Militants urge British rioters to topple system

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

If those stories were posted by the BBC...well then I wouldn't be surprised. The BBC isn't above siding on certain issues and with certain groups. In fact they are one of the more biased Euro media outlets I have read these past few years.

I'm sure peeps are going to say something like "#######...the BBC biased? No way!".

Ya, their biased.

Umm, actually they are found everywhere in the British press - especially on the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, not exactly known for leftist or pro-immigration views

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100100638/amid-all-the-bad-news-tariq-jahan-made-me-feel-proud-to-be-british/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024701/London-riots-2011-clean-Despair-hope-defiant-families-shopkeepers.html

Edited August 11, 2011 by Trompe le Monde

[_Simpson_ 250]

Umm, actually they are found everywhere in the British press - especially on the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, not exactly known for leftist or pro-immigration views

I would argue that there is a feeling among the ranks at BBC that Muslims are being picked on and they feel the need to highlight positive Muslim stories. That could be considered biased.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I would argue that there is a feeling among the ranks at BBC that Muslims are being picked on and they feel the need to highlight positive Muslim stories. That could be considered biased.

So what is every other outlet in the British media thinking? Please enlighten me!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I would argue that there is a feeling among the ranks at BBC that Muslims are being picked on and they feel the need to highlight positive Muslim stories. That could be considered biased.

The BBC is not the only news outlet in the UK.

[_Simpson_ 250]

So what is every other outlet in the British media thinking? Please enlighten me!

All I'm saying is that often our news agencies are agenda driven. I believe they want to improve Muslim's image around the world, don't you agree?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

All I'm saying is that often our news agencies are agenda driven. I believe they want to improve Muslim's image around the world, don't you agree?

First part is true. The second part is highly questionable.

[_Simpson_ 250]

First part is true. The second part is highly questionable.

Depends on the news agency. If we were talking about Fox News I would agree with you.

The BBC is not the only news outlet in the UK.

I never said it was the only outlet.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

For those who need their news Murdoch-approved, below is a story from The Time (would link but there is a pay wall)

Helping Out ... In the midst of looting, arson and violence, citizenship lives on

589 words

10 August 2011

The Times

English

© 2011 Times Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved

Much has been said and written in the past three days about "London's shame". To people abroad it must have seemed as though the inhabitants of the capital were either directly involved in arson and looting, or else standing passively by, waiting for the authorities to sort things out.

Of course, it has been difficult to know what to do. The police were taken by surprise. Our tired leaders banking on a quiet August became models of absence and uncertainty. The unspoken bonds of civility that bind a city together seemed themselves to have dissolved. Monday night was a scary and corrosive time in the capital.

But gradually other aspects of the life of Londoners have asserted themselves, and these also need to be noticed. There is what the authorities do in situations like these, and then there is what the people themselves do, and — to a surprising extent — they've done it.

Perhaps the most famous (and almost certainly the tallest) was the 6ft 6in historian Dan Snow, who executed a citizen's arrest on a looter in Notting Hill. On the other side of London the Turkish community around Dalston mobilised to protect its own houses and businesses, and thereby saved the houses and businesses of others. In Hackney, at the height of the looting and violence, one middle-aged woman was filmed haranguing passing rioters with some courageous home truths. Then there was Brenda, the elderly lady of Clapham who stood by and "unlooted" her local branch of Debenhams, by carrying contraband goods back into the store.

Late on Monday night an unofficial "clean-up" site was formed on Twitter. By yesterday morning, just hours later, 70,000 people were following it. Ordinary citizens armed with brooms were turning up in person in Camden, Ealing, Clapham and Hackney. In Ealing the local vicar spoke of his delight at the work of unpaid cleaners in undoing the malign work of the night before. In other places the promptness and efficiency of local councils and their workers had made any such voluntary effort redundant, and the volunteers took to buses and trains and travelled to areas that needed them more.

There were people such as Kate O'Hanlon, a secondary school teacher, who went from Chalk Farm in North London to Clapham, south of the River. In a city as big as London such crosslocality citizenship is as difficult as it is rare.

There are two obvious problems faced by anyone pointing out that many Londoners have behaved rather well in the past hours. One is the invocation of, or comparison with, the "spirit of the Blitz", the semi-mythological sang-froid with which Londoners met their existential crisis in 1940. There has been no Blitz in 2011, and therefore no spirit of it.

The second objection is that, by and large, the volunteers who raised their brooms for the photographers yesterday were middle-class — as though their efforts counted less or were less authentic. In any case it is likely that, in days to come, other stories will emerge of other local heroes, of all kinds of backgrounds.

London has been through this before: during the IRA years, during the 1980s riots, in the aftermath of the Marchioness and King's Cross tragedies, and after 7/7. Its citizens have a way of turning shame and loss into something positive. The signs are that they are doing it again.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Depends on the news agency. If we were talking about Fox News I would agree with you.

Without specifics its questionable. You can't simply say "they want to improve Muslim's image around the world" it's a completely unqualified opinion.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

All I'm saying is that often our news agencies are agenda driven. I believe they want to improve Muslim's image around the world, don't you agree?

And it's completely irrelevant as I was referring to widely reported stories from a multitude of outlets on all sides of the political spectrum. If you'd been following this story you would know that, instead of following back on pre-packaged talking points.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Good grief, stereotypes abound. Muslims are not the rioters. They have been targeted by the rioters and several have been killed for standing up to them. Retaliation by Muslims against the rioters is a possibility considering the impotency of the police.

[Ban Hammer 13,465]

Good grief, stereotypes abound. Muslims are not the rioters. They have been targeted by the rioters and several have been killed for standing up to them. Retaliation by Muslims against the rioters is a possibility considering the impotency of the police.

british police need viagra?

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Good grief, stereotypes abound. Muslims are not the rioters. They have been targeted by the rioters and several have been killed for standing up to them. Retaliation by Muslims against the rioters is a possibility considering the impotency of the police.

And yet, as the link in the Telegraph article suggests(nb: a right wing, Tory-supporting paper), one of the parents of one of the Muslim men who was killed has been instrumental in diffusing the possibility of retaliation - he is a hero in a time of unthinkable grief

Edited August 11, 2011 by Trompe le Monde

[_Simpson_ 250]

Without specifics its questionable. You can't simply say "they want to improve Muslim's image around the world" it's a completely unqualified opinion.

Sure, just about everything in life is questionable.

And it's completely irrelevant as I was referring to widely reported stories from a multitude of outlets on all sides of the political spectrum. If you'd been following this story you would know that, instead of following back on pre-packaged talking points.

I believe this is a problem with many of the news agencies(yes you read it correctly, a problem). I just used BBC as a example.

Good grief, stereotypes abound. Muslims are not the rioters. They have been targeted by the rioters and several have been killed for standing up to them. Retaliation by Muslims against the rioters is a possibility considering the impotency of the police.

Of course they're not Muslims,"real" Muslims don't riot.

Edited August 11, 2011 by _Simpson_

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Sure, just about everything in life is questionable.

I believe this is a problem with many of the news agencies(yes you read it correctly, a problem). I just used BBC as a example.

So if all of them are essentially in agreement I guess it's not a problem. But don't let that stop you from bring your own biases in. I'm sure if certain news agencies declared the pope catholic or that, indeed, bears do $hit in the woods we would have to get our leftist bias detectors out, you know, just to be sure......