I am now 50, and quite frankly, I do not see what the fuss is about. I have bought maybe 6 newspapers in the last 3 years. I feel more informed that I ever have. My local area has a free paper that delivers but it is also available online. I do not and will not miss having ink-smudged fingers. I have one thought of people who eschew “news” reported online: Luddites.

Newspapers are Dead! Newspapers are Dead!

When everybody jumps on a bandwagon you can guess it is going the wrong way.

Newspapers are in a difficult transition, and some big-city papers won’t make it, but many small- and medium-size papers are thriving.

Take a look at the just-out Pew “State of the Media” report:

http://www.stateofthemedia.org:80/2009/index.htm

They write:

“Smaller newspapers (up to 75,000 circulation) typically are doing better than the industry as a whole—with much more modest revenue declines and margins in the high teens. They have lighter competition from online alternatives and may be the sole outlet for local coverage and retail advertising in their communities.”

Jack — thanks for that link. It’s an interesting counterpoint. We’ll try to address it this hour.

We have the newspaper on the table every morning. Our 9 year old son began with reading the comics over breakfast, but now he picks up the paper and looks at the headlines, sports, etc. He has developed an interest in politics and the world around him simply because the paper is there to pick up and look at every morning. This experience can not be replaced by a computer.

I want to be informed, but I feel like I’m working at it harder than ever. I need to forage for a music web site, a news web site, niche sites for my personal interests and business needs. When is this going to be available in one grand harmonic convergence?

The for-profits in television news has definitely been a corrosive thing. We all agree the NY Times didn’t do it’s job leading up to the Iraq war.

Maybe it’s time to go back to news as a loss-leader. Maybe it’s time for more not-for-profit news orgs.

This idea that EVERYTHING has to be financially profitable is highly flawed.

I live in Denver, where we recently lost one of the dailys. People were saying, “oh now I have to switch to the liberal leaning newspaper, or conservative, or whatever”
I think the newspapers get complacent and ideological to one view or the other as they’ve been in business for generations.
It will be great with our media having less of that dominance, as more sources are available online. More objective sources like the BBC.
Thank you,
Joe G
Denver, CO

Will bloggers improve upon journalists? Of course not. It’s a bit like saying that brown bag lunchmakers will improve upon trained chefs.

Without newspapers, how will we know what’s going on locally in our community? Not the huge stories that make the 6 o’clock news, but the smaller, yet no less important, human interest stories? I’d like to point out that these are usually the ‘good news’ stories about average people who do something remarkable in their neighborhood. How about community related events, such as fund-raisers, or library programs, or school sports? It is terribly difficult to find these smaller notices on the internet, and public radio listeners may not realize this, but not everyone has internet access or the skills needed to find this information.

In central Connecticut there is now no good coverage of either the state capitol or of our representatives in Washington, DC. I have seen the local papers cut back on this coverage to the point that I now must hope to find bits and pieces online about what is going on day to day.

My question:

Do your guests envision web coverage which will rival the capitol bureaus of, say, twenty years ago and more?

Kim Bailey
Unionville, CT

I’d just like to say that i don’t think that you can just say that bloggers will fill the gap when newspapers go under. We need paid journalists because they are the ones that actually do reporting, and investigating. They are on site, and actually actively seeking out the news. They are trained to gather the the information and sources that are credible and can be backed up. Blogs are mainly the things that people gather all the info and putting it all in one place, where will the bloggers get their information?

Noah,
Providence, RI

What’s being overlooked here and in the radio conversation is that major newspapers (The New York Times, et al) have their highest readership ever. It’s just that people are not buying the print edition. Clearly people still have a desire for that kind of journalism so I think all this discussion about the “shift” to blogs is a red herring. Blogs are a completely new medium and they are not really competition for papers like the New York Times.

What’s the business model for the underlying blogs? Do the bloggers get paid? To what extent can the on-line institution rely on bloggers? To what extent are the bloggers diletantes?

I think we also need to consider the digital divide that still exists in this country. So many people do not have and/or cannot afford the internet. The newspaper is only $.75 or a dollar, and is also available at a lot of different locations. Without a computer, how will people get the news? Will this just perpetuate the already increasing socio-economic and educational divide in this country?

Loss of newspapers and the move of news to the Internet means less content and more talk. There will be one pool of investigative reporters, like the A.P., whose corroborated stories will be hashed and re-hashed over and over again on the web.

Which is really the driving factor: more authentic news, or that bloggers don’t need salaries?

What happens when all the social-good work that needs to be done is done by volunteers? How will writers/journalists/others pay their bills? (Sure, *maybe* the Seattle paper will re-hire people in a couple of years. Maybe.)

Will there be no place for expertise?

We are lucky in my small town to be served by wonderful small paper (www.carlislemosquito.org), operated by a nonprofit organization and supported by a combination of volunteer and quasi-volunteer reporters and editors, advertising and donations. We get excellent coverage of town events, policies and politics. I wish this model could somehow be more widely adopted to serve larger towns and cities.

On March 21, the undersigned will gather in Washington, DC to start creating the new revenue models everyone agrees are needed, but no one has yet delivered. We call this effort RevenueTwoPointZero.com

But unlike recent confabs of executives, editors and academics, we are hands-on professionals charged with delivering media solutions every day. And because we’re hands-on, we know how build to prototypes to demonstrate our ideas to the newspaper industry. We aim to do that by the end of the day on March 21st.

We reject the belief that media companies should pursue models based on pay-for-content plans or philanthropy. The latest report from Pew concurs. Instead, we believe the best hope for media companies to make money is the old-fashioned way — by earning it from advertising.

We will begin with these tasks:

Build an effective advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone.
Create a better CraigsList.
Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Re-imagine the homepage and display advertising.
This ad hoc group has been assembled by Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design and Matt Mansfield of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Jacobson has been talking about online revenue for more than a decade. Mansfield is a former deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News and is the current president of the Society for News Design.

The Society and its members have been at the cutting edge of virtually every newspaper innovation in the past 30 years including pagination, color, digital imaging and multimedia. SND has more direct leadership experience with radical change than any other group in the newspaper industry. And everyone in the industry agrees that radical change is needed.

Despite the fact that most of us come from editorial, we pledge to focus 100 percent of our energy on March 21 to developing advertising models. Our commitment is such that we are paying our own way. We are employed at the following places, but we are not representing them in this endeavor.

Vernon Loeb, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Eric Seidman, AARP
Jay Small, Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group and Small Initiatives, Inc.
Mary Specht, Gannett
Yuri Victor, Gannett
Jon Wile, The Washington Post
Chrys Wu, Washington Post Digital
Chris Amico, PBS NewsHour Online
Patrick Cooper, USA Today
Kristen Novak, USAToday.com
William Couch, USAToday.com
Wesley Lindamood, USAToday.com
John Kondis, National Geographic Digital Media
Kris Viesselman, National Geographic
Kaitlin Yarnell, National Geographic
Chris Courtney, Tribune Interactive
Ernie Smith, Express and ShortFormBlog
David Kordalski, Cleveland Plain Dealer
Steve Dorsey, Detroit Free Press and SND Secretary/Treasurer
Matt Mansfield, SND President and Medill
Alan Jacobson, Brass Tacks Design

The biggest thing that scares me about print newspapers disappearing is the loss of coverage of local government corruption and waste. In order to do investigative and legislative journalism, you need professional journalists who have the time and resources follow up on stories (as well as the institutional clout).

I shudder to think what would happen here in Massachusetts without a local paper. Who would cover the pension abuse, the back-room deals between Partners Healthcare and BCBS, untrained union firefighters performing maintenance on fire trucks, the treasury secretary’s sisters working at a no-show job at the statehouse?

Blogs can offer great analysis and perspective ( I enjoy reading many of them), but they don’t (and won’t) have the resources or ability to do difficult investigative work.

All this talk about blogging sounds so naive. I don’t need more opinions – I want information upon which to base my opinion.

How about investigative reporting? Who can afford to dig into a story for months?

Bloggers have more courage? A blogger in a town on the Mass. North Shore did a little digging into real estate records last year. She put the info on her blog, and was threatned with a lawsuit. She immediately took down her postings. She was terrified of financial ruin.

The Boston Globe runs a story about people gtetting state pensions who should not be getting them, or the sister of the Secretary of Transportation having a no-show job, etc. and those articles have an impact. Do you think the Mass. State House will worry about bloggers?

Great Idea for a Newspaper to get attention:

Why don’t you concentrate on Subjects that should be covered but not covered anywhere else due to Conflict of Interest. I know, you will be attacked by tini bidi interest groups, but who cares … attentions is attention.

Ideas:
Why did we “really” invade Iraq?
Why the Media never talks to Peace Activists (who have been right “all the time”) about our misguided foreign policy that is taking our nation to Bancruptcy.

Courage is always rewarded. Look at Jimmy Carter. He wrote a book about the Middle East that was hated by less that 1% of the general population, but he was always in the news for 3-4 weeks.

Everyone in my family, including our 7 year old, reads the paper at the breakfast table. I spend all day online but really don’t want to go there for all my news (in addition to NPR!).

Isn’t there some way the newspapers could charge for a subscription to their online news, and thus support their paper editions? I know lots of people who’ve dropped their subscriptions because they can read for free online — but some of them might choose to stick with the paper version if they have to start paying to read online.

It seems that those who yearn/long for a physical paper to read with their coffee or on the toilet will soon (if not now) be able to print a composite “paper” with a multitude of newsfeeds, including major media news sites, blogs, etc. etc.

There are so many older or lower income people expressing their anxiety about the loss of their local or regional newspaper. They don’t have a computer or are not savvy about on- line searching for news .

All this optimism about on-line sources seems youth centered and naive to me. The internet is vulnerable to many forms of attack and I think the local print newspaper will always be the more reliable alternative.

Much of the news that bloggers use come from newspapers, magazines, etc. print or online. Where will that information come from if these sources disappear?

Thie difference between bloggers and experienced reporters is an understanding of context. Someone who has been reporting for years is more likely than an enthusiastic blogger to understand the larger contexts within which the news has meaning.

Who assures balance on these news blogs (as an editor does in a newspaper)? Who double checks the facts in a story (as an editor does in a newspaper)? Who assures there are more than one source for issues? Who makes sure spelling and grammar are correct? Who guards against libelous statements? Who makes sure the stories are not “puff” pieces pushing commercial interests? How are opinion and fact differentiated on the site and within the story.
I agree that “society needs journalism, not newpapers”, but a first-class newspaper editor does all of the above, and a first-class reporter also knows the differences between fact and opinion, and strives to keep them separate!

I found the discussion about the Seattle PI’s new online venture very interesting. I work for a Web site, findingDulcinea (www.findingdulcinea.com) – our aim is to bring the best of the Internet to our readers through news, features, guides and more. It sounds like the Post Intelligencer will be going a similar route, writing what they can, and “linking to the rest.” I wonder if – and when – this approach will become the norm.

As a former small town newspaper reporter, I admit I was wary about writing and reading my news online, but I have become an enthusiastic convert. I’ll never give up my Sunday morning print newspaper and coffee, but I know that for the most cutting edge and current news, online is the place to be.

I read the paper at the breakfast table or sometimes at lunch. This is when I have time. I can’t imagine reading my laptop at breakfast. Also, I don’t like reading on a screen. I read some blogs, but quickly tire of reading that way. If the paper is gone, I guess I will be gone as well. It won’t be replaced by online content for me.

I think the comments here are skewing towards print, but for the most part I think that those who are sanguine about the media transition are not interested in commenting about the dissolution of print media…they are confident of the ebullience of information…it will not be suppressed…

I agree that we need more TRUE journalists with integrity. We the people are bombarded by media claiming to be journalists. Instead of impartial journalism we have Journalists that focus on Ideology that support one side or the other. Instead of listening to journalists with integrity we go to and listen to and read people with our views. I think that Blogging is just the shrapnel of an explosion of that.

I have been using Public Radio and Investigative Journalism like ProPublica.

While we are in a transitional phase, the plight of those not on the web, is not very interesting… the net will continue to rise…if only due to attrition…

What impact does a blog have? Do the powers that be quake in their boots at the thought that their misdeeds will be exposed by a bloggger? I don’t think so. Would I know that a MA state rep is getting an unnecessary job for $175,000 per year if the Boston Globe hadn’t put that story on the front page? I doubt it.

I read that story and called up my state rep and senator and let them know how angry I was. They know that they have to watch out – their constituency read the Boston Globe, and the Globe may put their misdeeds in the paper, and thousands of readers will find out.

I was glad to see that you required my name… which is my concern on relying on local bloggers for news and insight. Many of the bloggers in our local on line version of the paper are basically anonymous, allowed to use nicknames, etc. I feel the same way about assessing their reliability as I do when I read “According to an anonymous source…” in the regular paper. While main stream news papers are hardly free of their “agendas” and biases, I know what they are and factor that in when I read their commentary. I have no way to know what personal agenda or background or expertise of this ocean of bloggers is. A lot of seriously incorrect information which is not synthesized in any way exists on the web. It worries me. If bloggers are going to become our news and commentary sources, I think they should be required to identify themselves.

I would like to strongly disagree with the caller from Nashville, who thought the Tennessean was a bad newspaper. I recently sent a letter to the paper commending them on an article regarding a bill before the State Legislature, that would weaken the Comsumer Protection Law in Tennessee. I would not have known about this local issue without the Tennessean. I do read articles on line from other papers but I would really miss having the Tennessean paper to hold and to read. I hope it continues here in Nashville for a very long time.

I add to the voices that cherish the social connectivity of a newspaper- from the kids who pick up interest in any number of subjects because the paper is right there on the coffee table, to the stories everyone has read and can share at work or in social gatherings the next day or after the weekend, to the lovers who like to cuddle up in bed or on the sofa with coffee at hand to work on the crossword together, or the household who can split up and share sections ans still be sharing social space, as opposed to being sequestered at video screens. How many internet devices would a household need to have so every one can read what they want anyway.

Similar problems with online TV- I have one desk top in my home office- not where I am going to sit to relax and watch , let alone accommodate company. The internet connects us to strangers in isolation, but stunts actually speaking and sharing physical interactive space with people at hand (email is so impersonal, tone deaf, SLOW and inefficient for conversation).

NPR offers much more content and reporting then paper,
the BBC offers better coverage in the US the the US news networks never mind around the world.

News papers are a hold over of a time gone by we are now in transition and transition periods are always hard on the old ways and it takes time for the new technology to mature to match what it is replacing. But the advantages of web and other media have over printed news are so huge that it is only a mater of time.

Also Print is such a old way to get news. Think about it when big events happen do people run down to the news stand or do they turn on the radio, TV and computer of smart phone? The news paper has already been replaced it just took awhile for their advertisers to realized it. Because people want to know the news something will come along to fill that need.
Do people run down to the news stand the day after the election to see who won or did they get that news as the results came in the night before?
I think of the picture of Truman holding up the Chicago daily News headline “Dewey defeats Truman” the morning after the election he had just won. I think most people had already heard Truman had won the election on the radio or from someone who had. so everyone got a big laugh at the expense of the Chicago daily News.
Sure back then the end was a long way off but I feel the decline of the role of printed news had already started. The problem is Transitions from one technology to another is not always a straight line.

The internet was not the start of the shift away from printed news it but might just be the nail in the coffin.

Monica Guzman sounded so chipper and optimistic! Such a brave new world! If I was one of her ex-fellow workers I would be outraged by her comments.

The Web has concentrated wealth. Fewer and fewer get a piece of the action. How many jobs have been lost due to Craig’s List taking over the classifieds? Newspapers employed all sorts – blue collar and white collar. Even if the online version of newspapers become profitable, they will not employ as many, nor employ as diversified a group.

Hey Monica, ever been to a printing plant? Wonder what happens to the those skilled blue collar workers when a paper goes online? How many people does it take to put up a Website? Not so many. I have overseen Website development, and I have overseen print production, so I have seen both sides. I was always impressed by the knowledge of the pre-press / press operators – many of them had not gone to college. It sickens me to think those skilled blue collar jobs are evaporating. Not everything new is necessarily better.

Besides all that, I will miss reading a newspaper on the subway, or the beach, or at my kitchen table. I will miss reading the finely printed page of a magazine. A newspaper, magazine, or book are wonderfully portable.

As I type this, I have a nagging pain in my side – a result of sitting slightly askew at my computer over the years. Watch people working at a laptop, you will notice the odd, unnatural angle of their necks and the curve of their spine as they tilt their heads to see the screen. Progress?

I have not purchased a single copy of news in the past 11 years apart from a complimentary subscription of the print version of WallStreetJournal which I had for 6 months.
I have however had several subscriptions to online news such as the WSJ.com, FT.com The Mckinsey Quarterly and also several free news sources like the BBC and CNN.

I grew up reading a physical newspaper and yes it was part of my morning routine to pick a fresh copy and especially enjoy the Sunday editions.

I still do exactly the same with my laptop/mobile phone where I am able to read online versions of my favorite dailies as well as read about local events and reviews of fine arts venues or restaurants.

The media being used for “press” has been “evolving” over the past decades and will continue to evolve.
Online versions of News from the giants of news who practice eloquent journalism will continue to thrive. A well informed opinion based on facts, founded with strong literary skills will still attract most readers for news.

Will there be opportunities for new publishings, smaller companies and individuals to gain appeal via their own sites and blogs. Absolutely and there should be.
Reading diverse opinions that can cover the spectrum of biases will be more educating versus reading and digesting politically or financially biased opinions that may be represented by te larger news giants.

For those looking for the one harmonic place for it all. Tools like iGoogle, my.msn.com, my.Yahoo.com that can aggregate your choice of content providers of news, reviews, media and what have you can minimize your effort of having to wade through the web.

And if you are one who really needs the feel of paper – to sit with at breakfast – you always have the option of clicking on print.

I think the Local Dailies have to be prepared to change with the market as well and though they may have liked smoother transitions, change is usually not smooth unless you plan for it.

I wonder why the newspapers have not decided to turn themselves into 24×7 live local news web video businesses like the New England Cable News in format. Local TV news has seen large increases in viewership. Newspapers are well-positioned to move into the “TV” local 24×7 news market using their websites and creditable brand names. Live news, not short 3 minute clips is the key to drawing viewers for large chunks of time. Advertisers pay well for video ads. $75 per CPM as reported by the NYT for video ads compared to $1 for a banner ad.

The papers have several leverage points that could make this strategy succeed: arguably the best local reporters, a strong brand name for producing news, creditability of reporting, and, most importantly, deep relationships with advertisers. They just need a leader-number cruncher who sees live local news video streaming as the answer. The WSJ started heading this way when Bambi Francisco (now at Vator.tv) had a desk news anchor approach.

The anchor desk approach is one viewers expect for TV news and it can allow newspaper news anchors to highlight the newspaper reporters. I for one would be headed to Boston.com, NYT, Washington Post to watch news. I get tired of seeing the short-on-substance and content videos now being delivered at these papers’ websites. I would even be happy with reporters “reading” their articles on video. Also, video can deliver “star” qualities to reporters who are charismatic on the air or who are creditable and build a following. Star quality is what advertisers love – just ask any of the star TV news anchors.

If the newspapers on the other hand sit in their “frozen” mode they will eat through cash and cut their staff losing the most valuable asset of the business – the news reporter.

Every day I see at least one important investigative article in the Boston Globe that would probably not have come to light in any other way than through the resources of a major daily newspaper. Most of these deal with issues such as corruption and misspending at the State House. Who exactly is going to let us know that the former Speaker of the House’s staff is still employed and receiving pay checks months after he left office if the Globe isn’t there to tell us? This is just one example of the kind of journalism that doesn’t get practiced in any other media. And don’t try to tell me volunteer bloggers will fill in the news vacuum? That’s simply hogwash.

My thoughts are that blogger are good at bringing up and talking about points or events that maybe not always be PC.for the mainstream news,who often looks for more profit than journalistic integrity.

But often times i see that blogger throw false information about and it spreads often times other blogger but no actual facts and real information to back it up if some accountability was installed i be more for them.

I think a hybrids, or something like bbc is the best case for use to be informed. By having a main more credible source and than some additional blogger to get some opinions works best. which often time blogger are more opinion base than facts. I hope but has already been happening (thanks to foxes news) All U.S. media sources have often fell to reporting opinions instead of facts for higher ratings, and more profitability.

WBUR …My comment is awaiting moderation all day why ? could it be because I wrote criticism on the BBC and asking why they have not published the Balen Report ? WBUR are you censoring me?

Mr. Johnson, like others who promote the idea that blogs can supplant print journalism, perceives positive value in the distributed and organic nature of this new medium. But aren’t words like “distributed” and “organic” simply euphemisms for untrained and unprofessional? As an avid reader of blogs and other online news sources, I am awestruck by their near universally poor adherence to even the most basic tenets of straight news journalism and the freewheeling attitude taken to blur the lines between news, analysis, and opinion. These are compromises that the American public unfortunately accepted all too widely in their mainstream news sources over the past eight years. To promote and accept such a redefinition of journalism will continue to erode public confidence in news sources as impartial instruments for public service.

I listen to On Point a lot, and have never been moved to comment before, but “tech thinker” Steven Johnson’s approach and attitude is so wrong headed that I feel compelled to do so. I think it highly unlikely that bloggers and other online observers can replace the critical function of investigative journalism in our democratic society. The dramatic decrease in the number of reporters who are trained to uncover the news and keep politicians, lawyers, business executives, and everybody else honest puts our country at risk.

One more thing…

http://www.politicsincolor.com/articles/opinions/03/13/2009/future-newspapers.html

WBUR, why is my comment about the BBC still awaiting moderation? Are you protecting them ?Why have they not published the BALEN report?

http://www.honestreporting.com/
and
http://www.bbcwatch.co.uk/reports.html

Sorry, R.M. It wasn’t an editorial decision on our part. Apparently the post contained too many URLs. The WordPress software filters out posts containing more than 3 URLs (which I’m told serves as a spam filter). We can change the settings to allow more URLs, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

The newspapers did not do a good job covering obama, his past, socalist ideas etc…they failed to keep people informed…now we are really headed in the wrong direction.

If all the reporters lose their jobs, who will be left to cover the news? And if all the bloggers start working at newspapers, who will be left to attend the Star Trek conventions?

Ok..sorry for the suspicion ….

1)IS SOMETHING HAPPENING IN SUDAN?

The BBC efforts not to “offend” Arabs extremists even extend to their reports on ethnic cleansing and genocide. On both the occasions in the last week when I heard BBC World Service Radio refer to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the BBC took scrupulous care to avoid saying who the perpetrators were (they are Arab militias) and who the victims are (hundreds of thousands of Black Sudanese Africans – Moslems, Christians and Animists). The BBC didn’t make any mention whatever of the long history of mass slavery in Sudan, carried out by Arabs with non-Arabs as their victims; nor of the scorched earth policies, and systematic rape being carried out there by Arabs.

Darfur: all but ignored
Yet in one of these very same news bulletins, the BBC mentioned that “settlers” in Gaza were “Jewish” and the land they were settling is “Palestinian”. I don’t think I have ever heard the BBC refer to settlers in Gaza without mentioning their ethnicity or religion – which is, of course, relevant to the story (though many would dispute the historical and legal accuracy of referring to the territory as Palestinian). But the BBC doesn’t appear to think ethnicity is relevant when it comes to real killing or ethnic based cleansing.

That is apart from situations elsewhere, in which non-Arabs are perpetrators. In one of the very same bulletins in which the BBC failed to mention the ethnic make up of perpetrator and victim in Sudan, it made sure to let us know that “Bosnian Serbs have admitted for the first time their role in the massacre of Bosnian Moslems a decade ago.”

In another report last week, a BBC correspondent casually referred to “a fanatical rebel group” in Uganda. This contrasts with the term “Palestinian resistance group” that BBC reporters often use to describe Hamas, a group the BBC clearly doesn’t find fanatical at all.

2)SO HAMAS ARE NOT GUILTY?
But then Hamas (along with Yasser Arafat, one of the most vicious murderers of Jews since Hitler) appear to enjoy a certain degree of sympathy at the BBC, which throughout the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence has constantly tried to obscure the true nature of the group by using misleading language.

There are innumerable examples of this; they occur almost daily.

“Over the years, Hamas has been blamed for scores of suicide attacks on Israel,” says the BBC, thereby trying to suggest to listeners and viewers that Hamas has perhaps been wrongly accused of such attacks (even though Hamas itself has proudly and repeatedly claimed responsibility for them in mass celebratory rallies in Gaza, Jenin and elsewhere.)

Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire indiscriminately in the heart of the northern Israeli town of Afula, killing two young Israeli civilians and wounding over 50 others. They themselves were then shot dead by Israeli policemen. The headline on the BBC website read: “Four Die in Israel Shooting Rampage,” suggesting that four innocent people had died, possibly at the hands of the Israelis.

Again, when suicide bombers killed 26 Israeli civilians in attacks on Jerusalem and Haifa, the word “terror” was used by the BBC only when describing Israel’s retaliatory (and largely non-lethal) attacks on Palestinian military targets. (By contrast, the BBC didn’t hesitate to use the word “terrorism” last week, when one of its own correspondents, Frank Gardner, was shot and badly wounded by an al-Qaeda gunman in Saudi Arabia.)

Some of the foreign BBC staff are quite open about their sympathies for Hamas. The senior BBC Arabic Service correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Fayad Abu Shamala, told a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001 (attended by the then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) that journalists and media organizations in Gaza, including the BBC, are “waging the campaign [of resistance/terror against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.”

The best the BBC could do in response to requests from Israel that they distance themselves from these remarks at the time, was to issue a statement saying, “Fayad’s remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC.”

Indeed, today, three years later, the BBC is continuing to use Abu Shamala as much as ever. He was, for example, one of the BBC reporters in Gaza last month, who contributed to the BBC’s highly slanted reporting (on both the BBC English and Arabic services) of Israel’s operation to root out Hamas bomb-makers in Rafah in the southern Gaza.

3)A MINUTE’S SILENCE FOR SHEIKH YASSIN
Hamas mastermind Yassin:
Remembered in the Commons
Back in London, BBC staff are careful to promote sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in more subtle ways. Dr Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat Member of the British Parliament, declared in January that she would consider becoming a suicide bomber if she were Palestinian (and subsequently led a minute’s silence in March – in the House of Commons no less – for the deceased Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, who issued orders for dozens of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians). Since then, Dr Tonge’s invitations to appear on BBC have noticeably increased.

She was sacked by the Liberal Democrat party leader as parliamentary spokesman for children’s issues for these remarks, but this hasn’t bothered the BBC, who now invite her on both radio and TV to discuss the Middle East.

In one case, in February, BBC Radio 4’s Flagship morning news program “Today” actually sent her off to “Palestine” (at the BBC’s expense), after which they broadcast her “diary,” in which she further defamed Israel and reiterated her sympathy for suicide bombing. She has also repeated her support for suicide bombers on air on the BBC on other occasions.

Similarly, there is the case of Oxford university literature lecturer Tom Paulin – who among other things has compared Jewish settlers to Nazis, has said they should be “shot dead,” compared the Israeli army to Hitler’s SS, and said he could “understand how suicide bombers feel.” He continues to be invited as a regular guest commentator by the BBC; indeed, he is one of the two or three most frequent contributors to their most widely screened program on the arts.

4)DON’T MENTION LIMB AMPTUTATION

Those who dare criticize Arab extremism are dealt with somewhat differently by the BBC.

For example, Robert Kilroy-Silk – who does not appear on BBC news but hosted a daytime chat show – was immediately taken off air after he had the temerity to write in a non-BBC newspaper article in January that Arabs were “suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors.” He swiftly apologized and the newspaper in question acknowledged that he had written “Arab governments” and this was inadvertently changed to “Arabs” as a result of an editing error. But Kilroy-Silk was rapidly sacked by the BBC nevertheless.

However, Kilroy-Silk’s remarks – as many Arab moderates who welcomed them, such as the Egyptian human rights campaigner Ibrahim Nawar, have pointed out – were not technically inaccurate. Limb amputation and repression of women are enshrined in Saudi law, and suicide bombing of Israelis and Americans strongly encouraged by some in government circles.

And they were comments which may have had consequences. Just a few days later, after they were approvingly reported across the Arab world, several Israeli settlers were murdered, including five-year-old Danielle Shefi, slain as she screamed in her bedroom, leaving behind her Mickey Mouse sheets soaked in blood.

Kilroy-Silk – whose article appeared just a few days before Dr Tonge’s suicide bomb remarks – apologized. He said he “greatly regretted the offence caused” by his remarks. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy the BBC.

6)“THE STUFF OF LEGENDS”

The BBC rarely misses an opportunity to denigrate Israel or its prime minister. One program even staged a mock “war crimes” trial for Ariel Sharon. (The BBC verdict – that Sharon has a case to answer – was never in doubt).

Yasser Arafat, though, receives a very different treatment. One particularly cosmetic exercise was a 30-minute BBC profile of Arafat which described him as a “hero,” and “an icon,” and spoke of him as having “performer’s flair,” and “charisma and style” and “personal courage” and being “the stuff of legends”. Adjectives applied to him included “clever,” “respectable,” and “triumphant.” He was also inaccurately referred to as “President.” [2]

This was broadcast on 5 July 2002 – just two weeks after President Bush had called for a change in Palestinian leadership following revelations about Arafat’s links with suicide terror attacks. But then the BBC knew that they would get this kind of approach when they asked the notoriously anti-Israeli journalist, Suzanne Goldenberg (formerly Jerusalem correspondent for the London Guardian, now the Guardian’s Washington correspondent) to make the program.

A particularly blatant example of bias, perhaps, but not an isolated one. The BBC rarely mention Arafat’s dictatorial rule, his endemic corruption, or the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – the terror group he set up after launching the current Intifada, a group which, in recent months, has outstripped Hamas in the number of terror attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians. As for Hamas, Sheikh Yassin was recently described by one of BBC radio’s Gaza correspondents, Zubeida Malik, as “polite, charming and witty.

7)DID SOMEONE SAY DOUBLE STANDARDS?

Orla Guerin: One of the
BBC’s most partisan reporters
The BBC’s double standards are clear to almost everyone except, it seems, to the BBC itself and its sympathizers in the press. A BBC spokeswoman for example, told the Guardian (May 23, 2002) after the BBC was accused by British Jews of being a prime force in inciting renewed anti-Semitism in the UK, that “The BBC’s reporting about the Middle East is scrupulously fair, accurate and balanced.”

The official BBC line has not changed since then, even after the scathing criticism of the Hutton report. Such are the level of arrogance and the spirit of denial that permeate the BBC newsroom. Indeed, recent denials of political bias have been stronger than ever. Of course, the BBC would be in danger of losing its enormous public funding if they were admitted.

For a short while after the Hutton report was published in January, the BBC were a little more careful in their attacks on Israel. But recently they have returned to old ways, with at least four anti-Israeli TV documentaries airing in recent weeks. That makes a total of 20 major documentaries the BBC have made on Israel since 2001 (all but one attacking Israel.) That is three times more than the number of documentaries the BBC has made on any other single country, with the exception of Britain.

Meanwhile, to my knowledge, the BBC has made no documentaries about human rights abuses in the Arab world; or about Palestinian schoolbooks; or about the Palestinian Authority’s incitement of the Palestinian population; or about the Palestinian Authority’s funding of terrorism allegedly with the use of European Union aid funds.

The problem is not that every individual correspondent is biased. Whereas some, such as Orla Guerin, make almost no attempt at balance, others, such as James Reynolds in Jerusalem, do make a genuine effort to be fair. The problem is that the culture that permeates the BBC, a habit of thought that has become engrained throughout the network, allows only one worldview, in which the US and Israel are vilified well beyond any reasoned or justified criticism of anything these states have actually done.

Hiring practices reinforce this. Recently, Ibrahim Helal, editor in chief of the much-criticized al Jazeera TV network was hired by the BBC World Service Trust. The job the BBC wanted him for? To advise on balance in Middle East coverage, and head “media training projects,” i.e. to train BBC (and perhaps other journalists) into “understanding the Middle East better.”

8)OCCUPIED WEST BANK OF THE SAHARA?

BBC Proms night:
Israelis are Nazis?
This culture makes it all but impossible for anyone who thinks differently to gain or hold a job at BBC news. Who at the BBC can name the leader of the Polisario Front, fighting for independence against a 25-year Arab occupation of the Western Sahara (a territory bigger than Britain)? Who at the BBC has done a report about all the Arab settlers that the Moroccan government has been bussing into the area to take the land of the indigenous Saharawi people, since Morocco annexed it 25 years ago?

This article has been limited to BBC news programming. But even elsewhere there is anti-Israel (and some would argue anti-Jewish) sentiment. Each summer, for example, BBC Radio 3, a station largely devoted to classical music, carries a broadcast of “The Proms.” The Proms are a British institution, a jovial annual event at the end of the British summer during which classical favorites and (on the Proms’ final night) tunes such as “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” are sung by the audience with great fanfare and light-hearted flag-waving at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Yet on the evenings of August 13 and August 20, 2002, the BBC Radio 3 producers decided to fill the time during the interval in their live broadcast (there are no commercials on the BBC) with a recitation of poems that compared Israeli actions to those of the Nazis and asked Holocaust survivors why they had “not learnt their lesson.”

A GLOBAL PROBLEM

The BBC’s Middle East problem is not just a British problem but an international one. The BBC pours forth its worldview not just in English but in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Turkish. Needless to say it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Slovene and Slovak, Macedonian and Albanian, Azeri and Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz, and so on. (It doesn’t broadcast in Kurdish either; but then the BBC doesn’t concern itself with Kurdish rights or aspirations since they are persecuted by Moslem-majority states like Syria and Iran. We didn’t hear much on the BBC, for example, when dozens of Syrian Kurds were killed and injured by President Assad’s regime two months ago.)

Throughout the world the BBC enjoys exceptional influence. An article last month in the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz, for example, quotes a leading Lithuanian campaigner against anti-Semitism as saying that inflammatory and biased international BBC news coverage against Israel was helping to revive anti-Semitism in Lithuania against those few Jews remaining who were not murdered in the Holocaust.

The English-language version of the BBC seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. My friend Kamran al-Karadaghi, an urbane, moderate and thoughtful Iraqi, who was for a decade the political editor of the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat in London, and who until last week served as head of Radio Free Iraq, tells me that the BBC Arabic language service is not just far worse than the English language BBC. It is “even worse,” he says, than al Jazeera, in the vitriol it pours out against America and Israel.

[1] For more on these and other quotes, see http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR01102 and Steven Stalinsky’s NRO article last month (Kingdom Comes to North America. Top Saudi cleric to visit Canada.)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200405130846.asp (after which the Canadian government rescinded al-Sudais’ visa request

[2] For many other examples contrasting BBC coverage of Sharon and Arafat, see the well-compiled reports by London lawyer Trevor Asserson at http://www.bbcwatch.com

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