101 BBC journalists say it is biased against Palestine
JVL Introduction
The BBC has been accused of bias against Israel but here over 230 people, including 101 BBC journalists have argued that there is a strong bias towards Israel and certainly the Israeli narrative. The letter was sent to the Independent arguing that Broadcaster bias is failing to hold Israel to account.
It is noteworthy that only 72 of the 230 signatories felt able to sign openly and this included none of the BBC journalists. Distrust of mainstream media is growing but there is a real need for unbiased reporting. The BBC has previously claimed that the fact it receives complaints from those in support of Israel as well as those in support of Palestine shows its impartiality. This letter, and many other articles and letters before, show this to be nonsense.
LL
This article was originally published by Digi on Fri 1 Nov 2024. Read the original here.
Hundreds of journalists and personalities accuse BBC of bias in favor of Israel and call for a return to "fairness and impartiality"
More than 230 members of the media industry and personalities, including 101 BBC employees, accuse the British media outlet of providing favourable coverage of Israel and call on the public broadcaster to “recommit to fairness, accuracy and impartiality” in its reporting on the Gaza Strip.
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It is shocking that even senior BBC journalists feel the need to stay anonymous on such an important issue. The BBC coverage of the war has been woeful.
The BBC favours the establishment hierarchy and the USA and Israel. The BBC is indeed generally biased against the indigenous people of the land taken by Israel. The BBC is invariably selectively critical of the governments of China and Russia, often being highly hypocritical in this. Trivial or stale or irrelevant content seems to crowd out facts which should be broadcast.
There was a big demonstration for the Palestinianse on the streets of London this Saturday. I tried to find coverage of this event on the BBC news website. Have I missed something? Or has the BBC…?
I agree completely with your assertion of gross bias in BBC news coverage. It is of long standing. I used to watch RT as well to get broader picture before that news channel was banned. Then I turned to Al jazeera for a fairer treatment of news. Now I cannot find that anywhere. I was informed that itwould be available on channel 251 instead of channel 225 where I used to watch it. Has Aljazeera also been banned now? because it isnot on channel 251 as it said it would be. Can you tell me how I may view it now?
I’m sure the BBC does “weigh and measure” the words it uses in its headlines. That isn’t the excuse its spokesperson seems to think it is – it only makes the lengths its headline writers go to to avoid blaming Israel for anything really shocking all the more damnable.
This sounds to me very much the BBC ‘spokesperson’ telling the signatories to this letter that they’ve wasted their time because now that this ‘spokesperson’ has used up all the standard justifications for the BBC’s conspicuously unethical behaviour the BBC can just pretend this letter was never written. After all, that is the way the BBC usually deals with complaints.
Guardian is exactly the same.
They always and repeatedly state that they can’t ‘independently verify’ any particular incident in Gaza, but then never state the reason why … that Israel has banned them from reporting there. It is never mentioned . Context is never applied ever.
Al Jazeera is on 251, but only on some kind of download. It takes, some minutes to arrive, and then the sound is out of sync with the speaking image. I’m really distressed by this and would like more info on why it’s happening.
Al Jazeera is my most tested source (except sadly on Qatar). This obstruction is a huge loss, which imo RT wasn’t..
‘Wide range of interviews and expert opinions’? Seems to me, and definitely the reason I hardly either watch or listen to the BBC these days, these come from a small coterie of mostly right wing pundits expressing ‘establishment’ views. Unfortunately, if, for example, they brought Jeremy Corbyn or Andrew Feinstein or a John Trickett on to, say, Newsnight to discuss some crucial political matter, I would now miss it. Though, because of its bias against, well, we the people, who had made the Labour Party under Jeremy, the biggest in Europe at 500.000 strong, we’d be lucky if they would. My trust in the BBC has therefore gone. RT can, however, be easily found, and reports widely on all the current global news, as far as they are able, in a fair and balanced way.
It apparently seems very hard for the BBC (and many other media in the world) to resist the classical conditioned colonial reflexes of the once Imperial UK.
The once World-Wide Ruling UK, that after all – of all nations – does bear the full historical responsibility for the 100+ years aberration of Zionist Jewish- and Christian supremacists, to totally remove – by all violent means imaginable – the autochthonous Palestine population from The Holy Land.
The aforementioned Chosen People does thrive in this utterly racist and fascist settler colonial endeavour, in order to be able to establish the (imaginative) mono-ethnic entity, called “Greater Israel”.
Eretz-Israel, which “Biblically Promised” geographics will ideally be stretching from the Brooks of the Nile in the South, the Euphrates river on the East, the Mediterranean (including the territorial waters, containing a treasure-trove of mineral gas) on the West, and Lebanon and parts of contemporain Syria in the North. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel
A Homeland “for Jews only” – all divinely arranged according to “thousand years old”, Sacred Scriptures such as the Torah and Halacha.
A Palästinenser-rein Home-Land, that has been exclusively “Promised” to Jews, by their very personal Divine Mastermind, so He (whose name can not be mentioned) will be able, to subsequently send in the Jewish Messiah, who – as a free gift for all mankind – finally will “redeem entire humanity”.
Be meanwhile utterly aware of the highly disturbing fact, that – given the geo-political (or should I say : theo-political) objective of creating Eretz Israel – the belligerent job of the total Umvolkung of Palestine, today is only half-way of its gruesome finalization.!
Disclaimer : My dear Dutch Jewish friends – like the anti-Zionist Jaap Hamburger (A Different Jewish Voice and The Rights Forum) – do wholeheartedly and aggressively reject/expose this criminal settler colonial project.
Regarding Al Jazeera, if it’s not on Channel 251 that might be because, due to a glitch during the retuning of your Freeview box, it’s ended up at the back end of your channel list, in the 800s somewhere. That’s what happened on mine. The other snag is your TV must be hooked up to the net, I think, so in effect you’re getting the livestream also available on the Al Jazeera YouTube channel. Hope that helps (if you’re still reading this thread)!