Check out this BBC interview with Tony Blair on Newsnight, hosted by Jeremy Paxman. Now, Paxman is a notoriously rude and offensive interviewer in what is a ruder and more offensive political-media culture in Britain. But this grilling of Blair took things to a new level. Look at this exchange:
TONY BLAIR: Well I can assure you I’ve said every time I’m asked about this, the [sanctions] have contained [Saddam] up to a point and the fact is the sanctions regime was beginning to crumble, it’s why … we had a whole series of negotiations about tightening the sanctions regime but the truth is the inspectors were put out of Iraq so –
JEREMY PAXMAN: They were not put out of Iraq, Prime Minister, that is just not true. The weapons inspectors left Iraq after being told by the American government that bombs will be dropped on the country.
TONY BLAIR: I’m sorry, that is simply not right. What happened is that the inspectors told us that they were unable to carry out their work, they couldn’t do their work because they weren’t being allowed access to the sites. They detailed that in the reports to the Security Council. On that basis, we said they should come out because they couldn’t do their job properly.
JEREMY PAXMAN: That wasn’t what you said, you said they were thrown out of Iraq –
TONY BLAIR: Well they were effectively because they couldn’t do the work they were supposed to do
JEREMY PAXMAN: No, effectively they were not thrown out of Iraq, they withdrew.
TONY BLAIR: No I’m sorry Jeremy, I’m not allowing you to get away with that, that is completely wrong. Let me just explain to you what happened.
JEREMY PAXMAN: You’ve just said the decision was taken by the inspectors to leave the country. They were therefore not thrown out.
TONY BLAIR: They were effectively thrown out for the reason that I will give you.
Note the complete contempt for Blair. Note the silly semantics treated as if it were a real point. Not the insufferable pomposity of Paxman. And the audience was drawn entirely from people opposed to the Blair policy. Not a single affirmative question or sympathetic comment was allowed. Fair and balanced. That’s our Beeb.
BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION IV: Some more recent quotes from the BBC’s reporters and correspondents. From Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, at a Hamas rally – yes, a Hamas rally – in 2001: “Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.” The BBC still won’t characterize Hamas as a terrorist group. From John Simpson, World Affairs editor, the man who claimed to have liberated Kabul: George W. Bush is a “glovepuppet of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” Simpson also said of Americans he met in New York after 9/11: “Thank God I don’t have to broadcast to them.” There is, of course, one extraordinary exception to the BBC’s slide toward leftist agitprop. And that’s Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, a broadcast I grew up on and from which I learned my first lessons about America. Decades later, Cooke is still invaluable.
The Dish 