NUJ: whatever happened to journalistic ethics?
The British National Union of Journalists is running a two day strike in support of BBC staff whose pension entitlements are under threat from government cuts.
Usually I’d feel sympathy for their campaign.
But appeals to the public for solidarity and support wear thin for BBC journalists.
Like their Australian counterparts in the ABC, BBC journalists are widely reviled for betraying their profession in one of the most serious ways imaginable: helping to frame innocents for the heinous crimes of mass murderers, whose real identity they help to protect.
More and more members of the public believe that ‘journalists’ who are willing to spin irrational lies about 9-11 and the 7/7 London bombings, presumably for the sake off a smooth career path, do not deserve any reimbursement at all from the public purse.
A selection of my tweets on the #bbcstrike hashtag
I am one of them.
I appreciate the pressures most likely brought to bear on journalists to enforce conformity. Corruption within the BBC – so serious that it fails to report accurately and with fairness on topics as crucial as 9-11 and 7/7 – clearly goes right to the top.
But journalists do have organisations to help protect against individual persecution. They are called unions. The NUJ is the key player in this case.
If the Maritime Workers Union in Victoria, Australia is able to review the evidence about 9-11 in a rational way – and support the eminently reasonable demand for a fresh inquiry – there’s really no excuse for the NUJ and its members.
More home truths for the discredited BBC Commentariat
Lies and systematic deception over 9-11 and the 7/7 bombings have been used in recent years to shred civil liberties thoughout the western world – including Britain. They have been the pretext for a massive increase in military, ‘intelligence’ and security budgets, for two illegal invasions and military occupations, the death of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions.
Do BBC journalists care so little about their fellow humanity they’re willing to tell lies that make these horrors possible?
If so, why should the public give a damn about their pensions?
Building What? (a collapse reported by the
BBC half an hour before it happened!)
