The original BBC Views Online article, Rocket injures dozens in Israel, was published just after midnight on September 11th, as shown by Newssniffer.
The article progressed through a number of drafts, with version 7, at 9am, gaining a box-quote reading:
We will act, but I think it’s very important to make the point that there is no reason for this [attack]
Mark Regev
Israeli government spokesman
Skip forward fifty minutes and several revisions later to version 11, at 9.50am, and our box-quote is amended to read:
We will act, but I think it’s very important to make the point that there is no reason for this
Mark Regev
Israeli government spokesman
Did you spot the subtle change? Yes, the implied word, [attack], that put Mark Regev’s comment in its true context was deleted, leaving him sounding like he was saying that the Israelis would respond, but that there would be no reason for their response, rather than that there was no reason for the attack. And that’s the way it has been ever since.
A small but telling example of a Beeboid going out of their way to spin Mark Regev’s words as subtly as they could into what they wanted him to say, rather than what he actually meant.
Andrew, I never get involved in the Middle East stuff cause I know nothing about it. But just this once…
I mean do you really see bias here? There first quote is pretty clumsy and so it’s been quite rightly tidied up.
You’d have to be pretty perverse to read the second version as you have, it’s obvious what it means.
Not that obvious to someone who merely scans the article and the box quotes, as many unfortunately do.
David, I see your point, and occassionally it does seem as though people are looking very hard for bias that only the most sensitive of radar can detect. However, on the Middle East issue, this is one more example of a rather worrying trend: comments that favour Israel or state Israel’s position are often presented in a rather jumbled manner. It would be interesting to see the entirety of Mark Regev’s statement, because I’m willing to bet that there was somewhere a more solid line that could’ve been culled for the box quote.
The BBC’s use of language regarding the Middle East is always illuminating: it has been demonstrated for example that deaths caused by Israeli are directly and actively attributed to Israel in around 60 – 70% of BBC headlines, whereas deaths caused by Palestinians are so described only around 15% of the time, the BBC preferring the usual distancing vocabulary – “two die in Gaza fighting” or “Israeli dies in shooting” etc. I’ve been vague with the figures because I can’t get my hands on the article that studied the phenomenon right now – hopefully someone can confirm this.
David, while I can see your point, the unfortunate truth is that fits a pattern in which nuanced quirks and twists of vocabulary always seem to come out favouring the same side – the Palestinian Arabs.
It’s what we saw on Saturday – referees do of course simply get things wrong, but when every major or minor mistake favours Liverpool and penalises Everton, we are entitled to say that we have left the realms of the accidental and coincidental. It’s the same with the BBC and Israel-Palestine. (And that’s just the pervasive use of skewed quotes and headline vocabulary, which is far from being the biggest gun in the BBC’s anti-Israel armoury).
Can anyone dredge up anything on al-Beeb via Newssniffer that is overtly pro-Israeli? Or amended after publication to be pro-Israeli?
Anonymous,
That’s a reasoned response to David Gregory, but I think his reaction was of the knee-jerk “don’t be ridiculous” variety. Re your query, the article exposing the BBC’s bias in its use of the active vs passive voice could have been from Honest Reporting. (www.honestreporting.com) I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned a few times on this site as well.
David Gregory, if you follow the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian confict, you will start to detect an unmistakable pattern of bias. This was most evident during the Israel-Hezbollah war when the BBC slavishly followed Hezbollah’s line. It was shameful. Nobody from the BBC has accepted my challenge on this site and elsewhere to debate the war coverage. The reason is simple: the BBC knows it is guilty of gross bias here. It has no defence.
Bryan, perhaps an increase in the Licence Fee would’ve enabled the BBC to place correspondents in Lebanon *and* Israel – the same way Sky did.
Maybe they simply couldn’t afford to report from both sides! We know from recent revelations that BBC reporters are in short supply, there being no more than a dozen present at even the smallest events. Why would we suppose they have the resources to place correspondents in *both* countries engaged in a major armed conflict?
The BBC seem more understanding of the Turkish position than they did of Israel’s vis a vis Hezbollah
But Mr Babacan said Turkey would not consider a ceasefire with the rebels, following reports that the PKK might agree to stop fighting.
“Ceasefires are possible between states and regular forces – the problem here is that we’re dealing with a terrorist organisation,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7057753.stm
Also odd that only US, UK & Israeli artillery inevitably homes in on civilians esp. women & children
PKK sources reported heavy Turkish shelling of rebel positions after Sunday’s ambush but there were no reports of an incursion.
Bryan: I do follow it. But I certainly don’t know enough to contribute anything useful here. I do think one of the best B-BBC posts was about the lack of Israeli voices in that “Voices of the conflict” sidebar the BBC used to post. At best very poor oversight, at worst well yes bias.
But in this case I think we’re looking at tidying up nothing more.
Of course it does show the problem with detecting bias because Andrew believes totally the opposite.
People are not stupid, they can see right through this for what it really is: sly, sneaky insertion / omission of choice words to distort the meaning. Come off it, this excuse of “clumsiness” has been used too many times.
Yes this is evidence of bias. The first sentence reads like Regev saying there is no reason for the rocket attack, the second that there is no reason for Israel to act/attack.
David Gregory (BBC) | 23.10.07 – 3:47 pm |
and the balen report? the balen report? i once read something about bbc reporters or contacts possibly being put at risk if the report were released. i believe this is rubbish.
surely it would be the easiest thing to delete whatever sections might be truly confidential or that might put anyone at risk, and release the remainder of the report. this is already frequently done.
and i find it hard to imagine how this consideration would prevent just the overall conclusion of the report, or even a single word, being released.
can you think of any compelling reason, david, why there must be a total blackout of the report?
other than the reason many of us suspect, that is.
Why would we suppose they have the resources to place correspondents in *both* countries engaged in a major armed conflict?
gharqad | 23.10.07 – 12:30 pm
And which BBC hack lucky enough to be assigned to the Middle East at the time would miss the opportunity to pass him/herself off as a courageous war correspondent grimly pounding away on his/her laptop in a smoky cafe in Beirut with Israeli bombs exploding all over the place?? (Er, well, OK they were mostly exploding on Hezbollah turf in southern Beirut but why let the facts interfere with the romantic image of the intrepid journalist battling to get the truth out to the world in the face of great danger?)
Hell, even those who were not assigned to the Middle East like whatshername with a G flew up from the southern tip of Africa to join in the fun and claim that entire Lebanese villages had been destroyed.
No self-respecting BBC hack would be seen dead in Tel Aviv with such a great opportunity to trash Israel going begging in Lebanon.
David Gregory, thanks for at least acknowledging the possibility of BBC bias re the voices. In this instance, the bracketed word made Regev’s meaning clear. That’s accepted journalistic practice. Removing the word fudged it. The BBC does this continually and the fudging never favours the Israelis.
Also, you might like to dwell a bit on the comment that will made:
Also odd that only US, UK & Israeli artillery inevitably homes in on civilians esp. women & children
Bowen and company were yelling “war crimes” at Israel while Hezbollah were the ones deliberately targeting and killing Israeli civilians (including Arabs) and using Lebanese civiians as human shields.
Don’t you find that a little strange?
Bryan | 24.10.07 – 12:34 am
Bowen and company were yelling “war crimes” at Israel while Hezbollah were the ones deliberately targeting and killing Israeli civilians..
I seem to remember the question of war crimes being raised in connection with both sides.
Since both sides were committing them, this seems perfectly fair and proper.
Mr Reith, nice to hear from you. You must’ve missed the request from amimissingsomething – that you explain why the BBC would go to such lengths to keep the Balen Report hidden from those who have paid for it, using our money to pay lawyers to make sure it stays hidden. He asks several pertinent questions, and the fact that you are erading this thread but have failed to answer them, means – I assume – that you cannot justify the secrecy.
Also, you’ll forgive me if I don’t simply take your word for it that Israel committed war crimes. That’s quite a major accusation, and I have yet to see any evidence that you are qualified as an expert in international law or the Geneva Convention. Your assertions are a) unsupported by evidence, and b)risible as an attempt to convince anyone that the BBC was impartial during the conflict.
John Reith – I don’t want you to think I’m being hostile at all, that’s not remotely my intention. But the accusation of war crimes is a serious one, and I would be genuinely interested in your answer to the following question.
Given that (whether you or anyone else likes the fact) Israel exists as a democratically constituted state; given that its government has a legal and moral obligation to protect the lives and safety of Israeli citizens; and given that it has a similar duty to protect as far as it can the lives of its own troops when it sends them into a conflict – what would you have suggested Israel do, when – in an act of war, a hostile fundamentalist religious militia harboured in an unfortunate neighbouring country, (and supplied and goaded by a State that has expressed its desire to see Israel destroyed,) crosses into Israel’s territory, kidnaps two of its soldiers, kills several others, all under the cover of a barrage of rocket attacks aimed at military and civilian targets?
What would you advise a conventional army to do to protect the lives of its civilians when an enemy force fires no fewer than 4000 rockets from civilian areas towards your towns and villages, each time emerging only briefly to attack you before melting back into its own civilian population?
The choice that a certain section of the world community offered Israel was essentially to let Hezbollah kill Israelis, or be branded war criminals for fighting back.
Hezbollah cannot be defeated without civilian casualties – for which THEY are legally and morally responsible. I don’t shrug, I don’t dismiss the horror of that. It is clearly terrible. But the only other way is to let them win, to let them attack Israeli towns. I haven’t heard a single NGO spokesman – let alone War Crimes Bowen – suggest any way that Israel *could* have differentiated between militants and civilians, (and the only way that comes to mind is the tactic of going house to house using ground troops – a tactic Israel used in Jenin, which led to a vicious firefight in which many Israeli soldiers were killed, but which did not stop Palestinian Arabs screaming to these same gullible NGOs and media organisations that a terrible massacre of ‘hundreds of civilians’ had occured. Israel cannot win).
Maybe you suggest that Israel should have sat down under fire to talk with the organisation whose spokesman says,
“If they go from Shebaa, we won’t stop fighting them. … Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine, … The Jews who survive this war of liberation can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.”
Seriously, John Reith, what would you do? How would we react if a neighbouring country harboured in its parliament members of an organisation who attacked our armed forces and launched 4000 rockets at our towns and villages?
What did Bowen want Israel to do? How does Bowen suggest that UNSC Resolution 1701 (calling for the disarming of Hezbollah) be enforced, when both UNIFIL and the Lebanese parliament have stated that they will not enforce it? Would Bowen support UN member state Israel if it tried to implement the resolution by force?
You talk as though there is moral equivalence here. There is none. Hezbollah started a war, Hezbollah attacked. Only Hezbollah deliberately targeted civilian populations. Only Hezbollah used civilian populations as a shield.
And even then – while there may have been censure of both sides from the BBC – don’t pretend that Israel didn’t bear the overwhelming brunt of the BBC’s implicit (and sometimes explicit) condemnation, don’t pretend that BBC reporters weren’t as heavily policed by Hezbollah as other stations’ reporters have honestly admitted they were, and please, don’t demean what credibility you have by pretending that the BBC’s coverage of the war was “perfectly fair and proper”.
gharqad | 24.10.07 – 1:21 pm,
For much of the war, I listened to the BBC World Service. There was only one instance I can recall of the BBC challenging Hezbollah spin and that was a week or so into the war when a reporter voiced incredulity at the claim by a Hezbollah spokesman that it had lost only 14 men. I heard nothing further from that particular BBC guy for the duration of the war and I’ve heard nothing since.
There was no mention or even a hint on the World Service of any culpability on Hezbollah’s part, but plenty of bleating by Bowen about Israeli “war crimes” and snide anti-Israel reporting from his motley crew.
In fact, the first hint of a dim realisation from the lunatic left that Hezbollah were not angels came, not from the BBC, but from either Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International – with the acknowledgement of Hezbollah war crimes representing the exception that proves the rule of anti-Israel invective from these organisations.
John Reith is employing his usual tactic here when he has no hope of winning an argument. He issues a bland denial of BBC wrongdoing with no facts to back it up and then ducks out of the debate. So I doubt that he will be back to rise to your very comprehensive challenge.
Which is a genuine shame. And tells us a lot.