How and why the BBC is not impartial
anything to do with the corporation’s Middle East coverage know, a report that offends supporters of Israel right or wrong generates a highly organised campaign of protest and abuse including false charges of anti-Semitism. Such campaigns can result in many thousands of e-mails, letters and telephone calls, usually directed from two or three places. This intimidation, and the wish to minimize controversy if it can’t avoid it, has resulted in BBC news and management executives opting for an interpretation of what might be called the balance and fairness doctrine which, in effect, makes its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict partial and pro-Israel.
In principle the idea of balance – equal time for both sides – is fine, but it becomes a nonsense when one side is allowed to go on telling obvious propaganda lies without being challenged by the known facts. I’ll give just one of very many examples to make the point.
Israel’s line, asserted time after time by its official military and political spin doctors, was that Hamas broke the cease-fire and was therefore responsible for the war. Hamas did not break the cease-fire. Israel did, on 4 November. Two of Israel’s newspapers – Ha’aretzand Yediot Ahronot- are among the prime sources of that truth. (Despite the fact of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, collective punishment in all but name and a crime against humanity, Hamas not only kept the cease-fire until provoked by Israel, it was also, again contrary to Israel’s assertions, ready and willing to re-new the cease-fire on condition that Israel ended the blockade).
Israel’s spin doctors were not challenged by the facts of this particular matter (and many others) because BBC correspondents have red lines drawn for them by management – red lines that, if crossed, would bring the wrath of the Zionist lobby upon the BBC. (Governments, including the one in Washington D.C., are frightened of offending the Zionist lobby too much, so it’s not surprising that the BBC is frightened, too).
The BBC’s decision-makers need to understand that there is much more to balance and fairness than “one side says this and the other side says that”. The truth, when it can be established, does matter, and BBC reporters ought to be allowed to tell it, even when doing so offends supporters of Israel right or wrong.
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