Why Did the BBC Censor a Cry to Help Gaza Victims?
Gaza is recovering from Israel's latest assault, which ended in a cease-fire earlier this month. In the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation has let down its worldwide viewership by refusing to broadcast this charity appeal to help Palestinian victims of the violence:
The appeal was produced by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), a consortium of charities including the Red Cross, Oxfam and Save the Children. What is so inflammatory about this humanitarian plea, which doesn't blame Israel or any other party for the plight of Gaza?
Why did the BBC hide behind a statement that "the debate about who is responsible for causing (suffering and distress in Gaza) and what should be done about it...is contentious?"
The Corporation joined Rupert Murdoch's Sky News as the only two major UK broadcasters not to air the charity appeal, a decision which has caused a huge uproar in the UK and around the world.
Demonstrators march to BBC Headquarters in London
In years past, the BBC regularly aired similar charity appeals:
The BBC broadcast DEC appeals after the 1999 Kosovo war and 1990 Gulf conflict. In 1968 it broadcast an appeal for victims of the Vietnam war. Over the last two years it has broadcast appeals for aid for crises in Burma, Bangladesh, Sudan, Chad and the Congo. Neither has it previously shunned humanitarian appeals in the Middle East. The second DEC appeal ever to be broadcast on the BBC, in June 1967, was a film seeking help for Palestinian and Syrian refugees displaced by the Six Day War. In 1982, the BBC helped raise £1m by broadcasting a DEC appeal for victims of Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
But now, things have changed. Blame is being laid at the feet of the BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson.
Since his arrival at the BBC in 2004, according to senior sources within DEC charities, the BBC has grown cautious and worried about compromising its impartiality. In 2006, the BBC similarly rejected a DEC appeal for victims of Israel's month-long war against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
This episode is revealing interesting things about the factors that guide the BBC's coverage of the endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, coverage which helps shape worldwide opinion. These include a set of reporting rules that BBC journalists must follow in their dispatches:
"The 24 words and phrases from the reporting rules the BBC has agreed to make public appear innocuous enough, but even here some might discern a sense of paranoia. Journalists are instructed to avoid using 'assassination' in favour of 'killing' and in discussing Gaza, the word "occupation" is to be avoided in favour of 'permanent military presence'."
Palestinian children in Gaza
Ironically, the resulting controversy over the BBC's censorship has resulted in a doubling of donations to the DEC's emergency fund for Gaza, with over one million pounds raised since the appeal was aired by other UK broadcasters on Monday night. Shame on Mark Thompson, and shame on the BBC. It's a sad day if this once-venerable news organization can't be counted on to honestly and accurately inform the public.
Erik Ose is a veteran of Democratic campaigns in North Carolina and blogs at The Latest Outrage.
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Here in L.A. where we are considered not that bright, we can be trusted only to get the BBC for two hours in the middle of the night. (While we get seven hours! of re-cycling NPR's Morning Edition.) However, I try to listen to BBC as it puts on a different perspective of the news (sometimes a half-hour on one subject, sometimes news from countries Americans didn't know existed. And there are interesting half-hour interviews with a wide variety of people including authors, but also others we never would have heard of but from which we learn a lot. There is Alan Johnston's 'From Our Own Correspondent' on weekends (?) which gives us extremely well-told anecdotes from correspondents in other countries which make me feel I have been there. And -- The Strand, a music and arts-oriented show. BBC is stimulating and one of the very best on the radio.
BUT, lately I think BBC has taken off its reporters who disagree with its position not to put on pleas for contributions for Gazans, who were arguing that side on their news show, in favor of hard-edged arguers on the other side, challenging those who want to get the word out about the Gazans' needs. Have the former actually lost their jobs? Will they be back? The British government also has pleaded with the BBC, haven't they, to air the Oxfam and others' requests for contributions for Gazans, to no avail.
yes shame on the BBC . . . they broadcast to Israel and I guess they didn't want to upset the israelis . . .
the BBC has a history of caving into the israelis for all their so-called journalistic impartiality:
The Israeli government wrote to the BBC in April 2004, accusing the BBC Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-semitism and "total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups" over a report on a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber in April 2004 (See http://www
The Report of the Independent Panel for the BBC Governors on
Impartiality of BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in April 2006
concluded that “there are identifiable shortcomings, particularly in respect of gaps
in coverage, analysis, context and perspective and in the consistent maintenance of
the BBC's own established editorial standards, including on matters of language. All
of this points to the elusiveness of editorial planning, grip and oversight.
In short, we found that BBC output does not consistently give a full and fair account
of the conflict. In some ways the picture is incomplete and, in that sense,
misleading”.
shame on the BBC
The bbc has become a political battleground with the management and editors supporting the British government and showing unbelievable bias against the opposition.
It also has its own liberal and politically correct agenda, and desperately puts this out even if their owners (British TV license payers) do not agree.
What is needed is a total cultural and organizational change.
But this will not happen while Thompson is Director General (serial bad decision making almost since day one) and an ineffective board of trustees of bureaucrats and academics chaired by a very complacent and lacklustre Lyons, who in a recent interview did not answer any of the questions on due diligence put to him.
As much as I disagree with BBC decision, I wonder what would be the outcome had the DEC decided to run its charity appeal in the US.
In Britain where I have many friends, people are returning their costly television licences that cost circa $250 per year in protest. The BBC is a public utility, not a private corporation. I have seen Mark Thompson speak, and he is a very articulate and capable chief executive whose major contributions to broadcasting include the promotion of reality TV; dumbing down Radio One (which was already exquisitely dumb) and the relaunch of Dr. Who. Recent scandals under Thompson's leadership have involved Russel Brand and Jonathan Ross perpetrating cruelty jokes live on air. The British people are tired of the trash programming Thompson has fostered, and they are outraged that he has succumbed to what many of them describe as pressure from the Israel Lobby. Although, I admire Thompson's intelligence, his taste and judgment are inadequate to the task. Thompson has driven away many competent administrators and artists from the BBC. He should go.
Don't forget the overlong and cr@p cinema ads too.
OK this is seriously unimportant in light of the discussion at hand, BUT
Are you saying Dr Who is not good taste?!!
The rest I'll grant you, but the Doctor, no way!
It's an outrage that an appeal for humanitarian aid can be silenced. Shame on everyone who's let their allegiance to Israel blind them to the real-world consequences of this violence. They're no different than the Americans who justify civilian deaths in Iraq simply because the red, white and blue can do no wrong in their ideologically stained eyes.
I believe the BBC was correct in their decision. Coverage of the ongoing conflict has tended to focus on the suffering of the people in Gaza. What about the suffering of the citizens of Israel? It is rather obvious that even in not directly blaming Israel for the situation in Gaza, slanted news coverage seeks to elicit sympathy for the Palestinians. It should not be ignored or overlooked that it was the Palestinians who initially broke the cease fire and began firing rockets into Israel. Had the Palestinians not attacked FIRST, they would not be in their current situation.
I disagree. It was Israel who broke all kinds of laws and "deals" when they turned Gaza into a giant prison. The Palestinian citizens should not have to lack for food, water, medical aid, etc. at the say of the Israeli government.
Get your story straight.
3 Israelis dead vs over 1,000 Palestinians. You are actually asking for parity? FYI, it wasnt Hamas that broke the ceasefire. It was the IDF that broke it when they attacked a Hamas outpost and killed 6 Hamas members on November 4th, 2008. Before that the ceasefire had laster for 5 months. Actually go do some research before you start blurting out media talking points. We are all sympathetic towards the plights of both Israelis and Palestinians. What is happening in that region does not benefit either side. The real victims here are both the Israelis the the Palestinians. No one wins in this fighting. But it is despicable how one sided the coverage has been for the conflict. Shame on the media!!!
There is no doubt that there has been minor suffering in a few small towns in the immediate vicinity of Gaza. What there hasn't been is a humanitarian disaster, and the DEC appeal aim is to alleviate this humanitarian crisis. Is there one single Israeli who is struggling to survive, down to their last supplies of food and only limited amounts of fresh drinking water? Obviously not.
You are absolutely wrong in saying "that it was the Palestinians who initially broke the cease fire and began firing rockets into Israe". This has even been conceded by the Israelis themselves. According to a report by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) “Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire.
Now, please go back and adjust your story to the facts, not to some invented propaganda by Hasbara brigades who we know have been targeting the Huffington Post.
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