Sunday
(0)Those who follow its coverage know that BBC "impartiality" usually means not favoring Hamas over Islamic Jihad.
- CAMERA (Committe for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) reporting that the BBC's correspondent in Gaza reportedly declared at a recent Hamas event that reporters and the media are "waging the campaign [against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people."
via Instapudit and Free Will.
Moreover, the state owned BBC is waging that campaign with other people's tax money.
Privatise the BBC NOW so that we can try and drive it out of business.
Posted by Perry de Havilland at June 20, 2004 11:39 AM
If that CAMERA report goes back to May 2001, then it looks like bias is alive and well at the BBC.
Posted by John J. Coupal at June 20, 2004 12:22 PM
It is said that Blair made a political mistake by suggesting that the European Constitution ought to be put to a referendum. This is untrue. If Blair had tried to impose a European Constitution - which overrides both our law and our ability to change our law – all hell would have broken out. Blair sensed this and so in order to defuse it he suggested a referendum. It is to his credit. Some assert that Blair supports Bush in the war in Iraq because he is a wimp. This is also wrong. He supports him because he believes him to be right. This is also to his credit. I appreciate that the BBC line is that Blair is wrong on both counts (BBC news and current affairs is generally an exercise in attempting to justify a Guardian/Independent readers view of the world) but is the BBC that has made the misjudgement. When both the two political parties are to the right of the BBC, its claim to be a balanced source of news is no longer sustainable. They are too isolated from their market they are supposed to serve to notice. I notice that the market share of Fox News in the USA get higher and higher. People like to be given a choice. The Labour party will not be the one to free up the marketplace, but the breaking up of the BBC is now inevitable. When this happens it will be a significant step forward for freedom in the UK. Needless to add they will be horrified and shocked, like East European politicians after the fall of their regimes. Prescott was right to say there are tectonic shifts going on in British life, but they are not the ones he thinks are significant. Needless to add all he is interested in is his career.
Posted by Chris Goodman at June 20, 2004 05:03 PM
In order to condemn the BBC (or its correspondent) in this case one has to rely on the accuracy of a report of what he said on a Hamas website. I don't know that we can do that. He might have said anything at all and been reported thus.
If it were a direct quote to meeting attended by a Jerusalem Post reporter that would be a different matter.
Posted by Guy Herbert at June 20, 2004 05:07 PM
The quickest, indeed I would venture to suggest the best, way, of deciding if the BBC news coverage of Israel is prejudiced is to listen/watch very carefully to one of their reports. I find most BBC foreign news correspondents to be almost valueless, except as guides to the state of left-liberal thinking in the UK.
Posted by Chris Goodman at June 20, 2004 06:46 PM
I couldn't agree more Chris. Their coverage in the run up to the Iraq war was also a prime example of this, sort of biased foreign policy reporting from the BBC.
Posted by Gareth Russell at June 20, 2004 07:27 PM
Verity, do you mean Orla Guerin, Lyse Doucet and Fergal Keane?
If you are criticising bias and inaccuracy in the BBC --and I agree that it exists--it simply doesn't do to offer biassed and inaccurate critique. It is a disease of the blogosphere (to which I hope Samizdata is not about to succumb) to subsist on a game of Chinese whispers that confirms the blog in question's pre-existing points of view. That's not deconstructing the left-liberal media mythos, just mirroring it.
Posted by Guy Herbert at June 21, 2004 07:51 AM
