The researcher and I exchanged emails and had several long chats on the phone – she asking me about the logistics of travel across the Middle East and possible points of interest for a driving show, me bending her ear at length about how wonderful the region is and throwing lots of ideas at her about how and where the trip might run.

I can’t remember whether it was her or me who mentioned the idea of the show following the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” to Bethlehem. But it was probably her. Almost certainly her. I mean, let’s face it, it must have been her. Must have been.

Anyway, so there were more emails, and more long phone calls (“I wondered if you would be free for a chat about the Golan Heights?” “Do you know if it’s possible to drive through the West Bank now?”), and I passed on specialist contacts in Jordan, in Palestine, I sent her links for theories of where the Three Wise Men originated – perhaps Iran, perhaps elsewhere – I explained what frankincense and myrrh are, and where they come from… the whole thing. We got on alright, I thought.

Perhaps I was naive in freely sharing knowledge without fixing terms, or without discussing the possibility of being involved in the show (or at least being acknowledged somehow).

Perhaps she thought I was doing it for the love of the Middle East, or because she thought images of Clarkson in the desert would instantly cause a soaring rise in sales of my Rough Guide to Jordan, thereby recompensing me through vastly increased royalty payments at no cost to the licence-fee payer.

Either way, the emails stopped in May, and I heard nothing more.

Then, this appeared: a Top Gear Christmas special, broadcast on 26th December, centred on a trip whereby Clarkson, Hammond and May follow the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” (Iraq) to Bethlehem, via Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Israel, with attempted detours via Iran (not possible with a BBC crew), across the Syrian desert, and into the Golan Heights.

Iraqi Kurdistan came off rather well, with lots of epic scenery and enthusiasm about the friendliness of the people. Turkey was portrayed as shabby and dangerous. Syria seemed rather fun. Jordan was dismissed as a basket-case. Israel was glossed over, and Palestine didn’t exist – we saw nothing of Bethlehem. Top Gear’s not my favourite show, and I’m the wrong demographic, but all that burqa-wearing stuff struck me as particularly stupid.

And, of course, I got no credit. Perhaps I’m over-estimating my input, perhaps my info was utterly tangential, but I think that stinks. Sour grapes? Of course it’s sour grapes. I’m wallowing in sour grapes. They chewed me up and spat me out.

I’ll leave you with an email from me to the Top Gear researcher, dated 1st February 2010:

hi again
Struck me over weekend that this might also be of interest:
http://jerashchariots.com
Can just imagine the 3 of them racing, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome…

On the right is a still frame, taken from the sequence where the 3 of them race, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome at Jerash, Jordan.

Great idea, BBC.

I really enjoyed it – I thought the host, Vicky Letch, did a great job setting the right atmosphere and it’s always fun seeing how these shows are put together. It was live, but didn’t feel like it. Enjoy.

Link here.

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.

The reference is to Fadlallah, a prominent Lebanese Shia cleric, who died on July 4th. Nasr later explained her comments in a detailed blog post, in which she regretted trying to encapsulate a complex thought in a 140-character tweet.

CNN is not my favourite news source, and I hold no candle for Nasr, but to fire her shows a lack of judgement on CNN’s part that far overshadows Nasr’s indiscretion.

It reminds me of what happened when Barbara Plett, a BBC reporter in Ramallah, admitted crying at the death of Yasser Arafat. This is the transcript of Plett’s report. There was an outcry following its broadcast in 2004. An internal BBC enquiry later found that she had broken the BBC’s rules on impartiality (report here). Plett was mothballed for a while, and then reposted to a different part of the world.

But she was not fired.

Journalism is a difficult job. The days of rigid impartiality are, it often seems, over: in their place have come a welter of consciously partial news sources. In old media that shows itself in the nonsense extremes of, for example, Fox News and Press TV – and the very raison d’etre of new media is to supply multiple voices on every issue, to cover all angles. The onus has shifted, to a greater or lesser degree, onto the news consumer to take responsibility for filtering and processing the information they receive.

In claiming that Nasr’s credibility had been ‘compromised’ by her tweet, CNN is wrong. Nasr’s credibility is, rather, enhanced by it – not because Fadlallah was necessarily an admirable figure, but because her tweet demonstrates that she grasps nuance, and understands that the profoundly complex and contradictory realm of Middle East politics is not populated by one-dimensional figures who are purely good or purely evil, but by ordinary human beings who can hold outrageous, racist views and praise those who murder innocent civilians while simultaneously supporting progressive causes and benefiting their co-religionists and wider society. Life is not black and white. You are not either “for us or against us”.

The BBC placed more value on retaining the skills and expertise of Plett – who, undoubtedly, became a better, more cautious journalist because of the controversy – than on satisfying political calls for her to go. In doing so, they recognized the value of always trying to seek impartiality, but the unlikelihood of a single individual – let alone an entire organization – ever being able to achieve it.

By firing Octavia Nasr, CNN has, in contrast, shown itself to be a deeply reactionary, conservative organization – either more interested in toeing party-political lines than in seeking the truth, or (somehow worse) believing itself to be impartial, and thus perfect, already.

CNN has soiled its journalistic credentials, and rendered itself untrustworthy. More fool them.

The receding Dead Sea

Ferociously busy at the moment, ahead of a trip next week – I’ve got several stories I want to blog about, but only time now to post this BBC news report from Jordan by Natalia Antelava about the plans to build a Red-Dead Canal, linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, and thus (a) providing desalinated water for drinking, (b) exploiting the altitude difference to create hydroelectric power, and (c) pumping super-concentrated brine into the Dead Sea in an attempt to halt the shrinkage.

TV, as always, is restricted by the necessity to provide pictures – even when there’s nothing really to look at – but at least this 3-minute package introduces the issues and talks to the right people, including Munqeth Mehyar, director of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) in Jordan…

Red-Dead merits a longer post; I will come back to it.

I had high hopes: it’s a nice idea, and Humble is a good choice. There were some great sequences – camel-jumping in Yemen (where young bloods try to leap over a row of dromedaries, Evel Knievel-style: see pic), a bit of imperial nostalgia in Aden, discussing capital punishment with the chief of the religious police in Riyadh’s “Chop-Chop Square”, and so on.

But what a wasted opportunity in Oman! As the source of frankincense, and the anchor of the whole trip, Oman was treated surprisingly shoddily – a scant five or ten minutes, focused entirely around Kate Humble fooling around on camelback like a package tourist at the Pyramids. Nothing of Dhofari culture, nothing of the amazing frankincense souk in Salalah, nothing of the extraordinarily evocative ruins of Sumharam at Khor Rori, nothing of Salalah’s state-of-the-art Museum of the Frankincense Lands… Oman was reduced to swarthy tribesmen dancing and shouting at camels a lot while blonde foreigner looks on in bemused hilarity. If I was part of the Omani team who fixed that particular shoot, or in the promotions unit of the Omani Ministry of Tourism, I would not be very happy today…

Then we got perhaps the most positive half-hour of prime-time TV coverage Yemen has had in years – genuinely interesting sequences of travel, well described, well shot and with good Q&A cultural insight between Humble and her Yemeni fixer – including a baby-blessing ceremony in a tower-house in Shibam, a wadi walk approaching Shabwa on the ancient frankincense route, some nice sequences in Sanaa, and more.

Because the Yemeni-Saudi border is closed, Kate then diverted onto a three-hour flight to Riyadh to continue the story. But why Riyadh? It has nothing to do with frankincense, and is miles off the route. Why not Jeddah – which is at least in the right direction – or, better still, a connecting flight back to Najran or Jizan, on the Saudi side of the border, to pick up the proper trail again?

My guess – and forgive my cynicism here (I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist) –is because this series came about not because of a desire to enlighten the world about frankincense – but, rather, because someone, somewhere, gained permission to film a travel documentary inside Saudi Arabia, perhaps after years of asking. Lots is changing inside KSA, and there is a strong desire there to gain screentime in the West that is both positive and focused well away from news. From the trailers, it looks like episode two sees Kate hosted by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for a high-life tour of Saudi in limos, supercars, private jets etc etc. So much for frankincense. I suspect that, having secured permission to film, the successful negotiator went away and developed a pitch which justified screening an hour of amazing scenery and memorable adventures inside KSA without it looking like a PR whitewash. Weaving KSA into a story about ancient trade routes is a brainwave. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Saudi promoted onscreen as a viable tourism destination.

It might work well: we’ve only had the first 15 minutes so far, at the end of episode one (of four) – though arrival in Riyadh was tragically, and brainlessly, heralded with the immortal voiceover from Kate Humble: “Saudi Arabia is a kingdom of contrasts”. Doh! Fire the scriptwriter!

And then, after dwelling on just how scarily different Kate thinks Saudi will be, with her tears flowing after trying on niqab in Sanaa (yes, it made her cry) and her nervousness about doing something wrong in Riyadh, when she finally arrived and was taken to a mall, all she could say – while looking around at Dunkin Donuts and shops selling, yes, skirts and T-shirts – was “It’s all so depressingly familiar”. Doh again! That felt like a microcosm of how Europeans have approached Arabia for generations: first it’s all thrillingly exotic, then the exoticism starts to feel threatening, then finally it’s not exotic enough. It’s the same mindset which results in Dubai tour operators laying on Ukrainian hoofers to stage a pastiche of Egyptian bellydance for groups on desert safaris – the reality is simply not enough to meet expectations.

But praise to the BBC for commissioning a four-part series about travelling across the Arabian Peninsula – that must be a first. Interesting that it was scheduled in the middle of Ramadan, as well.

However, this is the map the BBC have drawn to illustrate the route. That diamond at the top is the ancient port of Gaza – but, as I’m sure must be known to BBC TV executives, Gaza is not an Israeli city. A simple question: where on this map is Palestine?

UPDATE: Seems I might be wrong about that Saudi prince – possibly not Prince Alwaleed, but rather Prince Bandar. And the Daily Telegraph have pulled no punches in their review of this programme today…

UPDATE 2: For detailed travel notes about following in Kate’s footsteps, click here.