The yids set the agenda - you need to be careful not to let them tie you in knots, says the BBC

Joshua

This was certainly true of the BBC during the Holocaust. From an article in the Independent in 1996: 'Other confidential internal memorandums show an unwillingness by the BBC to broadcast on behalf of the Jews. "Any direct action to counter anti-Semitism would do more harm than good," wrote Sir Richard Maconachie, controller of the home service, on 15 April 1943. May E Jenkin, Children's Hour assistant director, stated: "If you give Jewish broadcasters an inch, they come clamouring for a mile." Despite the evidence from the PWE, the BBC foreign and home news boards concluded: "It seems desirable to soft- pedal the whole thing".Leonard Miall of the wartime overseas service says that the BBC was "very careful to avoid giving currency to rumours that might not be true. We didn't want to jeopardise our general credibility. In the process, we did undoubtedly play down the extent of the Holocaust." In wartime, government censors made sure that the BBC would never be able to say anything contrary to official policy. The government line, echoed by the BBC, was to win the war, then save the Jews. "We wanted to keep the Middle East quiet," says Sir Frank Roberts, a Foreign Office mandarin in charge of monitoring German activities. "It was an important part of our war effort. We had to be careful we didn't give the Arabs the impression that we had suddenly turned over into a pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist organisation." ' -- http://tinyurl.com/3clwul

NicK

This article shows just how bad the anti-Semitism is within the BBC and their liberal leftwing journalists. These attitudes must be crushed. Well done Stephen for keeping us informed.

Ian C

I think I must be missing something here. I am a white Christian with all my roots in Britain and Ireland. My interpretation of what Ms Salmon is quoted as saying above is that HBO said something like "we've got a high %ge Jewish audience, we have to be careful" perhaps adding something ‘like our research shows they are sensitive about films depicting the Jews as blameworthy for Christ's crucifixion.' Whereas you and those you quote and the comments of Joshua and Nick above are reading something that I cannot see in her words. It's a cultural thing, I think, and indicative of how living in a multicultural society is very difficult because we all interpret the same things very differently. I would not have given this a second thought in the context of racism or BBC bias, both of which I would like to think I am the first to criticise. It’s back to sensitivity again and is evidence for the case that Jews are prone to be particularly ready to take what we white Christians believe to be an ordinary comment as pro-actively anti-Semitic.

Simon Shaeffer

Jews have much more power in the media here and in the US than their share of the population would strictly dictate. Aren't Stephen and Melanie (and possibly Clive) a good example of that? If any attempt to recognize that fact and its implications is caricatured as y*d-hating goys up to their old tricks, I think you're playing into the hands of genuine antisemites.

Clive

Oh, so I'm Jewish now, am I? Thank you for the honorary membership

ilana

I think IanC deserves a response because what he says is true, and many non-Jews would not pick up any anti-Semitic vibes from what Ms Salmon said. For me, as a Jew, the phrase about "setting the cultural agenda" was the main problem, because it feeds into the anti-Semitic charge that Jews control everything. Yes, Jews are over-represented (relative to their numbers) in the media, the arts and other fields, but strictly as individuals, with no "agenda" to set. I would also like to add that the reason Jews may seem very sensitive to such remarks is not because we are hothouse plants who cannot bear to be "offended" (that currently fashionable charge) but because we know that anti-Semitism of this low key type encourages or can morph into the type that involves actual physical violence.

Jerry Reed

So what else in new? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reith%2C_1st_Baron_Reith#My_Father_.E2.80.94_Reith_of_the_BBC

Lee Jakeman

I can accept that there is a residual anti-Jewish prejudice in much of what is written and broadcast. Having said that, I find the sanctimony of many Jews, like Joshua, rather irritating. Go and read some of the comments, written by Jews, on almost any Jerusalem Post article and you will find attitudes, prejudices and stereotypes as bad as anything you'll find among non-Jews. The American Jews, particularly, are violently anti-British and regularly portray this country as "the fourth Reich". Usually, they are responding to what some idiot in the Oxford Union did, or what Ken Livingstone said, as if these individuals spoke for the entire nation. This is exactly the same mentality that you find among anti-semites, who smear all Jews because of what this one did or that one said. If you're one of those that thinks of Jews as "fair-minded", "reasonable", "moderate" etc, then a quick read of the JP's Talkbacks will soon shatter your illusions. The bigotry and venom that I read there was sufficient to make me reconsider my (until then) unequivocal support for Israel.

David Lindsay

You either stick to the text (The Passion of The Christ, most recently), or else why bother at all? You might as well not bother as go through a re-writing exercise to conform to the liberal New York Jewish prejudices of HBO’s imagined core audience.

Or indeed to the liberal London Jewish prejudices of the BBC’s imagined core audience. The BBC openly admits to containing a disproportionate number of people from “ethnic minorities”. But apart from serving the food and drink or pushing a broom, there is only one “ethnic minority” with any significant presence inside the BBC.

And why not? But that is not an excuse to re-write the sacred texts of seventy-two per cent of Britons, which are among the core texts of Western and world civilisation.

jb

i would imagine that with salmon as a surname, the offending bbcnik could well be jewish too... not that this reduces the ridiculousness of what she says (jews make up less than <2% of u.s. pop. so hbo must have an extremely grim market share if passion play-watching "liberal jews" are going to constitute the core audience of this show)

Simon Shaeffer

Honorary membership, Clive? By no means! I hope the cheque's in the post.

I'm not sure about Ilana's remarks. If Muslims (practising or ancestral) were as over-represented in the media as Jews presently are, would she feel sure they had no agenda? If Jews don't have an agenda of at least trying to defend their own interests, they must be curiously unlike most ethnic or religious groups and curiously ignorant of their own history.