My thanks to B-BBC contributor George R for pointing out this little gem. I suppose the fact that ONLY 400 BBC employees protest in favour of Gaza relief is the really shocking statistic. It would be very interesting to see the names of all these stalwart advocates for Jihad relief. Any evidence of similar protests by BBC staff in favour of Israel?
NOT A HINT OF BIAS
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Excellent find by GeorgeR – and hey ! the article has a link at the right to an earlier article suggesting that a lot of the protests were in the news rooms of the BBC.
1000 BBC news staff. How many pro-Pali ? How many vehemently pro-Pali ?
sorry – here is the earlier Guardian article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/26/bbc-staff-protest-over-gaza-aid-appeal
Credit where credit’s due, the BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones did organise a petition against the NUJ conference call for an Israel boycott.
I think he collected >500 names, > 300 from among his BBC colleagues.
http://stopnujboycott.blogspot.com/
It’s not just the suffering poor of Gaza City the rank and file beeboids are worried about.
Look at this – they really must be taking the piss:
The BBC has expressed “surprise” at the claim by its recognised unions for an increase of £1800 per person from 1 August.
Writing to the joint unions, Mike Goodie, the BBC’s Employee Relations and People Strategy Director, states:
“I have to be candid that against this background, we were very surprised to receive your claim for an uplift of £1800 per person, effectively an increase of 6 per cent. This claim would add £51 million to our cost base, which is not only unaffordable but would be inexplicable to the general public.”
http://www.bectu.org.uk/2009/02/12/bbc-surprised-at-unions-pay-claim/
Anonymous, that’s a good point. Apparently the petition against the boycott collected 432 signatures. Not sure how many were from the BBC. I saved the page at the time:
http://stopnujboycott.blogspot.com/2007/04/petition-names.html
Some surprising BBC names on there, for those who are willing to plough through the list.
The blog against the boycott seemed to attract very little attention, with almost no comments to the articles.
Re the BBC decision not to broadcast the DEC appeal, all those lefty fascists baying like jackals against the BBC and hurling the worst insult they could find at it – that the BBC was pro-Israel – can now relax.
These BBC staff can join hands with chums at (Islamic) Al Jazeera English TV, with London offices at 1 Knightsbrige, whose owner, the Emir of Qatar, supports Hamas.
He has put $1 billion into the English language section TV station, which is staffed by many ex-Beeboids.
Al Jazeera English is less politically strident than sister station Al Jazeera Arabic.
Here is a comment from Mr. Stalinsky (of Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington):
“His group has found plenty of programming on the Arabic channel to criticize, such as an instalment this week, which featured a Kuwaiti professor advocating a biological attack on the White House and sneaking anthrax through Mexico, or the sheikh who late last month told viewers that Adolf Hitler ‘put Jews in their place’• even though they ‘exaggerated the issue.’
“Mr. Stalinsky believes Al Jazeera English is an elaborate Western front operation. ‘One of the main goals of Qatar is to use English as a PR vehicle for Al Jazeera Arabic, so that the Westerners think that the English channel is not so bad, so the Arabic can’t be bad, either.’
“People close to Mr. Burman” [of Al Jazeera English]”say that he was hired to ease tensions between the two cultures: the so-called ‘professionals,’ or Western-trained journalists, and so-called ‘ideologues,’ or employees with a radical agendas.
“Both channels saw dramatic exits in the past two years, in which leading correspondents have complained of ideological influence. Last March, the English channel’s Washington bureau chief Dave Marash said there was a ‘reflexive adversarial editorial stance’ against the U.S. which in part explained why he quit. Six months earlier, his Arabic-channel counterpart, Hafez alMirazi, also quit, complaining that Mr. Burman’s boss, Wadah Kanfar, was hiring hard-line Islamists as his assistants.”
http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=1312669
And these BBC staff can join up with people from the studios of the Iranian government financed Islamic PRESSTV, which fervently supports Hamas and Hezbollah; PRESSTV operates its English language propaganda out of London too, and like Al Jazeera English has a Sky satellite TV channel.
If, at the last minute, such BBC staff were to think better of things, they could do a lot worse that donate to the interesting and very worthwhile blog, ‘HARRY’S PLACE’ which is under threat of being sued by ‘Hamas, UK’:
‘Harry’s Place’ (2008)
“We’re being sued by Hamas, UK”
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/10/were-being-sued-by-hamas-uk/
No wonder the Balen report isn’t available to the people who paid for it.
George R –
Harry’s Place needn’t have worried too much – the solicitors involved, Dean and Dean, were themselves closed down for dishonesty, corruption, you name it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1103270/Law-firm-race-row-links-Labours-Keith-Vaz-closed-watchdog.html
Cheers
I wonder if the BBC will regard the handing over of the petition as a TOP STORY?
the absolute cheek of Al Beebs scumbag employees sucking from the teat of the telly tax fund is beyond belief.
If the BBC is supposed to be impartial, exactly what rules allow BBC employees to express themselves in this manner?. I disagree with any employee of the BBC using their position to highlight any issue which is so politically charged.
Of course if these 400 employees decided to resign from the BBC, and then protest, I would support them 100%, even if I do think that they are wrong.
The BBC cannot allow the stifling of debate, yet these employees are using this specific topic to attack Israel, whilst not allowing the contrary view to be aired.
They disagreed with the BBC’s decision not to broadcast the Appeal and that makes them ‘stalwart advocates for Jihad relief’?
‘Any evidence of similar protests by BBC staff in favour of Israel?’
Their protest isn’t pro-Palestianians or against Israel. Their protest is about the decision not to broadcast a charity appeal. Not everyone formed their opinion on the broadcast of the appeal based on their opinion on which side is right and which is wrong.
Personally, I agreed with the BBC’s decision in this case, but that’s on the grounds of the criteria for DEC Appeals not being met and for the stated reasons of impartiality. Your reasons are very different of course. What with them being Palestinians, Arabs and you’re not too keen on the poor either.
Given that ‘The decision led to 40,000 complaints to the corporation and nationwide protests outside its offices.’ it’s hardly suprising there might be some in the BBC that also disagreed with the decision?
Of course, it’s very difficult for you to reconcile your perception of the BBC with the decision on the appeal. In fact, you can’t reconcile it. The best you could do was the following nonsense:
‘what the BBC is actually doing here is a little bit of sophisticated triangulating, giving itself cover so that any future criticism of its coverage of matters in the Middle East is invalidated because of this move.’
look at how they protest when they dont get 100% their own way.
Then they come on here and sneer at us
400 hundred signatures out of a staff of 28,000 is pretty pathetic by any stretch.
Most of them are likely to be Glib Dems, Mussies and ZanuLiebour junior staff – researchers, web drones, unionised tekkies – on short term contracts following a brief but unproductive stint on a meeja studies course at some small town punyversity.
Ricky Martin | 22.02.09 – 9:27 pm | #
Interesting conjecture there. But we don’t really know do we?
However, the pro-Israeli petition organised by Rory Cellan-Jones has a large number of well-known and highly educated on-air journalists and programme editors and executives. So they got a pretty decent calibre of signatory.
David – now you have been provided with clear evidence of a similar level of support for a pro-Israeli petition what are your thoughts?
Bulls**t Detective | 22.02.09 – 5:52 pm |
Their protest isn’t pro-Palestianians or against Israel. Their protest is about the decision not to broadcast a charity appeal. Not everyone formed their opinion on the broadcast of the appeal based on their opinion on which side is right and which is wrong.
Personally, I agreed with the BBC’s decision in this case, but that’s on the grounds of the criteria for DEC Appeals not being met and for the stated reasons of impartiality. Your reasons are very different of course. What with them being Palestinians, Arabs and you’re not too keen on the poor either.
What if the DEC appeal actually gives an impression of who’s right and who’s wrong? Then the BBC would be taking sides by showing it. That’s why the bosses decided not to show it in the face of so much objection. Is this what you meant by not meeting the grounds of the criteria?
It’s possible that the 400 Beeboid protesters are unaware of this, and are acting on the emotion you’re suggesting. Alternatively, they could be taking the position that many of us suspect: they agree with the impression given by the DEC footage, and don’t have a problem with it being shown to the public. Do you know which it is?
Whether or not anyone here simply hates the Palestinians and poor people in general (smokescreen alert) is beside the point.