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15 July 2005

BBC, Quality, The Decreasing Lack Thereof

From BBC News and in relation to Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant from Leeds and the alleged 'bus bomber':
"He was a good man, quiet," said one parent, speaking outside the school.

"When I told my daughter she said 'no, he can't do something like that.

"I had to go and buy the paper and show her."
What utter nonsense!

The incredibly dangerous implication of, "I had to go and buy the paper and show her", is that the paper might have contained some semblance of truth in it over the last 8 days and that we should all be enlightening our loved ones by jolly well going out, buying a paper, and showing everyone just how the paper says things are.

To assume that the papers have been printing anything with any semblance of truth in them with regard to the events of 7/7 is beyond ridiculous and provably so. Just spend a few minutes reading this blog and see if you don't agree.

It's not just the 'news' papers that are guilty of this mass-deception of the public either. The same is true of almost every single news report on television, on radio, in magazines, on web sites and on just about every blog that has devoted most of its time to regurgitating the same bullshit myths that are inciting fear and racial hatred all around the UK while doing nothing to explain the tragic events of July 7.

All of this incitement to fear and racial hatred (technically illegal) by the mass media is occurring on the basis of evidence of terrorists so overwhelmingly convincing that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has to retract a statement containing the word 'bombers' immediately that he issues it.

What are we allowing to happen here?

Is opinion, speculation and rumour the function of our national and international news media?

Could it perhaps be that the news media should be doing something a little more constructive like investigating all the anomalies in all the unsubstantiated stories they are recycling, and which always seem to come from un-named 'police sources' or equally anonymous 'security experts'?

Maybe the media should be the ones investigating why the Number 30 bus that exploded had been diverted at the last minute, and one and half hours after disaster on the Underground, from its normal route along Euston Road to end up in Tavistock Square right in front of Fortress GB who now appear to have been part of Peter Power's 1,000 man security rehearsal operation in Central London?

Maybe the media should perhaps even mention that there are some huge anomalies in the story of 7/7 that are hitherto unexplained coherently anywhere other than here?

If the media isn't undertaking useful investigative journalism and asking questions such as this about issues as important as these, The Antagonist would like to suggest that it shuts the fuck up until such time as it has any discernible facts to report. And, no, this doesn't mean that the media should go quiet until it can cobble together a coherent story which doesn't fall apart at the slightest bit of questioning.

This way we can all turn our televisions and radios off, save a whole bundle of increasingly precious energy, and go about getting on with our lives as best we can until such time as there is anything vaguely useful to be learnt from doing otherwise.

For the time that the media isn't reporting facts that aid the enlightenment and understanding of all, we have to ask ourselves quite why they might be trying to confuse us so hysterically with stories that are nothing more than mindless speculation, lies and propaganda.

The Antagonist believes that a news media which serves these misguided purposes is not a news media that serves its viewing, listening and reading public any longer, and that such a media either needs to reform itself radically and start dealing in the business of facts, or we all are forced to assign the same value to the content that we view as the media does to the the content that it produces. Zero.

If anyone's got a problem with this, go and explain quite how you arrived at your errant notions and points of view to Sir Ian Blair who, at the time of writing, didn't want to use the word 'bombers' in relation to what happened on July 7.

2 comments:

Herge Smith said...

I agree.

We are currently being led to believe that on one hand, the police claim it may take months to come to a resolute conclusion as to the events of the 7th July, on the other had with a matter of hours and then days all 4 suspects are named - always with their religion/ ethinic orgin included to make it easier to feel that we are under attack from an outside source (British born Muslin, Jamacain born Britian). And this is now an established fact based on how many times it's been repeated by all news sources.

I have had many arguements with friends over the last couple of days for the having the audacity to suggest there may be more to this than just ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS ATTACK BRITAIN.

I have already alerted you to my horror at the standard of reporting on the BBC in the following days of the 7th July, this was only exacerbated by television news which not only repeated IN FULL the 2 minute 'shut up and don't ask questions' but then spent 20 minutes repeating so-called facts without ever digging any deeper than - 'we must pull together'.

I'm finding this more and more horrifying on a daily basis.

As for the 2 minute silence which was observed around the world, do you think there was a 2 minute silence in Baghdad for the poor British Victims?

The Antagonist said...

Herge - thanks for your comments. All I can suggest in relation to your friends is that you attempt the same approach as this blog and stick to the precious few available facts and qualified sources, and use the available eye-witness accounts, photographs and footage to establish what version of events this evidence supports.

Fourteen days on and today is a perfect example of why this is important.

No sooner does the memorial service in the gardens of the British Medical Association in Tavistock Square draw to a close and London is on heightened alert and shutdown as the media circus works itself into a frenzy again.

After a few hours of trains and buses in London coming to a halt with stations, buses and the city being cordoned off, we still know nothing other than the fact that trains and buses have come to a halt and that one person might have been hurt in the panic to evacuate everywhere.

What are the giveway clues to this new reign of terror in London? Apparently, the sounds of Champagne corks, 6'2" black men with wires protruding from their jumpers (not that it's just black men that wear personal stereos, or mobile phones, of course), people with rucksacks, people with black rucksacks, people with blue tops, and anyone with a mobile phone.

Now we've got the Australian PM talking to us all about it for some reason.

Does all this defy your sense of reason too?

Rudyard Kipling once started a poem with some very wise words:

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too...
"

And as I write that, Sir Ian Blair has just announced to the world of 21/7, "we have no evidence of any sort of attack at all", and Tony Blair says it's all about scaring and terrifying people. Well said those men.

How long before the story of another high profile false alarm fills the news media?