Un-BBC-lievable

The BBC has stepped into it again. It appears that a paintball trip they funded for a few Islamists as part of a BBC “reality”-type series – that was supposed to make western “paranoia” over Islamists seem unfounded – has backfired, with the recipients of the reality check being the BBC themselves. The Times of London reports:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

The BBC paid Mr Hamid, an Islamic preacher who denies recruiting and grooming the men behind the failed July 2005 attack, a £300 fee to take part in the programme, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

It was alleged that Mr Hamid told a BBC reporter that he would use the corporation’s money to pay a fine imposed by magistrates for a public order offence.

Nasreen Suleaman, a researcher on the programme, told the court that Mr Hamid, 50, contacted her after the July 2005 attack and told her of his association with the bombers. But she said that she felt no obligation to contact the police with this information. Ms Suleaman said that she informed senior BBC managers but was not told to contact the police.

Ms Suleaman told the court that Mr Hamid was keen to appear in the programme. She said: “He was so up for it. We took the decision that paintballing would be a fun way of introducing him.

“There are many, many British Muslims that I know who for the past 15 or 20 years have been going paintballing. It’s a harmless enough activity. I don’t think there is any suggestion, or ever has been, that it’s a terrorist training activity.”

The court was told previously that Mr Hamid taunted police on his return from an alleged terror training camp in the New Forest where exercises included somersaults, pole-vaulting and paintballing.

Ms Suleaman said she was not aware that Ramzi Mohammed and Hussein Osman, two of the July bombers, had joined Mr Hamid at the Tonbridge paintball centre on July 3, 2005.

Hat tip to Captain Ed, who concludes his post on the issue with this:

The BBC exists through mandated license payments for all British television owners. Perhaps those owners may want to get their MPs to reconsider the national subsidy for an organization clearly not operating in any sort of national interest.

I think they’d have a battle on their hands, as part of that ownership belongs to the roughly 2 million Muslims who were either born in or have immigrated to the UK, only 17% of which believe Arabs had anything to do with 9-11, 37% of which think it’s ok to target the Jewish community in Britain as “as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East,” and nearly 25% believe the 7/7 bombings in Britain were justified.

I’m looking fwd to Biased BBC’s commentary on this latest instance of the BBC’s dereliction of duty.

This, BTW, isn’t the first time the BBC has been caught giving favorable coverage to Islamofascists (more on that here), except in this current case, it was only later that they found out what kind of people they were broadcasting – and even then they still didn’t do anything about it.

Here’s a brief retrospective on the BBC’s bias:

Related: It gets even better: The BBC plans to broadcast in the spring a new series focusing on the concerns of white Britons over immigration:

At last, there is something on television that might please Alf Garnett. A BBC season about the “white working class” is to broadcast fears over immigration and Islam and take another look at Enoch Powell.

BBC Two is to run a series examining the concerns of “under siege” British whites. The channel promised that the explosive issues would be handled in a responsible manner.

A drama, White Girl, will show a white family being torn apart when they move to Bradford and their 11-year-old daughter absorbs Muslim values and wears the hijab. The BBC described the film as “provocative and emotional” and “a tender exploration of Islam through the eyes of a child”.

In the documentary All White in Barking, residents Susan and Jeff have never said hello to their Nigerian neighbours, insisting that “they are not our people”. Another resident, Dave, is so incensed by the influx of nonwhite faces that he becomes a British National Party activist.

Last Orders tells the story of the embattled Wibsey Working Men’s Club in Bradford. In The Poles Are Coming, residents in Peterborough say they are near breaking point because of an influx of Eastern Europeans.

The series culminates in Rivers of Blood, a reappraisal of Enoch Powell and his notorious 1968 speech in which he predicted racial strife.

The BBC said the series was intended to “shine the spotlight on the white working class in Britain”. A spokesman said: “It examines why some feel increasingly marginalised and explores possible reasons behind the rise in popularity of far-right politics in some sections of this community.”

But Roly Keating, the BBC Two Controller, said that the white season was not an attempt to use the explosive issue of racism to win back viewers. He said: “Some of the people in the programmes do have controversial opinions on race and the multicul-turalism in their area, but this season is in no sense a platform for promoting extreme political views. It is a more complex look at how life has changed for the white working class and we will be careful to ensure that there is balance.”

Balance? BBC? Hah! ;))

PM Update: LGF has video of “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic,” the 2005 ‘documentary’ in question, which was aired just a few weeks before the 7/7 terrorist attacks.

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Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on mainstream media bias and the culture wars.

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