The BBC?
source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-how-can-you-trust-the-cow...
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The BBC Trust is now a mouthpiece for the Israeli lobby which abused Bowen
By Robert Fisk
The BBC Trust's report on Jeremy Bowen's dispatches from the Middle East is pusillanimous, cowardly, outrageous, factually wrong and ethically dishonest.
============================= The BBC Trust's report on Jeremy Bowen's dispatches from the Middle East is pusillanimous, cowardly, outrageous, factually wrong and ethically dishonest.
But I am mincing my words.
The trust – how I love that word which so dishonours everything about the BBC – has collapsed, in the most shameful way, against the usual Israeli lobbyists who have claimed – against all the facts – that Bowen was wrong to tell the truth.
Let's go step by step through this pitiful business. Zionism does indeed instinctively "push out" the frontier. The new Israeli wall – longer and taller than the Berlin Wall although the BBC management cowards still insist its reporters call it a "security barrier" (the translation of the East German phrase for the Berlin Wall) – has gobbled up another 10 per cent of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" that Arafat/Mahmoud Abbas were supposed to negotiate. Bowen's own brilliant book on the 1967 war, Six Days, makes this land-grab perfectly clear.
Anyone who has read the history of Zionism will be aware that its aim was to dispossess the Arabs and take over Palestine. Why else are Zionists continuing to steal Arab land for Jews, and Jews only, against all international law? Who for a moment can contradict that this defies everyone's interpretation of international law except its own?
Even when the International Court in The Hague stated that the Israeli wall was illegal – the BBC, at this point, was calling it a "fence"! – Israel simply claimed that the court was wrong.
UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 called upon Israel to withdraw its forces from territories that it occupied in the 1967 war – and it refused to do so. The Americans stated for more than 30 years that Israel's actions were illegal – until the gutless George Bush accepted Israel had the right to keep these illegally held territories. Thus the BBC Trust – how cruel that word "trust" now becomes – has gone along with the Bush definition of Israel's new boundaries (inside Arab land, of course).
The BBC's preposterous committee claims that Bowen's article "breached the rules [sic] on impartiality" because "readers might come away from the article thinking that the interpretation offered was the only sensible view of the war".
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CONTINUED:
In a piece Bowen wrote for the BBC website last June under the headline "Six days that changed the Middle East," about the Six Day War, which was criticized at the time by HonestReporting UK, Bowen referred to "Zionism's innate instinct to push out the frontier". He also wrote that Israel showed a "defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own" and that its generals felt that they were dealing with "unfinished business", left over from the 1948 War of Independence. These references were deemed inaccurate or lacking impartiality by the BBC Trust:
"Readers might come away from the article thinking that the interpretation offered was the only sensible view of the war," it said. "It was not necessary for equal space to be given to the other arguments, but ... the existence of alternative theses should have been more clearly signposted."
The second finding related to a broadcast Bowen delivered on From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4 in January 2008, in which Bowen said the US government considered the Israeli town of Har Homa on the outskirts of Jerusalem as illegal.
- 3 years ago
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NOW STUDY THIS LINK:
Special Alert: BBC Mideast Editor Guilty of Inaccuracy on Israel
BBC's Mideast editor rebuked for breaching impartiality and accuracy rules.For many years, HonestReporting has criticized the BBC's veteran reporter and Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen for his anti-Israel bias. Now the BBC itself agrees.
- 3 years ago
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Robert Fisk holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. The Financial Times described Fisk as "unrivaled as a war correspondent." The London Sunday Times said of him, "He is a devastating witness to the failure of politics to guard mankind against itself." His book, Pity the Nation, a history of the Lebanon war, was published to great critical acclaim. His latest book is a monumental 1,000-page work, "The Great War for Civilisation : The Conquest of the Middle East," which has been described by the New York Times as "an unflinching, stunning achievement."
==========================Robert Fisk is the most respected journalists in the world. Reporting independently from the front lines of war is an increasingly rare engagement for journalists working for major international media outlets. From Iraq to Afghanistan, reporters are increasingly embedded with advancing Western forces on the front lines, operating without independence. Another such reporter is American reporter Dahr Jamail.
Fisk is in the position to take the BBC to task.......as one of the few unenbedded journalists in today's world. Most journalists are reporting from the frontl-ine with the troops on our side............giving a very biased view as they simply regurgitate the military briefings.
When Israeli military forces launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip, international journalists were barred entry into the territory by the Israeli government for the majority of the conflict. This despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court that called on the government to allow international reporters into the territory. Major international media outlets, including CNN and the BBC, ended up reporting from hilltops in Israeli-controlled territory kilometres away from the actual conflict.
The BBC is sadly losing its edge. I hope I'm wrong because it's a shining light.....but I personally prefer Chanel 4 in the UK.
British journalist Robert Fisk has offered fiercely independent accounts of conflicts throughout the Middle East for decades. Stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, Fisk reports for the U.K.-based Independent newspaper and is widely read around the world. - 3 years ago
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BBC is usually known for fair journalism and has a very good reputation around the world. Maybe one bad apple?
- 3 years ago
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Yet the decision of the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee to censure the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, for breaching the Corporation's guidelines on accuracy and impartiality demonstrates a terrible absence of good judgement. Mr Bowen's work has always been scrupulously unbiased. The BBC Trust needs to learn that accountability does not mean swallowing every complaint uncritically. When a good journalist needs to be robustly defended, it must not be afraid to do so.
- 3 years ago
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I can well see how BBC executives will say that this article of mine today is "over the top". Jeremy Bowen may indeed think the same. But the First World War metaphor would be correct. For Bowen and his colleagues are truly lions led by BBC management donkeys.
- 3 years ago
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Haaretz gave considerable space to the BBC's findings yesterday. I'm not surprised. But why is it that Haaretz's top correspondents – Amira Hass and Gideon Levy – write so much more courageously about the human rights abuses of Israeli troops (and war crimes) than the BBC has ever dared to do? Whenever I'm asked by lecture audiences around the world if they should trust the BBC, I tell them to trust Amira and Gideon more than they should ever believe in the wretched broadcasting station. I'm afraid it's the same old story. If you allow yourself to bow down before those who wish you to deviate from the truth, you will stay on your knees forever.
And this, remember, is the same institution which said that to broadcast an appeal for medicines for wounded Palestinians in Gaza might upset its "neutrality". Legless Palestinian children clearly don't count as much as the BBC's pompous executives.
How do we solve this problem? Well I can certainly advise viewers to turn to Sky TV's infinitely tougher coverage of the Middle East and – I admit I contribute to this particular station – I can recommend the courage with which Al-Jazeera English covers Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian-Israeli war.
- 3 years ago
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