BBC bias towards Israel shock!

The Times reports that a BBC commissioned independent panel has found that BBC coverage of the Middle East tends to favour Israel. I was joking in the headline when I wrote "schock!" but the panel was appointed because the Israeli government and a ragbag of zionists kept complaining that the Beeb favoured the Palestinians.

THE BBC’S coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict implicitly favours the Israeli side, a study for the BBC Governors has concluded.

Deaths of Israelis received greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities, while Israelis received more airtime on news and current affairs programmes. The references to “identifiable shortcomings” surprised BBC News executives, who are more used to accusations that their coverage is routinely anti-Israel.

Only “a small percentage of Palestinian fatalities were reported by BBC News”, the analysis, published yesterday, noted, while “the killing of more than one Israeli by Palestinians either by gun or bomb was reported on national broadcast programmes”.

At the same time, there was “little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives” and a “failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other side lives under occupation”.

Led by Sir Quentin Thomas, the president of the British Board of Film Classification, the Governors’ study group analysed a period between August 2005 and January this year in which 98 Palestinians were killed and there were up to 23 Israeli fatalities.

The findings were seized upon by pro-Palestinian groups. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: “When research consistently shows that fatalities from one side of a conflict — the party that has by far the least number — are more frequently covered, then this must raise alarm bells.”

However, the Thomas inquiry also argued that the BBC should be less cautious over its use of the the word “terrorism” because “that is the most accurate expression for actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians”.

The panel relied on research by Loughborough University for its conclusions about the coverage of deaths in the conflict, as well as the calculation that more “talk time” was given to non-party political Israelis, thereby tipping the balance away from Palestinians.

The report focuses on news and current affairs output during the period when Orla Guerin was the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent and concluded that there was “little to suggest deliberate or systematic bias” in the coverage of the conflict. “On the contrary, there was evidence of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial,” it said.

Instead, to rectify the problems, journalists were advised not to always highlight events accompanied by dramatic pictures, but concentrate on in-depth items that would reflect “shifts in Palestinian society and politics”.

The Thomas panel also suggested that a senior editor be appointed to oversee coverage of the conflict as a whole.

Michael Grade, the Chairman of the Governors, said that he would ask news bosses to come back with their response to the report next month.

Sir Quentin said: “What the BBC does now is good for the most part; some of it very good. But it could and should do better to meet the gold standard which it sets itself.”

Here's the BBC's offering on the same panel report:

The BBC fails to always give a "full and fair account" of the Israeli Palestinian conflict but is not deliberately biased, a report has said.
The BBC governors asked an independent panel to scrutinise its output.

Its report said the BBC was committed to being fair, accurate and impartial and UK viewers regarded it as unbiased.

But coverage was not consistently full and fair and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture", it found.

The panel, chaired by British Board of Film Classification president Sir Quentin Thomas, examined only the corporation's UK domestic public service output.

Sir Quentin said: "What the BBC does now is good for the most part - some of it very good.

"But it could and should do better to meet the gold standard which it sets itself in its best programmes."

The report said: "Apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias.

"On the contrary, there was evidence, in the programming and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial."

The report also said: "There is high quality reporting from location, some outstanding current affairs programmes and the website provides much valuable historical and other context."


Bus bombs should be described as terrorist acts, the report decided
But there were gaps in analysis, context and perspective as well as a failure to consistently uphold editorial standards, it continued.

Broadcast news lacked historical background, stories were often not put in the wider context and there was insufficient analysis and interpretation of important events and issues, the report said.

The range of stories and perspectives was too narrow and reporters' use of language was often inconsistent, it decided.

That included the use of the words "terrorism" and "terrorist". The BBC advises its journalists to avoid the latter because it can be "a barrier to understanding".

From the BBC's report you might think that the Palestinians were the beneficiaries of BBC bias.

The Guardian's piece on the same thing focuses on the BBC's avoidance of the word "terrorist" thereby implying a pro-Palestinian bias and only gets round to stating the finding regarding the Beeb's overall coverage close to the end of the article:

The report notes stronger evidence of pro-Israeli than pro-Palestinian coverage by the BBC, while concluding there was no overall, systematic bias one way or the other.

Now read the report, I know I should.