BBC 'Treason' on Iran

[Teddy Bear]

I know the subject title sounds rather extreme. It's one thing to be of the 'left liberal' persuasion in their reporting, quite another to betray one's own country. But I use the term with full consideration of its meaning.

Consider the following article written by Alistair Burnett - editor of 'The World Tonight'. The opening questions are a matter of fact and have been reported extensively in the last few years. The only reason that he didn't question whether Iran has also been supplying arms to Hezbollah, together with Syria, is that this has been in the news fairly recently and is still 'fresh in the mind'.

Reading on you see what he is trying to achieve. He's already preparing what will be the BBC stance in the event that those fighting militant Islam go against Iran. Bear in mind that the Islamic terrorists use this kind of propaganda to justify their attacks on us and further split our society with the aim to bring it down. The BBC is clearly on their side, therefore they are going to increase the amount of deaths we wil suffer in this 'War on Terror'. By every definition - THIS IS TREASON.

I have also included belowa comment I made on this article on the site. Whether or not the BBC wll include it remains to be seen.

Minefield for journalists
Alistair Burnett 2 Feb 07, 03:51 PM

Is Iran supplying advanced weapons to Iraqi insurgents and Shia militia who use them to attack American and British troops? Is Iran getting North Korean help to prepare a nuclear test? Have Iranian weapons experts been helping Hamas in their fight with Fatah in Gaza? These are just some of the allegations that have been made against Iran and reported in various media over the past few weeks.

On the other hand, is the US administration making allegations against Iran and feeding disinformation to journalists in order to prepare public opinion for an attack on Iran?

Forgive the metaphor but reporting the - so far rhetorical - escalation of tension between Washington and Tehran is a minefield for conscientious journalists, especially as we need to remember what happened in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

Then a lot of claims were made by the US and British governments about Iraq's weapons’ capabilities and intentions which were reported widely and could well have helped swing public opinion behind confrontation with Iraq. As we know, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and critics of the war have accused many journalists of being too credulous and not rigorous enough in reporting such claims.

In our editorial meetings we have discussed several times how we should cover the growing tension between the US and Iran - and there are some hard facts such as the US naval build up in the Persian Gulf - but we are aware of the need to be very careful which claims and counter-claims we report, and the need to tell listeners when we don't know things as well as when we do know.

This Wednesday (listen here), we decided to report that the Americans are stepping up pressure on Iran, and ask whether what we have been hearing from officials, former officials, analysts and journalists means the US is preparing the ground for an attack on Iran.

The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, known for his hawkish views, had given an interview to BBC World Service saying the US may need to take - unspecified - action against Iran over its nuclear programme, while the former US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, now more dovish than when he was in office, told the Today programme there are members of the Bush administration who want to take military action against Iran and maybe trying to provoke the Iranians over their role in Iraq to justify that action.

We used extracts from these two interviews to show there is a debate in Washington over its policy towards Iran, and then we asked the respected analyst, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whether the US is preparing an attack. He said on balance he didn't think so because the groups advocating such action do not have enough influence on the White House. He also said Iran has a limited presence inside Iraq and that the US knows Tehran is still years away from developing nuclear weapons.

What we try our best to avoid when doing this kind of story is reporting claims we can not substantiate, whether made by journalists, officials or politicians, about what the US and Iran are up to without first assessing their credibility and then making clear that they are just that - claims - and explaining the political context within which the claims are being made so that listeners can make up their own minds.


Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
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Regarding your opening paragraph, if the BBC was any kind of bona-fide news agency instead of a mouthpiece for extremist Islam, you would know the answer to that. The majority of people who have been keeping up with events in this part of the world know they have.
This kind of disingenuous method of already preparing the BBC stance to any attempt to overthrow your real masters is so transparent you should be ashamed of yourselves, even for the hacks that you are.

Maybe we should be giving the license fee to Al-Jazeera, they are certainly more balanced and objective than you.