Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.
For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict.
The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.
..but i am sure that the leftist agenda will be hard at work to promote awareness of war-inflicted brain injuries, of which pvt.Beharry is unfortunately afflicted with…
Well, I’m going to take the optimistic view and say that’s the BBC for you, and argue that maybe they’re about as representative of Britain as the CBC is of Canada. Not that there isn’t a problem here, of course: isn’t it interesting that lefty journalists usually find sympathetic homes in state owned broadcasters with assured sources of money?
Nah, no leftist bias and agenda at the Beeb…
And if we don’t think that such leftist censorship doesn’t happen as a matter of course at the CBC in Canada and NBC, CBS, et. al. in the US, we’d be incredibly naive.
Ditto for much of North America’s dead tree MSM.
I think it fair and accurate to call it lying-by-omission.
For a good analysis of the way the leftist liberal media and masses ‘think’ check out rightcrazy.com Brain Nudge
They ‘aim to please’ at the expense of freedom, morals and truth.
Sure, the BBC and CBC have been infested with Leftist propagandists.
When they skew the facts to manipulate opinion we get half truths through convoluted spin and confusion reigns.
Their headlines blare, the masses run with them. Busy people don’t have time to probe further for truth. Herein lies the crux of the problem.
When truth can’t be told or history gets rewritten so as not to offend, all is lost. It’s shameful, but then, there is no shame anymore either.
60% think Iraq war was wrong, poll shows
Tuesday March 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
More than half the British population would not trust the government again if it said war was needed to protect national security, a poll published today revealed.
The survey (pdf) – commissioned by the BBC – found that nearly 60% believed the US and UK were not right to invade Iraq exactly four years ago. It showed that 29% thought the conflict was justified.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2038378,00.html
A third of people in the UK think going to war in Iraq was justified, but six in 10 believe it was a mistake, a BBC survey suggests.
When the war began four years ago, two-thirds of Britons backed involvement, but the poll shows a marked decrease in support.
Some 29% of 1,000 people polled by ICM across the UK said taking action against Iraq in 2003 was right.
…
The survey also found that more than half of people questioned said they would distrust the British government if it said military action were needed elsewhere because a country posed a threat to national security.
While 51% said they would not trust the government in such circumstances, 32% said they would.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6467147.stm
WASHINGTON (CNN) — When American troops crossed into Iraq in 2003, nearly three out of every four Americans backed President Bush’s decision to use military force to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Four years and more than 3,200 U.S. deaths later, less than one-third of Americans support the war, according to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/19/iraq.support/index.html
And yet, their Channel 4 is able to both produce and acually broadcast that excellent takedown of the climate change fraud.
The Beeb seems to be suffering from some sort of institutional schizophrenia (and I say that knowing that I may alienate the institutional schizophrenic community ….)
Why are journalists allowed to live?
I wonder if it would be possible to trace this decision back to an individual. Somebody made a decision, not “the BBC.”
Accountability for decisions/behaviour is at the root of many of these “issues.”
BillyHW – I have a couple of journalist friends who are quite responsible. Unfortunately being a Conservative journalist on the Hill is still not cool. Don’t tarnish everyone in the profession. They all have to make a wage. It is the manager/producer/editor who needs to have a strip torn off them.
I wonder how Britons are feeling about the Falkland Islands being taken over by Argentina again? Perhaps the Empire is well and truly dead. Are the British people becoming isolationist? (Scotland looking to separate, home rule in Northern Ireland)….
You’ve got it, Liz. There appears to be no shame anymore. The “progressives” decided that this notion just isn’t nice. And we can’t have that, can we?
The problem is, without a sense of shame, people do the “unnicest” things imaginable, with both personal and societal impunity. Before you know it, things are looking pretty grim: despite more Behaviour Codes and Anti-Bullying posters in the halls than I care to mention, immature barbarians are overrunning our public schools with ease: like the BBC appeasers, administration doesn’t have the stomach to upset the inadequate to downright nasty and subversive, in a word IRRESPONSIBLE, parents of these miscreants who are wreaking serious havoc. Teachers’–let’s add police, politicians’, judges’ and prison guards’–hands are tied: we’re actively discouraged from being anything but “nice”: almost our entire repertoire of effective disciplinary techniques has been removed. (As the armed-to-the-teeth enemy charges over the hill, it’s like being required to abandon one’s own mode of travel and weapons. Not a good idea. But that’s where we are.)
Throw the weasel MSM into this toxic mix and it’s deadly.
It’s occurred to me that the other side of the shame coin is pride, as in ” a feeling of elation or satisfaction at achievements or qualities. . . that do one credit”, Canadian Oxford Dictionary. When we abandon societal shame, we effectively abandon pride as well. I’ve seen it. Excellence is generally eschewed, even actively discouraged by those who’ve jettisoned the notion of shame. Of course, because shameful things never really stop happening or being shameful–that’s the TRUTH!– all kinds of props have to be set in place to disguise the obvious. The Left’s allegiance to such magic thinking and the subsequent harm are, well, shameful.
My heart swelled to read of Johnson Beharry: now there’s a man of charater and true grit to be proud of! His story should most definitely be told. Shame–whoops!–on the BBC. Too many pampered and moribund citizens need to be roused from their stupor. What this brave man did might just do it for some. I truly hope that another broacaster picks up the option. Then I hope the show does so well that the BBC is sorry it backed out. Cowards and turncoats! (The CBC is no better.)
Speaking of excellence, how about “charaCter” and “broaDcaster”?!
Here is an article by Victor Hanson from a couple of years ago which is kind of characterizing people’s instincts and the herd mentality (especially now with all this 24/7 news crap going on all the time – and people just lining up online and elsewhere to have their views reinforced – which seem to change every 6 months).
Hanson quotes Al Davis (owner of the Oakland Raiders – my favourite NFL team – after the Bills) who famously said, “Just win, baby!”.
If this surge works over the next 6 months – they’ll be lining up to hear Johnson Beharry’s story – and the polls will all magically change.
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson052804B.html
Great posts, lookout and Liz.
It comes down to personal responsibility and accountability, as Geoff also points out. When everyone’s too busy to check out the accuracy of what’s reported by the BEEB, the CBC, etc., truth is trumped and traded for “nice,” no-account news. When so many are so stressed by day-to-day survival (a peril of modern life: ain’t it great?) they don’t want to hear about wars and they certainly don’t want to hear heroic stories about the war they hate.
So, by draining our homes of stay-at-home parents en masse (who, generally, were more likely to have the time to check things out for accuracy)we’ve ensured a society that’s in a tizzy, all of the time. The BEEB, the CBC, and all of the other major media outlets are having a hay day propogating myths and propaganda, and too many in our society are too preoccupied to be any the wiser.
They like news lite and they particularly like killing the messanger of any news that doesn’t line up with their worldview, which is either “nice” or Gore/Suzuki-packaged.
This is not the Good News of Easter. It’s news of an ever more fallen world and an eventual Apocalypse.
hospitals should be the number 1 priority shut em down and give said funds to hospitals.
…speaking of the BBC, did anyone notice Shaw is moving the BBC to lower channels?
Guess we’re not getting enough ‘balanced’ reporting from the CBC, Al Jez, and Communist China.
“Why Not Pull The Plug And Pipe In Al Jazeera?”
The natural extention of that posit Kate, is: ” Because there is no need for direct Islamo fascist propaganda when we get it by proxy on CBC, BBC and CNN”!
batb’s word “Apocalypse” is definitely not too strong to describe where we’re headed if things keep careening down the slippery slope of moral relativism the West has embraced over the last century. That’s our collapse from the inside. Add to that the Armageddon being prepared for us by our external enemies and the picture’s not rosy–definitely not nice.
When will we wake up?
The unthinking perception by the magic thinkers I know is that things just can’t go on getting worse. For sure–hey, presto!–bad things will get better just because they should. (But then they turn their backs on the estimable Johnson Beharrys: too violent, my dear! We like nice, soft, “green” solutions to things.) Conservatives–as in conservatives–don’t generally think that way. We understand the inherent flaws in human nature and know that it takes will and grit, even unpleasantness–sometimes really unpleasant, as in fighting back–to restore lost virtue, either personal or societal.
Kyrie eleison. (Lord, have mercy.)
The war in Iraq has become a gigantic Mexican stand-off with the Sunni, Shia and the western forces all pointing guns at each other in no particular order.
We would do well to pull out and let the other two have a good go at each other. Then move back in and kill off the winners. oops did I say “kill” how terribly insensitive of me. I should have said buy off the winners or something like that.
Seriously though, as things are right now, there can be no win or no settlement. There can only be more humiliation and frustration in the west. We have lost this war already.
The terrorist have beaten us psychologically and that is all that matters. We are not real threat to them. They will continue to send in wave after wave of martyrs as long as it takes for us to psychically get out of their countries. They are having children faster than we can kill them and we are not having children nor are we killing them fast enough. Do the math.
It will be up to Israel to do the big number on them and they will when their backs are to the wall. Iran is pushing them in that direction every day.
The other point, is we should all consider canceling our cable TV until we can get what we want from it and not the bundles the CRTC wants them to flog upon us. Watching the CBC, CTV, BBC, CNN is rally bad for your mental health.
Yanni, thoughtful post. Thanks.
And, yes, CBC and the other MSM surrender monkeys are most definitely bad for one’s health. So, for Lent, many years ago, I gave up CBC TV: never went back. No regrets.
lookout’s comment is too-true: “The unthinking perception by the magic thinkers I know is that things just can’t go on getting worse. For sure–hey, presto!–bad things will get better just because they should…Conservatives–as in conservatives–don’t generally think that way. We understand the inherent flaws in human nature and know that it takes will and grit, even unpleasantness–sometimes really unpleasant, as in fighting back–to restore lost virtue, either personal or societal.”
This dovetails nicely with an estimable quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson over at Kathy Shaidle’s blog:
“There is a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority of fact.”
Amen to that.
EVERY country has an army…
…..theirs or SOMEONE ELSES!
-Churchill
“We haven’t got all that many viewers in the first place, so we can’t really afford to offend our core viewership of lefty loons.”
I am reminded again of the fall of the Roman empire. Historians have written that the barbarians didn’t really defeat Rome, but that she had defeated herself by having largely lost those ideals which had made her great in the first place and through losing the will to defend herself. Rome was already lost before the barbarians knocked on her gates. There are too many parallels to be drawn in these 2 situations not to pay attention.
a little antiamerican pap from the other public broadcaster cbcpravda
http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/murray/20070409.html
ps its all GWBs fault.
Looks like the English or British public servants are so inbred, their brain is beginnig to degenerate something serious. It just may be, they still have some lead plumbing still in use.
cal2,
Whoa! The CBC is mostly full of shit, but the article you linked to is pretty damned accurate.
Whether through indifference, design or lack of adequate resources, the failure of U.S. forces to impose order during the first few days of the occupation was the seed of all their subsequent troubles. They didn’t behave like victors, and allowed the country to slide into anarchy.
Post WWII, an admittedly more thoroughly defeated, but infinitely more angry population in Germany was kept in check with an iron fist and, within weeks, the country was relatively peaceful.
For the record, Channel 4 is not part of the BBC.
Why anyone watches or listens to public TV/Radio is beyond me.
NUKE THE CBC