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Posted by: hyperbola 6 months, 2 weeks ago

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hyperbola6 months, 2 weeks ago

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The BBC reporting about the mideast is heavily biased towards zionist perspectives.

Israeli Perspective Routinely Highlighted

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17227

... We invited Professor Philo to comment directly on our exchange with Jeremy Bowen; in particular, on Bowen's assertion that the BBC is even-handed in its coverage of Israeli and Palestinian victims. In response, Philo pointed to the findings of 'Bad News From Israel':

"[T]he focus on Israeli victims, both in terms of the quantity of coverage and the language used to describe them, led some viewers to believe wrongly that the Israelis had the most casualties and these beliefs were attributed directly to what they had seen on television." (Email, April 18, 2008)

In fact, as we saw above, there have been over four times as many Palestinian as Israeli deaths between September 2000 and March 2008. And the ratio is as high as nine when it comes to children's deaths. It is highly doubtful whether 'consumers' of corporate news media, the BBC included, are aware of this.

... Their careful research concluded that news headlines "highlight Israeli statements, actions or perspectives." Palestinian views do appear in the media "but tend to be buried deep in the text of news bulletins. [...] it is hard to avoid the conclusion that one view of the conflict is being prioritised." ...

..."Editors, producers, presenters, and their immediate bosses, live in the heated climate of London and very much still within their own cultural heritage: the politics of the day plus the memories of an English education. [...] the story 'concept' in London is still, I am afraid, that Israelis are 'people like us', who should not be shelled every day while they drive their Polos to recognisable branches of Asda or whatever; while Arabs are 'tricky' and 'emotional' and if they weren't all firing rockets and hating Jews in the first place none of this would be happening. This is still the platform off which most Western journalists in London jump. To take a different tack is to run into that wall of 'anti-semitic' or 'unbalanced' reportage that any of us who tries to explain the facts on the ground in the region runs into."

John Pilger is one journalist has been on the receiving end of such flak in his extensive reporting on Palestine over several decades. His award-winning 2002 television documentary, 'Palestine is Still the Issue', is one of his most powerful, and most watched, films on the crisis. (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1259454...

We sent Pilger our exchange with the BBC's Middle East editor, highlighting Bowen's assertion that "You imply that we have double standards in marking the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children. I can assure you that we do not." Pilger replied:

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  hyperbola6 months, 2 weeks ago
  
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  "Jeremy Bowen's quote is indefensible. One only has to read the acclaimed study, 'Bad News from Israel', to understand the difference in the reporting of the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians....
  
  Pilger then recounted an example of the BBC's institutional bias that systematically suppresses uncomfortably honest perspectives:
  
  "A few years ago, [Bowen] invited me to take part in a BBC special about war correspondents, and we spent an enjoyable hour or so 'in conversation'. Although it was clear that tales of derring-do would have been preferred, I raised the unwelcome subject that the BBC was an extension and voice of the established order in Britain and its reporting on the Middle East and elsewhere reflected the prevailing wisdom -- with honourable exceptions from time to time. My contribution was cut entirely from the programme. I emailed Bowen and sometime later received an unsatisafactory response that there wasn't 'time or space' in the film -- something unsurprising like that. Censorship by omission is standard, if undeclared practice."
  
  ....As a result of this undeclared media censorship, public understanding of the Middle East remains limited; and challenges to Western support of brutal Israeli policy are easily diffused and minimised. Sadly, the net effect is that the BBC provides cover for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. This is a tragedy that stretches back to the 'Nakba': the 'catastrophe' of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which was the prerequisite for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Now seems as good a time as any to exert pressure on this publicly-funded institution to report painful truths.
  
  http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17227
  
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