May 25, 2011

More bad news from Israel

There is an update of the Greg Philo and Mike Berry book, Bad News from Israel titled More Bad News from Israel. Here's former BBC reporter, Tim Llewellyn in The Guardian:


Philo and Berry quote the BBC correspondent Paul Adams, a Middle East expert: what is missing from the coverage, he says, is the view that the Palestinians are engaged in a war of national liberation, trying to throw off an occupying force. Any Israeli casualty is headline news, shown in high quality images. BBC teams are based in West Jerusalem, de facto Israeli territory, and are on hand. Arab casualties may be shown in reports of a funeral, usually agency film, the victim anonymous. The Israelis, it seems, are for the BBC "people like us". The Arabs are "the other".
Racist bias at the beeb? Surely not. Here's the beeb's response published by The Guardian at the bottom of the Lllewellyn article:

BBC News endeavours to report on all matters in the Middle East – as elsewhere – impartially, objectively and accurately.
We have extensive editorial guidelines which all reporters and producers are required to observe.
In a highly charged political atmosphere any impartial and accountable broadcaster will rightly find itself under scrutiny by all shades of opinion.
In the Middle East debate there are organised, motivated and effective lobby groups on both sides of the argument.
We listen to their concerns and act on them where we think they are justified, but in doing so we bear in mind that our audiences expect us to remain independent of political pressure.
Although Tim Llewellyn was indeed a BBC correspondent some years ago, we note that he subsequently was active for a period with the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).
Aha! So he'd be with "the other" then...

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