[Marxism] Media Lens: WHY THE BBC DUCKS THE PALESTINIAN STORY

["Len Walsingham" <lha.walsingham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is taken from the regular bulletin of Media Lens, which is at
www.medialens.org
It is from the second part of a bulletin by former BBC Middle East
Correspondent, Tim Llewellyn. This is only an extract: he has much more
to say in both bulletins.

Len
=============================================
Why is the BBC so poor at covering Israel/Palestine (for the purposes of
this chapter I am concentrating on the BBC?s domestic output ? BBC World
Service and to some extent BBC World TV could easily be the product of a
different organisation)? 

In the past dozen years or so, the BBC has become a vast, impersonal,
extremely successful organisation ? a corporation in a very modern
sense, rich, powerful, crushing the opposition, riding high and
expanding in many directions. It is on the verge of being a commercial
organisation, with its diversity of interests. Certainly the spirit of
its Charter has been bent nearly to breaking point. It certainly behaves
like a commercial company in its ruthless pursuit of ratings and the
descent of its terrestrial TV channels down-market, proper current
affairs programming being a significant victim of this process. 

The difference between the BBC and other private concerns, however, is
that in the BBC?s case its only shareholder is the British government:
it prospers or fails by its licence fee, which is fixed by the
government. The more generous the government is to the BBC the more
unwilling is the BBC to cross that government in any significant way.
Why rock a comfortable boat? It is also true that the more one owns the
more one loathes to lose it. This was not true of the BBC of the 1960s,
1970s and 1980s. Since the advent as director general of John Birt, (8)
the Blair government has smiled on the BBC. We thus have what might be
termed a Blairite tendency at the BBC, an unwillingness to cross New
Labour on matters close to its heart; and the Middle East has been at
the very centre ? outside Europe ? of Tony Blair?s foreign policy
concern. 

The Blair vision of the Middle East ? that the Americans have all the
answers, but need a little gentle coaxing from Whitehall, that the
Israelis are victims of terror, and ?terror? is our main universal
enemy, that the Palestinians are their own worst enemies and must do
what they are told ? will have been sensed at the BBC and passed on down
the line. 

It is no secret that Blair is very close to Israel. His old crony and
party financier, Lord Levy, has been rewarded with the post of special
adviser on Middle East matters. Lord Levy is a peer who has close
contacts with Israel and a multi-million pound villa near Tel Aviv ? his
son Daniel Levy worked in the office of Israel?s former Justice
Minister, Yossi Beilin. The first stress in any New Labour comment on
the Palestine?Israel crisis is always on Israeli security or on
?terror?, that easy bête noir of the modern politician (the BBC has
uncritically accepted ?The War on Terror? as a phrase with meaning). 

Thus there is much for the BBC to be aware of as it peers out over the
carnage in the Occupied Territories. The process of getting the boys in
the front-line into line does not work by diktat from above but by hint
and nudge and whispered word, almost, in such a very +English+ way, by
extra-sensory perception ? rather as until the mid-1960s a Tory Party
leader would +emerge+ rather than be chosen. 

Eager to help in this insidious process, squatting there in the gardens
of Kensington, is the Israeli embassy, emanating influence and full of
tricks, with many powerful friends and supporters. The first bloody
month of the Second Intifada took the Israelis by storm. Their responses
were crude and ill-thought-out. They received a highly critical
international press after Ariel Sharon stormed on to the Haram
al-Sharif, the Palestinians erupted and the Israelis started their
killing spree. The Israeli machine recovered quickly, and immediately
turned its attention to the BBC. One experienced reporter in the field
told me how producers from The Today Programme would ring the office in
Jerusalem with story ideas launched by the Israeli embassy; how the
Israeli version of events was so often received as the prevailing wisdom
in London; how Israel successfully amended the very language of
reporting the crisis. 

For a short while on BBC news, ?occupied? territories became ?disputed?.
We heard much of Palestinian ?claims? of occupation rather than of the
33-year-long fact of it. Illegal Jewish settlements near Jerusalem
became ?neighbourhoods?. Palestinians +are+ killed (it happens); but
+Palestinians kill+ Israelis (that is deliberate); dead Israelis have a
name and identity, dead Arabs are ? just, well, dead Arabs. When
Palestinians die their bereaved vent ?rage? at apparently riotous
funerals; Israeli survivors express shock. The list goes on. The
news-speak of the crisis was adjusted to favour the Israeli side. (9) 

Then, unfortunately, the BBC?s experienced team in Jerusalem was removed
at the beginning of this new upheaval in Israeli?Palestinian affairs ?
not through any Zionist-inspired plot but because correspondents? and
producers? contracts or tours of duty were expiring. I do not wish to
malign the new reporters? professional expertise, as reporters, but it
was a bad moment for an across-the-board reshuffle. The BBC should have
staggered the changeovers and deployed people more experienced in Middle
East or even in similar crises ? the Balkans, for example. 



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