BBC wilfully violates own charter in blatant display of bias over UN report slating Israel
In one of the most disgraceful displays of wilful bias that you will ever have the misfortune to witness, the BBC today covers a UN Human Rights Council report which castigates Israel over the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this year.
The incident left nine pro-terror activists dead after they attacked Israeli soldiers in a bid for martyrdom. Gleefully, the BBC quotes the report as accusing Israel in the following terms:
“There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health”.
As good propagandists the reporters and editors are careful to relate Israel’s rejection of the report. But since any country accused of such crimes would instantly issue a rebuttal, the effect on the reader can safely be assumed to be minimal. What the BBC does is to censor out any of the relevant details, both about the incident itself and about the UN rights council. Here is a list of what they (quite deliberately) do not tell the reader:
1. The UN Human Rights Council is dominated by dictatorships, many with appalling human rights records. For example, members include China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. This is crucial information since it goes to the credibility of anything that the Council does or says. Any trained journalist would know that such information must be included in any fair report. To omit it must, therefore, be a matter of deliberate choice. In this case, the BBC must have known that to relate such information would nullify the report’s impact as a device for defaming Israel. And that is why they omitted it.
2. The activists on the Mavi Marmara openly (on camera, and in newspaper interviews) courted martyrdom before even setting sail. This is vital information since it allows the reader to understand the mindset of the people Israel was confronting. It would provide clear evidence contradicting the thrust of the UN report. Again, not to provide such information must be deliberate.
3. According to the testimony of the ship’s captain and his deputy, the activists hijacked the ship several hours before the incident took place. This is more evidence that the activists were looking for confrontation. But to provide such information would contradict the favoured narrative that Israeli soldiers massacred a group of peace activists. Therefore, the BBC does not mention it.
4. There is video evidence (it’s on youtube for goodness sake!) that activists armed with steel bars, clubs, and knives mobbed the Israeli soldiers the moment they landed on the ship in an attempt to maim or kill them. No professional journalist would omit such information. And since anyone with even a cursory knowledge of what happened would be aware of such facts their omission must have been deliberate and part of a clear policy of promoting an anti-Israeli agenda.
There is just no way out of this for the BBC. This isn’t journalism, it’s political propaganda. And since that violates the BBC’s own charter, the journalists and editors should be held to account.
Tags: Israel
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:38 am
‘…the journalists and editors should be held to account’. Couldn’t agree more, but how? Whenever I write to the BBC to complain about bias, supplying clear examples of omissions and inaccuracies, I get bland, weaselly replies that wriggle out of any charges of contravening its charter. The BBC will, however, investigate a complaint by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign that the Panorama programme about the flotilla was biased: http://www.justjournalism.com/bbc-focus/view/bbc-to-investigate-panorama-rsquo-s-lsquo-death-in-the-med. It is enough to make one think one is going mad.
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Nicole: You’re not going mad. The situation is really very simple.
When the BBC’s coverage upsets nice, law-abiding people such as yourself they get letters of complaint which they can then safely ignore or reply with a form response about how they strive for balance etc, etc.
If the BBC’s coverage upsets “them” (you know who I mean) they get windows smashed, riots outside their buildings, threats of law suits and so on.
So, being cowards and traitors, the BBC management would rather upset you because it’s less trouble.
And, of course, being trendy and anti-establishment, they hate Israel (which they see as a middle-class right-wing cause), and they love Palestinians and their supporters (which they see as a left, liberal, anti-establishment cause) and their coverage reeks of it.
What would happen if we all just stopped paying our license fee, I wonder? Would that make them listen to us?
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The UN HRC – which produced this ‘report’ – is a disgrace – remember they were the ones who invited Ahmadinejad to Geneva. It is controlled by the Islamic and African States and therefore has a built-in Israel-hating majority. It includes such paragons of human rights as Libya, Nigeria, Angola, Egypt, China, Pakistan, Saudi, and Russia. West European countries and the US form a minority of just 7 in a total membership of 47.
It is a scandal that this organisation – financed with taxpayer money – is allowed to continue on its bigoted anti-Israel crusade. Close it down – now
And sometimes the BBC – also financed with taxpayer money – is no better, as Robin points out.
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:50 pm
your logic of discrediting the Human Rights Council as its ‘dominated of dictatorships’ is nonsense. Just because it had a Chinese member and a Cuban member on the HRC this does not call the accuracy of its findings into account simply on this basis. This assumption is deeply racist, monolithic and based on negative stereotyping.
Robin Shepherd says: This guy’s so idiotic, I’ll let this one through just demonstrate the lengths to which people will go not to have a clear view of reality…
September 23rd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Robin, I would not expect the BBC to include caveats and context in its article on the UNHRC report.
In respect of the four exclusions you note …
1) According to the relativist mindset Britain is no better than China, Cuba or Saudi Arabia, so their membership of the UNHRC is immaterial from the BBC’s point of view.
2, 3 and 4) Actual facts and evidence, even video evidence, regarding what happened on the Mavi Marmara are irrelevant. In the BBC worldview, there is no such things as ‘facts’, only opinions which are all of approximately equal validity. Opinions are not to be criticised for fear of causing offence. The only exception is opinions from an Israeli perspective which should be liberally sprinkled with quote marks for purposes of dissociation.
In any case, the article is about the UNHRC report which must be important and bear weight by virtue of the fact that the BBC is reporting on it. True presentation of context is not within the remit of BBC News.
The article does quote Israeli dismissals of the report. Sympathisers of Israel would agree with them, while opponents will reject them, so nothing changes there.
Apart from the shallowness of the BBC, the main problem is that the United Nations is cynical, morally corrupt and useless. I look forward to the day when a Western leader (or Israeli leader even) has the guts to say ‘enough of this for a game of soldiers’ and pulls their country out.
Even NATO has become useless twenty years after the end of the Cold War and with Turkey friendly with Iran. New forums for Western co-operation are needed, but nothing can happen until the current waste of space in the White House has been turfed out.
September 23rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Just one further observation, why is the UN Human Rights Council spending so much time investigating one incident on the high seas and not investigating the malnutrition, starvation and total lack of human rights affecting many millions in North Korea ?
September 23rd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Brilliant concise indictment of the BBC, Robin. Let’s remember not to bother taking the BBC to court, though, since it is quite prepared to spend £200k of licence fee payers’ money on lawyers’ costs to hush up its own Balen report on BBC Israel coverage. The public is, doubtless, unlikely to see the report in our lifetime.
September 23rd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Hi Robin,
a new eyewitness book re the Mavi Marmara has come out.
The surprise?
It’s actually truthful!
More here:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e131.htm
here’s a para:
Overview
1. Several books about the flotilla incident have been recently published in Turkey. One of them was written by Şefik Dinç, a reporter for the popular Turkish newspaper Habertürk, who was on board the Mavi Marmara during the last flotilla. Şefik Dinçcaptured images of the violent confrontation between IHH operatives and their supporters on one hand and IDF soldiers on the other, concealed his photographs from the Israeli security forces, and managed to smuggle them into Turkey.
2. Şefik Dinç’s account is fairly balanced, giving considerable weight to events that he personally witnessed and experienced. While the IHH narrative is given at length, the author does not hesitate to expose the extreme violence used by IHH operatives against the IDF and criticize the Turkish government for not stopping the flotilla. “Let’s face it: the Mavi Marmara crisis was a calculated gamble,” writes Dinç in the foreword to his book. “People on the street said that Israel would not let the siege be broken. The Turkish government, by not preventing the incident, and the IHH, by insisting on entering Gaza, led to a harsh, non-compromising reaction from Israel, destabilizing the Middle East region again”.
3. The photographs and verbal descriptions match the plenty of information, according to which IHH operatives had made a well-designed plan to conduct a violent confrontation with the IDF. The author photographed IHH operatives beating IDF soldiers with iron bars and clubs (taken from a secret stash), kidnapping three of them, beating injured IDF soldiers after they were kidnapped, and trying to throw one of them into the sea. The journalist, who had earlier heard IHH leader Bulent Yildirim say in an interview that the resistance would be passive, witnessed and documented so-called “passive resistance” turning practically into violent behavior.
4. The author’s description clearly shows that IDF soldiers did not open fire until after other soldiers were attacked and taken hostage. He also quoted Bulent Yildirim’s deputy Hüseyin Oruç as saying that there had been no attempts from the Turkish government to recall the ships or prevent the flotilla from sailing.
5. Following is a selection of photographs and descriptions from the book concerning the preparations made by IHH operatives and their supporters for the confrontation, giving the reader a good idea of the extreme violence they used against IDF soldiers. In some cases, we chose to verify those descriptions against the information we have on the confrontation.
Preparations for the confrontation
6. In his book, Şefik Dinç mentions that the volunteers on board the Mavi Marmara held lively discussions about the possibility of Israel attacking the ship. The operatives were ready for any scenario and even expressed their readiness to die, as long as the “siege” was broken (pp. 23-24). That description matches the information we have collected, according to which seven out of the nine people killed had declared themselves one way or another willing to die as shaheeds prior to the violent confrontation (see our July 12, 2010 Information Bulletin: “According to well-documented information, seven of the nine Turks killed in the violent confrontation aboard the Mavi Marmara had previously declared their desire to become shaheeds (martyrs). Eight of them belonged to Islamist Turkish organizations and not one of them was a peace activist or human rights worker”).
7. While waiting for the confrontation, some operatives began training for a potential Israeli attack. They practiced using fire hoses to thwart possible attempts by IDF soldiers to board the ship; they were instructed on the use of gas masks and t how to resist Israeli soldiers. They were also told that, as soon as the ship entered Israel’s territorial waters, additional guards would be deployed and passengers would be given a warning signal. Each person in charge of passenger security was given a specific location to report to when the alarm sounded (pp. 36-37).
Notice how joyful the Turks are, especially one of them terrorising a soldier.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:06 pm
BTW, Robin, Australia’s ABC models itself on the BBC and is just as cavalier and untruthful about Israel, as is the Fairfax Media there.
Some s**** people who use pens who call themselves journalists there too.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Nicole, when you write to the BBC, you are pleading to the criminal himself. I hope that I’m right in saying that it would be better to write to your member of Parliament. If he or she doesn’t give a satisfactory answer or take some meaningful action, let your friends and this blog know.
September 23rd, 2010 at 6:36 pm
It must be of interest to learn about the book a Turkish journalist, who was on board the Maramara,has had published:
The Bloodstained Mavi Marmara
It is worth reading the complete review.
September 23rd, 2010 at 7:34 pm
In 1939 King George VI initiated a request to Hitler’s government, that Jews be prevented from leaving Germany (ostensibly so that they could not make their way to what was then Palestine).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/apr/14/uk.queenmother
“Some documents from the period have already entered the public domain, giving an indication of the royal couple’s views. In the spring of 1939 George VI instructed his private secretary to write to Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Having learnt that ‘a number of Jewish refugees from different countries were surreptitiously getting into Palestine’, the King was ‘glad to think that steps are being taken to prevent these people leaving their country of origin.’ Halifax’s office telegraphed Britain’s ambassador in Berlin asking him to encourage the German government ‘to check the unauthorised emigration’ of Jews.”
So what is new with the BBC?
September 24th, 2010 at 7:18 am
Complaining to the BBC is useless. Why not support and publicise Robin’s point of view by using the biased bbc blogspot.
September 24th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Everyone, including presumably journalists at the BBC, must have seen the videos of the “peace activists” beating the soldiers with iron bars.
So why give credence to a one-sided report by a discredited organization like the UN Human Rights Council which is widely regarded as an international joke?
September 24th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
The modern BBC is a far more sophisticated operation than Goebbels ever achieved. But make no mistake beneath that veneer of charm and urbane affability is a venomous leftist heart.
How to defeat it is indeed a conundrum. Unfortunately it has built up a huge capital of respect for the time when it did actually report the news. One suggestion might be more cooperation between those organisations, websites etc that do generally oppose the Beeb’s stance. I do not know what the answer is but one thing is for sure we have to keep trying.
September 25th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Matt Pryor’s response to Nicole agrees with the following observation:
The first BBC report on the Mavi Marmara incident was relatively unbiased, I recall, but the second and subsequent reports reverted to the standard anti-Israel line. This change of tune coincided with a violent demonstration at the BBC offices in Manchester, at which about 200 Hamas supporters smashed windows and sprayed slogans protesting the non-anti-Israel stance in the first report. Clearly the BBC is being intimidated by the friends of Hamas in the UK.