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Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

theguardian.com

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Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#241

Post by palmotea »

t-3 wrote: post #154
gruez wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra ... The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising…

>>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles. > Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't…

[flagged]

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#243

Post by YZF »

troad wrote: post #116
forgotoldacc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it calling for death to a military force leading a campaign of total war, and not a death call against Israelis in general? Like nobody would say "death to the Khmer Rouge" is a death call against Cambodians. It technically would be, since it was Cambodians in the Khmer Rouge who were killing innocent children, but it's a specific subset of Cambodians (the Khmer Rouge) and only those who were actually doing th…

Yes, the coverage of this has been a weird one to watch. How does this remark differ from what the Israeli government regularly says about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, just as much an official body in Iran as the IDF is in Israel? No one, to my knowledge, would consider calling for the demise of the IRGC to be hate speech against Iranians. No one has ever shut off a live transmission of a Netanyahu speech b…

Nobody chants "death to the IRGC" in music festivals in Israel (or anywhere in Israel). Not to mention we're talking a third party here, the UK.

The Israeli government doesn't say "Death to the IRGC". Iran however regularly (like weekly) has massive crowds chanting "Death to the USA" and "death to Israel", stepping on and burning Israeli and American flags.

Israel consistently says they consider the Iranians their friends who are also oppressed by the regime. There are zero calls for death of anyone from Israel.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#244

Post by LeoPanthera »

It must not be the entire BBC. In the US I listen to the World Service radio news, and they do not shy away from reporting the horrors of war in Gaza. Even their interviews with Israeli representatives are shockingly unfiltered.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#246

Post by NaOH »

bigyabai wrote: post #223
pvg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not some theoretical 'divisive', you can read how these threads go yourself, including this one. The meta discussions also make these a lot worse so it's hard to blame this on some 'small number' of people.

A lot of the flagged posts look completely fine, to me. Basically the entire discussion is greyed out, which suggests a pretty intense unwillingness to talk about the subject on principles alone. I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic…

>I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides."

The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:

>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#247

Post by WaxProlix »

gruez wrote: post #181
hn-shithole wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Yes.

Yet, when was the last time 100+ concerned journalists penned a open letter saying that we needed more coverage of the genocide in Sudan? It's all good if it's some sort of principle that's being applied evenly, but it's pretty clear in the case of the Israel vs Palestine conflict, most people are invoking that principle are doing it only when it suits them.

Aside from the fact that nobody is lionizing a group in Sudan (vs say Israel), and so there's no direct comparison here?

One major difference that I see - though of course I can't speak for the journalists - is that my country and tax dollars are directly involved in this conflict. Every child who burns alive, every man woman and child raped in an Israeli camp, every doctor or medic killed by targeted drone or sniper fire is in a sense in my name. I'm not saying Sudanese political instability isn't impacted by western actions, but this conflict is very real for a lot of people because of a direct, material involvement.

Journalists maybe feel this way, too?

I do also think this is a pretty straightforward distinction, and suspect your bringing up a fundamentally different conflict to say something like "well you think Israeli deaths get too much coverage in this war, why do Sudanese deaths not get very much?" is weird and borderline disingenuous.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#248

Post by darkoob12 »

engine_y wrote: post #25

I read the article but not sure which pro Israeli editorials the BBC has published. My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.

It's mostly anout how Israel army controls the way journalists report the war or regime in west bank that walks, quacks, and swims like an apartheid but apparently they can't call it that.

Sadly no one will be able to document the carnage in gaza. They plan to create an internment camp in the south and move civilians into at after making sure they are not linked to Hamas. Then they are going to basically follow Trump's plan to clean Gaza by building new jewish settlements and kill anyone outside the internment camp. While doing that they will not allow independent journalists to go in gaza.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#249

Post by somename9 »

bigyabai wrote: post #193
Aeolun wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible they influence so much of what happens in western politics, or at least how whole nations respond to their genocidal war anyway?

One theory is that an abundance of American Christians believe in dispensational premillennialism[0], which rebukes orthodox Judaism in the hopes of returning Christ. Many dispensationalists (including Issac Newton[1]) attempted to interpret the Bible as a function of divine will, and argued that the foundation of Israel is directly imperative due to the prophecy of Daniel. This seems to go against the majority ortho…

Dispensationalism is a heresy that flows out of the Scofield Bible, created by a con artist, Cyrus Scofield. He was likely funded and supported by Zionists.

The Israel of the Bible does not refer to the country Israel, but many Christians have been deceived.

Re: Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

#250

Post by jakelazaroff »

YZF wrote: post #240
jakelazaroff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much all Israeli serve in the IDF. He called for their death. The mental gymnastics. This argument makes no sense to me. You're basically saying that it's bad to call for the deaths of a genocidal military… once a certain percentage of the country enlists? Like, at what threshold do you think it would have been unacceptable to chant "death to the Nazis" or "death to the Imperial Japanese Army"?

Let's help you make sense of this: - Israel is at war with Gaza after it was attacked by Gaza. This war will end as soon as Hamas surrenders and the hostages are returned. Could have ended a long time ago. - Gaza is ruled by Hamas that just like Bob Vylan advocates for the murder of all Israelis and Jews. That is the genocidal party to this conflict, by their own declaration and actions. - The correct analogy is the…

At this point what you're doing is tantamount to writing long essays trying to convince people that the Earth is flat. It is very very obviously a genocide — probably the most well-documented one since the Shoah! — and everyone but the most hardline Israel supporters can see that.

There's a reason that support for Israel in the US has dropped to just 12% among Democrats. [1] Even among Republicans, it's down 18 percentage points! And this is despite heavy censorship of pro-Palestinian narratives (as evidenced by the article).

[1] https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/the-shift-just-12-of-dem-vote...

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