Sunday, September 05, 2021
BBC admits it breached impartiality guidelines in Churchill report
The BBC has partially upheld a complaint blasting it over suggestions made in a News At Ten report that Winston Churchill's attitude towards the Bengal Famine was motivated by racism.
The corporation admitted it fell short of its own impartiality guidelines by not offering up alternative views of Churchill's opinions on and actions with regards to the humanitarian disaster, which killed around three million people.
The offending broadcast was part of a series of reports 'looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide'.
Indian historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee of Ashoka University sparked outcry after he told BBC News at Ten in July last year that Churchill is 'seen as the precipitator of mass killing' due to his role in the 1943 famine.
Oxford University's Yasmin Khan also claimed that Churchill was 'prioritising white lives over Asian lives' by not sending aid to India, then a British colony, during the crisis.
A complainant argued that the report 'did not take proper account of the fact that Britain was engaged in a world war at the time; and it suggested the absence of effective action to alleviate the famine reflected racism on Churchill's part'.
The BBC's executive complaints unit (ECU) upheld this part of the complaint.
The comments were made amid a wider campaign to trash the war hero's legacy, with his statue defaced with the word 'racist' by Black Lives Matter protesters in London and civil servants calling for the Treasury's 'Churchill Room' to be renamed.
The BBC has partially upheld a complaint blasting it over suggestions made in a News At Ten report that Winston Churchill's attitude towards the Bengal Famine was motivated by racism +4
The BBC has partially upheld a complaint blasting it over suggestions made in a News At Ten report that Winston Churchill's attitude towards the Bengal Famine was motivated by racism
It states: 'This bulletin included one of a series of reports introduced as "looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide" which dealt with the Bengal famine of 1943 in which about 3,000,000 people are believed to have died.'
It added: 'A number of the interviewees in the report, suggested Churchill regarded Indians with a degree of disdain if not outright hostility, and the impression that this explained his behaviour was reinforced by the citation of a contemporary account reporting Churchill as having said Indians "breed like rabbits".
'It is hardly controversial to say Churchill on occasion expressed attitudes which many would now regard as evidence of racism, and the ECU thought it editorially justifiable to refer to the issue of racism in the context of a report focusing on Indian attitudes which run counter to the received view of Churchill.
'In the ECU's judgement, however, more exploration of alternative views of Churchill's actions and motives in relation to the Bengal famine was required to meet the standard of impartiality appropriate to a report in a news bulletin of this kind.
'This aspect of the complaint was upheld.'
The Bengal Famine was triggered by a cyclone and flooding in Bengal in 1942, which destroyed crops and infrastructure.
Historians agree that many of the three million deaths could have been averted with a more effective relief effort, but are divided over the extent to which Churchill was personally to blame.
Yogita Limaye, the BBC News India correspondent who led the report, said many Indians blamed him for 'making the situation worse'.
But historians suggested the report attributed too much of the blame onto Churchill when other factors were more significant.
Tirthankar Roy, a professor in economic history at the LSE, argues India's vulnerability to weather-induced famine was due to its unequal distribution of food.
He also blamed a lack of investment in agriculture and failings by the local government.
'Winston Churchill was not a relevant factor behind the 1943 Bengal famine,' he told The Times in July.
'The agency with the most responsibility for causing the famine and not doing enough was the government of Bengal.'
Churchill has been blamed for down-playing the crisis and arguing against re-supplying Bengal to preserve ships and food supplies for the war effort.
However, his defenders insist that he did try to help and delays were a result of conditions during the war.
They point out that after receiving news of the spreading food shortages he told his Cabinet he would welcome a statement from Lord Wavell, the new Viceroy of India, about how he planned to ensure the problems were 'dealt with'. He then wrote a personal letter urging the Viceroy to take action.
The historian James Holland also weighed into the row.
He said that Churchill faced immense difficulties supplying Bengal due to the amount of British resources tied up in the fight against the Japanese in the Pacific.
'In light of the latest furore over the Bengal Famine and people wrongly still insisting it was Churchill's fault, here's this on the subject,' he tweeted.
'His accusers don't a) understand how the war worked, or b) that his hands were tied over use of Allied shipping.'
Sir Max Hastings, the military historian, accepted that Churchill's behaviour was a 'blot on his record' but argued it should be considered against his achievements in helping to defeat fascism.
The recent Black Lives Matter protests have seen a renewed focus on Churchill's legacy, including calls for his statue to be taken down from Parliament Square.
At one point the monument was even boxed in by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to protect it from vandalism during a weekend of demonstrations. Figures of Gandhi and Mandela were also encased with wooden sheeting, at a cost of £30,000.
Threats to the statue triggered a strong reaction from defenders of the national hero who pointed out that his greatest achievement was defeating racist, anti-Semitic fascism.
At the time, Boris Johnson criticised the calls as being the 'height of lunacy'. The Prime Minister said he would resist any attempt to remove the statue 'with every breath in my body'.
Churchill's legacy has been attacked in other quarters, with a group of civil servants recently complaining that they did not feel 'comfortable' with having a room in the Treasury named after him.
After the initial uproar caused by the BBC's broadcast, a spokesman for the corporation said: 'The item was the latest in a series looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide.
'The series includes different perspectives from around the world, in this case from India, including a survivor from the Bengal famine, as well as Oxford historian Dr Yasmin Khan.
'The report also clearly explained Churchill's actions in India in the context of his Second World War strategy.
'We believe these are all important perspectives to explore and we stand by our journalism.'
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Curtis Flowers, freed from prison after more than 20 years, sues DA who prosecuted him 6 times
A Mississippi man freed after nearly 23 years in prison filed a lawsuit Friday against the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a small-town furniture store.
Curtis Flowers was released in December 2019, about six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.
The lawsuit filed Friday also names as defendants three investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans. The county is not named as a defendant.
The suit says Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including "pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders" and ignoring other possible suspects.
March 2021:Curtis Flowers, wrongfully incarcerated for 23 years, will get maximum compensation, judge says
The Associated Press left a phone message for Evans in his office Friday seeking a response to the lawsuit. The call was not immediately returned.
The lawsuit does not say how much money Flowers is seeking, leaving that decision to a jury.
"Curtis Flowers never should have been charged," one of his attorneys, Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said in a news release Friday.
McDuff said the killings "were clearly the work of professional criminals" and Flowers, who was 26 at the time, had no criminal record.
"The prosecution was tainted throughout by racial discrimination and repeated misconduct," McDuff said. "This lawsuit seeks accountability for that misconduct."
In March, a judge ordered the state of Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment — the maximum under a state law that allows up to $50,000 a a year for 10 years. The did not preclude Flowers from suing the district attorney and investigators, his attorneys said.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in September 2020 that Flowers would not be tried a seventh time because prosecutors no longer had credible witnesses and evidence was too weak for another trial. Fitch took office in January 2020 and took control of the case after Evans stepped away from it.
Four people were shot on July 16, 1996, in the Tardy Furniture store in Winona. They were owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees: 45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick "Bobo" Stewart. Tardy, Rigby and Golden died at the scene, and Stewart died about a week later.
Relatives of some of the victims have maintained their belief that Flowers is the killer. Attorneys for Flowers say he is innocent.
Flowers was convicted four times in the slayings: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials. Each of his convictions was overturned.
The 2019 Supreme Court ruling came after American Public Media's "In the Dark" investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him. Hallmon's story of the confession had been key evidence in later trials, but he told the podcast on a contraband cellphone from behind bars that his story was "a bunch of fantasies, a bunch of lying."
The podcast also presented an analysis finding a long history of racial bias in jury selection by Evans, and found evidence suggesting another man may have committed the crimes.
After the June 2019 Supreme Court ruling, Flowers was moved off death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and taken to a regional jail. He remained in custody because the original murder indictment was still active, and a judge released him on bail that December.
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Justice Department is readying a SECOND monopoly lawsuit against Google over the company's digital advertising business
The U.S. Justice Department is readying a second monopoly lawsuit against Google over the internet search giant's digital advertising business, according to a report - adding to the legal challenges facing the tech giant.
The Justice Department sued Google in October 2020, accusing the $1 trillion company of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals.
A trial - which is expected to be extremely lengthy - has been set for September 2023.
On Wednesday Bloomberg News reported that the Justice Department is preparing a second suit accusing the company of abusing its position as the preeminent search engine.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Asked about the report, Google responded in an email that its 'advertising technologies help websites and apps fund their content, enable small businesses to grow, and protect users from exploitative privacy practices and bad ad experiences.'
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This European country considers the pandemic to be over
The delta variant still keeps the planet preoccupied with COVID-19. However, there is one European country that has decided to theoretically turn the page on this pandemic.
With more than 70% of the country’s population vaccinated, the government has decided to end its restrictions on September 10th and return to the old normality.
With more than 70% of the country’s population vaccinated, the government has decided to end its restrictions on September 10th and return to the old normality.
The government of Denmark has decided to call the pandemic a thing of the past. It argues that COVID-19 is no longer a national threat but rather a disease (like many others) that the immunized population has largely under control. The country’s Ministry of Health doesn’t even include the coronavirus as a “critical illness for society.”
The Danish government believes that covid-19 is “under control” and that residents can return to their former usual lives. They will no longer be required to present the ‘covid passport’ (proof of vaccination and/ or negative testing) to enter restaurants, bars and other public places.
Denmark is one of the countries in the world with the highest percentage of population vaccinated. The small northern European country reached 74.9% at the end of August.
As in other countries, there had been protests in Denmark against the government’s restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus. These measurements had never been as harsh as in other countries, though. In fact, confinement had only been a recommendation, not a requirement.
The truth is that COVID-19 was tragic in Denmark as in other countries. So far, there have been 342,866 infections and 2,575 deaths for a country of 5.8 million inhabitants. The pandemic brought suffering to many homes.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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