BBC criticised for branding thugs as 'protesters'

[Teddy Bear]

No doubt everybody will have their views by now on those committing the looting and violence in London and elsewhere over the last days. Has anybody seriously considered them as 'protesters'?

Anyone who hasn't seen pictures of what they're doing, just look a these as an example.

I find it hard to believe that anybody in their right mind considering the actions of these foul thugs could, yet this is precisely what the BBC have done.

Some have attributed this to the BBC's idea of political correctness, but I see something far more sinister. By justifying the actions of these violent looters under the banner of 'protests' it enables the BBC to develop further the cause for their protests being the actions of the present government in relation to the cuts they have imposed.

In other words they will insidiously use any news to try and skew it to achieve their biased agenda, no matter how ridiculous is their premise.

London riots: BBC criticised for branding thugs as 'protesters'
The BBC was criticised for its political correctness last night after continually referring to the yobs rioting across London as “protesters”.

By Tom Whitehead, and Andrew Hough

Two days after a peaceful protest over the death of suspected gangster Mark Duggan in Tottenham ended, the corporation was still using the term to describe violent looters.
That was despite the fact that hundreds of youths, with no connection to events in Tottenham, had since run riot across the capital.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, and police have all condemned the youths as “criminals” whose behaviour is “utterly appalling”. Yet senior BBC presenters and reporters on the ground yesterday continued to describe those behind the violence as “protesters”.

The move sparked a wave of anger from members of the public on Twitter.
Duncan Barkes wrote on the micro-blogging website: “Hello BBC. They are not protesters, are they? Rioters better description. I mean, what’s the cause for the protest?”

Dee Modha said: “This hackney BBC reporter needs to stop calling them protesters. Thugs, hooligans and opportunists are better words.”

Jo Suherman added: “Wish the BBC would stop referring to rioters as 'protesters’. For BBC protest synonymous with violence and looting.” User Soneni Nkomo accused the corporation of “political correctness”, while a user called Craig added: “The BBC are still calling these thugs protesters! The liberal elite cannot see that it’s pure criminality.”

The BBC was criticised in 2005 when it emerged that an edict was sent around to staff in the wake of the 7/7 terror attacks ordering them not to use the word “terrorist”. The guidelines on language said “the word 'terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding”. The memo was sent within hours of the atrocities, which left 52 innocent people dead, by Helen Boaden, the head of news.

A spokesman for the corporation insisted last night that no guidance had been issued over what language should be used for coverage of the London riots. He said terms such as “riot” and “rioters” were also used.

[Teddy Bear]

Within a few minutes of writing the above, unsurprisingly I see I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Could the BBC please stop calling the rioters 'protesters'?
By Cristina Odone Politics Last updated: August 8th, 2011

A protester is a rebel with a cause. These youths in hoodies and men in bandanas are not fighting for a principle, they’re trashing neighbourhoods for a plasma telly and a pair of new trainers.

Masked gangs are looting department stores, not waving placards. One woman described being on a bus that was set upon by angry rioters; someone else talked about Turkish men lining the street of their neighbourhood to protect their homes from looters: neither eyewitness seems to be describing a protest.

To elevate the gangs’ inarticulate resentment to “protest” is not only a mistake, it is the creation of a dangerous urban myth. That myth sows doubts about police, fear of anyone young and black, and loathing of the lawless elements by fearful residents.

Broadcasters from the BBC to Bloomberg can’t decide whether they want to attribute the mob’s motives to anger against the Coalition’s cuts or fury at the police killing of a father of four in Tottenham. But the testimonials tell a different story: violent gangs coming together in an orchestrated fashion to confront “the feds” and seize an opportunity to plunder.

Earlier I wrote about the abuse of the word “community”. But the word “protest” is a misnomer too. Let’s get some reporting of facts, not urban myths.

[thehighlandrebel]

Never mind. Camerons back to give the hoodies a hug.

I see the b-bbc is going overboard bringing on idiots to tell us it's everyone else's fault except the criminals.
There is no excuse for that behaviour and our politicians should cut the crap about 'talking' and 'dialogue' and take some decisive actions.

I was thinking about the poor victims tonight, those who lost their homes and their businesses and are probabally destined to live in fear for the rest of their lives and wondering what they think of this shite about 'understanding' etc.

I grew up in a poor family. I went to bed hungry. I went to school hungry.
But I never ever even considered turning to violence against other human beings as a 'protest' but instead knuckled down at school and did something with my life.

The beasts of the jungle and other animals would never gather in groups and trash their own habitats which makes these morons a lower species than wild animals and should be treated as such.

You hug away all you like Mr. Cameron but please start doing something for the law abiding citizens in this country for a change.

[Teddy Bear]

I'll make a prediction now regarding BBC use of these looters to further their own agenda. If Cameron does approve the police to use plastic bullets and water cannon, and take a more heavy handed approach, as he would be absolutely right to do, what's the bet the BBC will ludicrously compare our government to that of Syria?

See if I'm right.

[Teddy Bear]

This is what the BBC call 'balance'.
After being heavily criticised for calling these criminals 'protesters', so as to better use that foul behaviour to further the BBC agenda by blaming it on Conservative policies, they take an equally ridiculous step in now referring to them as English rioters - so as not to offend Scots, Irish, or Welsh.

I doubt any intelligent Scot, Irish or Welsh were offended when talking about the riots across Britain, probably thankful that it hadn't extended further afield, although there may well be Scots, Irish and Welsh rioters among those in England. But, to show just how disingenuous it is of the BBC to do this, one only has to consider that every time there is a negative story about Muslims or Pakistanis in Britain they are referred to as 'Asians'. Funny how the BBC are unconcerned about offending the many other religions or countries that comprise Asia. Yet when the story might show Muslims in a more positive light or as a victim of crime, even if it's not relevant, they make a point to put this in.

A BBC article yesterday highlighted this perfectly. It concerned 3 men who were trying to protect their property from rioters and were seemingly purposefully hit by a car and killed.
The BBC made sure to include 'All three were from the Asian Muslim community,'


What we are seeing by this hooliganism, violence, and theft is the result of the left wing thinking that has brought this country to the state where one can believe it will get a lot worse.

A terrific article by Melanie Phillips in today's Mail lays this out perfectly. I include beneath it my comment left there. Consider how much cause for the damage Melanie describes does the BBC champion with their bias.

Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value

By Melanie Phillips

Last updated at 8:33 AM on 11th August 2011

So now the chickens have well and truly come home terrifyingly to roost. The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.

The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

Now we can see what they have brought about in the unprecedented and horrific scenes of mob violence, with homes and businesses going up in flames, and epidemic looting.

Clearly, there is some as yet unidentified direction and co-ordination behind the anarchy. But what is so notable and distressing is that, after the first day when adults were clearly involved, this mayhem has been carried out in the main by teenagers and children, some as young as eight.

The idea that they should not steal other people’s property, or beat up and rob passers-by, appears to be as weird and outlandish to them as the suggestion that they should fly to the moon.

These youths feel absolutely entitled to go ‘on the rob’ and steal whatever they want. Indeed, they are incredulous that anyone should suggest they might pass up such an opportunity.

What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse. What we have been experiencing is a complete breakdown of civilised behaviour among children and young people straight out of William Golding’s seminal novel about childhood savagery, Lord Of The Flies.

There has been much bewildered talk about ‘feral’ children, and desperate calls upon their parents to keep them in at night and to ask them about any stolen goods they are bringing home.

As if there were responsible parents in such homes! We are not merely up against feral children, but feral parents.

Of course these parents know their children are out on the streets. Of course they see them staggering back with what they have looted. But either they are too drunk or drugged or otherwise out of it to care, or else they are helping themselves to the proceeds, too.

As David Cameron observed yesterday, there are clearly pockets of society that are not just broken, but sick.

The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family.

For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.

Of course there are many lone parents who do a tremendous job. But we’re talking here about widespread social collapse. And there are whole areas of Britain, white as well as black, where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon.

In such areas, successive generations are being brought up only by mothers, through whose houses pass transitory males by whom these women have yet more children — and who inevitably repeat the pattern of lone and dysfunctional parenting.

The result is fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them. Such children inhabit what is effectively a different world from the rest of society. It’s a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos.

A world where a child responds to the slightest setback or disagreement by resorting to violence. A world where the parent is unwilling or incapable of providing the loving and disciplined framework that a child needs in order to thrive.

Yet instead of lone parenthood being regarded as a tragedy for individuals, and a catastrophe for society, it has been redefined as a ‘right’.

When Labour came to power in 1997, it set about systematically destroying not just the traditional family but the very idea that married parents were better for children than any other arrangement.

Instead, it introduced the sexual free-for-all of ‘lifestyle choice’; claimed that the idea of the male breadwinner was a sexist anachronism; and told girls that they could, and should, go it alone as mothers.

This was the outcome of the shattering defeat of Tony Blair, in the two years or so after he came to power, at the hands of the ultra-feminists and apostles of non-judgmentalism in his Cabinet and party who were determined, above all, to destroy the traditional nuclear family.

Blair stood virtually alone against them, and lost.

One of these ultra-feminist wreckers was Harriet Harman. The other night, she was on TV preposterously suggesting that cuts in educational allowances or youth workers had something to do with young people torching and looting shops, robbing and leaving people for dead in the streets.

But Harman was one of the principal forces in the Labour government behind the promotion of lone parenthood and the marginalisation of fathers. If anyone should be blamed for bringing about the conditions which have led to these appalling scenes in our cities, it is surely Ms Harman.

And this breaking of the family was further condoned, rewarded and encouraged by the Welfare State, which conceives of need solely in terms of absence of money, and which accordingly subsidises lone parenthood and the destructive behaviour that fatherlessness brings in its train.

Welfare dependency further created the entitlement culture that the looters so egregiously display. It taught them that the world owed them a living. It taught them that their actions had no consequences. And it taught them that the world revolved around themselves.

The result of this toxic combination of welfare and non-judgmentalism was an explosion of elective lone parenthood and dysfunctional behaviour transmitted down through the generations at the very bottom of the social heap — creating, in effect, a class apart.

Once, children would have been rescued from their disadvantaged backgrounds by schools which gave them not just an education but structure and purpose to their lives.

But the liberal intelligentsia destroyed that escape route, too. For its onslaught upon marriage — the bedrock institution of society — with a tax system that penalises married couples with a wife who doesn’t work, was replicated by an onslaught upon the understanding and very identity of that society. Instead of transmitting knowledge to children, teaching was deemed to be an attack upon a child’s autonomy and self-esteem.

Thus it was that teachers adopted the ‘child-centred’ approach, which expected children not only to learn for themselves but also to decide for themselves about behaviour such as sexual morality or drug-taking.

The outcome was that children were left illiterate and innumerate and unable to think. Abandoned to wander through the world without any guidance, they predictably ended up without any moral compass.

All of this was compounded still further by the disaster of multiculturalism — the doctrine which held that no culture could be considered superior to any other because that was ‘racist’.

That meant children were no longer taught about the nation in which they lived, and about its culture. So not only were they left in ignorance of their own society, but any attachment to a shared and over-arching culture was deliberately shattered.

Instead of forging social bonds, multiculturalism dissolved them — and introduced instead a primitive war of all against all, in which the strongest groups would destroy the weak.

Closely related to this was ‘victim culture’, in which all minority groups were regarded as victims of the majority. So any bad behaviour by them was excused and blamed on the majority.

In similar vein, all criminal wrongdoing was excused on the basis that the criminal couldn’t help himself, as he was the victim of circumstances such as poverty, unemployment, or as yet illusory cuts in public spending. The human rights of the criminal became seen as more important than the safety and security of his victims. Punishment became a dirty word. So the entire criminal justice system turned into a sick joke, with young hoodlums walking off with community sentences or Asbos which they held in total contempt.

Mr Cameron has declared that all those convicted of violent disorder in these riots will go to prison.

Really? Isn’t it more likely that they will end up on some community penalty which will see them taken on trips to Alton Towers to make up for their disadvantaged upbringing? This is the normal response of our sentimentalised and addle-brained criminal justice officials.

In short, what we have seen unfolding before our horrified gaze over the past four days in Britain is the true legacy of the Labour years.

The social and moral breakdown behind the riots was deliberately willed upon Britain by Left-wing politicians and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism.

These are the people who — against the evidence of a mountain of empirical research — hurl execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is, in general, a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women); who promote drug liberalisation, oppose selective education (while paying for private tutors for their own children) and call those who oppose unlimited immigration and multiculturalism ‘racists’.

And the real victims of these people ‘who know best’ are always those at the bottom of the social heap, who possess neither the money nor the social or intellectual resources to cushion them against the most catastrophic effects of such nonsense.

Britain was once an ordered society that was the envy of the world — the most civilised, the most gentle and law-abiding.

Can Broken Britain be put together again? David Cameron is commendably talking tough: but will he have the stomach for tough action?

Will he, for example, remove the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage? Will he dismantle the concept of entitlement from the Welfare State? Will he vigorously enforce the drug laws? Will he end the kid-glove treatment of ‘victim groups’, and hold them to account for their behaviour in exactly the same way as everyone else?

Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality.

Anyone heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury about the riots? Anyone care to guess what he will eventually say about them? Quite.

When church leaders stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilisation, and when our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilisation rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then — and only then — will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem.

Until then, within the smouldering embers of our smashed and burned-out cities, we can only look upon the ruins of the Britain we have so dearly loved; the Britain that once led the world towards civilisation, but is now so tragically leading the way out.

And my comment

Brilliant Melanie - as usual
The dynamics running this country is a left-wing parasitical agenda led insidiously by the BBC. Because they lack real vision, or the ability to string two threads of cause and effect together, they try to balance their inadequacy by seeking change for its own sake, just to feel their power.

Much like how somebody suffering from an inferiority complex will adopt a superior manner to make themselves believe that they are anything but inferior. But their inner disharmony will still prevail and lead to dysfunctional relationships.

For this reason the left lack the ability to examine the results of their behaviour and come to the conclusion that they might have made a mistake. Instead they will always put the blame elsewhere. It's no surprise therefore that the society becomes more and more irresponsible, since those who've brought it to this state with their muddled thinking are similarly irresponsible.

I believe it can only get worse.

[Teddy Bear]

Another article from today's Mail, this time by Richard Littlejohn observing among other things how the BBC and some of the other media are using these riots to further their agenda.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The politics of envy was bound to end up in flames

By Richard Littlejohn

Last updated at 9:10 PM on 11th August 2011

Much more of this and I’ll have to go out and loot myself a new television. There have been several times this week I’ve come close to putting my foot through the plasma screen.

Frankly, I don’t know what’s worse: Harriet Harman on Newsnight disgracefully trying to blame the Tory ‘cuts’ for this week’s robfest, or the rolling news channels giving airtime to masked criminals.

Why have producers been prepared to allow young thieves to shelter their identities beneath face masks, sunglasses and hoodies while they complain about the police?

The BBC and Channel 4, in particular, have been anxious to portray these violent thugs and looters as victims. We’ve heard the usual garbage about social exclusion and police hostility to minorities. Every lame excuse has been trotted out, from lack of job opportunities to tuition fees.

As I wrote on Tuesday, there’s no lack of job vacancies, it’s just that they’ve all been filled by hard-working Eastern Europeans attracted here after Labour tore up Britain’s border controls. The kind of hooligan seen throwing petrol bombs at the police and climbing through the front window of Currys to liberate 42 inches of hi-def, surround-sound home entertainment isn’t interested in a law-abiding, nine-to-five existence.

Most of them don’t get up before midday, except on the mornings they have to sign on the dole.

They’d rather live on benefits or the proceeds of gang crime. Yet we are told that if only the Coalition hadn’t slashed spending on youth clubs, they’d all have a more wholesome outlet for their energies and wouldn’t be tempted into crime and disorder. Do me a favour.
Looters carry boxes out of a home cinema shop in central Birmingham

We’re talking about a wolfpack of feral inner-city waifs and strays who spend their time smoking dope, drinking lager and playing Grand Theft Auto on their stolen PlayStations. The soundtrack of their lives comprises wealthy, bling-laden rappers, surrounded by near-naked booty, singing about smacking bitches and killing cops.
'In most cases, their mothers are stuck in front of daytime television or are out on the game to feed their drugs habit.'

Are we seriously being asked to believe that they are going to turn their backs on the glamorous gangsta lifestyle in exchange for a little light table tennis? Yeah, right.

There was a hand-wringing report on the local news in London which involved a social worker taking a BBC reporter on a tour of derelict playgrounds and boarded-up five-a-side football pitches.

The reason they’ve been abandoned is not because of the ‘savage cuts’, as the report would have had you believe, but because they have been firebombed, vandalised and colonised by drugs dealers.

Plenty of the rioters on the streets this week are of school age. Few of them even bother going to school, so they’re hardly going to sign up for a youth club. The idea that they’re protesting about tuition fees is beyond preposterous.

Up went the cry: where are the parents? Don’t be so naive. The babyfathers are long gone, if they ever hung around in the first place. In most cases, their mothers are stuck in front of daytime television or are out on the game to feed their drugs habit.

Some of the parents were out looting alongside their offspring.

The realisation is finally dawning in some quarters that we’re now into the third, or even fourth generation of inner-city underclass.

There are plenty of decent mums on some of these estates, but they are fighting a daily losing battle against the gang culture.

As Max Hastings and Melanie Phillips have argued eloquently on these pages, this is the inevitable outcome of 30 years of Left-wing social experimentation, aimed deliberately at destroying the social fabric of our country.
'Some of the parents were out looting alongside their offspring'

Many of those politicians attacking the Met’s sluggish response to the riots have spent their careers undermining and emasculating the police. They have created the conditions for this anarchy.

The police are hamstrung by legislation and terrified of being accused of racism. So it’s hardly surprising that instead of clubbing these looters like baby seals, which is what they deserved, they initially stood back and watched while shops were plundered and homes burned down.

Just wait for the witch hunt against those Manchester officers caught on camera battering a troublemaker to the ground, even though the law-abiding citizens of Manchester and beyond were cheering to the rafters.

The notion that all this was provoked by deprivation is nonsense. Many of those who have already appeared in court are opportunist thieves who hold down proper jobs. Even the unemployed are well-fed, designer-clad and shod, and equipped with the latest digital technology.

One of the most ridiculous TV clips was a young, blinged-up black man telling London mayor Boris Johnson that ‘de yoof’ had to riot because they ‘had no food in dem bellies’. It’s a wonder McDonald’s in Brixton is still in business.

Boris hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory this week. His Barnum & Bailey circus act is wearing thin. Instead of undermining Call Me Dave over police ‘cuts’, he could have pointed out that Labour closed more than 500 police stations, one for every week it was in office, and passed ridiculous regulations which denuded our streets of a visible law enforcement presence.

Labour’s attempts to make political capital out of the disorder have been little short of outrageous. The majority of the rioters have grown up since 1997. They are Labour’s children.

Ed Miliband may have made a few of the right noises, but he can’t help looking like a teenage rioter whose mum has made him put on a suit for his court appearance.

Harriet Harman and Red Ken have plumbed new depths of cynicism, even by their own shameless standards. And has it occurred to Ed Balls that every time he blames ‘the rich’ for all Britain’s ills, his words are echoed by rioters as justification for torching small businesses?

He may claim he’s having a pop at bankers and non-doms, but on the streets the ‘rich’ are anyone who has achieved something in life, from the owners of the local family furniture store to the proprietors of Patel’s Multimart and Papandreou’s Hair Salon — anyone, in fact, who is perceived to have more than them.

This is where the politics of envy and class hatred end up. In flames.

Parliament was recalled, though goodness knows why. Few of them looked as if they wanted to be there. More passion and anger was generated over phone-hacking.

Cameron handled himself pretty well after recovering from a false start, when he hesitated to interrupt his Tuscan holiday.

Now the Prime Minister has a once-in-a-career chance to seize the initiative, free up the police to tackle crime properly, build more prisons, scrap the Yuman Rites Act, bring in far more radical welfare reform than is currently being proposed, and use the tax and education systems to promote stable two-parent families.

The public mood is behind him and if the Lib Dems throw a hissy fit he could tell them to go to hell and call an election. He’d be up against the BBC and the entire ‘liberal’ establishment, but he’d win.

Sadly, I fear he won’t take this brief opportunity, any more than the courts will hand down exemplary sentences to those rioters who have been apprehended. Predictably, some have already been let off with small fines and conditional discharges.

Probation officers are probably ordering a fleet of coaches to take the ring-leaders to Alton Towers to teach them the error of their ways.

Why not just cut out the middle man and buy them all a nice flat-screen TV, instead.