BBC Caught In Mass Public Deception With Iran Propaganda »
Posted By dissent 5 months, 1 week ago in NewsThe BBC has again been caught engaging in mass public deception by using photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies in Iran and claiming they represent anti-government protests in favor of Hossein Mousavi.
An image used by the L.A. Times on the front page of its website Tuesday showed Iranian President Ahmadinejad waving to a crowd of supporters at a public event.
In a story covering the election protests yesterday, the BBC News website used a closer shot of the same scene, but with Ahmadinejad cut out of the frame. The caption under the photograph read, ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’.
The BBC photograph is clearly a similar shot of the same pro-Ahmadinejad rally featured in the L.A. Times image, yet the caption erroneously claims it represents anti-Ahmadinejad protesters.
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dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
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hyperbola5 months, 1 week ago
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The BBC reporting about the mideast is heavily biased towards zionist perspectives.
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Israeli Perspective Routinely Highlighted
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17227
... We invited Professor Philo to comment directly on our exchange with Jeremy Bowen; in particular, on Bowen's assertion that the BBC is even-handed in its coverage of Israeli and Palestinian victims. In response, Philo pointed to the findings of 'Bad News From Israel':
"[T]he focus on Israeli victims, both in terms of the quantity of coverage and the language used to describe them, led some viewers to believe wrongly that the Israelis had the most casualties and these beliefs were attributed directly to what they had seen on television." (Email, April 18, 2008)
In fact, as we saw above, there have been over four times as many Palestinian as Israeli deaths between September 2000 and March 2008. And the ratio is as high as nine when it comes to children's deaths. It is highly doubtful whether 'consumers' of corporate news media, the BBC included, are aware of this.
... Their careful research concluded that news headlines "highlight Israeli statements, actions or perspectives." Palestinian views do appear in the media "but tend to be buried deep in the text of news bulletins. [...] it is hard to avoid the conclusion that one view of the conflict is being prioritised." ...
..."Editors, producers, presenters, and their immediate bosses, live in the heated climate of London and very much still within their own cultural heritage: the politics of the day plus the memories of an English education. [...] the story 'concept' in London is still, I am afraid, that Israelis are 'people like us', who should not be shelled every day while they drive their Polos to recognisable branches of Asda or whatever; while Arabs are 'tricky' and 'emotional' and if they weren't all firing rockets and hating Jews in the first place none of this would be happening. This is still the platform off which most Western journalists in London jump. To take a different tack is to run into that wall of 'anti-semitic' or 'unbalanced' reportage that any of us who tries to explain the facts on the ground in the region runs into."
John Pilger is one journalist has been on the receiving end of such flak in his extensive reporting on Palestine over several decades. His award-winning 2002 television documentary, 'Palestine is Still the Issue', is one of his most powerful, and most watched, films on the crisis. (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1259454...
We sent Pilger our exchange with the BBC's Middle East editor, highlighting Bowen's assertion that "You imply that we have double standards in marking the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children. I can assure you that we do not." Pilger replied:-
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hyperbola5 months, 1 week ago
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"Jeremy Bowen's quote is indefensible. One only has to read the acclaimed study, 'Bad News from Israel', to understand the difference in the reporting of the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians....
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Pilger then recounted an example of the BBC's institutional bias that systematically suppresses uncomfortably honest perspectives:
"A few years ago, [Bowen] invited me to take part in a BBC special about war correspondents, and we spent an enjoyable hour or so 'in conversation'. Although it was clear that tales of derring-do would have been preferred, I raised the unwelcome subject that the BBC was an extension and voice of the established order in Britain and its reporting on the Middle East and elsewhere reflected the prevailing wisdom -- with honourable exceptions from time to time. My contribution was cut entirely from the programme. I emailed Bowen and sometime later received an unsatisafactory response that there wasn't 'time or space' in the film -- something unsurprising like that. Censorship by omission is standard, if undeclared practice."
....As a result of this undeclared media censorship, public understanding of the Middle East remains limited; and challenges to Western support of brutal Israeli policy are easily diffused and minimised. Sadly, the net effect is that the BBC provides cover for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. This is a tragedy that stretches back to the 'Nakba': the 'catastrophe' of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which was the prerequisite for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Now seems as good a time as any to exert pressure on this publicly-funded institution to report painful truths.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17227
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Natureboy5 months, 1 week ago
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Not the first time. Welcome to Wag the Dog II: Mousavi's big adventure.
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http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_con...
If you read the comments below the pictures, you will see that Photo #18 in this series was an Ahmedinejad rally mislabeled as a Mousavi rally.
You will also see, above that pic, the photo the BBC used- except that it is correctly captioned.
You will further note a cheap trick of photojournalism - closeups which suggest a large crowd but which actually only show a dozen or two dozen protestors. Was it actually a large demonstration being photographed? Or is it just a cropped photo of a dozen yahoos in a park somewhere? You will likely never know. -
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tadair9195 months, 1 week ago
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still not nearly as embarrassing as the time BBC reported that the Solomon building (World Trade Center 7) fell 23 minutes before it actually did.
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See psychic reporting, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NefExHDu3s -
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ur-land-is-my-land5 months, 1 week ago
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Iranians are well familiar with BBC.
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Photos of Ahmadinejad's campaign have been used by BBC and also by other news agencies as well and claimed to belong to Mousavi campaign. The easiest way to find out which photo belongs to whom, is look at the picture little carefully. If you see SOLID green bands and colors it is definitely Mousavi's, if you see lot of Iranian flag which has three colors of green, white and red it is Ahmadinejad's rally. After Mousavi campaign chose the color of green as its color,
Ahmadinejad campaign announced the color of flag and the flag itslef is their color and that is the reason for lot of flags in Ahmadinejad's rallies.
Western analysts including their propaganda machinery have some knowledge of Iranian culture but they fail to grasp the whole picture, after thirty years of Islamic Republic they are still resorting to old used and abused trickery and scams,
the fabric of Iranian society, be it politic, religion or nationalism is way too complicated and sophisticated to be TRUELY understood by these western analyst.
The only western analyst who comes close to understand Iranians and Islamic republic and the culture and the people is a man named Professor Hamid Alghar, a British man who converted to Islam, a very talented man but don't expect to see him on major news networks since they don't like what they hear. Alghar speaks many languages including Farsi, I have never spoken to him in English , it was always in Farsi.
He has met many first generation Iranian leaders , he had accumulated lot fo documents , interviews and pictures and...to write a book about Imam Khomeini, but his house in Berkeley Ca mysteriously caught on fire and everything was burned. hmmm... -
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Dionys5 months, 1 week ago
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"The BBC has again been caught engaging in mass public deception by using photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies in Iran and claiming they represent anti-government protests "
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That said, the pro-Ahmadinejad rallies are probably government organized or forced upon people. -
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