{"id":425,"date":"2009-01-26T05:38:19","date_gmt":"2009-01-26T10:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=425"},"modified":"2009-03-21T05:40:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-21T10:40:39","slug":"the-strictly-impartial-bbc-operating-on-behalf-of-the-israeli-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2009\/01\/26\/the-strictly-impartial-bbc-operating-on-behalf-of-the-israeli-government\/","title":{"rendered":"The strictly impartial BBC, operating on behalf of the Israeli government"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nTo update an old Young Ones<\/cite> joke. As seen on Prog Gold<\/a>, the current BBC’s director general is quite cozy with the Israeli government<\/a>, which of course did not influence the decision to remain impartial by not broadcasting an appeal for the IDF’s victims. Now Ellis Sharp reminds us that he has been impartial towards Israel from the start of his tenure<\/a> when in 2004 the then Middle East correspondent was transferred to Africa:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nOrla Guerin\u2019s offence was to run stories not just about the grief of Israeli families who had lost family members to suicide bombers but also stories about the grief and suffering of ordinary Palestinian families. As one blogger put it at the time:\n<\/p>\n

\nGuerin\u2019s real sin, of course, is to show some sympathy for the victims of the Israeli bombing (that\u2019s enough to brand her a “terrorist”).
\n<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nWithin days of Thompson meeting Sharon, Guerin was sacked as BBC TV Middle East correspondent and transferred to Africa.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAs you’ll remember, Thompson became director general because his predecessor had to resign after the BBC got caught on a technicality and was keelhauled for it in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry<\/a>. Thompson was brought in as very much a pair of safe hands who wouldn’t rock the boat, follow the establishment line ever more so than his predecessors and not embarass the government. Despite this, there have been several scandals during his tenure, from running unwinnable contests to sexing up a documentary about the royal family to of course the Ross\/Brands clusterfuck. This seemed to have made the BBC gunshy, prone to overreact and moreover, seemed to have lost the corporation its political nous<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo while the BBC has always been careful to not upset Israel or its zionist cheerleaders in the UK, always had an internal bias towards Israel, it used to be much more subtle about this. Even five years ago, I don’t think it would’ve been so blatant as to refuse air time to a genuinely humanitarian appeal for the inhabitants of Gaza. But because the corporation has been so battered by the same politicians and tabloids that are such great friends of Israel as well, because it has been caught with its pants down so often lately, it has overreacted. And now even those people who are normally the first to accuse it of a pro-Palestinian bias are disgusted.\n<\/p>\n

\nPoor Auntie Beeb. It just cannot win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To update an old Young Ones joke. As seen on Prog Gold, the current BBC’s director general is quite cozy with the Israeli government, which of course did not influence the decision to remain impartial by not broadcasting an appeal for the IDF’s victims. Now Ellis Sharp reminds us that he has been impartial towards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,104,254],"tags":[284,283,2473],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auntie-beeb","category-manufacturing-consent","category-war-on-gaza","tag-bbc-bias","tag-mark-thompson","tag-war-on-gaza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}