Unbiased news is our bulwark against chaos
On 8 September, BBC1 breakfast time news headlines referred to the two men who machine-gunned six people at a bus stop in Israel as Palestinian “activists”.
In itself, it doesn’t necessarily confirm anti-Semitic bias in the Corporation, but that soft-handed term clearly betrays bias in favour of a different group, whom it can portray as freedom-fighters, uncritically relaying claims by Hamas.
The BBC is not the only institution to fall prey to it. The British Foreign Office has long been seen as Arabist, and it’s not just Jews saying that – Nigel Jones repeated it in The Spectator last year.
When both the Government’s advisers on foreign affairs and the nation’s official broadcaster have lost their objectivity, we have a problem.
The erosion of trust goes further.
The United Nations – such an optimistic, feel-good title – recently ruled that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza, so giving official validation to a word used by many in their allegations. The verdict was issued by a UN ‘Independent International Commission of Inquiry’ on 16 September. It was referenced on X the following day by a group of ex-BBC journalists calling themselves The News Agents, who also quoted a Labour MP calling on the PM to stop Israel.
I replied: “You are journalists. Please look carefully at who is on that UN committee and come back to us.” They haven’t yet done so. That is a pity, because the Committee resigned in July amid accusations of anti-Israel prejudice – but are still serving out their terms. Perhaps this latest ruling is their Parthian shot.
The UN was created in 1945 as a way for the world to be run better and more peacefully. Yet when ex-diplomat Craig Murray told them last week that the UK is a force for evil in the world, “people from all over the globe interrupted with spontaneous applause”. That could be saying more about them than us.
Murray was advocating Scottish independence; yet seeing how the Scottish politico-judicial system dealt with him, one wonders what worse it might have done had it been completely sovereign.
He is an idealist. The UN members are people, and like all people, have a host of agendas. They are also capable of childish resentment when someone comes to tell them unwelcome news, as we saw when both the escalator and his teleprompter suddenly failed President Trump.
Speaking of childishness, see when Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers donated a minute of his speaking time so that the EU Parliament could remember the death of Charlie Kirk and “declare that our right to freedom of speech cannot be extinguished”. Instead, the noise from various quarters was a “rejection” of what Politico calls “right-wing and far-right groups”. Or, to put it another way, bad manners from good haters.
When you know in your bones that you are what Leo Kearse calls “good kind people”, then all opposition must be from the Devil and eradicated by any means possible. Brexiteers are unbelievers in the Great Dream and must be punished.
The liberal civilisation we have depends on not being so sure.
English history has been plagued by doctrinaire Catholicism, firebrand Puritans and revolutionary Communists; now, we have to deal with the threat of millenarian Islam. Most Muslims here are not jihadists, but as their population numbers grow, the underbrush is building up in readiness for radicals to set fire to it. The Left is still smouldering too; perhaps there could be a temporary alliance as there was in Iran. Spiked thinks it is happening again in the West.
As our society fragments into mutually incompatible cliques, it becomes ever more important to consider what could bind us together. Oppression is one answer, and an authoritarian regime like Starmer’s might hold things for a bit; but not forever.
What we need is the truth. The news media are our eyes and ears, and if they feed us illusions, we risk crashing. The Fourth Estate must know that journalism is not propaganda. It should abandon its self-conception of leading a righteous crusade by hiding and twisting facts to tell us stories. We are fallible human beings, not angels and demons. Enough of holy panic. Let’s hear it all, good and bad.
Then, we need our other secular institutions to recover their impartiality.
It has been fascinating to watch US Senate hearings as they try to restore the FBI and the Federal judiciary to their proper functions and root out political activism. To achieve that here, we may need to undo much of what has been done structurally since 1997 to tie up the powers of the people like the threads that held down Gulliver.
But it must be done. Trust is eroding; when it is gone, the nation will collapse.
Our liberty and stability depend on not being certain, on hearing all sides, on avoiding being drawn into a great quest, on not following some charismatic captain, on not delegating our judgment and conscience to international arbiters. We need truth the debunker, not truth the pillar of smoke by day and fire by night.
It starts with the news. We need the news, the whole news and nothing but the news.
An ably-written minute! But of course "unbiased" commentary is impossible in principle, since everyone has different opinions and beliefs. The best we can hope for - and what we certainly ought to have - is the widest possible spectrum of views, analysed by people who are fully aware that they are biased and who try to allow for their biases.
I noticed the reference to "millennarian Islam", and accept that as fair criticism. But I saw no mention of Judaism, whose more extreme teachers declare openly and unblushingly that only Jews have real souls, and all Gentiles are "lower than cattle". Such doctrines have not only been preached by many rabbis, past and present; they are there in black and white in the Talmud and all the vast mass of commentaries that have sprung from it down the years.
As far as I know, every religion has sometimes been used as a pretext for murderous violence, often on a huge scale. The final blow was when I read, a while ago, about actual wars between Buddhists and Taoists! Perhaps no more disappointing than that professed Christians, followers of Jesus who urged us to forgive and to turn the other cheek, have murdered just as many and just as cheerfully as the rest.
I totally agree, especially with the finishing paragraphs. Trust in reporting the news has sadly been eroded for a long time. It didn't start just wich covid. I pinpoint it to the Blair years, where a certain Mandelson demanded all Labour MPs be 'on message' or else, and where 'Teh Narrative' became more important than actual news. Remember yon Mr Sixsmith (???), former BBC reporter become PR agent for a Labour Department? During a train catastrophe he said this was 'good day to punish bad (for the minister) news' ... and that's how things have been going on ever since.
I don't think any paper would publish nowadays something as huge as the Expenses scandal ...
But then again, an uninformed populace is easier to 'govern' with government propaganda than one able to make up their own minds. Funny how during WWII the BBC was listened to ins secret by Germans, even by pain of concentration camp or death, because it was reporting true facts, not Goebbels propaganda. I doubt anyone nowadays would listen to the BBC for 'news' - not here, not in the EU, not anywhere. And that's why this:
"Yet when ex-diplomat Craig Murray told them last week that the UK is a force for evil in the world, “people from all over the globe interrupted with spontaneous applause”.
is happening and taking roots everywhere.
Ah well - what did the Romans ever do for us, innit ...