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Good news this morning: a US hostage in Iraq has been found in good health. But every silver lining has a cloud, right? Jeff Jarvis is most upset at the BBC headline:
Why he hell did the BBC feel compelled to put quotes around the word "escape" in its headline -- US hostage 'escapes' in Iraq? Is he a 'hostage'? Is he a 'good guy'? Is he on 'our side'?
No, Jeff, and in case you're completely blind, the word "hostage" was not the one in quotes. Furthermore, the quotes round "escapes" weren't scare quotes, they were quote quotes. The only evidence the BBC has that Mr Hamill escaped is the word of one person, US Army spokesman Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, who had no first-hand evidence of the escape, and who felt the need to qualify his own account with the word "apparently".
Jarvis is so convinced that everything the BBC publishes is biased, of course, that he piles on unthinkingly. But it's clearly responsible journalism not to take a spokesman's "apparently escaped" and turn that into a BBC report saying that we know that Hamill escaped from his captors – after all, no journalist, it seems, has even talked to the man yet.
Yet, when Saddam would hold elections, there would be no scare quotes to speak of to suggest that the 'landslide' wasn't exactly uncoerced. The BBC has plenty of flaws, most of which are its love for editorializing in its news. Didn't your knee just jerk to defend it?
Posted by: Karol on May 3, 2004 01:52 PM