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Saturday, August 16, 2003

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What would Austin Powers say?

The blogosphere has ridden the BBC pretty hard over the past six months -- myself included. Josh Chafetz does an excellent job of itemizing the myriad sins of the "Beeb" in this comprehensive Weekly Standard piece. The quick and brutal summary:

It turns out that what a captive audience gets from a media megalith with a government-enforced subsidy is exactly what a beginning student of economics would predict: The BBC may be arrogant, but it's also incompetent, not to mention surly and evasive when criticized.

Indeed. It's a sad day for Austin Powers and the members of Ming Tea.

UPDATE: Josh responds to his myriad critics:

posted by Dan on 08.16.03 at 02:01 PM

Comments:

I disagree with your assessment. For one, his conclusion: that the BBC was influenced by "the BBC's desire to prevent the death of Saddam's regime" is morally beyond the pale.
Second, his view of events is just as slanted as he would make us the BBC is. For instance he objects to "British troops" instead of "our troops" and "occupation" versus "liberation". Whatever your take on the correctness of his prefered term, one has to admit the BBC term is neutral in each case.
Finally, regardless of one's take on the accuracy and correctness of his recount of BBC errors, his piece fails to take into account the second player in this drama, the Blair government. He describes the BBC's actions in a void and thus contributes exactely nothing to the debate, unless you consider BBC=bad a valuable contribution.
FWIW, I've laid out my criticism at greater length here:http://brmic.blogspot.com/2003_08_10_brmic_archive.html#106103463124109543