Remember that BBC-produced children's guide to 9/11 that blamed it on America's foreign policy?
It's now facing some real public pressure in the form of Pauline Neville Jones, a former British spy and now powerful member of that country's Conservative party. She's also a former governor (aka board member) of the BBC. And she wants some changes to the program:
Britain’s former spy chief accused the BBC of “parroting” Al Qaeda propaganda to children as young as six.
Dame Pauline Neville Jones, who is also a former BBC governor, is infuriated at the stance the corporation’s Newsround programme took on the September 11 attacks. She accused the flagship children’s news bulletin of feeding an “ugly undercurrent” which suggests the terrorist outrage was somehow justifiable. [...]
After the public complained, the text was amended. It now reads: “Al Qaeda is unhappy with America and other countries getting involved in places like the Middle East. People linked to al Qaeda have used violence to make this point in the U.S.A, and in other countries.”
Dame Pauline, who headed the Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee and is described as the most formidable female diplomat Britain has produced, said the new version was even worse. “It still says it’s all America’s fault, and now for daring to be involved in the Middle East at all,” she said.
"It wasn’t ‘people linked to’ al Qaeda who killed 3,000 people that day, it was al Qaeda itself. Osama bin Laden even boasted of the attacks. Is the BBC really saying that if you’re ‘unhappy’ it’s quite normal behaviour to murder people?“Is the BBC so naive as to take al Qaeda’s propaganda at face value? Or is there something more sinister at work here?”
