick one, it would be a toss-up between AP and Sky News, I think, but I wouldn't be satisfied...

This is bad PR for the local NPR station WBUR (Boston) which has been carrying even more of the BBC broadcasts since the war began. The BBCs constant sneering and mocking of the Coalition is beyond end.

WBUR is having a fund raising drive and they're actually promoting their BBC affiliation in some sort of dimwitted death wish. And NPR wonders why they're having more trouble than usual raising money. Not one clue.

I think THE COMMAND POST" is a better news source than all those mentioned.

The problem isn't so much that the BBC questions Coalition statements. It's that they don't question Iraqi. They just play the Minister of Information's tirades with out obvious questions like, "Isn't that an American tank across the river?"

The British get raked over the coals for saying they took Basra when they first surrounded it and the US went on, but Iraq doesn't get questioned when they say they control the whole south.

And that's why they are at the bottom of my news sources to check...

Watching from London, I can well understand the attitude of the crew of HMS Ark Royal. I find myself focussed on Sky News for the most up-to-date reporting, and for commentary that seems to ask and discuss the right questions. Proper analysis.

Whereas if I switch to BBC News, I find tendentious questioning of everything the Coalition does or says, by journalists and commentators who look and sound naive. And very little questioning until recently of all the Iraqi propaganda. Very left-wing bias, in my view, little deep analysis.

The BBC will have an awful lot to answer for, after this war. Why should all of us be forced to pay £110 (say $160) each year as a BBC licence fee when it cannot report properly on a war involving our own troops ? A war decided on by our elected Government, in spite of all the worries.

We don't want "blind loyalty" from the BBC - we want balance and depth. As in the Falklands, the BBC has been very poor. But this time there is direct competition from Sky, which has been far more PROFESSIONAL.

This just in. BBC says coalition forces haven't entered Baghdad. The tanks seen on TV are inflatables.

Simon: Please give us sources where any official coalition rep has said any of those things. That's all.

Regards / GulGnu

-Stabil som fan!

For those of you who think watching the CENTCOM briefings or reading the transcripts gives you 1/10 of what the military is saying, I suggest you read a litle bit about how the Pentagon, and government in general, communicate.

"On the record", transcribed briefings are almost always followed by "on background" and/or "off the record" briefings where the vast majority of the new and more speculative information is released.

When you watch Brooks speaking at Centcom, keep in mind that he also spends as much time in the back talking with reporters.

You might be led to think that when you read "a pentagon official said" or an "administration official said" or "government source said" that you are reading some neferious "leak." You are not. You are reading details, a message, a trial ballon or a claim that is being made by the same briefer jsut with less consiquences for him and his insitution.

For those of you who think watching the CENTCOM briefings or reading the transcripts gives you 1/10 of what the military is saying, I suggest you read a litle bit about how the Pentagon, and government in general, communicate.

"On the record", transcribed briefings are almost always followed by "on background" and/or "off the record" briefings where the vast majority of the new and more speculative information is released.

When you watch Brooks speaking at Centcom, keep in mind that he also spends as much time in the back talking with reporters.

You might be led to think that when you read "a pentagon official said" or an "administration official said" or "government source said" that you are reading some neferious "leak." You are not. You are reading details, a message, a trial ballon or a claim that is being made by the same briefer jsut with less consiquences for him and his institution.

Simon,

Good points. You forgot the British military's claims of securing Umm Qasr which were contradicted, repeated, contradicted, etc over a week. There is also the announced surrender of the Iraqi 51st which never occured.

There were both US and British military officials saying that Scuds were fired into Kuwait. The claim was totally false.

It is important to separate unfounded expectation about quick victory generally. Certainly the military has been very conservative about that, compared to the politicians.

On the other hand, the issue of Basra, Umm Qasr and Nassariya, the scuds, the pesticide dance are the kind of positive spin the military tends to put out. It's natural.

The reaction of HMS Ark Royal is understandable. BBC commentators sometime seem to be so smug.

Holy hole in a donut Batman! A hundred and sixty bucks a year just to watch the telly? If it were me, I would just figure out a way to tempest-proof my set so that when they come around with the cat detector van from the Ministry of Housinj they would have a hard time finding it. Shield it, ground it, and place ferrite chokes on all the leads (like the antenna and power lines).

Besides, doesn't anyone have the cojones to spoof/jam them? Gotta be some righteously upset people with the technical skills to make their jobs difficult. Like perhaps an emitter that emulates the emissions that a television makes for $10 in parts. Make a few and scatter them around the neighborhood.

Bill Twist

If you have a house or apartment, paying the BBC licence fee of $160 per annum is mandatory. You virtually have to PROVE you don't have a TV to avoid fines of up to $1500 for non-payment.

This is one quaint old tradition the Brits could do without !

From what I can see some of the BBC correspondents in Iraq are a good deal closer to the sharp end of this conflict than most of the the sailors on HMS Ark Royal. With the exception of the air crew they are unlikely to see the real impact of the war.

BBC employees such as John Simpson who filed a report only seconds after nearly getting killed in a blue on blue incident in northern Iraq need no lectures on courage or probity from the military.

If I really wanted to be cruel I could point out that during the Falklands war the ship in question was kept so far away from Argentinian attack by the British Admiralty that it was affectionately known by soldiers in the British army as the 'Pacific' fleet.

Really Fred? You might want to read the article, it’s very short. Seven men (6 Brits 1 Yank) died when two helicopters crashed in darkness while maneuvering over the HMS Ark Royal. Just a hunch, but I’m guessing that the sailors on deck had a pretty good view of the bodies and wreckage. I’m not sure if that qualifies as “impact” in your view, since no BBC correspondents were involved.

And as for brave John Simpson, you should check out this description of him from a BBC Newsmaker profile http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/1660087.stm

“ the boldness of the man was startling, as he strode confidently into Kabul through a cheering throng, declaring: "It was only BBC people who liberated this city. We got in ahead of Northern Alliance troops."
The BBC said later that "John was being ironic", but his words, coupled with the possibly premature pronouncement that "the Taliban are finished in Afghanistan", raised a few eyebrows back home.
In fact, a BBC team, including correspondents Rageh Omaar and William Reeve, was already in Kabul before him. The Independent commented: "So much for teamwork" and asked: "But who will get the medal?"

Well, I guess those BBC guys are even more arrogant and condescending than they come off over the air, if that’s possible.

And my good man Fred, thanks for not being cruel to the men and women fighting for the Coalition. Their blood and sacrifice protects your freedom to run your mouth.

JohninLondon:
That sounds suspiciously like "Guilty until proven innocent". Seems to me (coming as I do from the US) that one could say "Piss off. You think I have a telly, prove it". Make them get a warrant (if indeed a warrant is necessary) to search the premises. I suspect that if enough people did that, the system would collapse. Perhaps that is just the arrogance of having a Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

By the way, what do they do if (for instance), you don't have a television per se, but you have a computer that may or may not have a card/software that can decode television signals? Or a radio that when combined with a monitor could display television signals?

One last question: Is that fee per household, or per television?

I did a little research on the "TV detector" vans. Seems they either passively look for the 39 MHz local oscillator signal of a television that is turned on, or they actively send out a signal to make the oscillator, well, oscillate, and they detect that. It seems to me that a little shielding around the oscillator and a five dollar high-pass filter would completely defeat this strategy by severely attenuating any signal that might be radiated. Hell, I have such a filter on my (poorly shielded) VCR already to prevent my HF ham radio from interfering with it. This stuff isn't rocket science, but I suspect that a lot of the methods they use to get people to pay are psychological, not technological.

In any event, you have my sympathies.

Funny, my lunch bunch and I here in the US are tuning into BBC World News because we are disgusted with the right-wing jingoism of FOX, the right-left-right disingenuousness of MSNBC, and the infotainment of CNN and Headline News. I can see Ark Royal's point of view -- it just did not affect me the same way back in safe, cushy Washington, DC.

Unfortunate that the BBC editors did not pick up on how their reporters seemed to be assuming viewers would not need to be prompted about skepticism for Arabs sources but did need prompting regarding UK and Coalition sources.

The news war seems to require that we be told not what the news IS, but what the news MEANS (as if we are too stupid to figure it out for ourselves).

That "lunch bunch" isn't an indicative sampling of the population, seeing as Fox News is #1 in the U.S. by a long stretch.

I tuned out to the BBC early in the Iraqi war after a couple misreporting incidents that seemed obviously bent on fear-mongering. For instance: BBC3 reported there were chemicals on the scuds shot into Kuwait.

CNN angered me long ago with Christian Amanpours blatantly false reporting on the Serbian / Bosnian situation. She was either a prey to the Jihadist propagandists Osama imported there, or a part of it, and probably still is ?

Fox and Sky News are both owned by Rupert Murdoch, and I've always found him to be a man of integrity and rationale. More power to him on his latest acquisitions. (Direct tv).

Just a "Yank" over in the colonies..

uggh.. that word ! :p