In days of yore the BBC acquired a reputation for excellence. The world switched off their local news organs, suspicious they were being fed propaganda. They turned instead unto the BBC and they saw that it was good.
Fastforward and into reverse. It has been said that Al Jazeera is now more impartial than the BBC.
The lag between the BBC itself realising this and the media savvy public doing so has yet to be measured. What if Jeremy Hunt’s threatened cost cuts jolted it into reality?
When the BBC is less fascinated by anything Israel does, and stops poring over every fart and speculating about its malevolence we’ll know that time has come. Currently they struggle to report the intricacies of Palestinian politics, other than divulging that Hamas and Fatah are enemies. Hamas being baddies and Fatah moderates. But there’s much, much more to tell.
One year ago, August 11th 2009, Tom Gross urged those who work in the media to read his Mideast dispatch. Who knows whether Jeremy Bowen or any of the BBC Middle East staff subscribe to his blog or have even heard of Tom Gross. Judging by their output, it seems not.
At that time Tom Gross was writing about an eye-opening conference in Bethlehem attended by the Fatah General Assembly which, he said, was:
“woefully underreported in the Western Media. Instead, the BBC, for example, has been running yet more distorted reports about Israel last week, deluding themselves and their viewers that Fatah is a moderate party committed to compromise”
Mahmoud Abbas has persuaded the Western world that he is a moderate and a seeker of peace; but when he speaks in Arabic his rhetoric is somewhat different. He promises his Arab speaking followers a different kind of peace. “Resistance until the Zionist enemy is wiped out.” Even if such drastic measures were successfully accomplished, the hostilities between Palestinian factions and various other warring Islamic parties make peace unlikely. We should be told.
President Obama’s faltering support of Israel has emboldened Abbas further. One year on, things are as bad as ever. Abbas is still saying one thing in English and another in Arabic, which you’d think someone from the BBC’s generous fount of Arabic-speaking employees could kindly pass on.
The BBC is so busy criticising Israel that we don’t get to hear about matters which might broaden our attitude, such as the persecution of Syrian Kurds. Tom Gross said:
“I only wish the BBC and others would devote a fraction of the substantial resources they employ in the Middle East to not only scrutinize every little thing Israel does but to pay a little attention to the hundreds of millions of people living in the 22 dictatorships (and one partial democracy, Iraq) in the region around Israel.”
The BBC is forever urging Israelis to “talk to Hamas” and they spun the Ipsos poll to look as though British Jews agree. If every single British Jew did support direct unconditional talks with Hamas, and unconditional surrender to Fatah, or mass self-flagellation, it wouldn’t be any wonder. Unmedia-savvy British Jews probably rely on the BBC to tell them what’s going on just as much as un-savvy British non Jews, atheists, rastafarians, the socialist workers party, pole dancers, the women’s institute and Uncle Tom Cobbley, probably Abu Hamza, and all.
So Mr. Hunt. Get the scissors out.
