The Foreign Ministry is under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to "one-sided" reports on the war in Lebanon, Israeli diplomatic officials said Wednesday. For seven months during a wave of Palestinian violence in 2003, Israeli officials boycotted BBC news programs, declining interviews and excluding BBC reporters from briefings. The boycott was ended after the BBC appointed a panel to oversee its Middle East coverage and to ensure it would be unbiased. The diplomatic officials said the network had not been reporting the war fairly. Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem went as far as saying that "the reports we see give the impression that the BBC is working on behalf of Hizbullah instead of doing fair journalism." Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Media and Public Affairs Gideon Meir, who declined to comment for this article, spoke on Channel 1 about a column that appeared in The Times of London on July 24 in which Stephen Pollard wrote that a BBC program appeared to have been written by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. "The BBC's coverage has been overwhelmingly one-sided, with presenters and reporters editorializing against what they universally refer to as 'Israeli attacks on Lebanon,'" Pollard wrote. Col. (res.) Miri Eisen, who is set to take over as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman on August 20, called the BBC "the only international English-speaking news outlet that is downright hostile to Israel on every level." Eisen told an audience from the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey on Wednesday that the BBC's coverage was fair during the first week of the war, but then the network moved its anchors from Haifa to Beirut, and since then it has been similar to Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525841951&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
The mainstream media have become big problems in the war against terrorism. Clearly the BBC, al Reuters, CNN, PBS and others have been biased against Israel in their coverage. Fox and CBN seem biased towards Israel. Clearly there is extensive bias against the US as well. Often bias reveals itself in editorial choices as to what is newsworthy. Why was the relatively minor Qana incident so newsworthy? Why did minor indicidents in Iraq, like Haditha, warrant endless coverage, while the nightly terrorism is background noise? Why did the media harp endlessly on the two or three incidents where US troops were accused of crimes, but never reavealed exactly what happened to the two soldiers who were kidnapped from that bridge outpost and horribly mutilated and tortured? Could it be because they knew the Americna people would demand retribution and that it made the earlier American "attrocities" look lame? Why do we never hear of the stories of heroism by our troops? The few bad apples are prime time news, presented as representative of all, but the stirring stories of heroism and self-sacrifice do not merit coverage? Or consider those intrepid journalists and photographers who choose to meet with terrorists or tag along with them. They would laugh in your face if asked to reveal what they learned about their whereabouts and give you a lecture on the First Amendment. The same media have no reluctance to publish secret details of highly classified US programs designed to protect the country from terrorist attacks. In short, I thin Israel is right to boycott eh BBC. I wish our government had the same courage. They could start by revoking the NY Times White House credentials.
Hmmm... objective journalism always appears to be biased when truth hurts. In an earlier message, I had commented how I thought the European media appeared far more sympathetic to Lebanon than the US media. Perhaps, Israel is on the wrong this time and the truth is hurting them. Just an opinion.
Blasphemy. Israel is never wrong. They can't ever do any wrong. They are always right. They are always the victims. It is obvious, right?
Israel is not complaining about ALL european media either, it does not have a problem with French, Italians, Spanish, German news outlets, it's not complaining about Canadian, Australian and even British (other than the BBC) media organizations. On the other side their dissatisfaction with the BBC is nothing knew, as the article points out they boycotted it before so there is no reason to doubt their claims that BBC coverage is biased.
Hey DDdoo, What about the BBC's coverage of the Iraq invasion, was this venerable news agency biased then??
Hey dodo, What have you got to say about the NY times glowing piece on Hisbollah leader Nasrallah by Neil MacFarquahar (8-7-06)?? (Its the kind of pro hisbollah propaganda, I've long ago come to expect from such a red state paper as the NY times). Why doesn't Israel and all the jewish people in NY, boycott the NY times??
Nick, I don't read the NY Times but an op`ed piece (even if glowing) on Nasrallah does not prove all by itself an anti-Israel bias. If the NYT were to publish hundreds of pro-Hezbollah anti-Israel articles and no articles supporting Israel and condemning Hezbollah's actions - then yes, their coverage would undoubtedly be biased and they would deserve to be boycotted. But I doubt that's the case. Sorry I have no knowledge about the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq.
Bleeding-heart ignoramuses By Julie Burchill ...To say we were amazed when a news presenter solemnly intoned that there had been "two militants wounded" with all the grieving gravitas of Richard Dimbleby reporting on the state funeral of the late Winston Churchill is to employ English understatement to an almost surreal degree. ... One of the most grotesque examples of the almost brainwashed level of bias can be seen on the official BBC Religions Web site, where that "peace be upon him" eyewash is going on like crazy, while other religions are coolly commented on in a strictly "objective" way. ... Even the women's magazines have gotten in on the act, with lots of first-person eye-witness accounts of British citizens fleeing the Jewish jackboot. Then turn the page and you'll often find a shocked article about honor-killing or forced marriage, Muslim-style. That Israel is fighting the frontline war, on behalf of the freedom and civilization of all of us, against the very real evils of shari'a law never seems to occur to these bleeding-heart ignoramuses. Over at Channel 4, Jon Snow interviewed an Israeli diplomat with all the finesse and objectivity of a neo-Nazi spraying a six-foot swastika on a wall. Of the rockets which murdered Israeli civilians in the town of Sderot, he said "Rockets, pretty pathetic things - nobody gets injured." This was gleefully picked up and proclaimed by The Guardian, the newspaper I left some years ago in protest at what I saw as its vile anti-Semitism. All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians" where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed - even me, until then. ... A surprising number of British people - especially the super-creepy British Jews who recently signed a treacherous letter to the press distancing themselves from Israel's actions - seem to think Israel should exist not as a real, imperfect country full of real, imperfect people led by real, imperfect leaders, but as some sort of collective kosher Mater Dolorosa, there to provide a selfless, suffering example to the rest of us. ... Fight back, and the outside world reacts with the revulsion of a man seeing his sainted grandmother drunk and offering sailors outside. Even (especially?) anti-Semites and enemies of Israel are shameless in recycling the legends of "brave little Israel" - I'm thinking of David and Goliath here - and basically believe that each IDF member should go into battle against the assembled hordes of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah armed with nothing but a slingshot apiece. Failing that, this tiny country must embark on a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in the face of murderous, genocidal hatred, as Matthew Parris astoundingly suggests: "The settlement has to be a return to its pre-1967 boundaries. Precisely because Israel is by no means forced to make so generous a move, the international support (even love) this would generate would secure its future permanently. It would bring it back within the pale." http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749291.html
Bias? Who can tell, the lot of them were wallowing like drunken pigs in a sea of top quality war footage. They were so busy re-running the latest smartbomb clip, they probably wouldnt have noticed one way or the other.