The Wall Street [Paleolithic] Journal

Is Unfit to Criticize the BBC

By M.P. Prabhakaran

             A newspaper which represents primitive values should not be telling one of the most progressive news organizations in the world how to conduct its business. To put it differently, The Wall Street Journal should not be sitting in judgment on the journalistic performance of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Its July 21, 2003 editorial, “The Campaign to Bring Down Blair,” compels one to make such an observation.

            The Journal is owned by moneybags and purveys paleolithic views. It serves the interests of mammon while professing to serve the interests of God. It will cease to exist the day it stops serving those interests. Its editorial page reads like the manifesto of the Republican Party. So much for its journalistic ethics and objectivity.

            The BBC, by contrast, is owned by all television-owning households in Britain. It serves the interests of the people and, in the process, often finds itself at loggerheads with the powers that be. The journalism it practices is known for its objectivity and fairness. Journalists around the world try to emulate the standards set by the BBC. When a partisan and primitive outfit like The Wall Street Journal attacks the BBC for having taken a principled position in a controversy, it only has the effect of causing contemptuous chuckle. The controversy I am referring to is the one relating to the “sex[ing] up” by the Tony Blair government of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

            It all began when Andrew Gilligan of the BBC reported on its “Today” program, on May 29: “We have been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier … that actually the government probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in … A week before publication date for the dossier, Downing Street ordered it to be sexed-up.”

The Root of 45-Minute Claim

            Intelligence material is seldom published. The Tony Blair government took the unusual step of publishing it, in September 2002, in the hope of strengthening its case for war with Iraq. Most Britons were against the war. It turned out that the 45-minute claim—the claim that Saddam Hussein was capable of deploying chemical and biological weapons on 45-minute notice—was inserted in the dossier with no intelligence data to substantiate it.

            The controversy took an alarming turn on July 17, when the source of the BBC story, David Kelly, committed suicide. Dr. Kelly, an Oxford-educated microbiologist and a practicing Bahai, worked as an adviser in Britain’s ministry of defense. How did Kelly’s name come to be leaked to the press? It was so honorable of the BBC that it didn't reveal the source of its story until his death. According to The Economist of July 26 – August 1, once the ministry of defense and prime minister’s office hinted that the source of the BBC story had worked as a UN weapons inspector, it became easy for the press to trace that source. The prime minister’s office has vehemently denied that it has done any such hinting. The truth will out when Lord Justice Hutton’s committee, appointed by the British parliament to investigate Kelly’s death, completes its work.

            It is laudable that, unlike The Wall Street Journal, which changes its views as chameleon changes its color, the BBC has stood by its story to this day. It did so at the cost of earning the wrath of the Tony Blair government.

Critics of Blair Are Not Called Un-British

            The Journal is surprised that the media in Britain are so effective that “Tony Blair is more exposed than President Bush.” Let me explain why it shouldn’t be surprised. In Britain, the media and the public can attack the government’s war policy, which according to them is ill-advised and hurtful to the nation, without the embarrassment of being branded un-British and unpatriotic. No critics of the war are portrayed as “opponents of deposing Saddam Hussein,” as The Journal does in its July 14 editorial, “Lack of Intelligence.” Even Conservatives in Britain don’t stoop to the level of taking refuge in patriotism to win an argument.

            The mouthpiece of the ultra-rightists in America is so disappointed that not all critics of Tony Blair in this case can be called leftists. “The Prime Minister would not be half as beleaguered were his enemies all arrayed on the left,” the July 21 editorial says. It is about time the paper accepted that in Britain, and for that matter in other democracies, an issue of international importance is decided on its merits, not by attaching left-versus-right label to it. Silencing critics by labeling them as leftists is a favorite pastime of paleolithic conservatives in America and their bible, The Wall Street Journal. It is important to mention here that Britain’s Labor Party prime minister became a darling of Wall Street’s ultraconservative outfit only after his own countrymen began to call him “Bush’s poodle.” He won that derisive title for his dogged support to President Bush’s war policy in Iraq.

            If The Journal knows that “Britons will be able to make up their own minds about their affair, Mr. Blair and Iraq no matter how the BBC spins events,” why is it wasting its valuable space doing precisely that? It can as well use that space to print more advertisements and bring more money to the moneybags that own it. Its advice “to consider privatizing the BBC” deserves to be pooh-poohed by the British public. They should know that privatizing the BBC will be the surest way of relegating it to the level of The Wall Street Journal.

[Published on July 26, 2003]

[Readers are invited to comment. Send your comments to letters@eastwestinquirer.com]

☺   ☺   ☺

Readers' Response

WSJ Should Be Taking Lessons From BBC

            Instead of criticizing the BBC, The Wall Street Journal should be taking lessons from it in 'ethics and integrity in journalism.' Is the WSJ aware that many Americans turned to the BBC for their news during the Iraq invasion because they were tired of the bogus reporting in many American newspapers and television networks? When the head of the BBC toured America, he said he was amazed at the number of Americans who went up to him and thanked him for the refreshing way the BBC reported the war, compared to its biased and gutless American counterparts.

            Mercifully, the BBC will continue its bold and independent reporting long after the Blair and Bush administrations are gone. What tune will the WSJ be singing when the next administration (whoever that may be) takes the reins?

Suresh Shottam, New York, New York, U.S.A.

July 27, 2003

Proof of Britons' Independence

            The reference to Tony Blair being called "Bush's poodle" is proof of the British public's independence of thought. After all, the "greatness" of Great Britain today (unlike in colonial times) comes from the unstinted support its prime ministers (whether Conservative, Labor or Liberal) have given to successive US presidents on foreign policy matters in the past few decades. It is also Britain's way of maintaining its one-upmanship on the rest of Continental Europe.

Colin de Souza, Bangalore, India

July 27, 2003