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from MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

We have just sent this letter to BBC news reporter Margaret Gilmore, and to Richard Sambrook, director of BBC news:

Dear Margaret Gilmore

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared today that Saddam Hussein “had rejected the path of peace” (BBC1 News at Six, December 18, 2002) increasing the likelihood of military action some time next year. The clouds of war are gathering fast over Iraq.

We have noticed a consistent pattern in recent BBC reports, beginning November 7, the day before the latest UN Resolution (1441) on Iraq. The BBC has passed on almost daily reports of terrorist threats based on government sources. To select a few examples from this month at random: there has been a report that sky marshals may soon be guarding against terror attacks on British planes, a report of possible smallpox vaccinations against the threat of a terrorist attack, of the arrest of a Taliban sympathiser by anti-terrorist police, of North Africans arrested on terrorism charges in Edinburgh and London. Tonight (December 18) you delivered the useful information that intelligence services believe that if al-Qaeda were to carry out an attack in the UK, they would probably go for a ‘soft target’ - large public gatherings - using traditional weapons such as cars packed with explosives, etc.