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This is the story that is all over the broadcast news tonight, and will be all over the English newspapers tomorrow:
Three Leicester City footballers have been charged with “sexual aggression” after three women claimed they were attacked at a Spanish hotel.
Paul Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Keith Gillespie, who deny the charges, will now spend another night in custody.
The judge in Cartagena said the charges were serious enough to go to trial.
We are now enduring that horrible moment when someone very famous is charged with something very serious, but when no one other than the arresting officers and the accused has the faintest idea of whether the accused are guilty or not, and when the logical thing for everyone else is to say nothing.
I can now hear the ITV news, trying desperately to turn whatever tiny scraps of information and background chit-chat they have in front of them into something portentous enough to serve the needs of this, their top story this evening. But what on earth can they say? The real writing of the story can only seriously begin when whatever court ends up being involved reaches its verdict.
Meanwhile, you have to remember just how important lots of people in England feel football to be. (A great, great many of them make our own David Carr look like a total football agnostic.) In the city of Leicester, this is the biggest news story for years. Leicester City are facing relegation from the Premier League. This could quite well finish their chances of avoiding that fate. To talk about something as trivial as the relegation of a sports team from a football league to a lower football league when some men have been charged with a crime may seem very odd. But that is what this is about, and why this is such big news here.
It is the combination of vagueness and disastrousness to something which so many people take so seriously which gives this story its special atmosphere.
With a regular disaster, like an earthquake, or a terrorist outrage, the disastrousness of the disaster is not in doubt, and there are plenty of things to say because there is actual news to report, in ghastly abundance. But not with this. Fans and other players foolish enough to open their mouths on the subject are now queueing up to say that they “do not believe” that these men would do such a thing. Others who are equally ignorant are muttering under their breath that there is no smoke without fire, and what can you expect of footballers, who are a law unto themselves and think they can get away with murder? Neither opinion is worth anything. This is why the civilised world has law courts, to replace ignorant speculations like those with disciplined investigation.
The only solid facts here are that this is very bad for Leicester City football club, and that these charges are serious.
This is quite a little story, and with my libertarian stirrer hat on I say that the more it gets around the better, because the more it will draw attention to the existence of the libertarian journal Liberty, and of the libertarian movement generally. And when a little story gets written about in the New York Times, I guess that makes it not such a little story:
ALPINE, Tex., Feb. 16 — The first indication that Dr. Larry J. Sechrest’s neighbors and students had read his article titled “A Strange Little Town in Texas” was when he began receiving death threats and obscene phone calls and his house was vandalized.
The article by Dr. Sechrest, an economics professor at Sul Ross State University, was published in the January issue of Liberty, a small libertarian magazine with a circulation of about 10,000 and only two local subscribers, one of whom is Dr. Sechrest. But it was weeks before people heard about it in remote Alpine, which is three hours from the closest Barnes & Noble, in Midland, Tex.
The article lauded the beauty of West Texas, the pleasant climate, the friendliness and tolerance of the locals. But Dr. Sechrest, who has a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Texas, also contended that “the students at Sul Ross, and more generally, the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well, … just plain stupid.”
Well, death threats and obscene phone calls does sound pretty plain stupid to me, so although Sechrest may regret his candour, he has nothing to apologise for.
Sadly, Liberty seems to be one of those paper publications which is reluctant to give all its writings away on the Internet until several years have passed (which you can understand), so the actual article by Larry Secrest that caused all the fuss is not linkable to. But in addition addition to the NYT piece linked to above, there’s also this from the Desert-Mountain Times:
Sechrest said he regretted publishing parts of the article that have caused such a strong reaction in the community.
“I thought there were two libertarians in the community,” he said. “If that’s true, I thought, ‘Who will ever see it’ – it never crossed my mind it would cause such an uproar. If I knew the reaction it would cause, would I have done it? Of course not.”
Ah, but the libertarian movement is bigger and more pervasive than you think!
The New York Times piece ends on a positive note:
Last week Dr. Sechrest said he had begun to receive more positive e-mail and phone calls. He noted in particular an e-mail message from a former student.
“As I read your article I found myself laughing out loud and saying things like ‘amen’ and ‘true,’ ” the former student wrote. “At the same time I felt somewhat guilty because it really did offend people I really care about. There’s no denying these are legitimate concerns. The lack of interest in anything beyond Brewster County lines also baffled me.”
The student added, “It is my sincere hope that all involved can extract what is true and good from your article, and get over the rest.”
The message was signed, “A former clod.”
Maybe getting a not unsympathetic write-up in the New York Times will stir Alpine into being less cloddish, and Sul Ross State University into improving its standards. It certainly sounds as if that could be the longer term outcome. Maybe Sechrest has done the whole area a favour, in other words. If he has, it would not be the first time in human history that criticism was met first with anger, but then with a resolve by the people criticised to do better in the future.
For a wonderful account of the BBC’s world famous dispassion and impartiality, check this out.
Some views are more welcome than others it seems.
We Brians must stick together, so here is a plug for this campaign by Brian Whiley (linked to by b3ta.com) to replace either Greg Dyke or That Bloke From The City as BBC DG or BBC Chairman, whichever.
What was Gilligan’s crime? That, early in the morning – at a time when nobody except insomniacs and farmers would be listening – a bleary-eyed journalist embellished a report that, in all honesty, probably needed it. My first duty would be to defend to the last BBC journalists from a Government that feels the need to hound reporters whose only error has been to make a boring story a little more interesting by inventing conversations that never took place.
I particularly like the promotional products peddled on this website, which downplay the “Whiley” aspect of the situation in a way that will surely meet with widespread approval here.
It made me chuckle when I received a cheque for £50 ($85) from the BBC for my recent appearance on BBC News 24. It is rare that I get both the satisfaction of responding to a question pertaining to the Kilroy-Silk affair on live TV that, to paraphrase, “Surely this was not objective journalism by Kilroy-Silk” by saying “Surely you are not going to claim that the BBC itself is purely objective and does not take editorial positions in issues?”… and then to get paid by the BBC for saying it!
But then it dawned on me that £50 is less than half of the TV tax I am forced to pay annually to fund that monstrosity… and in any case they were only giving me back my own damn money. Oh well.
Despite taking a big one amidships with the Hutton Report, the BBC is still at it. If anyone happens to be watching right now, they are showing a ‘documentary’ about ‘How the Americans and British got it Wrong’.
The documentary consists primarily of every single photo or film clip they have of civilian deaths. Nearly every segment begins with the line ‘The Americans were fearful …’. I’m not exaggerating and given the calibre of writers at the BBC it cannot concievably be accidental. It is an intentional construction of a rhetorical framework.
These people hate us with a white fury I have difficulty fathoming. I finally had to just walk away from it.
I wonder if I can sue the BBC for Hate speech against Americans? Yeah, that’s the ticket. I have Rights too! The EU says so!
A reader has noted that I was completely incorrect and the show was actually on ITV\Ch4, not BBC. Mea Culpa. I was certain the TV had been set to BBC and the announcer’s style was so BBC that I just assumed it was. My apologies for this error.
In today’s Telegraph Charles Moore has an excellent summary of what is wrong with the BBC, its deeply entrenched institutional bias and its undeserved influence:
It seems to me that the BBC today is the enemy of conservative culture in Britain. This is not immediately obvious, because elements of the BBC’s output, particularly on radio, are justly loved by many conservative-minded people. But it is nevertheless the case. The few glorious programmes are used as the camouflage behind which political correctness can advance.
How does the BBC approach subjects such as American power, organised religion, marriage, the EU, the Middle East, the actions of the Armed Forces, the rights of householders to defend their property against burglars, public spending, choice of schools, or any perceived inequality?
Who will be more politely treated – Gerry Adams or Norman Tebbit, a spokesman for Hizbollah or Paul Wolfowitz? If someone appears on a programme described as a “property developer” with someone described as a “green activist”, who will get the rougher ride? If a detective drama features a feisty lesbian and a chilly aristocrat, which is more likely to be the murderer?
And when it comes to a war – it applied both in the Falklands and in Iraq – the BBC takes a pride in being what it calls “even-handed”, which means inventing moral equivalence between the forces of our country and those of aggressive dictatorships.
None of these attitudes is unique to the BBC, but what is unique is the BBC’s power to impose them. In order legally to have a television in your home, you have to pay the BBC £116 a year. This allows it to dominate virtually all forms of broadcast media, many of which have nothing to do with any idea of “public service broadcasting”.
Out of the deference that this power instils, senior BBC executives are paid more than anyone else in the entire British public service. Greg Dyke, the now ex-director-general and editor-in-chief who seems to have been too busy to edit, got £464,000 last year. BBC executives are like the princes of the Church of England before the commutation of the tithes. They are rich and powerful, and no doubt they mean well, but there comes a time when non-conformists get fed up with paying for their sermons and their privileges.
That time is surely near. We must find a way of abolishing or hugely reducing the licence fee while reviving the core of public service broadcasting. How half-witted of Tory Britain to hand this chance to Tony Blair, instead of claiming it for itself.
Apologies for such a long quote but apart from a tiny disagreement about the license fee – it should be scrapped, not just reduced – I have nothing to add.
The Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has now resigned.
Mr Dyke’s decision to step down came 20 hours after BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies resigned following the Hutton Report.
An emotional Mr Dyke told BBC staff at their central London headquarters: “I don’t want to go. But if in the end you screw up you have to go.”
What with Gavyn Davies gone and now Mr Dyke, the corporation will hopefully be a bit less ‘hideously white’.
I am just watching the evening news that reverberates with the release of the Hutton report . It exonerates the government of lying about their 45-minute claim and pretty much damns the BBC.
- Editorial system at BBC was defective in allowing Mr Gilligan’s report to go to air without editors seeing a script
- BBC management failed to make an examination of Mr Gilligan’s notes of the interview with Dr Kelly
- There was a defect in the BBC’s management system relating to the way complaints were investigated
- BBC governors failed to investigate Mr Gilligan’s actions properly
Channel 4 were gloating relishing that the BBC is in “disarray”, “deep crisis” and words to that effect. They read extracts from the letter by the BBC Chairman who acknowledged that the trust the viewers had in the BBC had been undermined. I’d say! And add that it is not due to the Hutton report but by institutionally engrained bias and arrogance that one comes to expect from public institutions with no accountability. The BBC governors are admitting that the ‘procedure failed’ and are considering resigning en masse. Oh, the Chairman has already resigned. I think we will get over it.
Now Andrew Neil a BBC presenter, is complaining that Lord Hutton is an anti-journalist judge. Oh yes, the BBC never errs. And the government is not right either – look they still haven’t found any WMD!!!! The report favour the establisment, he keeps mumbling. I expect any minute they are going to lead him out to meet nice men with a lovely long-sleeved jacket.
The political impact of publicly unveiling just how political and biased the BBC is will be considerable. I am not sure that the result will be to our liking. The government is not going to disband the BBC but will call for a full-scale regulation and the license fee will become an even less conspicous form of taxation.
Update: This is such major news that I have been wondering whether any other news have been ‘buried’ today. I think I found it.
Journalism is a dog-eat-dog business these days. Lack of talent is no longer enough. No, you have to do something truly original and spectacular in order to get noticed.
Take, for example, Osama Bin Laden. After years of fruitless struggle (and the customary mound of polite rejection letters) he has finally been rewarded with his own column in the Guardian:
The west’s occupation of our countries is old, but takes new forms. The struggle between us and them began centuries ago, and will continue. There can be no dialogue with occupiers except through arms. Throughout the past century, Islamic countries have not been liberated from occupation except through jihad. But, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the west today is doing its utmost to besmirch this jihad, supported by hypocrites.
Employing him was clearly the right decision. Who else can boast such an enticing combination of political commentary, history and anti-Western rhetoric? This is sizzling stuff. Looks like the Guardian has landed itself a new champion of social justice and the environment.
There’s a curious use of a word to be found here, or there is now, as I concoct this, at about 4.40 pm on Sunday afternoon, London time. Maybe it will change soon. I refer to the little heading which leads to this story. The story itself is headed “Blair praises UK troops in Basra” and I have no problem with that. But the bit at the main website that leads to this story says, on the left, just under where it says “NEWS”:
Blair rallies UK troops in Basra.
Rallies. Yes, you read that right. Evidently some twit at the BBC thinks that Britain’s army has just suffered some sort of defeat.
Please understand that I am not in any way blaming Blair for this absurd word, merely the fool who put it up at the BBC website, and as I say it may soon vanish.
These people are starting seriously to believe their own bullshit.
There were big anti-terror/pro-democracy demonstrations in Baghdad today. Glenn Reynolds points out they were noticed grudgingly, when at all, by the ‘professional’ ‘media’. A few years ago this would have meant the story didn’t exist.
Times change.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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