Bill's Comment Page

The war in Iraq, the Middle East and Islam - and Andrew Sullivan and his eccentric views on media (in this case BBC) bias

I don't disagree with everything Andrew Sullivan writes, by any means, but on the subjects of the Middle East and Islam he often talks complete nonsense. And his current anti-BBC campaign shows what a sharp mind can do when it loses its edge. The following is the text of an 'open letter' to Sullivan. His letters page is famously eccentric, so I'll be quite surprised if my little 'billet doux' finds its way onto that august forum - thus its airing here:

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Hi Andrew

You do write some God-awful rubbish sometimes, and you are specially unreliable on things touching on the Middle East and Islam. Frankly, you don't know anything about the Middle East and your seeming knowledge of Islam is embarrassingly scant. Why do you bother?

Where we do agree, though, is on the merits of the current military effort on the part of the US and the UK finally to get rid of Saddam Hussein's thuggish regime. I am completely behind Bush and Blair and hope that the Iraqi Ba'athist regime will soon be history (I understand why Bush senior didn't do the job in 1991, even though I had some misgivings at the time - I spent that period in Abu Dhabi, where I lived then).

Your tired 'Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation' really has to stop, though. I, too, sometimes find some of the BBC commentary on current affairs touching on the Middle East rather too 'neutral' or sometimes even seemingly pro-Iraqi for my 'refined' tastes and I would have to agree that there seem to be rather too many lefties given free-reign for their odious views; I'm right of centre, but perhaps not quite so right-wing as you sometimes come across.

However, on balance, I believe that the BBC is reasonably even-handed in its treatment of events and in the present crisis in Iraq this is particularly noticeable. Of course, someone like me (an ex-Tory gay Briton with right-wing tendencies) often finds BBC output pretty hard to take - for the reasons I mention above. But I really am a democrat who believes passionately in free speech, and that sometimes (pretty often, actually) means that people and broadcasters say things I disagree with, but they often say things I agree with, too. You, however, seem to have a very 'dirigiste' view of the world and don't appear to take too kindly, in practice, to genuinely diverse viewpoints. I revel in them - that is why I find your constant harping on about perceived BBC bias (or CNN or NYT, for that matter) so tiresome. The US and the UK, and only a very few other countries, have genuine freedom of expression. That's why, of course, I strongly support your right to spout the c..p you often do - most readers of your pieces know what to expect most of the time when they read you; there are few surprises. Fair enough, your views are well-grounded and well thought out (or at least firmly held), but there's little surprise - rather sad, really.

From personal experience, I know how much (even today) the BBC is believed and respected in diverse countries - I'd lay a bet that a fair number of Iraqis today who can get hold of a short-wave radio make a point of trying to catch the news on the BBC in Arabic (I often listen to the Arabic version on the web), because they know it is even-handed and not a tool of the British government and often comments on matters in other countries much more objectively than do their own broadcasters. The last Conservative government often complained of BBC bias against it, just as the present Labour government does - I'd say that its real fault, if it has one, is that it likes to be controversial and hold the government, of whatever colour, to account. It was no more a 'luvvie' of the former Clinton administration than it is of the present Bush administration. It is genuinely independent - and that is sometimes painful.

There are very few broadcasters who approach the BBC in objectivity - Radio Canada possibly and perhaps a few others. In any case, the best way of forming a view is to try and listen to as many different views as possible and trying to balance out the pros and cons. The days of 'my country right or wrong' went out with the disaster of WWI and Earl Haig in the UK; I loathe communism, but the US had its own period of madness during the McCarthy period. Objectivity really is a state of mind - which I don't think you possess.

All the best, though .

Bill Cameron
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