Tracking the 'cyber-jihadis'

TVReview: Peter Taylor and Mohammed al-Massari are watching a piece of film on a laptop. It shows a suicide bombing in Iraq that killed three British soldiers. The person with the camera - an associate of the bomber - praises Allah as the bomb goes off.

Al-Massari, a self-described "publisher", distributes footage such as this on the internet to rally support for violent Islamists. Taylor is interviewing him for his series, The New al-Qaeda. Al-Massari has "no problem" posting these gruesome images on his website, nor the online training videos that illustrate how to make suicide bombers' vests and other weaponry. He has the right to post the videos, he insists, and those who make them have the right to perpetrate the acts.

It's now generally accepted that popular, post-9/11 notions of al-Qaeda - as an international terrorist organisation controlled by Osama Bin Laden - were naïve. That view was most convincingly dismantled by the BBC's 2004 documentary, The Power of Nightmares, which declared that the al-Qaeda threat had been overstated by western governments and media, and even suggested the organisation does not exist. That in turn became a widely held view.

Now Peter Taylor, after nearly three years studying al-Qaeda, presents a different thesis: that the organisation may have changed since 2001, but it certainly exists and presents a real and constant threat. The recent London attacks have proved him right and make his film - made before the July 7th bombs - all the more compelling.

He takes us inside a world of "cyber-jihadis", who film bombings and other attacks, often placing cameras at various angles for maximum dramatic effect. Within hours of a strike, this footage is uploaded and distributed across the web, which now plays a central role in the Islamist war on the West. "We must get our message out, to raise funds, to recruit," says al-Massari. It is these films of beheadings and bomb-making seminars - apparently aimed at middle-class Muslim youths in western cities - that help create the next wave of bombers.

Taylor's investigation takes place in a familiar urban environment. He interviews one source over eggs and toast in a Tooting cafe; during another exchange, a coffee machine in the background squeaks out a latte; and we watch a reconstruction of MI5 trying to recruit an agent in Starbucks.

Taylor is one of Britain's most experienced TV journalists (his work on Irish affairs includes the books and documentaries, Provos, Loyalists and Brits), an adept and determined interviewer who digs and digs until he meets a brick wall of "information too sensitive to discuss". He presents findings in a serious style appropriate to the subject matter, without Michael Moore-style histrionics. In this bombing-aftershock period - when mainstream media can casually inflame public fears and become unwitting agents of terror - this three-part series looks like being a sober, informative account of modern terrorism.

Only at the last does it become openly polemical, when Taylor's voice-over expresses the view that cyber-terrorism is merely a symptom of the Islamist war on the West. In truth, he says, it is events in Kashmir, Palestine and Iraq that are fuelling anti-western fury. The very final word - in a similar vein - is left to Michael Schueur, former head of the CIA's "Bin Laden Unit": "The Islamists are winning this war hands down. Politicians tell the American people that this war is aimed at our liberties and our electoral system and our quest for gender equality. It has nothing to do with that. Until our president tells our people that these people are mad at our policies in the Islamic world, then they are winning, because we have failed to take the measure of our enemy."

Several Housemates are experiencing mid-series mental anguish in the Big Brother household. "My brain is working overtime, 24-seven. It aches," complains Craig before going to cry alone in the swimming pool. Former Miss Northern Ireland runner-up Orlaith admits defeat and begs for eviction on a seemingly hourly basis, while plain-spoken Anthony has had enough of the "thinkin' an' shitin' an' analysin'" that is the defining characteristic of this series.

Credit for the poisoned atmosphere goes to the Machiavellian Makosi, a powerful and outspoken personality with vote-management skills that would put a Fianna Fáil tallyman to shame. Her every comment seems designed to unnerve a fellow inmate, and her every action geared towards nominations avoidance. Somehow, while turning perfectly decent people into deadly enemies of one another, she has remained relatively popular herself.

It must indeed be torturous to sit with these people throught the longest Big Brother yet and have nothing to do but "think an' shite an' analyse". Even Nelson Mandela was allowed to grow a few veggies. Also in contrast with other series, most of this psychological warfare has occurred without the imposition of artificial enmities by the producers. Apart form the odd rule-change over nominations, Big Brother has for the most part sat back and let them wreck each other's heads. Unless Makosi's a plant, of course. Or am I getting paranoid too?

At some stage after each eviction and Davina debrief, some poor soul at Endemol Productions must be responsible for informing housemates that their capital city was bombed three weeks ago, that the world they are rejoining is very different from the one they left in June, that they have to get used to a new reality now.

Far from the smutfest I had hoped for, Secrets of the Sexes turned out to be a science programme - but I kept watching, because this is an ambitious and imaginative investigation into differences between men and women. Anybody who is either couldn't fail to be interested.

Realising that if science is to be watched, it must be fun, the producers are quite happy to take seemingly outlandish concepts and put them to the test in televised experiments. In episode one of the three-part series, one boffin theorised that people whose ring finger is longer than their index finger have unusually high testosterone levels. He said he could predict the order in which six men would finish a race, based only on photocopies of their hands. He did.

This week, they set up a speed-dating event to ascertain whether sexual attractiveness could be predicted by science. By collating various existing theories - that we are attracted to people with similar facial shapes to our own; that women are most attracted to men four-five years older and four-five inches taller than them; that aftershave is a scientifically proven turn-off; that men judge a woman's physical attractiveness not by any of the features you might expect, but on the ratio of hips to waist (a subconscious measure of fertility, apparently) - the scientists built up a "compatibility quotient" for each couple who sat down for a three-minute chat. This, they said, would predict who would be attracted to whom.

They botched it completely. Few if any of the couples who should have been compatible liked each other, and none of the dates was converted into a long-term union. People liked best those faces that were dissimilar to their own, and the compatibility quotient was immaterial. Looks like these scientists were studying the wrong kind of chemistry, but at least they were big enough to broadcast their failure in an entertaining fashion.

Three weeks into Saturday Night with Miriam, the host is warming to her work. If her "chill out, Minister" style was too flippant for the more earnest current affairs viewers, it may have found a more natural home in light entertainment.

Since O'Callaghan's inauspicious week-one interview with hurler DJ Carey, she has persuaded two of Ireland's brighter characters, Eamon Dunphy and Charlie McCreevy, to appear, and coaxed entertaining and personal interviews from both. Dunphy even shed a tear while talking about his mother, then to change the subject congratulated O'Callaghan on having elicited it. As an interviewer,she is genuine and respectful towards guests, yet admirably forthright in her questioning.

A measure of her confidence with the new show was that she invited fellow broadcaster Ray D'Arcy as last Saturday's first guest. A pettier presenter might see D'Arcy - leading light of Today FM, currently warming up for Rose of Tralee, occasionally whispered of as the "next Late Late host" - as a rival. And they might be right.

He gave an engaging interview, describing with affection a live radio broadcast from his mother's house (what is it with Miriam and mothers?) and discussing his efforts to shake off his Peter Pan image and become a credible, mature broadcaster. After their slot, guests remain in studio, Parkinson-style, to contribute to subsequent interviews. D'Arcy, conversing easily with Sheila Hancock and Lee Sharpe, also put some of the most perceptive questions of the night in his disarming style.

You wait and wait for a good Irish chat-show host, then two come along at once.

Hilary Fannin is on holiday