BBC News Boss Slams 'Flag-Wrapped' U.S. Media

[JME2]

Here

LONDON (Reuters) - The head of the BBC's news operations accused U.S. media organizations on Tuesday night of being overly patriotic in their coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq (news - web sites) war.

"Before Iraq, it seemed to me that some U.S. news broadcasters wrapped themselves in the flag and, as a consequence, did not perform the role the public expects of them," said Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC's global news division.

"Our natural instinct is to support our country. But the responsibility of the news media is to ask the difficult questions, to press, to verify," Sambrook said, according to an advance copy of his speech to the Columbia Journalism School in New York.

The New York Times, earlier this year, acknowledged it had failed to adequately challenge information from Iraqi exiles who were determined to show Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction overthrow him.

The BBC lost a high-stakes battle with Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s government over its own coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq war.

The publicly funded broadcaster's chairman and director general were forced to resign after a judicial inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly, a weapons expert who was the source for a BBC report that the government "sexed up" evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"We now know that all of us failed to ask the right questions about WMD in advance of the war. That isn't to say the war was wrong: each can make their own mind up about that," Sambrook said.

"But to do so they need accurate information, evidence that has been tested. And if a news organization imbues itself with patriotism, it inhibits itself from asking some of those questions."

The speech was in part to announce a new international committee to investigate the dangers facing journalists around the world, under the auspices of the International News Safety Institute. Eighty-five journalists and support staff have been killed in the past year.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Anybody else get the feeling conservatives are going to be touting this as "proof" that the BBC is a liberal-controlled, biased source?

[Patrick Degan]

Anybody else get the feeling conservatives are going to be touting this as "proof" that the BBC is a liberal-controlled, biased source?

Yes, but essentially they say that about any media organ which doesn't mindlessly parrot the current political gospel of the Republican Party.

[Fire Fly]

I've heard it called the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation by this one hard line Bush supporter, who I tried to have a casual conversation about politics, who btw was gay and believed that a marriage is between a man and a women.

That aside, its becoming increasingly on the rise that when ever there is some attempt to get answers from this administration or from the President or point out flaws, his supporters (the common person, not the politicians) will fiercely retaliate with accusations of being unpatriotic or that "its only your opinon" and among other things. I once pointed out to this fellow who "loves Bush" that the 9/11 Commission said that there was never any strong connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq and he rebutted by saying that the whole "Bush & Co. said there was a relationship" was one giant myth.

I honestly try to see it from their point of view sometimes, but I just can't fit my head up their asses.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Anybody else get the feeling conservatives are going to be touting this as "proof" that the BBC is a liberal-controlled, biased source?

I've already had to deal with one wanker thinking FOX was more reliable than the Beeb or even Reuters because the Beeb covered the EU points made by Blair (he neglected the fact that they also covered the downers made by the Conservatives too, but that's just annoying contradictory evidence to his delusions).