BBC's Refusal To Air Gaza Appeal Symptomatic Of Amoral Reporting In Modern Day Media
By Richard Collie
26 January, 2009
Countercurrents.org
As inhabitants of Gaza begin the slow and costly process of rebuilding their battered infrastructure (UN estimates suggest this cost as somewhere in the region of $1.7billion, without taking into account the immeasurable cost of human suffering inflicted) the international media begins the usual practice of picking the bones of the latest conflict looking for potential newsworthy stories before moving onto the next conflict zone, be it Darfur, East Congo or perhaps one of those old favorites: Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in the fall out of the latest crisis one story more than any other reflects the bizarre nature of the international media's reporting of the Israel and Palestine conflict and mainstream journalism in general.
It has emerged that in the UK three of the main terrestrial broadcasters- ITV, Channel 4 and Five- are all set to air an appeal on behalf of a raft of charities, including the British Red Cross, Christian Aid and Islamic Relief to assist with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The BBC, Britain's most well known and most popular news network, has declared it is unwilling to air the appeal. The BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson, stated that the decision had been made on the grounds that it would 'risk reducing public confidence in its impartial coverage of the conflict.'
The BBC's unwillingness to support the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza humanitarian appeal has prompted widespread demonstrations, with many protesters gathering outside the BBC's headquarters in London to vent their outrage at the decision.
What the decision underlines is the sanitisation of news coming from the modern day big broadcast news organisations. News is just news. Free from the ideological shackles of what some would refer to as basic morality. Fox News would call this 'fair and balanced.'
There is no fundamental problem with the principles of the BBC as a publicly funded network untainted by the commercial demands of its corporate rivals. But how far is it prepared to go to defend its claims of impartiality? When the BBC refuses to stand up and do what even its commercially funded domestic rivals have done and support the victims of one of the worst deliberately inflicted humanitarian catastrophes in living memory, people will inevitably start to question if they are not in fact guilty of pro-Israeli bias.
The truth is that, in fairness to the Beeb, they do deserve some sympathy when you take into account some of the beatings they have take in recent years for supposedly breaching their impartiality agreement.
In 2004, the Israeli government wrote to the BBC to accuse its Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-Semitism and "total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups" over a report on a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber. Only the previous year, the Israeli government had lifted a ban on BBC journalists in protest at a documentary on the Jewish state's weapons of mass destruction.
Also in 2004, the more famous Hutton Inquiry lambasted the BBC over it's claims that the then Labour Government under Tony Blair had knowingly "sexed up" the September Dossier, a report into Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The incident gained notoriety when Dr. David Kelly was found dead after being named as the Ministry of Defence source for the claims.
In the aftermath of the Hutton Report, Greg Dyke, the Director General of the BBC was forced to resign along with Chairman Gavyn Davies and Andrew Gilligan, the journalist who initially broke the story. In other words, the repercussions of the BBC’s attack on the government were severe, with heads rolling at the highest level. In hindsight, when you consider that the actual report was in reference to the government's bogus claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within 45-minutes, claims which were later found to be completely unfounded, the severity of the beating the BBC took on that day appears even harsher.
It would be fair to say that the BBC has become something of an easy target because of the impartiality agreement written into its broadcasting contract with the British public, who support the network with a compulsory license fee.
This goes some way towards explaining why it is so reluctant to support the Gaza relief campaign today. Refrain from criticising Israel and the British government’s support of its expansionist regime and it will avoid further punishment. Presumably, it's current Chief Operating Officer, Caroline Thompson, thought so when she spoke publicly in defence of the BBC's decision not to support the campaign.
With governments leaning so heavily on news networks to connect the dots and link disasters such as those in Palestine and Iraq to decisions at the top level of government, is it any wonder that the kind of news we are increasingly being fed appears sanitised and amoral?
The decision of self-preserving figures at the head of these news networks may be understandable, but are they commendable? The more ‘yes men’, answering to government demands ahead of their conscience we have in these positions, the more our source of easily-digestible news will slip into the realms of this new sub-reality ‘news world’ and the more those susceptible to their output will distance what they see on their TV screens with their real life conscience.
