Objectivity

["Michael Keaney" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

BBC denies Israel influenced coverage of conflict

 By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

 The Independent, 21 September 2001

 A senior Israeli official publicly
 boasted yesterday that Israel has
 influenced the editorial policy of
 the BBC in its coverage of the
 Middle East conflict.

 The claims have caused anger at
 the BBC, which has been fending
 off allegations, first published by The Independent, that it was
 pressured by Israeli diplomats into softening its language
 towards Israel - notably by describing the assassinations by
 Israeli death squads of suspected Palestinian militants merely
 as "targeted killings".

 One allegation is thatthe Israeli embassy in London, which has
 mounted a huge drive to influence the British media, has
 pressured the BBC to take a tougher line during interviews with
 Palestinians in the past year.

 The claims were made by David Schneeweis, the Israeli
 Embassy's press secretary, who has a wide range of contacts
 at the highest levels of the British media, during a taped
 interview with the Jerusalem Post's internet radio service.

 In it, he states that the BBC, of which he is scathingly critical,
 is a vast organisation, like the Coca-Cola corporation, and is
 "very difficult" to influence.

 But, he adds: "London is a world centre of media and the
 embassy here works night and day to try to influence that
 media. And, in many subtle ways, I think we don't do a half-bad
 job, if I may say so ... We have newspapers that write
 consistently in a manner that supports and understands
 Israel's situation and its dilemmas and challenges. And we
 have had influence on the BBC as well.

 "The rigour of the questioning of Palestinian interviewees is
 nowhere what it should be, but it is vastly improved over the
 past 12 months than what it was before."

 The claims were met with an angry rebuttal from the BBC. "To
 suggest that either the Israelis or the Palestinians have had
 any influence on our rigorously independent coverage of events
 in the Middle East or that there has been any change in the
 way we cover events in the past 12 months is complete
 rubbish," a spokesman said.

 Yesterday, Mr Schneeweis wrote a letter to the BBC attacking
 two correspondents in Jerusalem, Orla Guerin and Barbara
 Plett, for saying on air that television footage of Palestinians
 celebrating after the US atrocities did not reflect the sentiments
 of most Palestinians.

 This interpretation was substantiated by many other
 correspondents in the region. But Mr Schneeweis said the
 reporting went to "great lengths to put the pictures 'in context'"
 and were "blatant and apparently co-ordinated attempts to
 guide the British audience away from making its own
 judgements". He suggested the two BBC reporters had
 succumbed to Palestinian intimidation or had chosen to
 "champion the Palestinian cause".

 His letter, which was leaked to the Jerusalem Post, caused
 fury at the BBC. Its Middle East editor in Jerusalem, Andrew
 Steele, has written a letter to the newspaper denying that its
 correspondents were either biased towards, or intimidated by,
 the Palestinians, and pointing out that it is a reporters' job to
 put events into context.

Full article at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=95212

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx