{"id":13872,"date":"2015-10-27T07:24:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T12:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13872"},"modified":"2015-10-27T07:24:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T12:24:02","slug":"bbc-protects-u-k-s-close-ally-saudi-arabia-with-incredibly-dishonest-and-biased-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13872","title":{"rendered":"BBC Protects U.K.\u2019s Close Ally Saudi Arabia With Incredibly Dishonest and Biased Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC Protects U.K.\u2019s Close Ally Saudi Arabia With Incredibly Dishonest and Biased Editing<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The BBC loves to boast about how \u201cobjective\u201d and \u201cneutral\u201d it is. But a recent article, which it was forced to change, illustrates the lengths to which the British\u00a0state-funded media outlet<\/a>\u00a0will go to protect one of\u00a0the U.K. government\u2019s closest allies<\/a>, Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be\u00a0one of the country\u2019s\u00a0largest arms purchasers<\/a>\u00a0(just this morning, the Saudi ambassador to the U.K. threatened\u00a0in\u00a0an op-ed<\/a>\u00a0that any further criticism of the\u00a0Riyadh\u00a0regime by Jeremy Corbyn could\u00a0jeopardize the multi-layered U.K.\/Saudi alliance).<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the BBC published\u00a0an article<\/a>\u00a0describing\u00a0the increase in weapons and money sent by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf regimes to\u00a0anti-Assad fighters in Syria. All of that \u201creporting\u201d\u00a0was based on the claims of what the BBC called \u201ca Saudi government official,\u201d who \u2014 because he works for a government closely allied with the U.K. \u2014 was granted anonymity by the BBC and then had his claims mindlessly and uncritically presented as fact (it is\u00a0the rare exception<\/a>\u00a0when the BBC reports adversarially\u00a0on the Saudis). This anonymous \u201cSaudi official\u201d wasn\u2019t whistleblowing or presenting information contrary to the interests of the regime; to the contrary, he was disseminating official information the regime wanted publicized. This was the key claim of the anonymous Saudi official (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

The well-placed official, who asked not to be named, said supplies of modern, high-powered weaponry including guided anti-tank weapons would be increased to the Arab- and western-backed rebel groups fighting the forces of Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC Protects U.K.\u2019s Close Ally Saudi Arabia With Incredibly Dishonest and Biased Editing The BBC loves to boast about how \u201cobjective\u201d and \u201cneutral\u201d it is. But a recent article, which it was forced to change, illustrates the lengths to which the British\u00a0state-funded media outlet\u00a0will go to protect one of\u00a0the U.K. government\u2019s closest allies, Saudi Arabia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[1319,64,5243,5437,2864,512,1426,655,701,776,5567,820,2080,862],"class_list":["post-13872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-armaments","tag-bbc","tag-bias","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-lies","tag-media","tag-misinformation","tag-propaganda","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-syria","tag-the-intercept","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13873,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13872\/revisions\/13873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}