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.
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias
Pigs fly: The Beeb apologizes for Itamar coverage
I am sure that many of you have already heard that the BBC has admitted that is coverage of the Arab spring was '
over-excited.' But what you're less likely to have heard, because it has not been as widely publicized, is that
the BBC apologized on Monday for its coverage of the Fogel family massacre in Itamar in March 2011 (Hat Tip:
CAMERA).
The BBC “got it wrong” by not giving prominence to the massacre of the Fogel family by Palestinians in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, the outgoing director-general has admitted.
Mark Thompson was quizzed by Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who made various complaints to the BBC about the coverage, at a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. Mrs Mensch said the BBC’s decision not to include the story as part of its rolling news coverage generated “the most reaction I have ever had in all my time in politics.”
She said: “The BBC ran the story on Radio 4 and a lead item on the website but they never subsequently touched it in broadcast or on the 24-hour rolling news programme on BBC News 24. I only found out, after the event, from an American blog, called “Dead Jews is no news” and the more I went into it, the more shocked I was.
“I was overwhelmed by response from the Jewish community both here and abroad. There was a feeling the BBC just didn’t care and that, if a settler had entered the home of a Palestinian family, slit the throat of their children, that the BBC would have covered that.”
Mrs Mensch had subsequently received an apology from BBC News’s Helen Boaden but wanted Mr Thompson’s reassurance about the BBC’s “even-handedness” on the Middle East conflict.
Can you imagine what's in the unreleased
Balen report?
By the way, let's hear it for Louise Mensch, who is simply awesome!
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias, Fogel family massacre, Itamar
Balen Report won't be released
It's all over in the British Supreme Court. The
Balen Report, which allegedly shows just how biased the government-funded BBC is against Israel,
will not be released.
The BBC had argued it was exempt from releasing the report because it was "for the purposes of journalism, literature or art."
Four out of five of the Supreme Court judges ruled that the report was beyond the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, even if information was held only "partly for the purposes of journalism."
Lord Wilson ruled that if information was held "predominantly" for the purposes of journalism, it was outside the scope of the act, and he judged that to be the case with the Balen R eport.
They dismissed the argument of appellant barrister Tim Eicke QC, that the withholding of information would violate the European Convention on Human Rights Article 10, the right to receive and impart information.
The BBC said in a statement: "We welcome the Supreme Court's judgment, which upholds the rulings of other courts in this case, and will ensure that the BBC is afforded the space to conduct its journalistic activities freely.
"Independent journalism requires honest and open internal debate free from external pressures. This ruling enables us to continue to do that."
The Information Tribunal ruled in Mr Sugar's favour in 2005, ordering the BBC to release the report. But the decision was overturned by the High Court, and upheld by the Court of Appeal.
So much for 'freedom of information' in the UK. I wonder what would happened if someone stole the report. Is there a newspaper in Britain that would publish it?
Labels: Balen report, BBC, BBC bias
Despite protagonist's death, battle to release Balen report to continue
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. To date, the Beeb has spent more than £270,000 of taxpayer shillings to prevent the report from seeing the light of day.
The battle against the Beeb was carried on by Steven Sugar, a lawyer who for the last six years has made pursuing the Beeb his personal crusade. Sugar died of cancer recently at the age of 61. His widow is going to
carry on his struggle (Hat Tip:
CAMERA).
Mr Sugar, a solicitor, first asked the BBC to publish the Balen Report in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act and refused to accept the BBC’s argument that it was outside the Act’s scope.
The corporation successfully argued in the past that the report should not be released because it was held for “the purposes of journalism, art or literature” and, as such, was exempt. It was commissioned to analyse the BBC’s coverage of Middle East issues and make recommendations for improvement.
Mrs Paveley, a 48-year-old clinical psychologist, was approached by her husband’s lawyers after he died. They explained that the case could only continue if he was represented at court.
“I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to abandon it,” she says. “It would have almost felt like a betrayal to let all his hard work go to waste. He never gave up, so why should I?”
Mrs Paveley said that she and her late husband saw an anti-Israeli bias in the reporting of Orla Guerin, the BBC’s former Middle East correspondent, who was accused of anti-Semitism in 2004 by the Israeli government.
Mrs Paveley said: “Steven thought that reporting should be balanced. As a publicly-funded body, it seems wrong that the BBC is afraid and reluctant to be more transparent.”
Another reporter, Barbara Plett, was found by BBC governors to have “breached the requirements of due impartiality” after she said she cried as a dying Yasser Arafat left the West Bank in 2004.
More recently, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, was also found to have breached rules on accuracy and impartiality in two reports about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A BBC spokesman said: “If we are not able to pursue our journalism freely and have honest debate and analysis over how we are covering important issues, then how effectively we can serve the public will be diminished.”
A Supreme Court spokesman said: “This is an interesting case which the Justices have decided raises an issue of general public importance.
“It will effectively establish the test for what constitutes a document held for journalistic purposes.”
Good luck, Mrs. Paveley. We're rooting for you here in Israel, because we know the truth.
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias
CAMERA: Sign the petition to release the Balen report
CAMERA has called for signing a petition calling for the release of the
Balen Report, which examines the impartiality (or lack thereof) of the BBC's coverage of Israel.
The BBC has spent
hundreds of thousands of pounds to prevent the Balen Report from being released.
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias
An MP responds
Do you all remember Louise Bagshawe, the British MP who wrote an article in London's Telegraph
blasting the BBC over its lack of coverage of the Fogel massacre? A British friend of mine here in Israel wrote her to thank her for her article and got this in response.
Dear Brian
Thank you for writing to me about my article in the Daily Telegraph concerning the BBC’s coverage of the tragic Fogel massacre that took place in Israel last month. I was however overwhelmed with amount of correspondence I received (over 450 emails alone) so please excuse this generic response.
It was terrible to see that the brutal murder of nearly an entire family was not picked up further by the British media, and in particular the BBC who have long heralded their neutrality and independence on reporting current affairs. I was glad to speak up for what I saw as biased coverage of a serious crime.
I expressed my grave concerns to the BBC and recently received a written response from the Director of BBC News. In her letter she makes clear concessions that, despite the number of news stories going on that day, in hindsight they should have found more room for the story on the BBC News Channel.
It is only by putting pressure on news organisations, and especially those funded by British taxpayers, that we can help to prevent atrocities such as this from being overlooked. In my role as a Member of Parliament and a member of the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee I feel I was able to deliver a clear message to the BBC in regards to their reporting on Israel.
One major reason the BBC listened and admitted fault was that I could point out to them how many emails and letters, like yours, I received. So your taking the trouble to write had a direct effect. I thank you for that and for your email. Although this is a standard response due to the overwhelming volume, can I assure you that over several hours I sat down and read every single email sent to me individually. It was an incredibly moving experience and I found myself in tears many times.
Thank you again, therefore, for having gone to the trouble of researching my email address (which was not mentioned in the original article) and having written in support. It had a direct effect, and we can only hope the BBC and others in the media will learn from this for future coverage.
For all those of you who are Jewish, may I wish you and your families a very happy Passover for next week.
With best wishes,
Louise Bagshawe signature JPEG (10)
Louise Bagshawe MP
There's a lesson there for all of us.
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias, Fogel family massacre, Itamar, Lord Patten, Louise Bagshawe, Palestinian terrorism
British MP blasts BBC coverage of Fogel massacre
British MP Louise Bagshawe has blasted the government-funded BBC for
their lack of coverage of the massacre of the Fogel family of Itamar (Hat Tip:
Honest Reporting).
As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC's seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that "five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody".
There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC's apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC's broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby's head? Might we have heard about it then? On Twitter, I attacked the UK media in general, and the BBC in particular. I considered filing a complaint.
The next morning, the BBC's public affairs team emailed me a response that amounted to a shrug. The story "featured prominently on our website", they said. It was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context, they said. In reply, I asked a series of questions: for how long did the massacre feature on TV news bulletins? On radio? On BBC News 24, with all that rolling airtime? Why were the Hamas reaction and Gaza celebrations not featured? And what about the omission of all the worst details?
It was only when I tweeted about their continued indifference that the BBC replied. Then they informed me that the Fogel story had not featured on television at all. Not even News 24. It was on Radio Four in the morning, but pulled from subsequent broadcasts. The coverage of Japan and Libya, they said, drowned it out. Would I like to make a complaint?
Do you know, I think I would. The BBC has long been accused of anti-Israeli bias. It even commissioned the Balen report into bias in its Middle Eastern coverage, and then went to court to prevent its findings being publicised. As a member of the select committee on culture, media and sport, I was at the confirmation hearing of Lord Patten of Barnes as chairman of the BBC Trust. I asked him about political neutrality. In reply, he said that he would give up his membership of a Palestinian aid organisation. Both I and another member asked about bias against Israel. Lord Patten denied any existed. What would he do if shown an example of it? He would ultimately take it to the BBC Trust, he said.
The day after Lord Patten uttered those words, the Fogel children were butchered to almost complete silence from the BBC.
Did Lord Patten suddenly become less hostile to Israel the morning after he resigned from the pro-'Palestinian' organization as demanded by the MP's?
The only thing that stuns me about this story is that Bagshawe was stunned. The BBC's bias against Israel has long been known and has been extensively documented. Perhaps, if she has a right to do so as a Member of Parliament, Bagshawe should demand to be shown the Balen report. Maybe she can even publicize some of it, so that either the BBC can be embarrassed into change, or the British public can know how its tax shillings are being used.
No, the BBC doesn't care.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Balen report, BBC bias, Fogel family massacre, Itamar, Lord Patten, Louise Bagshawe, Palestinian terrorism
