Post by Teddy Bear on Apr 27, 2012 22:18:16 GMT
I never heard the programme myself, but am familiar enough with BBC tactics to recognise the tack that Christina Odone identifies below.
The BBC attempts to discredit the abortion limit campaign
By Cristina Odone
What's the most effective way discredit a campaign? Invite its most hysterical and antagonistic champion on the Today programme. As six million breakfasting Britons listen, the loony will lose the plot on air, in a spectacular own goal that ensures their proposals or their measures are lampooned.
This morning's item on abortion tried to do precisely this. Today invited Gregg Cunningham, the American (and male) director of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a pro-life campaign that uses shocking photographs of dismembered foetuses, to defend his actions. Opposing him was a tape-recorded message from Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – a nice British woman who sounded calm and rational. Clearly, the listeners would take umbrage at being bossed about by some moralising Yank, and side with nice Ms Furedi. Things, however, didn't go according to plan.
Despite John Humphrys's grilling – Humphrys brought up a comparison Cunningham had apparently made of abortion with the Holocaust – Cunningham struck a few blows himself. Yes, he was using horrific images to raise awareness of abortion – but abortion is horrific; and William Wilberforce, in his campaign to end slavery, also used disturbing images of slavery to bring home to the British public what British colonials were doing in the West Indies. Cunningham also reminded the listeners that nice Ms Furedi's organisation had in fact been exposed, by the Telegraph, as carrying out illegal terminations in Spain. And, more importantly, that hospitals in this country were saving premature babies at 24 weeks.
Oops, you could almost hear the Today producers freaking out. The 24-week cat was out of the bag! This was precisely what they'd been hoping to quash. Today is all too aware of a very real and serious grassroots movement to change the 24-week abortion limit. This is not a B-list remake of "Vera Drake", starring Nadine Dorries as the hate figure who forces nice women to die at the hands of backstreet abortionists. It is instead a widespread feeling that although abortion should be available in certain circumstances – and with the agreement of two doctors, as specified by the law – the present 24-week limit is truly troubling. We've seen images of a foetus at 24 weeks; and know that babies born prematurely at 24 weeks survive and thrive. Worse, we've learned, thanks to the Telegraph's investigations, that too many doctors and family planning clinics flout the law and carry out abortions on the most banal grounds (the baby is the wrong sex; the mother and father have career plans). Because of both technological progress and the scandal of illegal procedures, many of us would like to review the law.
In so doing we are taking on a "non-negotiable" principle of the liberal agenda: no one, ever, must review the 24-week limit. To do so is to open the way for criminalising abortions. The logic is hugely flawed, but the sentiment is heartfelt – and leads to the manipulative behaviour Today's producers were guilty of this morning. No one wants American-style abortion hysteria here, but nor do we want debate of the 24-week limit to be stifled. Above all we don't want to be manipulated, as listeners or viewers, by a supposedly unbiased BBC.
By Cristina Odone
What's the most effective way discredit a campaign? Invite its most hysterical and antagonistic champion on the Today programme. As six million breakfasting Britons listen, the loony will lose the plot on air, in a spectacular own goal that ensures their proposals or their measures are lampooned.
This morning's item on abortion tried to do precisely this. Today invited Gregg Cunningham, the American (and male) director of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a pro-life campaign that uses shocking photographs of dismembered foetuses, to defend his actions. Opposing him was a tape-recorded message from Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – a nice British woman who sounded calm and rational. Clearly, the listeners would take umbrage at being bossed about by some moralising Yank, and side with nice Ms Furedi. Things, however, didn't go according to plan.
Despite John Humphrys's grilling – Humphrys brought up a comparison Cunningham had apparently made of abortion with the Holocaust – Cunningham struck a few blows himself. Yes, he was using horrific images to raise awareness of abortion – but abortion is horrific; and William Wilberforce, in his campaign to end slavery, also used disturbing images of slavery to bring home to the British public what British colonials were doing in the West Indies. Cunningham also reminded the listeners that nice Ms Furedi's organisation had in fact been exposed, by the Telegraph, as carrying out illegal terminations in Spain. And, more importantly, that hospitals in this country were saving premature babies at 24 weeks.
Oops, you could almost hear the Today producers freaking out. The 24-week cat was out of the bag! This was precisely what they'd been hoping to quash. Today is all too aware of a very real and serious grassroots movement to change the 24-week abortion limit. This is not a B-list remake of "Vera Drake", starring Nadine Dorries as the hate figure who forces nice women to die at the hands of backstreet abortionists. It is instead a widespread feeling that although abortion should be available in certain circumstances – and with the agreement of two doctors, as specified by the law – the present 24-week limit is truly troubling. We've seen images of a foetus at 24 weeks; and know that babies born prematurely at 24 weeks survive and thrive. Worse, we've learned, thanks to the Telegraph's investigations, that too many doctors and family planning clinics flout the law and carry out abortions on the most banal grounds (the baby is the wrong sex; the mother and father have career plans). Because of both technological progress and the scandal of illegal procedures, many of us would like to review the law.
In so doing we are taking on a "non-negotiable" principle of the liberal agenda: no one, ever, must review the 24-week limit. To do so is to open the way for criminalising abortions. The logic is hugely flawed, but the sentiment is heartfelt – and leads to the manipulative behaviour Today's producers were guilty of this morning. No one wants American-style abortion hysteria here, but nor do we want debate of the 24-week limit to be stifled. Above all we don't want to be manipulated, as listeners or viewers, by a supposedly unbiased BBC.