Watching the War on BBC

[S.O.S]

Watching the War on BBC

 

By MUHAMMAD IDREES AHMAD

 

On February 29 last year the BBC's website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a 'holocaust' on Gaza. Headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours. Before the day was over, the headline would read "Gaza militants 'risking disaster'". (The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai's comments). An Israeli threatening 'holocaust' may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish State's criminal behaviour. With the 'holocaust' reference redacted, the new headline shifts culpability neatly into the hands of 'Gaza militants' instead.

 

One could argue that the BBC's radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel Lobby's well-oiled flak machine is notorious. But, as will be demonstrated in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel's image. The norm is reflexive self-censorship.

 

To establish evidence of the BBC's journalistic malpractice one often has to do no more than pick a random sample of news related to the Israel-Palestine conflict currently on its website. In a time of conflict, BBC's coverage invariably tends to the Israeli perspective, and nowhere is this reflected more than in the semantics and framing of its reportage. More so than the quantitative bias – which was meticulously established by the Glasgow University Media Group in their study Bad News from Israel – it is the qualitative tilt that obscures the reality of the situation. This is often achieved by engendering a false parity by stretching the notion of journalistic balance to encompass power, culpability and legitimacy as well. The present conflict is no exception.

"Hamas leader killed in air strike", reads Thursday's headline on the BBC website. Notwithstanding the propriety of extrajudicial murder, there are fourteen paragraphs and the obligatory mention of the four dead Israelis before it is revealed that 'at least nine other people', including the assassinated leader's family were killed in the bombing of his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp. The actual number is sixteen dead, eleven of them children; twelve more wounded, five of them children; ten houses destroyed, another twelve damaged – a veritable slaughter. Had a Hamas bombing killed or wounded 28 Israeli citizens including 16 children you'd be sure to see endless coverage – of the kind the BBC lavished on the disconsolate illegal settlers in 2005 as they were made to relinquish stolen real estate in Gaza. The BBC's Mike Sergeant, sitting in Jerusalem, would not concern himself with such sentimentality. There is no further mention of Palestinian civilian deaths. Their tragedy was no more than a sanguine message which Sergeant tells us will 'be seen as an indication that the Israeli military can target key members of the Hamas leadership'.

 

"Israel braced for Hamas response", blared the ominous headline on the next day's front page. With all references to Hamas in its coverage prefixed with 'militant' and invariably accompanied by images of blood and debris, the average viewer is very likely to assume the worst. It transpires what the world's fourth most powerful military is bracing itself for is merely a citizen's protest called by Hamas in the Occupied Territories. Further on we learn that Israel has been bombing such 'targets' as a mosque and a sleeping family.

 

The BBC's next headline on the same day – "Gaza facing 'critical emergency'" – is an improvement. It quotes Maxwell Gaylard, the UN's chief aid co-ordinator for the territory, highlighting the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis. Following this is a warning from Oxfam that the situation is getting worse by the day: clean water, fuel and food in short supply, hospitals overwhelmed with casualties, raw sewage pouring into the streets.

 

And then we get 'balance'.

 

Israel, we learn, has claimed Gaza has 'sufficient food and medicines'. It of course ought to be easy to verify which of the competing claims is valid, but that presumably would violate the 'usual BBC standards of impartiality'. There is also a more mundane reason why the BBC won't present its own findings, but it is tucked away in the very last paragraph of the article. Israel, we learn, 'is refusing to let international journalists into Gaza', including no doubt those of the BBC. The ethics of reporting would require that the BBC preface each of its reports with the disclaimer that it has no way of knowing what is going on in Gaza other than through the propaganda handouts of the Israeli military.

 

The final act of chicanery comes in the shape of a sidebar which lists the number of rockets fired by Palestinians for each day of the conflict. This is particularly odd in an article ostensibly about the consequences of the Israeli blockade and bombing, especially since no similar figures are produced for the number of bombs, missiles and artillery shells rained on the Gazans. The source the BBC uses is the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center based in Israel. What it does not mention however is that the 'private' think tank is a conveyor belt for Israeli military propaganda which, according to the Washington Post, 'has close ties with the country's military leadership and maintains an office at the Defense Ministry'. Any Palestinian claim on the other hand would not appear unless enclosed in quotation marks, even if independently verifiable.

 

The quotation marks are a useful distancing device deployed to show that the characterization may not be one shared by the BBC. This would be understandable if their application were consistent. It isn't. To take one telling example, after the Lebanon war when both Israel and Hizbullah were accused by Amnesty International of war crimes, only in the case of Israel did the BBC enclose the accusation in quotation marks.

 

It is through these subtle – and not so subtle – manipulations of language that the BBC has shielded its audience from the ugly realities of Occupied Palestine. In the BBC's reportage Palestinians 'die', Israelis are 'killed' (the latter implies agency, the former could have happened of natural causes); Palestinians 'provoke', Israelis 'retaliate'; Palestinians make 'claims', Israelis declare. Schools, mosques, universities and police stations become 'Hamas infrastructure'; militants 'clash' with F-16s and Apaches. 'Terrorism' is something Palestinians do, Israelis merely 'defend' themselves – invariably outside their borders. All debates, irrespective of fact or circumstance, are framed around Israel's 'security'. If the Apartheid wall is mentioned, it is in terms of its 'effectiveness'. In the odd event that you have an articulate Palestinian voice represented, the debate is rigged with a set-up video that is meant to put them on the defensive. When all else fails, there is the reliable 'both sides' argument – if reality won't accommodate the image of an even conflict, the BBC figures, language will.

 

Then there's the framing: Israel's violence is always analyzed in terms of its 'objectives'; Palestinian violence is of necessity senseless. This is no doubt how it must appear to the average reader since the word 'occupation' rarely appears in the BBC's coverage. It hasn't appeared once in the last twenty stories on Gaza on its website. And if occupation is mentioned rarely, then the UN resolutions almost never. The picture is even worse on television, where the Israeli point of view predominates.

 

While Matan Vilnai's threat of a holocaust is consigned to the memory hole, the statement invented and attributed to the Iranian president about wiping Israel off the map is still in play. It is this double standard which also allowed the BBC to cover the story of a British Jew joining the Israeli military as a life interest story – which may not be entirely surprising considering the BBC's man in Jerusalem, Tim Franks, is himself a graduate of Habonim Dror, a Zionist youth movement. It is this inhuman devaluation of Palestinian life that allowed the BBC at the peak of the criminal blockade in July 2007 to have two stories up on its website related to the occupied territories, both about animals – an eagle and a lioness.

 

While the BBC's refusal to by-line its online reports makes it hard to trace stories back to individual journalists, a revealing glimpse of the editorial context in which they work was offered by an article in the Observer by the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen – a man whose modest analytical skills are matched only by his historical illiteracy. With the BBC workhorse – 'both sides' – weaved into the very headline, Bowen piles inanity upon cliché, sedulously avoiding any mention of the occupation. He is no doubt aware that the fragile narrative he has constructed -- where the conflagration begins with Hamas firing rockets into Israel -- will collapse with the first mention of the occupation which predates both the rockets and Hamas. Bowen, who has been conveniently transported to Sderot – an Israeli PR ploy to 'embed' journalists within range of Hamas rockets in order to make them report with empathy – plays his part to the tee. On the other hand there is no mention of those at the receiving end of Israel's lethal ordinance. He mentions civilian casualties only in the context of the 'lot of bad publicity' they get for Israel. On the basis of this evidence, he then concludes 'it is probably fair to say that [israel] does not hit every target it wants, otherwise many more would have died'. We then end with speculation on Israel's possible objectives. Despite 'both sides', there is no similar scrutiny of Hamas's objectives.

 

At a conference in London in 2004, a BBC journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories told me that when it comes to Israel the editorial parameters are so narrow that journalists soon learn to adapt their stories in order not to upset the editors. And editors likewise know not to upset their government-appointed managers. Since the days of Lord Reith, the BBC-founder who assured the establishment to 'trust [the BBC] not to be really impartial', on foreign policy the corporation has acted as little more than the propaganda arm of the state (whatever independence it had once enjoyed evaporated with the purge carried out by Tony Blair in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry). Contrary to the prevailing view in the US, where progressives don't tire of comparing it favourably against US media, the BBC's record of coverage in the Middle East is dismal. As media scholar David Miller revealed, during the Iraq war the representation of antiwar voices on the BBC was even lower than on its US counterparts. A Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung study found the corporation to have the lowest tolerance for dissent of the media in the five countries it analyzed. Just as its correspondents in Iraq celebrated the fall of Baghdad as a 'vindication' of Blair, its man in Washington Matt Frei threw all caution to the wind to exult: 'There is no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now in the Middle East, is especially tied up with American military power.'

 

The BBC's partiality in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict is a mere reflection of the close affinity of successive British governments with Israel. Both Blair and his successor Gordon Brown have been members of the Israel Lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. The Foreign Minister David Miliband has kin who are settlers in the West Bank. All three major influence-peddling scandals in the past five years that engulfed the leadership of the ruling New Labour party involved money from wealthy Zionist Jews (all linked to the Labour Friends of Israel). If the BBC is not impartial, then the UK government most certainly is not. And the BBC, as is its wont, merely reflects the latter's tilt. This is blatant enough that, despite Israel Lobby pressure, the BBC's own Independent Panel concluded that its coverage of the Palestinian struggle was not 'full and fair' and that it presented an 'incomplete and in that sense misleading picture'.

 

But the gap between the alternate reality that the BBC inhabits and the reality on the ground witnessed and relayed by independent media is so great today that it has compelled John Pilger to write: 'For every BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more powerful now than ever.'

 

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a member of Spinwatch.org. He can be reached at m.idrees@gmail.com

[Ibtisam]

It is very easy to influence the BBC, they are forced to investigate anything they get more that 25 complaints for, previously they have changed their news bulletin the next hour as result of a campaign. Muhammad Idress is right on point about everything, but instead of moaning I wish he would tell his followers to be more Pro active like him and shape the news in how we want. That’s all the Zionist do, they stay active, and soon journalist and editors get tired of their e-mail inbox being flooded with complaints and non stop ring phone every time they piss off the Zionist. On the other hand, the Muslims just moan to each other. No independent institution or organization is inherently bad, it is just a reflection of its active audience and workers, so get active and get a job with them if you are in that field. Same goes for politics and political parties.

 

P.s. Don't get me Wrong I like Muhammad Idrees.

[Allamagan]

BBC sucks!!

[NASSIR]

It's true that BBC had to rely on a second hand news since its reporters were blocked from going into Gaza. Al-jazeera had the advantage in this saga of a first hand reportage. The Arabic version had more than 4 reporters inside Gaza before the war started, sort of like "lahayste meeshaan ka dhahno"

 

BBC is mostly impartial and credible but this time its fault on reliable news coverage is noted.

[S.O.S]

Originally posted by Caamir:

BBC is mostly impartial and credible..

Astonishing!

[Abtigiis]

shakes head at Caamir's definition of impartiality. Ninka see wax ka noqdeen nin adag baan ku ogaaye.

[N.O.R.F]

Amazing how things have chaged at the BBC!

[AYOUB]

BBC refuses to show Gaza appeal

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has defended its decision not to participate in a television fund-raising appeal for Gaza, saying it did want to avoid compromising public confidence in its impartiality.

Normally all broadcasters show Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals without charge, but in a statement on Friday, the BBC said: "Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal to raise funds for Gaza.

"The BBC's decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation, and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story."

 

full Al Jazeera article

The Director General of the BBC has rebuffed a request from the Government to reconsider its decision not to broadcast a charity appeal for the aid effort in Gaza.

In a letter to Douglas Alexander sent this evening, Mark Thompson, the head of the corporation, said that even if it was possible to deliver aid to Gaza, the BBC would not transmit an appeal from the Disasters & Emergency Committee (DEC) because to do so would tarnish the broadcaster’s attempts to remain impartial in the conflict.

Mr Alexander wrote to chiefs of broadcasters this morning expressing his disappointment that no television appeal will appear, saying the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “dire”.

He also took issue with the BBC over claims that aid may not get through to the victims due to the volatile situation in Gaza and said he has evidence that several British charities definitely got aid into Gaza yesterday, adding that the excuse does not stand up to scrutiny.

But in his response, Mr Thompson said whatever the prospects of successful delivery of aid, the BBC considered that broadcasting an appeal “ran the risk of calling into question the public’s confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in its coverage of the story as a whole”.

He wrote: “This is because Gaza remains an ongoing and highly controversial news story within which the human suffering and distress which have resulted from the conflict remain intrinsic and contentious elements.

“We have and will continue to cover the human side of the conflict fully across our news programmes and services. Within these bulletins and services, we can put the events in their wider context and draw attention to the claims and counter-claims that are made about them by the parties to the conflict ...

..times

Benn accuses BBC over Gaza appeal

2 hours ago

Veteran politician Tony Benn will accuse the BBC of a "betrayal" of its public service obligations following its decision not to broadcast a public appeal for funds for Gaza.

He will address a pro-Palestine rally called by the Stop the War coalition outside Broadcasting House in central London.

The former Labour MP and Stop the War president will say: "The decision of the BBC to refuse to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, which has left aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations, is a betrayal of the obligation which it owes as a public service.

"The destruction in Gaza, and the loss of the lives of over a thousand civilians and children, has shocked the world as Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, made clear, when he saw the devastation for himself.

"The human suffering that the people of Gaza have experienced over the last few weeks has appalled people who have seen it for themselves on their television screens.

"To deny the help that the aid agencies and the UN need at this moment in time is incomprehensible and it follows the bias in BBC reporting of this crisis, which has been widely criticised.

"I appeal to the chairman of the BBC Trust to intervene to reverse this decision to save the lives of those who are now in acute danger of dying through a lack of food, fuel, water and medical supplies."

The Disasters Emergency Committee - which brings together several major aid charities - wanted to run TV and radio appeals to help raise cash to assist people in need of food, shelter and medicines as a result of Israel's military action in the Palestinian enclave.

Similar appeals have been aired during previous humanitarian emergencies, raising millions of pounds from the British public. But the BBC, ITV and Sky have said they will not show the appeal.

The BBC said it is concerned about compromising public confidence in its impartiality in the context of a conflict which has sparked fierce debate. And the Corporation also raised questions about the delivery of aid to Gaza in the current volatile conditions.

[Paragon]

The BBC is really taking the piss; what the hell poses the breach of a broadcaster's news impartiality in an appeal for aid for kids? BBC's stand is really insincere.

[AYOUB]

^^ Has the BBC "changed" or are we "wiser"?

[Paragon]

^Neither, Ayoub. The coorperation is being weighed down by possibly some interest groups.

[S.O.S]

^^The BBC has not changed. They still remain foremost promoters of western crimes, wars and genocides committed around the world. Ever from its inception, the BBC functioned as the propaganda mouthpiece of a crumpling empire and of colonial apologists, often an extension of HMG and the Anglican Church's policies under colonial subjects in the true spirit of white man's burden. Why would any government sponsored media outlet have such a global presence? The sinister intentions were there for all to see.

 

We Somalis still remain religious followers of the BBC which played an important role in the polarisation, destruction and ensuing anarchies of Somalia in the last 30 years.

 

The kind of journalistic and editorial standards the BBC upheld in the brutal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the continuous slaughter of Palestinians over the years has left no doubts about the BBC's role in this world –not to mention the psychological and religious warfare against Muslims in the UK and elsewhere. They are not unique in that sense however as all western mainstream corporate media is toeing the same line, predictably I must say.

 

I read "Manufacturing Consent" in 2002, a book co-authored by Noam Chomsky, outlining the propaganda model of corporate media (in both methodological and operation level) and the layers of filtering mechanisms in place (about four if I remember it correctly). Definitely an eye-opener for anyone new to this subject.

[AYOUB]

 

Around 2,000 protesters converged upon Broadcasting House to demonstrate against the corporation's decision to not to broadcast a charity appeal. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

 

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury today added to criticism of the BBC over its refusal to broadcast a charity appeal for aid to Gaza.

Politicians – including some government ministers – religious leaders and senior members of the BBC's staff have condemned the decision, which has attracted around 11,000 complaints, not to broadcast tomorrow's appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).

Speaking after a church service in Cambridge today, the Right Rev Rowan Williams said: "My feeling is that the BBC should broadcast an appeal."

The corporation today admitted it had received "approximately" 1,000 telephone complaints about the decision and a further 10,000 by email.

Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has been left isolated as ITV and Channel 4 agreed to air the plea for aid.

The BBC has decided that broadcasting the appeal might be seen as evidence of bias on a highly sensitive political issue.

Despite pressure to reverse its position, a BBC spokesman today said the situation remained unchanged.

The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, said it was right that broadcasters made their own decisions, adding that the BBC faced a difficult choice because of the way it is funded.

The communities secretary, Hazel Blears, said she hoped the BBC would "urgently review its decision", and the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, said the corporation had made the "wrong decision".

Yesterday, the Archbishop of York, the John Sentamu, accused the broadcaster of "taking sides" and said: "This is not a row about impartiality, but rather about humanity.

"This situation is akin to that of British military hospitals who treat prisoners of war as a result of their duty under the Geneva convention," he added.

"They do so because they identify need rather than cause. This is not an appeal by Hamas asking for arms, but by the Disasters Emergency Committee asking for relief.

"By declining their request, the BBC has already taken sides and forsaken impartiality."

Thompson received backing from the BBC Trust's chairman, Sir Michael Lyons. He said he was "concerned" about the tone of some politicians' comments on the issue, which he said came close to "undue interference" in the BBC's editorial independence.

The BBC's unrepentant stance has stirred up rebellion in the ranks of it own reporters and editors. One senior BBC news presenter told the Observer: "I've been talking to colleagues, and everyone here is absolutely seething about this.

"The notion that the decision to ban the appeal will seem impartial to the public at large is quite absurd.

"Most of us feel that the BBC's defence of its position is pathetic, and there's a feeling of real anger, made worse by the fact that, contractually, we are unable to speak out."

Jon Snow, the journalist who presents Channel 4 news, said the BBC should have been prepared to accept the judgment of the aid experts of the DEC.

"It is a ludicrous decision," he said. "That is what public service broadcasting is for. I think it was a decision founded on complete ignorance and I am absolutely amazed they have stuck to it."

Snow said he suspected a BBC bureaucrat had "panicked" and urged Thompson to put the situation right.

Martin Bell, the former BBC foreign correspondent, said the corporation should admit it had made a mistake and claimed "a culture of timidity had crept" in.

"I am completely appalled," he said. "It is a grave humanitarian crisis and the people who are suffering are children. They have been caught out on this question of balance."

But Greg Dyke, Thompson's predecessor as director general, said the issue had put the BBC in a "no win situation".

"Outside of Iraq, the single biggest issue that caused complaints was the coverage of Israel," he added. "I can understand why the BBC has taken this decision, because on a subject as sensitive as the Middle East it is absolutely essential that the audience cannot see any evidence at all of a bias."

The BBC also faces demands for an explanation from within the ­Commons international development select committee.

Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, said: "We believe that they should allow the broadcast to proceed so that the British public, who have proved themselves so generous during recent emergencies in the Congo and Burma, can make their own judgment on the validity of the appeal."

The satellite broadcaster Sky said it was "considering" broadcasting the appeal.

A BBC spokesman said: "We do accept that people are strongly guided in their view on this by the humanitarian emergency.

"We are highlighting the situation in Gaza in every news bulletin, and that is one of the reasons the issue is so high on the agenda."

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/24/bbc-ga za-palestine-aid-appeal

[Abyan]

Petition the BBC to show the DEC Gaza Appeal

Please sign.

It's easy and quick

 

Click here

[Resistance]

the BBC is saying it must act imaprtial on this issue and in this very month it is carrying a series of programmes on the Holocaust aimed at children and adults alike, the very cause Isreal uses to justify its massacre if the Gaza people.