Shamima Begum: BBC’s First Jihadi Correspondent
by Frank Haviland, The New Conservative:
As the UK’s public service broadcaster, the BBC’s Royal Charter lays out its mission statement: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.” This is further clarified by its editorial values: “Our audiences have a right to receive creative material, information and ideas without interference. But our audiences also expect us to balance our right to freedom of expression with our responsibilities to our audiences and to our contributors, subject to restrictions in law.”
In other words, the broadcaster attempts to walk the tightrope between free expression and good taste. This is a delicate act: not least because good taste is entirely subjective, but also because one man’s freedom of expression is increasingly another man’s hate speech.
Having acknowledged that, the very least the taxpayer might expect for the princely sum of £159 per annum is that critical issues be met with dispassionate rigour; that scandals be rewarded with prompt exposure, and that bans be meted out only to those most egregious of persona non grata. The merest scrutiny of BBC funambulism, however, highlights the fact that this is a line the BBC does not tread particularly well.
[…] BBC stalwarts like Sue Barker may well bemoan their unceremonious dismissal; Jon Holmes regret his “recasting with more women and diversity”; and Mark Lawrenson claim he was fired simply for being a white male, but diversity is a one-way process; which is why you are increasingly less likely to be hired at Broadcasting House, if you are of a white persuasion.
So when the opportunity arose for a new podcast on BBC Sounds, while you can guarantee who won’t feature on it, you might be surprised to learn the target audience the Beeb has opted for. Yes, the job has fallen to Shamima Begum: the schoolgirl who ran off to Syria in 2015 to become a jihadi bride for the Islamic State. Begum stars in the 10-part series “I’m Not a Monster,” the first episode of which premiered last week.
If Begum has fallen off your radar, allow me to jog your memory. This is the woman who “wasn’t fazed” by the sight of severed heads in bins, nor suffered any pangs of remorse when interviewed four years on. She claimed the Manchester Arena bombing was “justified,” and that she was not aware ISIS was a death cult. She claims she never did anything “dangerous” in Syria, although witnesses confirm she was a cruel enforcer for the morality police, who also sewed men into suicide vests.
It is of course impossible to gauge what proportion of the BBC’s diversity quota is allocated for returning jihadis, but what is clear is that the current thinking at Broadcasting House is that it’s “best to be ahead of the game.”
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