Leading article: Bad judgement
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
The idea held in some circles that the BBC should be able to float serenely above any criticism of its news reporting has always been silly. Like any media organisation the BBC occasionally makes mistakes. And it is only right that it investigates complaints properly and apologises when it has erred. Indeed, the fact that the BBC is financed by the licence fee makes it all the more important that the Corporation is seen as accountable.
Yet the decision of the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee to censure the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, for breaching the Corporation's guidelines on accuracy and impartiality demonstrates a terrible absence of good judgement. Mr Bowen's work has always been scrupulously unbiased. The BBC Trust needs to learn that accountability does not mean swallowing every complaint uncritically. When a good journalist needs to be robustly defended, it must not be afraid to do so.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Jeremy Bowen's arguments, whether written or broadcast, are advanced in his own style; a style incidentally, that got him the job in the first place. But when you add this example to the BBC's refusal to broadcast the Gaza appeal, questions do need to be asked.
Both Government and Bloomsbury Square use their influence to censor both bloggers and the writers in comment columns, particularly the broadsheets (this is less evident in Live Journal); but whether this is direct pressure from the organisations or the infiltration of the moderating system, I don't know.
It is probably both and if ever there was a need for a whistle blower ... this subject deserves one.
By passing into law matters that stifle free speech we have made a noose for ourselves that can only tighten as time goes on.. How, for example, could the criticism of the activities of a particular race or political party when it comes to our national interest, be any more offensive than the salacious, in depth examination of some people's private lives? And yet to legislate against the latter would surely open a whole new can of worms.
Best left for comment to be unrestricted, I think, and to allow the good sense of the general public to determine if an argument has merit.
The only problem is that any Israel supporter will think that Mr Bowen is against them because he reports on the hundreds of people killed by the so called israeli "defence" force.
Of course any Palestinian supporter will think Mr Bowen is biased against them, because he reports on the dozen or so people killed on the other side.
The only safe way is not to report at all, but that would mean that we would only hear an official report as to what is going on from western Governments, & as they all appear to support one side we would never see behind the wall.
Thank goodness for quality journalists who do not always bow down before political pressure.
Does this mean that they will be giving air time to revisionist views of the holocaust?
Best regards
Prem Nizar Hameed
Prem149@yahoo.com
I would remind those who read this that a leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called, some two and a half years ago by BBC chairman Michael Grade, revealed that its reporting is biased. For example, it said that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
Your family background doesn't give you a moral high-ground to support the BBC's biased approach against Israel. The BBC commissioned that report because of lines like this, describing the 67 war-
"The Israeli generals... had been training to finish the unfinished business of Israel?s independence war of 1948 for most of their careers"
What "unfinished business "? describing Israel's forced fight for survival as some vendetta or sinister plot to "finish businesses" just shows how rotten from the core is the man's stand on the issue.
"I understand that there are provocations from both sides"
The Palestinians are entirely the victim of this situation. So-called 'terrorist' attacks are their right to resist 60 years of dire oppression. No people can be expected to sit back and take 78% of their country being turned into a different nation by an invading army, most of the indigenous population being expelled from their homes and turned into refugees; then 20 years later, the remaining 22% of their country being occupied, with checkpoints imprisoning the few Palestinians lucky enough to not have had their homes bulldozed.
After all the Palestinians have been through, can we really claim their response has been "provocation"?
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
Angry Swede...