JAMES LILEKS’ OBSERVATIONS about the BBC:

It’s interesting, listening to these guys – I’m unsure how it’s possible to sneer the entire time you’re speaking. I fear the announcer’s face will stay that way. Perhaps you can recognize an old Beeb hand by the permanently curled lip. I’ve tuned in twice in half an hour; both times they were talking about the FAILURE to get Saddam, and what this FAILURE means for the war which might be hindered by this initial FAILURE. And then the reporter – a female one, with a sneerier sneer – says the question now is when the attack will come, and whether the President will give his generals permission to act with a free hand.

Um . . . haven’t we already settled that question? I know it conflicts with the Beeb’s view of Bush as a vulture with a bloody globe clutched in one claw, the other holding the leashes of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I heard hours ago that theater decisions had been left to the folks who do this for a living.

Yeah, and Congress voted its approval. Twice. Now Mickey Kaus has been listening and says:

Now I know what Andrew Sullivan’s been talking about! … And James Lileks is right about the British network’s near-permanent anti-U.S. sneer. (There was also a hilarious segment in which the Beeb’s man-on-the-scene, in the best British tradition, had chosen to report on the mood of the American citizenry from “Lake County” in California — i.e., California wine country. He managed to find a few Republican citizens and make them sound like comically rabid John Birchers.) … If I were in the Bush White House, I too would be paranoid and suspect the BBC’s airing of Bush’s pre-speech primping wasn’t just an honest mistake. …

Yes, it’s funny how often anti-Americanism goes hand-in-hand with being a state-funded apparatchik. That goes back to the anti-capitalism point mentioned below.

As Andrew Sullivan notes, a lot of people are experiencing epiphanies as the dishonesty of once-respected media institutions becomes apparent.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Speaking of BBC lip-curling: I’ve just seen one reporter on BBC News 24 question an Iraqi at an anti-war protest. The reporter obviously didn’t do any kind of pre-rehearsal, because things did not go As Planned.

The young lady turns out to be absolutely pro-war, despite having family members in Bagdad, and was about 2000% more eloquent than some of the more telegenic air-heads that the BBC seems to have this curious talent for singling out, and then airing footage of over and over again.

Finally the reporter asks “Why are you at an anti-war rally if you agree with the war?” in a rather peeved tone of voice. The gist of her answer is that most of the protesters don’t have the faintest idea of what it’s like to live under a regime such as Saddam’s, which is right of course.

Then the reporter turns to the camera and says “Well, there you go, one Iraqi who approves of the war” as if this was some mind-boggling occurance, and as if their own footage didn’t show Iraqis dancing in the streets when the US Army showed up, and as if there was not one single Iraqi, anywhere else on the entire planet, who might have a itsy-bitsy-teensy-weeny little bit of an issue over how Saddam has been running their country.

No surprises here. (LATER: Here’s an account of what seems to be the same interview, from OxBlog.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg has been listening to The Beeb too, and has some not-very-flattering observations.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Perry DeHavilland writes:

The coverage of SkyNews has been head and shoulders better that the rest, as was also the case during the fighting against the Taliban/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. CNN and ITN are both fair to adequate, and the BBC is hovering between adequate and truly dire, with dreary hackneyed commentary filled with technical errors. Are the BBC incapable of finding a few ex-military people to employ who might know that there is no such thing as an ‘Abrahams’ battle tank?

It is also easy to see the institutional political biases of the different channels: SkyNews has been repeatedly showing an extended clip of bemused Royal Marines in Umm Qasr surrounded by exuberant Iraqi men welcoming them as liberators… I saw one clip of about 6 or 7 seconds long of this on the BBC. Once.

Interesting.