{"id":317,"date":"2007-02-26T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T19:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=317"},"modified":"2007-02-26T13:13:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T19:13:00","slug":"reporting-tony-blair-inaccuracy-or-partiality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/02\/reporting-tony-blair-inaccuracy-or-partiality\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporting Tony Blair: inaccuracy or partiality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you get this:<\/p>\n

\u201cTony Blair says his belief in God played a part in deciding to go to war in Iraq. The Prime Minister tells ITV1 he prayed over the difficult decision. Tonight the startling insight into how Mr Blair\u2019s faith influenced Britain\u2019s part in ousting Saddam. So was it holy war?\u201d<\/p>\n

ITV News<\/span> Saturday, 4 March 2006<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From this: <\/p>\n

Tony Blair:<\/span> The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing, according to your conscience. And for the rest of it, you leave it, as I say, to the judgement that \u2026
Michael Parkinson:<\/span> So\u2026
TB:<\/span> \u2026.history will make.
MP:<\/span> So you, so you would… you would… you would\u2026 pray\u2026to\u2026 to God whenever you make a decision like that?
TB:<\/span> Well I\u2026 you know\u2026 I don\u2019t want to go into…
MP:<\/span> No, but I mean, hey, you said that\u2026
TB:<\/span> \u2026this side of this but it\u2019s\u2026 [NB These two lines spoken simultaneously]<\/span>
MP:<\/span> \u2026you said that\u2026you\u2019d\u2026
TB:<\/span> Yeah I \u2026 you, you… [NB These lines also spoken simultaneously]<\/span>
MP:<\/span> …been informed\u2026
TB:<\/span> but you\u2026 of course\u2026. It\u2019s\u2026. you, you struggle with your own conscience about it because people\u2019s lives are affected\u2026<\/p>\n

Michael Parkinson<\/span> show, Saturday 4 March 2006<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to industry regulator Ofcom<\/a>, the interpretation placed by ITV News <\/span>on Tony Blair<\/span>‘s appearance on the Michael Parkinson<\/span><\/span> show broke the regulation on due accuracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can watch the full clip of the interview here<\/a>. Seeing it is more compelling than reading it, and in my view, whilst ITV News reported Mr Blair accurately<\/span>, they didn’t report him impartially<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the ITV intro again:<\/p>\n

Tony Blair says his belief in God played a part in deciding to go to war in Iraq. The Prime Minister tells ITV1 he prayed over the difficult decision. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, here’s the BBC News<\/span> intro (which gives Parky<\/span> a bigger plug):<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister has said in an interview that he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq. Tony Blair told ITV1’s Parkinson<\/span> chat show that he had struggled with his conscience…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Beeb launch into a Richard Lister package, but then ITV continues with this:<\/p>\n

Tonight the startling insight into how Mr Blair\u2019s faith influenced Britain\u2019s part in ousting Saddam. So was it holy war?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ITV took a view on Blair’s exchange with Parkinson and – without exactly mis-representing it – they ‘over-represented’ it, failing to produce anyone in their reporting to defend a position they had created by amplification.<\/p>\n

If you’re a Christian, isn’t it right that you pray for guidance over difficult decisions? After all, we’re not talking about consulting a Ouija board. As a firm atheist I know that prayer won’t be delivering anything back, but if we take prayer as a socially acceptable euphemism for reflection, then is there really anything offensive, shocking or surprising about this admission? One doesn’t have to agree with Tony Blair on anything, not least his commitment of troops to Iraq, to tolerate his right to religious freedom.<\/p>\n

Still, accuracy is the offence as far as Ofcom is concerned. I guess it’s a less ‘politically sensitive’ crime than impartiality which might make you vulnerable – unfairly – to accusations of stooge-dom. I’d like to see the regulator have a little backbone, and tough it out one of these days…<\/p>\n

Incidentally Richard Lister<\/a>‘s report on the BBC didn’t have anyone defending Tony Blair either, but then the BBC piece <\/span>didn’t shout as loud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you get this: \u201cTony Blair says his belief in God played a part in deciding to go to war in Iraq. The Prime Minister tells ITV1 he prayed over the difficult decision. Tonight the startling insight into how Mr Blair\u2019s faith influenced Britain\u2019s part in ousting Saddam. So was it holy war?\u201d ITV […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[16,119],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-itv-news","tag-uk-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}