**
Here's a report that you'll find 00.47.27 into the full 3-hour version of Today on the BBC i-Player (Wednesday 16 September).
**
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter has accused some of Barack Obama’s opponents on healthcare reform of running a “dastardly” racist campaign against him. His specific target was South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson, who yelled ‘You lie!’ at the president during his address to both houses of Congress.
**
Jim Naughtie discussed the significance of Carter’s intervention with the Beeb’s new North America editor, Mark Mardell. Now Mardell's reporting is not without merit (and he's a likable chap) and he does make concessions to balance but still I have reservations. (Surprise, surprise!!)
**
I'll transcribe the bulk of what he said (marking out the bits I think suggest bias) & comment along the way.
**
“What he said is that he thinks an overwhelming proportion of what he calls ‘the intensely demonstrated animosity’ towards President Obama is based on the fact he’s a black man. Obviously President Carter comes from the South. He’s seen this. He’s seen it bubbling up for a long while. And there’s a belief among many white people, he says, not just in the South, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this country, America, and he calls it ‘abominable’."
**
Has Mardell "seen it" too? For himself? Did Mardell not think to ask whether Carter really has "seen it"? Does "it" really exist? If the intense racism of the past has been 'bubbling up' again in the South recently, Mardell should investigate. It would be an interesting story. Until then he should reserve judgement.
**
Moreover, how widespread is this this "belief among many white people...that African-Americans are not qualified to lead...America"? Shocking, if true - but how true is it? How many is "many"?
**
"Now, what’s been happening over the summer, and even more recently in Washington at a big demonstration, is people attacking President Obama with a level of vitriol that I think people have been thrashing around trying to discover what’s behind it."
**
Who are these 'people' who 'have been thrashing around trying to discover what’s behind it'? Does he mean liberals? Or Democrats? Or BBC journalists? A sign of bias if not to label those of whose opinions you approve whilst labeling those of whose opinions you don't approve (as Mark does later when he talks of 'conservatives'.)
**
On a separate point, plenty of 'vitriol' was aimed at George W. Bush without racism being the cause.
**
Mardell's phrase 'thrashing about' is a good one, however, to describe the predicament many of the Left must feel about Obama's fall in popularity. How tempting for them to put it down to racism!
**
"It’s nominally about tax and about health care - and it may for many people but exactly and only about those issues - but, listening to the demonstration at the weekend, people were talking about fighting his tyranny, taking back America from this un-American president. Now it’s perfectly possible there are other reasons about the nature of the debate about the role of the state and governance in America that are behind this level of anger but some people are saying it is plainly about race. Some people think it’s illegitimate for a black person to be a president.”
**
Again, who are these "some people"?
**
Jim Naughtie then asked Mardell about the censuring of Joe Wilson.
**
“This is one of places of the debate where this has bubbled up. Over the weekend we saw people pointing out that he was once a rather junior aide to a segregationist politician and that he was one of the few politicians to vote for the confederate flag to fly over the state congress in his own state. And then one commentator said that what he meant was not “You lie!” but “You lie boy!” and that really brought everything to a head."
**
Which 'commentator' said that? Shouldn't we have been told? If we knew who it was we could judge for ourselves whether the source of this comment - which smacks of 'mind-reading', not to mention 'mud-slinging'! - is one of whom we, the listeners, can either trust or approve of.
**
"Now Mr Wilson hasn’t made any comments about his motivation, beyond saying that he thought the president was telling an untruth and that’s all there was behind it. He hasn’t answered these allegations."
**
I don't know about you but that sounds like all the comment 'about his motivation' that Mr Wilson - if he isn't a racist - needs to make. Why does Mark Mardell assume that more is needed?
**
"But another Democratic member from Georgia, Henry Johnson, has said that if this was allowed to go unpunished then people would soon be riding through the streets in hoods and sheets. Now that shows the sort of level of debate that is going on, the level of fear and anger, and of course the conservatives on the other side are furious, that they regard their opponents of playing the race card. They say it’s a cheap shot and that because it’s the worst insult you can hurl at some one in America in some ways is that they’re a racist and they feel that President Obama’s friends are really just playing dirty tricks on them.”
**
Here Mardell partially redeems himself. Johnson's extreme remark is on a par with the extreme remarks made by some of Obama's opponents and he reports the opposing side's point of view succinctly.
**
Yet note the labeling of the president's healthcare opponents as 'conservatives'. Are they all 'conservatives' in the sense Americans mean when they use the word (and when reporters about America use the word)? Might not some be libertarians? Or centrists?
**
Carter's comments obviously needed reporting & Mark Mardell has certainly done his job in doing that. He has, however, treated them as pearls of wisdom rather than as assertions.
*
*
*
LATER IN THE DAY....
*
The race-card was played again on PM, where Kevin Connelly played a now-familiar clip and then said, "That was Representative Joe Wilson, white, Southern and Republican, shouting 'You lie!' to the president. To most Americans that is a shocking breach of protocol, like heckling the Queen's Speech."
"But to many Americans there was much more to Mr Wilson's two-word tour-de-force. African-Americans saw it as straightforwardly racist."
When I heard that I thought, how many is "many" and who are the "many"? And to the second point I thought, "What, all of them?"
Connolly went on, "Now the former president Jimmy Carter has raised the stakes in the whole debate, telling an interviewer from N.B.C. that most people who oppose Barack Obama do so just because he's black."
&
Here's a report that you'll find 00.47.27 into the full 3-hour version of Today on the BBC i-Player (Wednesday 16 September).
**
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter has accused some of Barack Obama’s opponents on healthcare reform of running a “dastardly” racist campaign against him. His specific target was South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson, who yelled ‘You lie!’ at the president during his address to both houses of Congress.
**
Jim Naughtie discussed the significance of Carter’s intervention with the Beeb’s new North America editor, Mark Mardell. Now Mardell's reporting is not without merit (and he's a likable chap) and he does make concessions to balance but still I have reservations. (Surprise, surprise!!)
**
I'll transcribe the bulk of what he said (marking out the bits I think suggest bias) & comment along the way.
**
“What he said is that he thinks an overwhelming proportion of what he calls ‘the intensely demonstrated animosity’ towards President Obama is based on the fact he’s a black man. Obviously President Carter comes from the South. He’s seen this. He’s seen it bubbling up for a long while. And there’s a belief among many white people, he says, not just in the South, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this country, America, and he calls it ‘abominable’."
**
Has Mardell "seen it" too? For himself? Did Mardell not think to ask whether Carter really has "seen it"? Does "it" really exist? If the intense racism of the past has been 'bubbling up' again in the South recently, Mardell should investigate. It would be an interesting story. Until then he should reserve judgement.
**
Moreover, how widespread is this this "belief among many white people...that African-Americans are not qualified to lead...America"? Shocking, if true - but how true is it? How many is "many"?
**
"Now, what’s been happening over the summer, and even more recently in Washington at a big demonstration, is people attacking President Obama with a level of vitriol that I think people have been thrashing around trying to discover what’s behind it."
**
Who are these 'people' who 'have been thrashing around trying to discover what’s behind it'? Does he mean liberals? Or Democrats? Or BBC journalists? A sign of bias if not to label those of whose opinions you approve whilst labeling those of whose opinions you don't approve (as Mark does later when he talks of 'conservatives'.)
**
On a separate point, plenty of 'vitriol' was aimed at George W. Bush without racism being the cause.
**
Mardell's phrase 'thrashing about' is a good one, however, to describe the predicament many of the Left must feel about Obama's fall in popularity. How tempting for them to put it down to racism!
**
"It’s nominally about tax and about health care - and it may for many people but exactly and only about those issues - but, listening to the demonstration at the weekend, people were talking about fighting his tyranny, taking back America from this un-American president. Now it’s perfectly possible there are other reasons about the nature of the debate about the role of the state and governance in America that are behind this level of anger but some people are saying it is plainly about race. Some people think it’s illegitimate for a black person to be a president.”
**
Again, who are these "some people"?
**
Jim Naughtie then asked Mardell about the censuring of Joe Wilson.
**
“This is one of places of the debate where this has bubbled up. Over the weekend we saw people pointing out that he was once a rather junior aide to a segregationist politician and that he was one of the few politicians to vote for the confederate flag to fly over the state congress in his own state. And then one commentator said that what he meant was not “You lie!” but “You lie boy!” and that really brought everything to a head."
**
Which 'commentator' said that? Shouldn't we have been told? If we knew who it was we could judge for ourselves whether the source of this comment - which smacks of 'mind-reading', not to mention 'mud-slinging'! - is one of whom we, the listeners, can either trust or approve of.
**
"Now Mr Wilson hasn’t made any comments about his motivation, beyond saying that he thought the president was telling an untruth and that’s all there was behind it. He hasn’t answered these allegations."
**
I don't know about you but that sounds like all the comment 'about his motivation' that Mr Wilson - if he isn't a racist - needs to make. Why does Mark Mardell assume that more is needed?
**
"But another Democratic member from Georgia, Henry Johnson, has said that if this was allowed to go unpunished then people would soon be riding through the streets in hoods and sheets. Now that shows the sort of level of debate that is going on, the level of fear and anger, and of course the conservatives on the other side are furious, that they regard their opponents of playing the race card. They say it’s a cheap shot and that because it’s the worst insult you can hurl at some one in America in some ways is that they’re a racist and they feel that President Obama’s friends are really just playing dirty tricks on them.”
**
Here Mardell partially redeems himself. Johnson's extreme remark is on a par with the extreme remarks made by some of Obama's opponents and he reports the opposing side's point of view succinctly.
**
Yet note the labeling of the president's healthcare opponents as 'conservatives'. Are they all 'conservatives' in the sense Americans mean when they use the word (and when reporters about America use the word)? Might not some be libertarians? Or centrists?
**
Carter's comments obviously needed reporting & Mark Mardell has certainly done his job in doing that. He has, however, treated them as pearls of wisdom rather than as assertions.
*
*
*
LATER IN THE DAY....
*
The race-card was played again on PM, where Kevin Connelly played a now-familiar clip and then said, "That was Representative Joe Wilson, white, Southern and Republican, shouting 'You lie!' to the president. To most Americans that is a shocking breach of protocol, like heckling the Queen's Speech."
"But to many Americans there was much more to Mr Wilson's two-word tour-de-force. African-Americans saw it as straightforwardly racist."
When I heard that I thought, how many is "many" and who are the "many"? And to the second point I thought, "What, all of them?"
Connolly went on, "Now the former president Jimmy Carter has raised the stakes in the whole debate, telling an interviewer from N.B.C. that most people who oppose Barack Obama do so just because he's black."
&
(Memo to Gordon Brown: Stress your Scottishness. Then get your spin-doctors to say that anyone who opposes you is a racist English supremacist.)
*
Have the Democrats started trying to shut down the debate and are their media friends following close on? If so, and if Connolly's closing words are anything to go by, the BBC will be joining them:
*
"Expect this angry, bubbling sub-current to rise closer to the surface as next year's mid-term elections loom ever closer."
*
In other words, if the Democrats do badly in 2010 it's the racists wot did it! If they do well of course, the healing hands of the sainted Obama will be seen still to have their magic touch. Either way, it's a win-win for Barack Obama.
Have the Democrats started trying to shut down the debate and are their media friends following close on? If so, and if Connolly's closing words are anything to go by, the BBC will be joining them:
*
"Expect this angry, bubbling sub-current to rise closer to the surface as next year's mid-term elections loom ever closer."
*
In other words, if the Democrats do badly in 2010 it's the racists wot did it! If they do well of course, the healing hands of the sainted Obama will be seen still to have their magic touch. Either way, it's a win-win for Barack Obama.
**
The only talking head in Connolly's piece was Mark Kelly-Tyler, "a black minister from Philadelphia", whose mother told him how to deal with "racially-motivated criticism".
*
**
Gavin Esler on Newsnight was keeping the flag flying for this story: "Jimmy Carter said what many Americans has been thinking." Those "many Americans" again! His introductory piece re-played many of the phrases used by Mardell and Connolly.
**
Unfortunately for the Beeb, he then he interviewed some Americans and the story flew off the rails...!!!
**
Esler interviewed a former Clinton aide, Jennifer Palmiera, who criticised her fellow Democrats for this 'dangerous' playing of the race card and said that the White House didn't accept what Jimmy Carter had said, adding that he was out of touch ("a generational thing"). She said Hillary Clinton would have received similar hostile treatment. The other guest, Armstrong Williams, described by Esler - in a typical case of bias by labeling - as a "conservative broadcaster", didn't believe it either. He jokingly put Carter's comments down to senility. He's black, which shows that Connolly's bold statement that all African-Americans saw Wilson's comments as "straightforwardly racist" was not strictly true!
Jennifer Palmiera's comments were a welcome breath of reasonableness. Inadvertently, she dropped the BBC in it by telling Esler that his introduction had neglected to mention the White House's rejection of President Carter's slurs. It had indeed!
Ritula Shah on the World Tonight (which did mention the White House's rejection of the slurs) talked to only one side of the argument, Paul Waldman of the liberal American Prospect magazine, who (ignoring the point) kept the accusations coming.
In summary, the above-mentioned BBC reporters had, I feel, got overly excited about a story that they so wanted to believe and ran with it beyond reason. Call me a pessimist, but I suspect that the words of the guests on Newsnight will be ignored & the 'Obama's-opponents-are-racists' angle will continue to run and run at the biased BBC.
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