May 07, 2006

The Jewish Chronicle on the BBC report

Having shouted long and loud for the BBC to address its bias on the question of Palestine the zionists got their wish and the BBC commissioned an independent report into their Middle East coverage. Well as I have said before the report didn't quite turn out how the zionists had hoped. It said what any obejective observer will have noticed already over they years: the BBC has been biased in favour of Israel by failing to contextualise the situation in that Israel is a major power and the Palestinians have no power. From the Jewish Chronicle (paid subscription only):
One passage noted the BBC's "failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, refelcting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation".

It continued: "Although this asymmetry does not necessarily bear on the relative merits of the two sides, it so marked and important that coverage should succeed in this if nothing else."
This has the zionists in a bit of a tizzy. The Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre's Daniel Shek now says that to point this out would of itself mean a bias against Israel. At least it looks like that is what he's saying. Bear in mind here that zionists don't, as a rule, do clarity.
The most problematic passages relate to the fact that there is an intrinsic imbalance betweeen the two societies. The report then implies that an imbalance in BBC coverage could be acceptable.
Eh?

Anyway, the Labour MP Louise Ellman is also concerned
at the suggestion that not enough attention is paid to the Palestinian point of view. The report talks about about an imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians, but it doesn't refer to those Palestinians who are ambiguous about Israel's existence as a state.
So a bit of a panic among zionists that the BBC might be about to show the true context of the situation in Palestine but still there are those putting a brave face on it. A Board of Deputies spokesman, Jon Benjamin,
said that the Board was pleased that the panel had accepted that "a lack of context and historical background meant that reporting in the past been incomplete and therefore misleading."
So let's put that past behind us and look forward to the BBC telling it how it is: Israel is a colonial settler state based on ethnic cleansing and that at its most legitimate it is an occupying power and that its victims, are for the time being mostly powerless.

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