http://www.thecommentator.com/article/880/abu_qatada_is_an_extremist_so_why_won_t_the_bbc_tell_the_truth_
Abu Qatada is an extremist so why won’t the BBC tell the truth?
Calling Abu Qatada an extremist may well be a value judgement but it would be the right value judgement and more importantly than this it would also be the truth
According to notes shown to the Daily Telegraph, BBC journalists have been told by the corporation’s managers that they should avoid referring to the al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada as ‘an extremist’. This, they were told, would be to make a ‘value judgement’ and rather they were to describe Qatada as ‘a radical’.
Yet this seems an incredible position for the BBC to have adopted, and it’s incredible because it very clearly appears that the BBC is instructing it’s journalists to avoid telling the truth.
Abu Qatada is quite demonstrably an extremist. Calling him a radical just doesn’t suffice. You might say that Roy Jenkins was a radical Home Secretary or that Ayn Rand with her views on the virtue of selfishness was a radical. They were radicals because, to varying degrees, they went against the grain of the prevailing orthodoxies that had existed. But Abu Qatada sits at the extreme end of what is in itself an overtly extreme and violent ideology.
Good old Auntie has done its best not to offend this man and his advocates
Good old Auntie has done its best not to offend this man and his advocates
This is after all the man who essentially acted as Bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe. He is known to have acted as a mentor to shoe bomber Richard Reid, Abu Hamza and Zacarias Moussaoui; the so called ‘20th hijacker’ of 9/11. And Qatada has been a fundraiser for terrorist activities and linked with terror groups whose networks stretch from as far as Algeria to Chechnya. Indeed, the immigration judge who thought it would be a good idea to rule that Qatada should walk free from Long Lartin high security prison had already been advised by his security team that the preacher posed a ‘grave risk’ to national security.