SLAUGHTER OF OUR CHILDREN - NOW THE BBC REFUSES TO CALL HAMAS TERRORISTS
We at the BEEB must be careful not to take sides, says that nice John Simpson
When I first became a tabloid terror, I was accepted into The Pack immediately.
In the 90s, we hunted like wolves, you see. Safety in our snapping snarling numbers.
We could be in the bosom of our family, or down the pub, or in somebody-else’s bed, but the moment that bleeper went off we slid into the glistering night streets and headed hungover and listless to a pre-determined stump in the forest of lies.
Something had only just happened and we were ready to hunt.
Within minutes we would be pacing the boundaries of legal intrusion, of privacy and that other boundary of truth, the inalienable right of the public to know what is going on.
That’s the boundary where all the bad ‘guys and gals’ lay their traps.
Some of us would always go feral, sniffing round dustbins and gutters. Some of us even hid in trees, cameras like predatory eyes blinking and flashing in the blackness.
Others like me, were door dogs… and we snapped at your heels, we were in the nearest phone box calling you, or pushing notes through your letterbox, rattling doorknobs and shouting questions in to the void of your guiltily quiet hallways and corridors…
We knew you were hiding the truth in there.
Tabloid terrors were fast, we were tough, we were aggressive, stank of cigs and beer and we were after the things you didn’t want to get out into the public eye … rape, assault, cheating, scams, cons, secrets and lies.
So, what was the big difference between us and the BBC?
We knew what we uncovered was going to be committed to paper, left to be read over and over on trains and boats and planes, in cafes and pubs.
Believe me, yesterday’s newspapers were never just tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, they were documents, proof-perfect of what we in The Pack had had to say.
That’s how society controlled us… we could be metaphorically shot on sight if we were caught inside the chicken coop, blood on our quill-like talons.
Do you know, that BBC reporters – particularly radio ‘chaps and chap-esses’ as they liked to call themselves - were rarely allowed in to The Pack … we didn’t want them there.
And they were aware that, on the whole, we could eat them alive if they got under our feet.
So, many of the BBC reporters deliberately stayed on the outside, scavenging for the odd dropped fact, discarded crumb of narrative - like pigeons, anything they didn’t have to find for themselves.
They’d pick your teeth too if you’d let them.
BBC radio reporters (in particular) were seen as lazy, overweight, sweaty, posh talkers with socks with sandals on. And they stank of salmon and cucumber sandwiches. They’d loll about in the back of their BBC OB vans and chunter on about politics and chutney, gay rights and origami.
They weren’t like us.
And they didn’t seem to care about facts. What was the use of ‘facts’ to them?
They’d be lucky to get 20 seconds on air and then all they had to do was prattle on about the rain before waddling off for – well - a waffle and a nice cup of tea.
Even forty years ago the BBC was a breed apart … a toothless, IBS-suffering, heavy breathing British bulldog that just wanted hot waffles and its tummy tickled …
The BBC was already isolated.
And nothing it has done in all these years gone-by has changed a thing.
But now the BBC has refused – for editorial reasons, it says - to describe the Butchers of Hamas as terrorists.
That surely is morally - and editorially - indefensible?
The kidnapping of innocents?
Children slaughtered?
Pledges of annihilation?
Israel today is the victim of barbarism.., of time running backwards.
And yet, veteran BBC newsman John Simpson – with his pleasant moon-faced smile and his gravestone teeth - has said the BBC must be careful not to “take sides”.
TAKE SIDES?
John Simpson at the BBC certainly takes sides in wars, siding with Marxist Harold Wilson's military support to bomb kids in Biafra in the Nigerian civil war, objecting to BBC TV reporter Freddy Forsyth's allegedly support for the Biafrian's, who my dad met when he was travelling the country as accountant to Holman Brothers of Cornwall, who had offices and equipment in Nigeria, supplying mining engineering equipment and road graders, bulldozers, etc for road building and oil mining activity in the Niger river delta (which sparked the civil war, with the local Igbo people objecting to their local oil resources being seized by the Federal Nigerian government to be spent in Lagos, not the Biafrian lands).
"I was sent to cover the Nigeria civil war by the BBC, from the rebel side. I reported exactly what I saw in eastern Nigeria, which became Biafra, but it wasn’t what the Foreign Office wanted to hear. I was summoned and accused of biased reporting. They said, that’s not what we’re being told. I said, do we work for the Foreign Office? “Don’t be impertinent.” So I said, tell you what, screw you. I’m resigning." - Forsyth, Big Issue interview at https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/frederick-forsyth-put-price-head-i-get/
John Simpson's version: "...BBC sent him to Nigeria to cover the secessionist Biafran War. The Wilson government was angered by his reporting, he says, and the BBC bowed to the pressure. Mr Forsyth was sacked. ... as an extremely lowly sub-editor in the BBC radio newsroom I had to put Mr Forsyth's Biafran dispatches on the air. Even at the age of 23 I could see that he had accepted the Biafran line entirely. He was reporting propaganda as fact. Eventually he announced, without any qualification, that Biafra had shot down (as far as I remember) 16 federal Nigerian aircraft. The newsroom copy of Jane's All The World's Aircraft said that the federal air force possessed only 12." Simpson, My Part in the Fall of Freddy, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1423541/Simpson-on-Sunday-My-part-in-the-fall-and-rise-of-Freddy-Forsyth.html
Problem is, my dad was there until July 1969, and was bombed with long-fuse hand grenades dropped from civilian aircraft being used desperately by both sides (France was supplying Biafra, while the federal gov in Lagos commandeered civilian aircraft used by dad's flying club in Lagos (dad was living in Apapa during the 60s having worked previously in Accra, Ghana from 1957), not military stuff listed in Jane's London edition of All the World's Aircraft! Whoops! Mr Simpson is wrong. You had to be in Nigeria to see what was going on. It's a textbook example of how "fact checking" from books doens't always counteract eye-witness reporting. We can all see terrorism for what it is, so he's playing with dictionary definitions doesn't really change anything about the Hamas tactics, if you face the facts.