The lead story in the May 22nd afternoon edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour’ was the visit of the US president to Israel which, at the time of broadcast, had commenced just a few hours earlier. The programme included the false ‘Israel Apartheid’ claim by guest Mustafa Barghouti, a smear that wasn’t challenged by the BBC presenter.
The Economist is currently promoting a seven-part “special report” titled “Six days of war, 50 years of occupation”. The online version of the unattributed sixth installment goes under the title “The half-life on an occupied Palestine”. The article, quite predictably, solely blames Israel for the occupation and suggests that Palestinians have no responsibility for the ongoing conflict
On May 18th listeners to BBC Radio 4 heard the fourth part in Jeremy Bowen’s series of programmes ‘Our Man in the Middle East’. Titled ‘Jerusalem’, the programme is both rambling and predictable, with Bowen’s portrayal of the city focusing on blood, violence, religion, power and nationalism at the expense of any mention of its diversity and eclectic coexistence.
I do understand Sarah Helm’s desire to paint Hamas in a positive light in her May 19 article at the Guardian. I too wish that their intentions were as positive as she seems determined to present them as being; peace between Israel and the Palestinians – the magical goal that every politician yearns for – would be so much more easily attainable.
For some time I have sensed a gradual shift from articles that were in large part composed of or promoted outright lies on the former “Comment is Free” (CiF) pages to a somewhat more muted but nevertheless constantly critical view of Israel.
A filmed report titled “Israeli news presenter gets tearful reporting own show’s cancellation” appeared on BBC News website’s page on May 10th.
Following communication with Telegraph editors, the erroneous claim was removed.
Fifty years ago today, the build-up of events that led to the Six Day War had already begun. After fourteen Palestinian terror attacks had been carried out with Syrian support since April 7th, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol warned Syria of retaliation on May 13th 1967. In this post, we investigate how those events portrayed to BBC’s audiences.
On May 8th the BBC News website’s Middle East page published an article – titled “Palestinian hunger strike leader Barghouti ‘filmed eating’. The article gives generous amplification to statements from interested parties and even before they clicked on the link, BBC audiences were informed that ‘Marwan Barghouti’s wife says the surveillance footage released by Israel’s prison service is “fake”‘.
In contrast to other media reports on the Trump-Abbas meeting, this BBC article fails to inform readers of Mahmoud Abbas’ egregious claim that “we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace”.
Reports that appeared on the BBC News website on May 2nd clarified to audiences that Hamas itself had said that their new document launched in Qatar does not replace the terror group’s 1988 Charter. Nevertheless, the BBC World Service radio programme includes the inaccurate heading “Hamas Presents New Charter”.
it is certainly obvious that BBC Arabic (which is of course part funded by British taxpayers through FCO grants) has yet to satisfactorily address the issue of the use of inaccurate and politically partisan language by its Arabic-speaking employees.
Wishing a very happy holiday to all our readers celebrating Israel’s 69th Independence Day! Take a look at our ‘how well do you know Israel?’ Independence Day quiz over at BBC Watch!
This is a cross post from BBC Watch An item in the December 28th edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘The World Tonight’ related to the speech given by the outgoing US Secretary of […]
This is a guest post by Aron White. The discussion and analysis of Resolution 2334, passed by the Security Council last week, is still continuing in earnest. But in all the coverage […]
This is a cross post from BBC Watch As was noted here in an earlier post, while BBC coverage of the UN Security Council’s adoption of resolution 2334 included reactions from “the Palestinian […]
This is a cross post from BBC Watch. In part one of this post we looked at the way in which the BBC presented UN Security Council resolution 2334 to listeners to […]
This is a cross post from BBC Watch. The Community Security Trust (CST) recently published its annual report (available here) on the topic of Antisemitic Discourse in Britain for the year 2015. The […]
This is a cross post from BBC Watch. Events at the UN Security Council received generous coverage on the BBC News website on December 23rd and 24th. BBC audiences found articles relating […]
In addition to holding informal meetings with activists on the ground, Levick will give two public talks: at Limmud in Birmingham on Dec. 26th, and for the Manchester Zionist Central Council on Dec. 28th.
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