BBC's shameless 'apology' for its biased reporting
I know - it's been a long time since I posted anything. I've been working - pays much better than blogging. But I don't want to let the blog die entirely, and I wanted to share with you what has to be one of the worst media bias stories from Western media in recent years.
I am sure that many of you saw the headline above. On Friday night, an Israeli policewoman, 23-year old Hadas Malka HY"D (May God Avenge her blood) was murdered by three 'Palestinian' terrorists who conducted coordinated attacks in two places along the outside of the Old City's wall. The headline above sat on the BBC's website and in its Twitter feed for many hours. The bias in the headline is obvious - the 'deadly stabbing' didn't happen itself. It was perpetrated by the three 'Palestinians' who were shot. A more appropriate headline would have been 'Israeli policewoman murdered by three Palestinians.' Even Maan's headline was less biased.
This morning, the Beeb 'apologized' for its headline. No, not really, but they posted a response to outrage in the virtual world that included Donald Trump Jr., the US President's son. Here's the Beeb's entire 'apology.'
BBC Response: We accept that our original headline did not
appropriately reflect the nature of the events and subsequently changed
it. Whilst there was no intention to mislead our audiences, we regret
any offence caused.
They don't regret the headline. They regret the 'offence caused.' They accept that it didn't appropriately reflect the nature of the events, but they don't apologize for writing it, nor for leaving it up for many hours.
Makes it sound like there's no connection between the Israeli's death and the 'Palestinian' attackers' assault - they just happened to occur around the same time.
And you wonder about the origins of the #FakeNews epidemic?
ICYMI Netanyahu asking BBC reporter if she lives on the same planet
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas to hold talks to calm the recent surge of violence. Asked
by the BBC's Lyse Doucet whether he was prepared to return to the
negotiating table, he angrily questioned whether she was "living on the
same planet".
BBC reporter blames French Jews for 'Palestinian suffering'
The BBC's Tim Wilcox answers the fears of a scared Jewish lady in Paris during Sunday's mass rally by saying 'the Palestinians suffered greatly at Jewish hands.'
In November 2014, Wilcox suggested that 'a lot of these prominent Jewish faces will be against the mansion tax.'
On Sunday afternoon, Israel time, the BBC tweeted this:
Palestinian militant group Hamas declares Gaza ceasefire after Israel ended earlier truce amid rocket fire from Gaza http://t.co/SszXAi4COt
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 27, 2014
Of course, it wasn't Israel that ended the previous cease fire. It was Hamas that ended it with a volley of rockets aimed at morning commuters in Israel on Sunday.But who says truth is a requirement at the Beeb?
In the meantime, Twitchy has done a great job of collecting some of the comments on the BBC tweet. Check them out here.
UN 'human rights council'(!) admits Hamas killed BBC reporter's baby son
The United Nations 'human rights council' has admitted that a 'Palestinian' child who died in a rocket explosion during Operation Pillar of Defense died as a result of Hamas fire (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
In what has become typical of international media, The Washington Post and a BBC bureau
chief last November accused and convicted the Israel Defense Forces in a
heartrending, angry piece without verifying their information after a
fellow editor in Gaza lost his baby son in rocket fire that struck his
home.
The front page photo of an Arab stringer
for a world-class news network, clutching his dead baby son in his arms,
tears running down his cheeks, became a powerful icon of the tragedy of
the conflict.
It was used by Hamas as propaganda to blacken Israel’s name in the
media and politically in the international arena as it fought to defend
its southern population against Gaza’s missile fire.
But apparently very few questioned the source of the rocket fire – certainly not the grieving father, Jihad Misharawi, who at his son’s funeral blamed “the Jews” – nor did BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who came to Gaza to support his colleague, or The Washington Post, which printed the story, written by Max Fisher and "foreign staff", with photos, published on the front page.
...
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me,” Fisher wrote, “saying that Misharawi is a BBC
video and photo editor. After spending a ‘few hours’ with his grieving
colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ‘Question asked here is: If Israel can
kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month), how
did Jihad’s son get killed.”
Answer: Jihad’s son was killed by Hamas, according to independent
investigators from the United Nations. He was murdered by the
journalist’s own neighbors, the very men who purport to be his biggest
protectors, who live in the surrounding buildings in the city where he
lives.
According to the advanced version of its report released by the U.N.
Human Rights Council released late last week, “On 14 November, a woman,
her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were
killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of
Israel.”
A footnote to the section says the case was personally investigated
by the U.N. OHCHR, and that investigators believe the attack emanated
from Hamas.
This story was actually reported last Thursday night by Elder of Ziyon, who has been all over it since the start. Read the whole thing.
BBC reporters rooting for 'Palestinian state' on Twitter
I suppose that these twotweets shouldn't surprise anyone who has a clue just how biased the BBC is against Israel.
3 weeks ago would have said Abbas's UN bid was non event but Gaza has put Pals back on agenda. #Abbas needs a big day to try & salvage rep.
— Jon Donnison (@JonDonnison) November 29, 2012
#UN General Assembly vote on #Palestine status significant moment. Not just symbolic.
— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) November 29, 2012
The retweet pictured at the top of this postmay yet cost the BBC's Jon Donnison his credentials to work in Israel.
The picture link is to a picture of a dead Syrian child, whom Donnison's retweet clearly implied had been killed in Gaza. Here's the original picture:
Donnison has been summoned to a hearing by Israel's Government Press Office for Wednesday, and the result may be that he loses his credentials to report from Israel (i.e. his press card).
The BBC’s Jon Donnison, together with the head of the BBC Jerusalem Bureau and head of the Foreign Press Association, Paul Danahar, has been summoned by the Government Press Office in Israel to a hearing this coming Wednesday (November 28th) on the subject of Donnison’s Tweet of a picture of a child casualty from Syria as though it were from Gaza – as first publicised by BBC Watch on November 19th 2012.
Potentially, this exceptional and
unusual step on the part of the GPO could lead to Donnison’s Press
Credentials being revoked, which would make it very difficult indeed for
him to work in the region.
So, how did the BBC turn this unprovoked attack on Israel by
terrorists and a corresponding announcement of defensive action into an
exercise in blame-the-victims?
.@Twitter bans "threats of violence", but will it stop tweets by
Hamas's @AlqassamBrigade & Israel's @IDFSpokesperson?
http://bbc.in/Sso5cD
Note that BBC wants Twitter to stop the Tweets of both Hamas and the IDF as if they both share exactly the same guilt.
When they find a director general who's not involved in covering up child molestation, please call me. The Beeb has very warped moral values. But then, you knew that.
Time to hit the BBC when they're down: Release the Balen Report
Normally, I'm not a fan of hitting people when they're down. But in the case of the BBC, everything else has been tried and failed.
The BBC is down right now, because of a series of scandals that resulted in its director general, and its director of news and her deputy resigning. The scandal can best be described as Left-leaning media bias. This is from the first link.
Entwistle fell on his sword after being engulfed by a crisis that
escalated following confirmation on Friday that the BBC had wrongly
implicated Lord McAlpine, a former senior Tory politician, in a story
about paedophilia. It was the second scandal to hit Newsnight in recent weeks.
In
an extraordinary scene outside Broadcasting House, in central London,
just after 9pm, Entwistle, flanked by the BBC Trust's chairman, Chris
Patten, said he felt it was the "honourable" thing to do.
His
resignation was accepted by Lord Patten who said it was one of the
"saddest evenings of my public life" to see Entwistle end his 23-year
career at the BBC in such ignominious circumstances.
Looking
composed, but battle-weary, Entwistle read from a prepared statement:
"In the light of the fact that the director general is also the editor
in chief and ultimately responsible for all content; and in the light of
the unacceptable journalistic standards of the Newsnight film
broadcast on Friday 2 November, I have decided that the honourable thing
to do is to step down from the post of director general," he said.
The first scandal involving the Beeb is described here.
The public in Britain is furious. There's a sampling of letters - admittedly from the more Right-leaning Daily Telegraph - here. Note how many of them discuss how the Beeb has to be unbiased.
More importantly, there's an interview with Lord Patten here. Notice what he says about how the BBC has to cover itself between 1:10 - 1:28. He says that their credibility depends on telling the truth about themselves and about others however horrible it may be. And from that we come to the Balen Report.
In 2004, a report called the Balen Report was written in response to
accusations of bias in the BBC's coverage of Israel. The report was
written by by Malcolm Balen, a senior journalist, for Richard Sambrook,
then BBC director of news. As of August 2011, the Beeb has spent more than
£270,000 of taxpayer shillings to prevent the report from seeing the
light of day. In February 2012, Britain's Supreme Court decided that the Balen Report need not be released to the public. Is covering up the Balen report consistent with what Patten (who is notoriously anti-Israel) calls 'telling the truth about ourselves and about others however horrible it may be'? I think not, and so do a lot of other people.
There's an online petition calling on the Beeb to release the Balen Report. You don't need to be a Brit to sign. We need to put pressure on the Beeb to come clean on its coverage of Israel, which is among its most biased (against Israel, of course). I urge you all to sign the petition.
British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould: 'Israel is Goliath, the 'Palestinians' are David'
Here's a Channel 10 interview with British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould (the report is in Hebrew, the interview is in English, but it's about the BBC page for Israel in its Olympics coverage). Gould claims our problem is the 'occupation' and not hasbara.
Let's go to the videotape.
Support for Israel has long since eroded and continues to erode as Britain and Europe continue to bow to Islam. This has nothing to do with the 'occupation' and it's not about hasbara. It's about Israel's very existence in what Islam regards as land that belongs to it. There is nothing we can do about it.
The Torah tells us that Israel dwells alone. We see that today constantly.
For a summary of the comments you might have missed in Hebrew, go here.
The BBC will never give up. They have 'improved' their Israel entry on their Olympics website, but as Brian of London points out, they have put an asterisk next to Israel's area.
Previously they stated the size of Israel was 22,072 km² (screen cap on the right).
Now they’re telling us the size of Israel is 22,072 km² (screen cap on the left). What’s the difference? We are now informed that this number is the work of the “Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics” and includes “Jerusalem and Golan”.
BBC, you got a problem with that?
Well, they certainly should not. Some questions:
Does the BBC note whether the Russian figures include the Kuril Islands?
Does it note whether Pakistani and Indian figures include parts of Kashmir?
Does it note whether Indian figures include Lathitila?
Does it note whether Armenian figures include Nagorno-Karabakh?
Does it note whether Chinese figures include Aksai Chin or Taiwan?
Does it note whether Serbian figures include Kosovo?
Does it note whether UK figures include Gibraltar, the Falkland islands and Chagos archipelago?
Does it note whether Georgian figures include Abkhazia?
Does it note whether Moroccan figures include the Western Sahara?
Does it note whether Ethiopian figures include Badme?
Does it note whether Cypriot figures include Turkish Cyprus?
Also, look at the Palestinian figures – do they note any dispute about territories or population?
The Beeb removes one manifestation of its hostility to Israel
The BBC has changed the picture on its web page for Israel from an image of a confrontation between a Border Guard officer and a Palestinian, to that of landmark Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv, which has been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).
The choice of the original photo placed on Israel's profile page was particularly stridulous compared to those used on the profile pages of other countries in the region.
Egypt's profile page carries the picture of a the Great Sphinx of Giza, Jordan's page features the rose-colored columns of Petra, those visiting Syria's page are met with the beaming faces of smiling children, and Iran's page has a picture of a mosque.
I'm so glad they don't hate us anymore... if only....
If you thought that the controversy over the BBC's omission of Israel's capital on its Olympics web page, was going to be resolve by the bizarre formulation that Israel's "Seat of government [is] Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv," you were of course wrong.
Government officials have sent several sharply-worded letters to the BBC demanding that it list Israel’s capital as it does for virtually every other country. It also launched a popular campaign on Facebook called Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel, inviting the public to join the effort. More than 16,000 already have.
For HonestReporting and all those demanding the BBC print the truth about Israel, the change was not good enough. Seat of government is not the same as capital, and Mark Regev sent a second letter demanding that the BBC end the discrimination against Israel. “Unlike all other countries listed,” he wrote, “in Israel’s case, our capital Jerusalem is not classified by the BBC as such but rather as a “Seat of Government.”"
The Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, also issued a press release stating firmly that “irrespective of the BBC’s political agenda, Jerusalem always was, is, and will be the capital of Israel and the spiritual, political, and physical center of the Jewish people.”
As of this writing, the BBC continues to discriminate against Israel by treating it differently than every other country competing in the London Olympics.
If any of you are still wondering how the 'civilized' Brits could have been so anti-Semitic during the pre-State period, you can now see how, and that things haven't changed a whole lot in the last 64 years.
Catch the slip of the tongue in this interview by the BBC with Israeli Ambassador to England Daniel Taub in the aftermath of Wednesday's suicide bombing in Bulgaria. What's that the reporter asked at the 0:21 mark?
The BBC has updated its Israel and 'Palestine' pages for the Olympics. For Israel, they still can't bring themselves to say 'capital, Jerusalem' so it says "Seat of government Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv." And for the imaginary country of 'Palestine' it now says "Palestine is recognised as a competing country by the IOC but is not recognised as a modern state." and "Intended seat of government East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital."
Unfortunately, I cannot get the letter to embed in this post (yes, I'm still using a laptop without a hard drive to blog and a 9-year old desktop to work), but you can find the letter here (Hat Tip: Lance K).
On perusing the BBC Sport website, The Commentator was disgusted to see the inherent anti-Israel bias shine through even when it comes to something as trivial as country profiles on their Olympics website.
Every other nation represented on the BBC website has a profile of the country which lists ‘Key Facts’. For instance, Djibouti’s top medal sport is athletics, its population is 879,100 and its capital is Djibouti. In case you were unsure, Iranians are good at wrestling, their capital is Tehran and there are just over 75 million people living there.
But if you’re interested in the state of Israel, you’ll have a hard time obtaining a certain bit of information from the BBC website. Sure, Israel shines at sailing and judo (no Mavi Marmara or IDF jokes, please) and it has a population of 7.3million. But we were interested to know where the BBC placed Israel’s capital.
It seems… nowhere.
Israel is the only country listed, correct at the time of writing, that has no capital according to the BBC. Yet they bestow the honour of having East Jerusalem as a capital on the country of ‘Palestine’.
The British establishment’s ongoing problem with the state of Israel manifests itself in many places. Most recently we have seen the Olympic committee reject a massively popular campaign for a one minute silence to commemorate the lives of murdered Israeli athletes. Now the BBC won’t even acknowledge Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, let alone Jerusalem.
I wonder what the Balen Report says on this issue. Unfortunately, we're unlikely to ever find out. If I lived in Britain, I'd try to avoid paying my BBC tax.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
