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BBCWatch Denise Tattersall Editorial & Investigation Team BBC Information Television Centre Wood Lane London W12 7RJ Dear Ms Tattersall, BBC Censors Muslim Responsibility For Violence Unfortunately, you’ve been misinformed about the nature of my protest (your letter dated Sept 6). In 3 or 4 calls on this subject, I was pointing to the fact that the BBCTV news at 10, and all the BBC radio news I listened to, was in the name of political correctness, censuring the fact that the perpetrators of the atrocity were almost certainly Muslim extremists. In the particular case you mentioned, indeed the BBCTV news bulletin came before the Newsnight report. But before and after that, when everyone who wasn’t deaf and blind knew, at the very least, there was almost a 100% chance that the barbarians in Beslan were Muslims, your editors insisted on keeping this from your audience. In one call, I pointed out to the BBC information operator that if BBC editors really were unaware of who was the likely perpetrator, they should read Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s article in Sept 7’s Daily Mail – “Why we Muslims are now viewed as monsters”, and the Sunday Telegraph of Sept 5’s “Innocent religion is now a message of hate”, by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya news. “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists,” al-Rashed said “but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.” Perhaps all your editors and reporters should be made to read “Remember 9/11: Stop sanitizing the killers”, by Michelle Malkin, (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ michellemalkin/mm20040908.shtml) a syndicated columnist in the U.S. She points out that the leftist media in the U.S., just like you in the BBC, is in denial about the nature of the threat the civilised West faces from Muslim extremism. “How many times have you picked up a newspaper and read about terrorist attacks perpetrated not by Muslim terrorists, but by generic "militants" or "guerrillas" or "rebels" or, as Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted the Pakistan Times called them, "activists"?”, says Malkin. This is exactly what you in the BBC are doing. Why do you seek to present the story from Beslan with the most salient fact censured - that this was another example of the apparent inexorable march of Islam-inspired terrorism? As the monopoly provider of news in Britain, you have a responsibility to report the news with truth and balance. You constantly fail in this mission. If you want more evidence of this, click on my website – www.wintonsworld.com – and look at the BBCWatch section. Yours sincerely Neil Winton, September 9, 2004 |