The BBC's Magic Quotes

Or how to make unsubstantiated claims against our official enemies.

by: Antony Wright

On March 30th the Media Advocacy group, Medialens, issued a Media Alert – ‘But The Generals Love Napalm’. The alert questioned the failure of the BBC to investigate reports of US atrocities during their assault on the city of Falluja, specifically alleged evidence of war crimes.

BBC Director of News Helen Boaden, in her response, stated that it was vital that these reports are independently verified.

Too right Helen, the BBC can’t go round making unsubstantiated claims. Unless of course they liberally throw quotes and the word alleged into the article and then they can publish whatever they want. Oh and don’t forget the one liner at the end refuting the claims. Job done! Or is that damage done?

Of course there is one more rule and that is that this approach should only be used against our official enemies.

That is why yesterday the BBC published an article entitled - Burma 'used chemicals on rebels'. See, there are those magic quotes, concentrate or you will miss them; actually that’s the idea.

The article goes on to say

An international human rights group has accused the Burmese army of using chemical weapons in an attack on rebel groups in the country.

Wow an international human rights group, that is very heavy weight.

Later the article reports

Christian Solidarity Worldwide says it has evidence which suggests that chemical weapons were responsible for the men's injuries.

Gosh evidence, how can you start to doubt this story? And there’s more

The president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Australian physician Dr Martin Panter, has since flown to the area and examined five of the men.

He concluded that their symptoms were synonymous with exposure to some form of chemical attack.

And now for the one liner

Burma's government "completely rejected" the allegations, saying it did not have or use chemical weapons.

Yeah whatever, we all know the Burmese government are bad guys so they must be lying.

With my curiosity roused by this article I decided to get some background information on Christian Solidarity Worldwide, it’s none to pretty I’m afraid.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) who also go by the title Christian Solidarity International (CSI) - has a pretty grubby track record by all accounts

In Sudan, which has a horrific underlying slavery and abduction problem exacerbated by the conflict, CSW are involved in the practice of slave redemption, the buying and setting free of slaves.

John Harker the Canadian government’s special envoy to Sudan in his report, “Human Security in Sudan: The Report of a Canadian Assessment Mission” [pdf], uncovered testimony that implicated CSW in fake redemptions, where people posing as slaves where purchased from Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) members dressed as Arabs, the money going to fund the ongoing conflict. For the CSW, a fundamentalist Christian group, this had the added benefit of demonising Muslims as well as funding the arms purchases of their allies.

This close relationship between the CSW and SPLA rebels in Sudan was publicly revealed when the CSW used John Garang, head of the SPLA, to represent it before the UN commission on Human Rights. The result was that their UN NGO accreditation was withdrawn.

Lastly, following a press release by Norwegian People's aid (NPA), that chemical weapons had been used in bombing by Sudanese Government forces, Baroness Cox then President of CSW repeated the claim in the British House of Lords and offered samples of soil, water and shrapnel as evidence.
Later it was discovered that these samples as well as others collected by the UN and tested at CBD Porton Down and at US and Finnish laboratories showed no signs of chemical weapons.

There we have it - the BBC is happy to repeat the claims, from a discredited ‘international human rights group’, of Burmese atrocities. But ignore claims of US atrocities in Falluja, even though those claimants include;

• Dahr Jamail - 'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah
• Aljazeera - U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah – Health ministry
• Mark Manning - Diving Into falluja
• Iraq Analysis Group - Fire Bombs in Iraq: Napalm By Any Other Name

None of these people, or the eyewitness testimony they have gathered, is worthy of the BBC quote treatment.

Perhaps things would be different if the victims were American and the alleged perpetrators Muslim