Toby Blyth copied to us a step-by-step analysis of and complaint about a BBC article on North Korea.

"I wish to complain about anti-American bias in and the general quality of this article.

1. It implies that somehow the US is illogical in not attacking (ie by waging war on it) North Korea since North Korea's human rights record is worse than Iraq's.

2. It highlights (by leading) criticism of Israel while using scare quotes relating to the use of the word terrorist in relation to obviously terrorist organisations (eg Islamic Jihad), seeking to undermine the nature of these terrorist organisations. This is an undergradute writing tactic and so hackneyed as to make one wonder at its continued use by the BBC. Israel is a democracy with an admirably better human rights record than any of the countries that surround it, and better than China, Cuba, Zimbabwe and the central Asian states - why does this piece immediately leap to Israel? An unkind reader would assume it is a manifestation of documented anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic bias at the BBC.

3. The use of the word 'berated' is not exactly neutral - it implies some form of hysterical behaviour, where 'criticised' would have been more appropriate to the actions of a state.

4. The use of the word 'presuming' implies the US lacks moral authority - the US is not presuming to criticise (except in the author's mind), it actually is criticising. The US is certainly not on a par with any of the countries criticised with respect to human rights, being a fully functioning democracy under the rule of
law.

5. It uses scare quotes around the word 'coalition'. This really is reprehensible -the coalition fighting in Iraq fits the dictionary definition - the scare quotes are meant to make the reader understand that somehow the coalition of 46 countries involved in attacking Hussein's regime is a US front and lacks legitimacy.

6. The final point - about the apparent inconsistency between one spokesperson saying North Korea is the worst regime, with another saying that Saddam Hussein is the worst ruler, is flawed on its face. Barring the deeper case that evil at this level is pretty difficult to distinguish, the writer is wrong to compare differing comments about a ruler and a regime and then say this is a comparison."

At its best, this piece is ill-informed and transparently biased editorial. It is not labelled as editorial."

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Arab News beats BBC. A few moments ago I was listening to some Radio 4 news analysis programme on the future of post-war Iraq and I caught an audio clip of Arabic chanting and an of an American voice saying "What they are saying is, '“With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam.'”

As the clip finished the female presenter said, "As shocked US journalists are discovering, pro Saddam sentiment is widespread." (All this is from memory; those might not be the exact words, but that was the sense of it.)

Even Arab News, scarcely a pro-American source, managed to apply a little more critical thinking than that. Their war-correspondent Essam Al-Ghalib wrote, probably describing the same incident:

"I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food.

His answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

He said: “There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else.”

Perhaps I shouldn't say that "even" Arab News could see beyond the obvious words. Perhaps it is the case that they know better than we do how repression works. In response to a post I made elsewhere about that same story, a reader wrote in to say that it reminded him of a remark by Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko: "Only the seasoned subject of a modern dictatorial police-state can quite comprehend the fear that its power and ubiquity and amoralism can inspire in a man's heart."

The same e-mail continues:

While I was checking this, another Kravchenko quote caught my eye. (He is talking about how startled he was, when posted to Washington late in WWII, to find that successful soviet propaganda in the U.S. was on many issues more extreme than that offered to soviet citizens, who at least knew what life was like there.)

"The myth of a happy socialist land is treated as a grim piece of totalitarian ballyhoo inside Russia. It is acepted literally, solemnly, in an almost religious transport, by a large part of those men and women who create public opinion in the outside democratic world."

Pro-US chanting is treated by the BBC with scepticism. They are quick to say - no doubt with some truth - that the chanters may just be being prudent in view of the presence of heavily armed American soldiers. But why am I not surprised that pro-Saddam chanting is accepted at face value.

My correspondent adds:

Stalin and his system have gone but the men and women Kravchenko describes are still with us, just as eager to believe 'totalitarian ballyhoo' as ever they were, and just as eager to create a public opinion that suits them.

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