At a May 2001 rally sponsored by the Arab terror group Hamas to honor their friends in the media, veteran British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Gaza correspondent Fayad Abu Shamala took hold of the microphone and announced, “Journalists and media organizations (are) waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.”
Three years later, another BBC West Bank correspondent, Barbara Plett, renewed allegations of impartiality within the news outlet with an on-air admission that she cried as Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat's helicopter left his compound to take him to a Paris hospital. Plett's remarks were made during the Our Own Correspondent: Personal Reflections by BBC Correspondents Around the World segment, broadcast Saturday, Oct. 30 on BBC Radio 4 and published on the BBC website.
"But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the fanatic expression of concern?" Plett asks listeners rhetorically. "Was this another story we westerner journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is a historic event, while the locals get on with their lives?"
"Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry, without warning" (italics added).
"I remembered well when the Israelis reconquired the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: 'Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.’"
"And so am I," Plett declares (italics added). She felt under siege when they were under siege? Was Plett burned out by the dangerous West Bank assignment, perhaps feeling under siege by a repressive terrorist regime stiffling her ability to report honestly and fearlessly, given the attacks on press freedom created by Arafat's henchman? Was she suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological state in which victims of a kidnapping or people detained against their free will develop a relationship with their captors?
Or was Plett expressing a genuine sense of unity and sympathy for the Palestinian people, their cause and leader? On Nov. 7, 2004, Israeli National News reported that the BBC received at least 500 complaints in response to Plett's comments. Plett offered a tepid apology for misguided remarks.
Clearly, her controversial statements were made in during a commentary, but it nevertheless raises serious questions: Is it ever appropriate for a working journalist to inject his or her personal feelings into a news story or commentary, especially one as volatile and divisive as the death of a Palestinian leader?
"Yes. Journalists are always swayed by their emotions and opinions. At least if they are honest about it we know where they are coming from. It's sort of a disclaimer," says Dr. Michael I. Niman, assistant professor of journalism in the Communications and Media Studies Department at Buffalo State College. "More problematic was the New York Post -- or maybe it was the Daily News -- obscene celebration of Arafat's death. That crossed the line as volatile hate speech."
Some would argue that Plett was too emotionally attached. Niman, however, doesn't believe Plett was acting in an unprofessional manner: "No. This is a normal thing to say or write when a nation's leader dies. If a foreign correspondent didn't express sorrow at the death of an American or European leader, many people would see it as a sign of disrespect. So why the double standard here? Wouldn't not showing sorrow be a sign of bias?"
Other media critics have assailed Plett's remarks, claiming she crossed the line between personal bias and professional objectivity. Furthermore, some argue that it was just the tip of a much larger iceberg. They charge the BBC with institutional bias, claiming the mammoth news organization is distorting their coverage of events in the middle east to promote an agenda that is virulently anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian.
"This is a clear example of the problem that Israel has been facing for years, and that is the lack of balance in BBC reports... BBC never displayed feelings like that towards Arafat's victims," according to Danny Seasman, the director of Israel's Press Office following the Plett incident.
London attorney Trevor Asserson has conducted several exhaustive analyses of the BBC recently. His research reflects a system anti-Israeli bias at the BBC. "[These] reports demonstrate how the BBC consistently fails to adhere to its legal obligations to produce impartial and accurate reporting. Our systematic, objective and rigorous research points to the firm conclusion that the BBC frequently displays marked and consistent pro-Palestinian bias in their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute," Asserson believes.
Asserson backs up his assertions. "We have found the BBC documentaries featuring the middle east over the last 43 months (3.5 years) have been overwhelming negative in their depiction of Israel or positive of Palestinians, with considerable amount of time and space being given to program makers with views known to be antithetical to Israel.
Our findings suggest that the BBC provides the watching public with a (normally) 30 minute negative image of Israel approximately once every two or three months. These programs are generally well advertised for several days before they are aired and are typically broadcast at peak viewing time.”
Stopping short of accusing the BBC of institutional bias, Asserson nonetheless writes, "We consider that this trend of partiality and imbalance over such an extended period amounts to a campaign to vilify Israel. We do not accuse the BBC of deliberately deciding at senior management level to vilify Israel in this way. We consider this highly improbable. However the accumulation of program makers, commissioning editors and other management decisions has produced a huge imbalance.”
Honest Reporting, one of the largest media watchdog organizations, lists seven key violations of media objectivity -- misleading definition and terminology, unbalanced reporting, opinions disguised as news, lack of context, selective omission, using true facts to draw false conclusions and distortions of facts -- they believe the BBC is guilty of.
In March 2001, there were two separate acts of terrorism in the world which gave textbook examples of the BBC's use of selective terminology. The headline following a bombing in London by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) read: "BBC Bomb Prompts Terror Warning." The IRA is identified as terrorist organization (and justifiably so) and the term terror and its equivalents are used five times. No shock here: The U.S. State Department has designated the IRA as a foreign terrorist organization in the Federal Register (Oct. 2003). One person was slightly was injured in the IRA attack.
Conversely, when three Israeli civilians were murdered by a Palestinian homicide bomber in Netanya that same week, the BBC used the term "militant" to describe Hamas, which the State Department as also designated a foreign terrorist organization.
In a correspondence with Honest Reporting on May 6, 2001, the BBC freely admitted to the double standard: "It has long been the policy of the (BBC) domestic service to refer to terrorists in Northern Ireland of any religious persuasion as (terrorists), but the policy of the World Service is not to refer to anyone in those terms."
The BBC, as reported on Honest Reporting, left out essential elements of another story to present the Israel Defense Forces in the most monstrous light possible. On Dec. 17, 2001, Israeli troops in Gaza shot dead a 12-year-old Palestinian boy. The death of an innocent child is always a horrible tragedy. No one would argue against that. In this case it was particulary tragic because the IDF mistakenly believed the toy gun the boy was holding was a real weapon.
Yet the BBC chose to exlude this critical element in its coverage of the shooting, giving the world the mistaken impression that the IDF shot and killed an innocent child in cold blood and without cause. Other documentaries demonstrate shoddy research and slanted reporting. In a May, 2001 film, the BBC essentially called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "war criminal" (in contrast to Plett's glowing image of Arafat as a valiant freedom fighter) when it revisited the Lebanese Christian massacre of the Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 1982.
The BBC documentary “Behind the Fence,” broadcast on May 5, 2003, addresses the controversial security fence constructed to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorists. There is no mention of a similar fence built to keep Muslim terrorists out of India or a protective barrier in Cyprus, Asserson says.
The BBC also aired a documentary in April 2003 called “Israel's Secret Weapon,” an investigation into Israel's alleged build-up of nuclear weaponry. It focused on Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli convert to Christianity who spent 18 years in prison for giving out information on Israel's nuclear capabilities.
The documentary begins insidiously by posing the following questions: Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons? Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities? and Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections?
“Israel's Secret Weapon” aired shortly after the first Iraq war ended, Asserson writes. "The inference behind the opening remarks, which is repeated throughout the film, is that Israel would have been a more appropriate target than Iraq for the coalition forces to attack.
Continues Asserson, "Shortly before its broadcast, the filmmaker, in a Radio 4 broadcast, suggested that Jews had poisoned the wells in Egypt. This baseless allegation--reminiscent of medieval anti-Semitic charges--was left uncontested. The program itself suggests that the IDF used poison gas against the Palestinians in Gaza in February 2001."
"The program created such a distorted and unremittingly negative view of Israel that it led to the Israeli government ceasing cooperation with the BBC when it was shown a second time," Asserson notes. "This was an unprecedented move by Israel."
What's the cumulative impact of such inflammatory and derogatory images and words on Israelis and the jewish community? Isn't there the risk of inciting anti-Semitism in the Palestinian territories and across Europe?
"(That) is another reason why it is important to analyze the BBC. The reputation and coverage of the BBC guarantees the immense influence of it's output. It is not fanciful to contemplate that portraying Israel in an unnecessarily negative light, the BBC might itself unwittingly encourage aggression and not only against Israelis but also UK Jewish citizens," Asserson continues.
And it lends credence to known terrorist organizations and leaders rather than uniformly condemning them and their actions. Honest Reporting cites numerous examples of the BBC consistently and incorrectly using the word President as Arafat official title. Palestine has not achieved statehood and doesn't not have a president or prime minister. As one news organization aptly pointed out, "In the text of the Oslo Accords, the title of Chairman was carefully chosen to avoid language implying statehood."
Andrew Steele, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, denied allegations of bias during a speech in Jerusalem in February 2004. According to the Middle East Information Center, Steele told the skeptical crowd: "The BBC is enormous (and) we try our hardest. I've never been anywhere where so much care is put into the words we use and the balance we seek."
This writer contacted the BBC Press Office for comment. They responded with an automated email, rejecting her request.
For more information on Mr. Asserson's research, go to BBC Watch.
To lodge complaints about the BBC's coverage, write to newsonline@bbc.co.uk.
Patricia Abbatoy earned her bachelor of science degree from D'Youville College in 1993. She works as a freelance writer/reporter in Buffalo, New York. Her work has been published in the Buffalo News, North Buffalo Rocket, West Side Times, and Riverside Review. This article was commissioned by the Jewish Defense League.
