The BBC Report

The Board of Governor's independent Report on the BBC's reporting on the
Middle East has one positive feature, they concluded that the BBC was
deliberately biased when they used the "T" word to describe bombings in
London and Madrid, but not in Israel. In Israel all terrorists are
"militants." However, while they said that the BBC should use the "T"
word in relation to Israel, they demurred sufficiently to leave it up to the
individual reporter depending on circumstances whether he/she decides to
label an organization as a terror group. So we will no doubt continue to
hear about "militant organizations" such as Hamas.
Apart from this positive result, the rest of the report is ridiculous. While
the Committee agreed that the BBC failed to provide adequate context for
many of its reports on the Middle East, most egregiously it labels the BBC's
coverage pro-Israel! That is the most preposterous conclusion I have ever
heard from a supposedly serious analysis.
The Times of London (www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2174641,00.html)
published an article by Martin Walker, a United Press International
editor, ridiculing this conclusion, giving example after example of the kind
of pro-Palestinian coverage that the BBC is famous for (for example their
correspondent crying at Arafat's funeral, etc., etc.) One reason why the
Committee may have come to this conclusion is that there were many reports
in the period covered by this Report about Israel, on the disengagement from
Gaza and on Sharon's illness. As a result there were more news items from
and about Israel than usual, although their tone was hardly pro-Israel.
Also, incredibly the BBC World News and the BBC international service
were not included in this review, which is hardly credible given that these
have been the most biased pro-Palestinian services imaginable.
Another aspect not covered in the Report is the intimidation of journalists
and photographers in the PA, and their often direct cooperation with the
terrorist organizations in presenting photojournalism, such as the staged
shooting of the boy Muhammed al-Durrah by an Arab cameraman
working for French TV in Gaza at the beginning of the intifada. These
events do not occur in Israel, which has an open and free society. Any
News organization, especially the BBC, would be reluctant to admit
the compliance and intimidation of its own journalists and the consequent
biasing of its news coverage.
In conclusion, this Report is as biased and unbalanced as the reporting it
supposedly was analyzing.