Mark Mardell was fond of editorialising when he acted as the BBC's North America editor.
Curiously, he obviously still believes it's appropriate to sound off in a highly opinionated fashion - even though he's now a presenter on Radio 4's The World at One and The World This Weekend.
Even by his standards though, his latest blogpost - Cameron is not asking the big question on Islamic State - is stonkingly opinionated. And on a highly controversial subject too.
He mocks David Cameron for saying that Islamic State poses an "existential threat" to the UK:
One has to have a fairly lurid imagination to envision that IS could snuff out the UK.
He also implicitly includes the PM in his description of the "emotive words and stirring phrases from politicians around the world" - as is made explicit by his later description of Mr Cameron's proposals on how to deal with IS as "portentous pronouncements".
He also gives Tony Hall the finger by ranting about his feelings about the terminology used to describe the so-called so-called Islamic State:
It is perhaps telling that Mr Cameron objects to the BBC using the phrase "Islamic State", he prefers Isil - which stands for Islamic State in the Levant - or the preface "so-called" .
No doubt there will be a big debate about this, but personally I loathe that phrase.
It is only used in ordinary conversation in scorn: "Your so-called girlfriend.
And, it seems to me, once we start passing comment on the accuracy of the names people call their organisations, we will constantly be expected to make value judgements. Is China really a "People's Republic"?
Now, I have to say that I agree with Mark Mardell on that - and on other things in this piece. His strong opinion here mirrors mine, but...
...I'm an unpaid blogger, and he's a well-paid senior BBC news presenter. I am allowed to express strong opinions. Is he?
And, seemingly inevitably when it comes to 'old hand' BBC types (and where I part company with him), he ends by blaming...
...can you guess?...
...no, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, just try to have a guess who Mark Mardell of the BBC ultimately blames for the appeal of Islamic State...
...go on, can you guess?
Yes, it's us! The West! We're to blame!:
But there is a critical element that is often ignored, a Western aversion to what should be obvious and beyond debate - the appeal of IS is not just an increasingly violent and fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, not just a retreat into the values of the past in the face of the shock of modernity, but an explicitly political reaction to the actions of the West.
******
Incidentally, Mark Mardell has been backed over this by a fellow BBC journalist, via a re-tweet from a Palestinian-American columnist:
Birds of a biased feather flock together, eh?
This just adds to my suspicion of collusion between Cameron and BBC management. Mardell has to know his colleagues have already been using the phrase for some time. He doesn't live in a vacuum, and the practice is wide spread already. He will have heard about it from somewhere. So now he can pretend to stand up to Cameron and strike a blow for the BBC's editorial independence. Even while so many of his colleagues were doing it already, and this was just and excuse to further push the 'unIslamic' narrative.
ReplyDeleteIt's also typical of Mardell to completely twist and misrepresent what Cameron meant by an existential threat. Nobody thinks he means ISIS could do anything to Britain in a conventional military sense. Mardell is pathological.
But then I kept reading, and it turns out that Mardell isn't even objecting to what we think he's objecting to. Look at the enormous leap and full twist of logic Mardell goes through to shift the focus away from the problem of Islam.
However understandable the desire to hold the words "Islamic State" at arm's length, using the verbal rubber gloves of "so-called", the name itself is doubly appropriate.
Why is it understandable to deny the name? What's he talking about?
An aspiration to be not simply a nation state but a supranational one - a worldwide caliphate, it is also a state of mind - an inspiration to lone wolves and those who want to travel to join the pack, from mad malcontents to the deeply disconnected.
Oh, of course. Calling it that victimizes otherwise innocent and peaceful kids who until that moment thought Islam was a British religion of peace. Same BBC narrative we hear everywhere.
And, paradoxically, the fact that "Islamic State" is a geographical and political entity makes it easier to imagine its collapse or destruction.
Paradoxically? I think he means 'ironically'.
The state of mind that allows IS to grow is potentially more problematic and could well flourish even if Islamic State were to be beaten in Syria and Iraq.
Typical Mardell foreign policy position. Do nothing. Even defeating them will only make them stronger? Is he kidding?
Mr Cameron has talked of taking on an extremist narrative that falls short of advocating violence at home.
If the effort is focused on Bradford that is one thing - if he is telling allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to abandon core beliefs, that is a far more serious attempt to deal with the roots of the problems.
Again, what the hell is he talking about? Does he think denying the Islamic bit is somehow telling the Saudis that they're doing Islam wrong? He does!
(Maj. Cross) says regional powers have to engage more and rich individuals, if not governments, are "feeding the tiger" of radicalism.
So what Mardell really objects to about the 'so-called' qualifier is that it denies the imperialist ambitions of the group. He's out of his mind. Then we get his equally moronic statement about the whole thing being - what a shock - a struggle against Western foreign policy. So predictable, and so completely disconnected from reality.
When the BBC created the titled editor positions, it completely destroyed the line between opinion and objective reporting. Mardell is a prime example.
It might be worth a complaint to the BBC to see how they can justify Mark Mardell's opinion-mongering now that he's moved beyond being a titled editor to being a fully-fledged Radio 4 presenter. I'm quite sure Radio 4 presenters aren't usually this opinionated and I really can't see how this latest Mark Mardell piece doesn't contravene quite a few BBC editorial guidelines. (Not that the BBC will ever accept that, of course.)
DeleteBut honestly, David, I really would love someone to try and convince me that this piece sits comfortably with the idea of BBC impartiality. Because, to me, it's just one biased opinion after another. If anyone's out there who doesn't agree, please feel free to show me why I'm wrong.
DP -
DeleteI think one can criticise Mardell on giving vent to his personal political opinions on matters of controversy when he is supposed to be an impartial monitor.
However, I think you are wrong on many of your specific criticisms.
Certainly if Cameron is criticising a particular narrative at home, then it is not at all clear why it's OK for the Saudis to be treated as our "friends" if they follow a similar poisonous narrative that means no Jew is allowed to live in their country and no Christian churches may be built.
He's also right to mock the mealy-mouthed "so called".
Anon,
DeleteI'm not sure at all that Mardell is pointing out the dichotomy between treating the Saudis as allies on this issue and the need to direct people away from fundamentalist Islam. Mardell is not that profound a thinker. His point is muddled enough that it's easy enough to interpret it a number of ways. The Saudis don't butcher people or enslave them (publicly) like the ISIS boys do. What 'core beliefs' is he talking about? The Saudis certainly have spread the worst kind of Islamic beliefs far and wide, and one could give him the benefit of the doubt and see him as actually insisting that ISIS certainly is Islamic, as Islamic as the Saudis, and if Cameron is saying ISIS is not Islamic, the Saudis are not proper Muslims either. But Mardell isn't thinking that. He's not saying that Islam is the problem with ISIS because he started out by expressing sympathy for the desire to separate them from it.
Mardell was twisting himself all over the place, as usual, to reach his predetermined emotional position.
He's right to mock the 'so-called', but I believe I've shown that he's worried that it denies their territorial and political ambitions, something he sees as dangerous. Everyone else - even Nick Cohen - is saying that Cameron is wrong for the same reasons we are, but Mardell didn't say that. If he meant to, it got lost in his usual anti-war political bile.
Craig, nearly all of Mardell's output while in the US was editorial opinion rather than reporting. But Simon Wilson and the rest of them loved his work. He didn't get quite the promotion Justin Webb did afterwards, but then he didn't have the luck to have Sarah Palin to insult.
DeleteIf you recall, more than one journalist has chided and sneered at me over on B-BBC for imagining that Mardell ever expressed an opinion. I was always finding all sorts of non-existent meaning in a single word, they would tell me. So I doubt that anyone at the BBC will ever accept a single complaint.
Most galling is the fact that even his BBC colleagues at Ariel agreed with me, but even that's not good enough for the priest caste.
While Mardell is cautious with his language at times, worried about how it might be interpreted, there are hints that he is a passionate man with strong beliefs.
Mardell's aim in life is to simply to fill space (by writing) or time (by talking). He has always had only a superficial understanding of any issue he comments on, but he does not get paid for being a competent commentator. He is just a filler.
ReplyDelete