BBC pays £200,000 to ‘cover up report on anti-Israel bias’ – DailyMail.co.uk: This is not the first time the blog has posted stories about the bias in the coverage from the BBC, and now there’s this.
The BBC has been accused of “shameful hypocrisy” over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information (FOI) request about its reporting in the Middle East.
The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.
The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC’s coverage in the region.
The BBC’s determination to bury the report has led to speculation that the report was damning in its assessment of the BBC’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the BBC wants to keep it under wraps at all costs.
Sit down, Gasparrini.
Do you want to know why The Daily Mail is called the Forger’s Gazette. Read why on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
It’s a hate-filled right-wing scare rag with an anti BBC agenda.
A lot here depends on whether the BBC is a private news company or is an official government connection. If they’re private, FOI access shouldn’t even apply, if it works like information access does in the U.S. – but I don’t know the answer. If they’re an arm of the UK government and they have to reveal their notes about an internal investigation, there’s bound to be propaganda value in there for somebody. Maybe for both parties, if they found one slant here, another there. And that’s likely, given reporters stationed all over the world. Local viewpoints are always going to affect reporting, they can’t NOT. Complete objectivity isn’t even possible and even reasonable balance is an always moving target.
BBC – Bagdad Broadcasting Company
#1, you should know by know that wikipedia is not a reliable source of information 😉
The Daily Mail, a hate filled rag or is it a tremendously insightful newspaper?
At least it’s not the Guardian, which publishes those annoying and pretentious Noam Chomsky articles. The fact that he teaches at MIT is beyond me…
That’ ridiculous. What’s shameful is the way the United States has protected the government of Israel in the United Nations. A government that blew up a US Naval vessel ( USS Liberty ) in international waters in 1967 and then wouldn’t even pay reasonable amount of money to replace the boat, much less help the families of the 34 US soldiers killed and 174 US soldiers wounded in the attack. I am really tired of the government of Israel whining. The government of Israeli government would get less bad press if they would stop blaming all their problems on everyone else and started treating other nations and people as they would like to be treated.
http://www.ussliberty.org/
How come when anyone says anything negative about Israel, a country who started a disasterous war with Lebanon that made both countries weaker and Hezbollah stronger, a country whose President has been accused of rape and is still in office, a country who supports AIPAC lobby here in the US which is pushing for a war in Iran which would be disasterous to US interests, is always labeled as racist or anti-semite, or (for shame!) Anti-Israel?
Regular viewers of the Beeb also recognize that Blair purged the institution of most left or liberal staff and management a couple years ago. Using the sad suicide of David Kelly as his excuse, even the commission investigating Kelly’s whistleblowing termed Blair’s evisceration a disgrace.
But, it made his Bushy-Bushy oh so happy.
#7, riiiiiight, we are supposed to believe that Blair’s party (from the left)would allow him to proceed with such a move. If you believe that I have a bridge I would like to sell to you.
If the BBC is criticized by both left and right, as they are on different occasions, they’re probably doing okay on balance.
The BBC does sometimes obey FOI applications but delays them as long as possible.
One fairly new one is that they spent £15 million on air fares last year.
Do not expect them to announce this or to state if they are going to reduce this – in a world of internet reporting this is somewhat shameful.
BBC is biased and has its own agenda such as the current slavery programme, Brown bias, etc which is why I threw away my TV 3 years ago. If you want to know what is going on in the Middle East the BBC is not my first choice of information.
As for clearing out BBC over Kelly – that is a myth since both people that left were fully acknowledged labour supporters and replaced by others more easy to manipulation.
Regards
I”d trust the BBCs reporting on the middle east, Iraq and Iran over any American news source any day.
#6 because Israel runs the media in the United States. As soon as there is an anti-israel statement all hell breaks loose. I am no anti-semite by any means, but it’s just like gays who have to tell everyone they are gay, the same is with the jews.
I don’t know why they can’t deal with critique. Everyone else gets put down by them and when someone puts them down, it’s a big bitch fest.
ArianeB –
It would seem that you’re claiming that the only reason the USA might go to war against Iran, is because of pressure from the “AIPAClobby”. Yeah, so what if Iran is developing nuclear weapons and is threatening to use them against the US. And has repeatedly attacked American targets since the Islamists took over that country 28 years ago. That’s all irrelevant and immaterial, right?
If you actually believe the crap you posted, you’re a perfect example why so many take the denial “I don’t hate Jews, I’m just an ‘Anti-Zionist” with a very large grain of salt.
Steve –
Are you claiming that Israel controls CNN? I think Ted Turner would be very disappointed to learn that. Are you claiming that Israel controls the New York Times? Are you claiming that Israel controls NBC? The Washington Post? The Los Angeles Times? ABC?
I am not claiming that. I said they run the media. There’s a difference between control and run. By running I mean they have a minority voice that’s extremely loud. Louder than even Al Sharpton, a man who deserves the same amount of time we give to Israel on US news.
Listen, no one really cares about anti-this or anti-that anymore. All I was trying to say was that as a minority the jewish community sure raises hell ever time there’s criticism of their community. Put them in the same league as the free software lunatics 🙂
The Beeb itself has admitted – nay, proclaimed – their leftist bias.
At the Governors “impartiality seminar” in September 2006, political correspondent Andrew Marr said that “The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias”.
According to former BBC business editor Jeff Randall, he was told by a senior news executive that “The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.”
The BBC’s credo could be phrased as “White people, particularly English & American, are evil, imperialistic oppressors of noble, wonderful minorities, who are all utterly innocent victims.”
In other words, Marxist-derived multiculti PC hooey. Not many objective people regard that stance as “unbiased.”
It’s a damn shame, considering the priceless contributions to the arts the Beeb has made over the years. I’ll treasure their creative output, but I spit on their commie-revival editorializing and slanting of the news.
I am not claiming that. I said they run the media.
Haha, that’s a good one. “I’m not a Jew-hater, I just hate that Jews run everything and are so uppity!”
Your right Frank IBC. I hate all religions and have finally got the balls to say this publically. I am anti-religious and don’t respect a single religious person, regardless of religion.
Sorry I sugar coated everything before. Good day!
So you’re OK with secular Zionists, bullethead? I’m happy to hear that. 🙂
Frank IBC… Steve is correct. The Jews – yes, Israel is a Jewish state – has a lot of influence on the spin news get. If someone happens to say something negative about Israel, then they do their best to portray the person as an anti-Semite, no matter what. But by reading your answers to Steve, I believe you’ll remain clueless.
When did Turner by CNN back?
hagbard –
While Ted Turner no longer owns CNN directly, he is the largest shareholder in its parent company, Time Warner.
So if I understand you correctly, Jagermeister, there is no possibility that any criticism of Israel could be motivated by anti-Jewish bigotry, because Jews are allegedly hypersensitive to criticism, and exercise undue influence on the news media?
#24
You still don’t get it Frank… What Steve is saying is that you can not criticize Jews/Israel without being labeled anti-Jewish. It’s like the idiots at the beginning of the current Iraq war who labeled any critics of the war as anti-American and terrorist lovers. Black or white… no shades of gray.
Jägermeister, thank you for stating it so clearly.
Warm regards
ArianeB –
Oh, I forgot – Hizbullah, which bombed the Marine compound in Beirut, killing 241, and which bombed the US embassies in the same city killing dozens more Americans, has absolutely no connection to Iran. And of course, the bombing of the barracks in Dhahran in 1996 has no connection with Iran, either. How silly of me.
#25
Have you ever thought of the black and white labels (no shades of gray) is due to the fact that Israel receives only criticism no matter what they do? Palestinians could have their own state tomorrow and people would right away criticize Israel for not giving up enough land. Hezbollah infiltrates their borders and kills their soldiers. They purposely try to kill Israeli civilians, yet the “Zionist Regime” is the only one that does evil.
And don’t give me this crap about Jews controlling the media. Come on, didn’t a Reuters photographer photoshop extra smoke into Beirut aerial photos to make Israel look bad. Yes, the American Jews are smart and do control the media here. But don’t hate them for being smart. And don’t act like the media bias in America makes Israel out to be a heroic state in the international community. You can’t be oblivious to the fact that some people just MIGHT be anti-Jewish or anti-semitic or whatever the hell you want to call it. I’m not saying that Israel does no evil, whatsoever. But they don’t deserve as much criticism as they receive. The United States and other countries have caused much more grief to people on this earth than Israel will ever cause. Yet, they receive more criticism than any other country on earth. They even receive more than the US even with the war in Iraq.
Jagermeister –
What Steve said, if you’ll bother to read his post, is that “Israel runs the media”. But since I didn’t immediately infer that what he really meant to say was “Jews don’t like being criticized”. (not that the latter statement is any less prejudiced.) So of course I am the one with the reading comprehension problem.
One more thing to ArianeB, then beddy-bye…
What Israel needs to do is get rid of its Neo-Con controlled government that is pissing the rest of the world off!
Oh, this is so absurd on so many levels.
First, you claim that Israel controls the government of the USA, now you imply that the Israeli government is controlled by the USA. Or at least your definition of the term “neo-con” is sharply at odds with the usual moonbat definition of that term.
And do you honestly think that if Israel were to vote out Qadimah and Likud – Hamas, Fatah, and Hizbullah would suddenly be rushing in for a group hug with the Israelis?
steve is a racist