Latest Article
Refusal to Connect the Dots: Analysing Rory Carroll's Portrayal of Latin America
Josh Watts, 11 May 2012
Between 2006 and his recent relocation to the United States, Rory Carroll reported from Caracas, Venezuela as The Guardian's South America correspondent. The selectivity and omissions characteristic of Carroll's work prompted Samuel Grove in Red Pepper to deconstruct in detail the bias of Carroll's reporting on Venezuela, which, he commented, 'borders on the farcical'.
An example can be found in Carroll's February 2012 report of Latin America confronting its 'bloody history' with 'a series of prosecutions and apologies that shine a light on decades-old atrocities'. Speaking specifically of Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala, he notes complicity of foreign powers only by means of 'a US-backed campaign...
Previous Articles
The Unworthy Victims of US Drones Attacks
The Editors, 8 May 2012
Many victims of acts of terrorism or state aggression receive the sympathy they deserve from the international media. In the case of certain aggressors however, the victims are 'unworthy'. On behalf of these victims, our media has little interest in consulting with experts on terrorism or international relations. Nor do they speculate about what the punishment or international response should be...
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Afghanistan: Maintaining the Facade of the 'Mission'
Steve Nutt, 20 April 2012
In light of recent predictable events in Afghanistan, it is worth taking a long view of the NATO invasion and occupation to see if we can garner some sense of what the "mission" actually entails. The usual rhetoric concerns two related central matters: that NATO's presence is intended to prevent Afghanistan from reverting to an incubator for international jihadi groups, and...
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Syria Intervention: Endorsement Masquerading as News in the Guardian
Steve Nutt, 13 April 2012
Media advocacy masquerading as news has a considerable precedent. Whether it be journalists looking for some 'sick action' in Somalia that might 'restore hope [...] in the capacity for governments taking a moral stance', or to provide western audiences with some much needed post-Cold War meaning in the flagrant PR exercise in Bosnia where the Major administration sought to rescue a...
Downplaying the Arms Trade: BBC Complicity
The Editors, 13 April 2012
David Cameron recently 'packed a plane full of business people' (in his own words) on a trip to Indonesia. Reporting on his 'trade tour of East and South East Asia', the news celebrated the securing of a '£326m Airbus Deal'. In a BBC report, it was pointed out that 'representatives from defence firms' accompanied the Prime Minister. Cameron defended...
An Attack on Iran Would Be Illegal. What Does the Media Say?
The Editors, 23 March 2012
The 'option' of a military attack on Iran by Israel, the UK and the US has been increasingly discussed in the UK media since 2011. Government threats of military action have come in various forms, with Israel warning of potential air strikes against Iran in the next few months, and Obama and Cameron stating that 'no options are off the table'. This is...
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Cameron and Blair: The Media Continues to Dutifully Convey Intelligence 'Warnings'
The Editors, 7 March 2012
For the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 'top secret' intelligence was used to create a media storm concerning weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed in 45 minutes. Now, the media reports on a 'top-secret' briefing by MI6 to UK ministers on the 'Iranian Nuclear Threat'. The routine appears familiar: When weapons inspectors fail to produce results, 'intelligence' is employed...
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Eye on the News
BBC Headline Change: Iran Goes from 'not building' to 'undecided on' Nuclear Bomb
25 April 2012, BBC News
The image below shows how the BBC initially ran the headline 'Iran not building nuclear bomb, Israeli military chief says', and then changed the words 'not building' to 'undecided on' for...
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Audio
BBC News Repeat Obama's Iran 'Weapons' Assumption
26 March 2012 on BBC Radio 4 News
On the 7am BBC Radio News, a false assumption is yet again made about the existence of Iranian nuclear weapons:
"He also made appeals to the leaders of North Korea and Iran to give up their own weapons programmes."We might expect that a news organisation that has taken enormous interest in Iran's...Editor's Blog Latest
13 Years of BBC Reporting on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez
Blog: The Editors, 14 February 2012
The headline "Chavez 'would accept' Venezuela election defeat" ran on the BBC website on 14 January 2012, for a story which reported that Hugo Chavez would 'relinquish power if he loses elections due in October.'
When a news organisation deems it news-worthy that a country's president would step down if not re-elected, the natural assumption of a reader might be that the situation had not always been so (and, in this case, that Hugo Chavez had at some early point suggested that he would not leave power in that event).
However, the story was in fact based on a quote that Chavez directed to his opponents as he addressed the National Assembly: 'If any of you win the elections I will be the first to recognise it, and I ask the same of you.' We contacted the BBC complaints office to ask why...
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