BBC pays £200K to keep report on its bias secret

[limeylily]

www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23628970-details/The+secret+report+at+heart+of+BBC%E2%80%99s+Gaza+paranoia/article.do
27.01.09
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the BBC is a top secret document that could explain a great deal about the corporation's decision to boycott the aid appeal for Gaza. It is called the Balen Report and has been seen only by a small number of individuals at the very top of the BBC. They commissioned Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, to investigate allegations that the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was biased........................ the BBC spent £200,000 on a legal fight to keep it secret........................

Shock, horror - stand back in amazement.... who'da thunk it?

[joliet]

Some people have nothing better to do with their time than invent controversy

[limeylily]

Jan 27, 2009 14:30:12 GMT joliet said:

Some people have nothing better to do with their time than invent controversy

If you believe the story is invented, simply report the newspaper to the Press Association who will force them to retract and apologise.

It makes more sense that this is the genuine reason for Aunty Beeb's wet knickers - plus the fact that there's the licence fee at stake if the report is made public!

[VikingHumpingWitch]

But, from the article:

Leon Barkho, an academic based in Sweden, is shortly to publish a book in Britain, The BBC and the Middle East. The book derives from years of research into how the big media organisations conduct their reporting policies. Barkho is convinced the BBC's coverage has become slanted towards avoiding upsetting Israel.

"I have investigated this and I am convinced the policy is dictated from the top because of the enormous sensitivity," he said. "The BBC treats the Israel-Palestinian conflict like no other story. The message is: don't antagonise the Israelis." He seeks to prove his point with revelations about the BBC's internal teaching module for journalists covering the Middle East. Reporters are instructed to abide by a series of rules based on what Barkho called a "glossary", a collection of words and phrases reporters should use - or avoid.

"Only 24 of these terms have been made public," he said. "The rest are confidential." He says he has seen the glossary in its entirety and claims it supports his view that BBC policy is aimed at not provoking Israel.

"The instructions to journalists are clear," he said. "They are: don't tell it like it is, tell it the way we tell you to tell it. That is not a policy that fosters impartiality, it is biased from the very start."

The 24 words and phrases from the reporting rules the BBC has agreed to make public appear innocuous enough, but even here some might discern a sense of paranoia. Journalists are instructed to avoid using "assassination" in favour of "killing" and in discussing Gaza, the word "occupation" is to be avoided in favour of "permanent military presence".

[minge tightly]

I reckon Leon Barkho is right

[joliet]

Who cares? They could call the "permanent military presence" a tea dance for all I care. I do not rely on the BBC to be my gospel. That's just silly.

Grow a backbone and read The Times website if their reporting is more to your taste.

The BBC is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

[limeylily]

Jan 27, 2009 15:02:10 GMT minge tightly said:

I reckon Leon Barkho is right

Whatever Barkho's opnion, with their licence fee under threat the fact remains that the BBC paid £200,000 to keep facts like these under wraps:

Balen examined hundreds of hours of broadcast material, television and radio, and analysed the content in minute detail, often scrutinising journalists' individual phrases and choice of words. He then put his conclusions in a 20,000-word report. If BBC executives had hoped for a clean bill of health they were to be disappointed. Balen's findings, given highly restricted circulation at the end of 2004, were frightening.

Although they were kept secret, elements leaked out, including Balen's conclusion that the BBC's Middle East coverage had been biased against Israel.

The enormity of this can hardly be overstated. Apart from the corporation's legal obligation to be impartial, it had struggled for years to counter allegations that its reporting favoured the Palestinians. The claims meshed with attacks on the BBC for being Left-leaning and undermining its own legitimacy by harbouring a secret liberal agenda. Bosses at the corporation ordered Balen's report to be locked away. When an effort was made to make its findings public through Freedom of Information laws, the BBC spent £200,000 on a legal fight to keep it secret.
(..)
In the bleak days of 2004 that seemed almost incidental to those at the top of the BBC. What really mattered was that apparently impregnable positions had been demolished by allegations of faulty journalism. The new people running the corporation, including director-general Mark Thompson, had just had a sharp lesson. They were not going to suffer the same fate as Greg Dyke.
(..)
A sense that BBC journalists favoured the Palestinian side was reinforced by a number of famous incidents with which the corporation had to grapple. In 2004, just as Balen was becoming the orthodoxy among editorial managers, Barbara Plett, an experienced journalist who worked as a BBC correspondent in Jerusalem, took part in a From Our Own Correspondent broadcast.

Plett, who had covered the siege of Yasser Arafat's compound on the West Bank, talked about seeing Arafat being taken to hospital by helicopter towards the end of his life. She said: "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound I started to cry ..."

Her remarks prompted outrage in some quarters, especially among Israelis and Jews who remembered Arafat as an enemy, unworthy of sympathy. Complaints poured in, but the BBC rejected them - at first. The pressure grew and almost a year after the broadcast the governors' complaints committee decided Plett's words had breached "the requirements of due impartiality".
(..)
Then, in 2006, during the war in Lebanon she (Orla Guerin) was accused of misreporting when she claimed a town near the Israel border had been "wiped out" by Israeli forces. "I haven't seen a single building that isn't damaged in some way," she said.

But Alex Thomson, filing for Channel 4 from the same town, Bint Jbeil, on the same day, presented a different perspective. He reported that the suburbs of the town "are pretty much untouched by the Israeli attack".

[joliet]

I've seen two or three things in that cut and paste that I take issue with. But I really can't be bothered going into it.

Suffice to say that the BBC isn't omniscient and, sometimes, errors in reporting can be put down to the fact that one reporter may cover 3 square miles in a conflict encompassing hundreds of square miles. This is why those that do follow the news should gather it from more than one source and come to their own conclusions.

[limeylily]

Jan 27, 2009 15:06:21 GMT joliet said:

Grow a backbone and read The Times website if their reporting is more to your taste.

I'll be glad to... just as soon as the Government forces me to contribute to the upkeep of The Times!

[joliet]

So your, personal, license fee goes solely towards their Gaza reporting does it?

I don't like Strictly dancing with "Celebs", so I don't watch it. Does that mean I'm owed a rebate?

ffs

[VikingHumpingWitch]

Anyway as ever, some people think the Beeb is biased one way and some people think it's biased the other way. Same old same old. I suspect that "biased" to some people means "Doesn't report in line with my bias."

[oldmanofthesea]

In my estimation the BBC is suffering from a reality meltdown. Cock up after cock up seems to be the norm. As to the Gaza appeal no one in their right minds could see a carefully worded humanitarian appeal as being politically biaised. The Israelis took a sledgehammer to crack a nut resulting in tremendous damage, not to military bases, but to the homes of ordinary people, schools, hospitals, etc. They used weapons banned by international treaty e.g white phosphorus against people when its sole use should be for laying smokescreens. Having experienced white phosporus while a soldier I know its horror. The Israelis were teaching the people of Gaza a lesson. Unfortunately the majority of the men women and children they killed were not Hamas fighters, but ordinary folk who have no control over their lives.

[joliet]

The BBC is suffering with numpties who can't see past their Daily Mail.

[limeylily]

Jan 27, 2009 15:30:54 GMT joliet said:

So your, personal, license fee goes solely towards their Gaza reporting does it?

I don't like Strictly dancing with "Celebs", so I don't watch it. Does that mean I'm owed a rebate?

ffs

I dunno - try claiming and see how far you get!

[omnipleasant]

Wot Joliet said.

Nothing wrong with the BBC when you compare it to most news sources, except it offends the sensibilities of deranged rightwing ideologues because you are "forced" to pay the licence fee wah wah it's so unfair.

[cobblers]

"Barkho is convinced the BBC's coverage has become slanted towards avoiding upsetting Israel."

Another way of looking at it is that it has been leaning towards 'the Palestinian resistance', which goes against the terms of its charter. The BBC is supposed to report the facts and be impartial, that's how it is able to levy a tax in the form of a licence fee on every household in Britain that owns a television.

"I have investigated this and I am convinced the policy is dictated from the top because of the enormous sensitivity"

The enormous sensitivity is that they will lose their cloak of impartiality and lose the licence fee.

"Journalists are instructed to avoid using "assassination" in favour of "killing" and in discussing Gaza, the word "occupation" is to be avoided in favour of "permanent military presence"."

REPORT THE FACTS WITHOUT COMMENT OR EMOTIVE TERMS! Otherwise you become a propaganda outlet, like The Independent.

[cobblers]

Jan 27, 2009 15:46:36 GMT oldmanofthesea said:

In my estimation the BBC is suffering from a reality meltdown. Cock up after cock up seems to be the norm. As to the Gaza appeal no one in their right minds could see a carefully worded humanitarian appeal as being politically biaised. The Israelis took a sledgehammer to crack a nut resulting in tremendous damage, not to military bases, but to the homes of ordinary people, schools, hospitals, etc. They used weapons banned by international treaty e.g white phosphorus against people when its sole use should be for laying smokescreens. Having experienced white phosporus while a soldier I know its horror. The Israelis were teaching the people of Gaza a lesson. Unfortunately the majority of the men women and children they killed were not Hamas fighters, but ordinary folk who have no control over their lives.

What bullshit. I don't know where to start.

[omnipleasant]

"I don't know where to start. "

Whinge about Muslims? Usually a good first step.