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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

#281

Post by bawolff »

jedimind wrote: post #82
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self-described mission of the Centre For Media Monitoring is "Promoting Fair And Responsible Reporting Of Muslims And Islam", so they might be slightly biased...

According to your own logic I should not even bother providing any evidence when you can simply assume any organization to be biased based on identity alone instead of addressing the evidence they provide, like the BBC operates under a Royal Charter agreed upon with the britsh government, "so they might be slightly biased..." "Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of…

Would you honestly accept a report by an Israeli think tank that came to the opposite conclusion? I feel like most people would be suspicious of such a report.

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

#283

Post by rich_sasha »

dgellow wrote: post #275
rich_sasha wrote: post #260

Offending or over-accusing sides of this conflict is a very asymmetric risk. Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously. Misrepresent Israelis negatively and you get very powerful and well-organised protests. BBC is sadly doing the rational thing of staying clear of suggesting Israel may be doing some bad things. It is a…

> So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet? Whenever a group publicly criticizes a behavior, you see the rhetorical question “Why are you surprised?”, and that feels dismissive and disingenuous. Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought. Every actor has reasons to behave. People are critical of the behavior,…

> Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought

My point is they are responding to external constraints shaped by the broader society - the very same group who seems to put up with Israel's outrageous stunts. To angst about the first but not the second is the illogical bit to me. The BBC is not quite a weathervane, but like so many commentators in this space, is so heavily constrained in what it can do that it's meaningless to focus on the actions, not the constraints.

It's like when people are shocked that politicians are not morally superior to the average person in the society that raised them. You sample from a group, you're going to mimick its distribution.

So I am not surprised or shocked how the BBC is acting. I am surprised and shocked that the many societies (Europe, America, ME) seems to accept this situation, as a root cause if you like.

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

#284

Post by tclover »

chvid wrote: post #26

This goes on all over western media not only the bbc.

Western propaganda lies not only about this, corruption in the EU reaches incredible proportions, censorship, violations of freedom of speech, but Putin is always to blame.

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

#285

Post by philipallstar »

rich_sasha wrote: post #260

Offending or over-accusing sides of this conflict is a very asymmetric risk. Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously. Misrepresent Israelis negatively and you get very powerful and well-organised protests. BBC is sadly doing the rational thing of staying clear of suggesting Israel may be doing some bad things. It is a…

> Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously

No, you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests and every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much.

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

#286

Post by philipallstar »

gruez wrote: post #100
jedimind wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra... "Comprehensive new r…

> 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…

You're bringing logic to a gunfight.

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

#287

Post by philipallstar »

Alive-in-2025 wrote: post #258
gruez wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. pointing out genocide, attacks that kill hungry or starving people trying to get food is not some special unusual mean thing. It's something that all decent peoples should be against. I'm against all attacks on the innocent. It doesn't need to be repeated, but I'll do it - I was against the attacks by Hamas on Israel too.

Even calling this genocide is biased. Going into a country to kill the people from it of a race, and then texting celebratory texts that you killed some of that race, and capturing people of that race, is at least attempted genocide, if not completed.

Retaliating to that to get your hostages back and to stop the endless attacks on your race is not genocide.

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

#288

Post by defrost »

k4rli wrote: post #282
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Which part was antisemitic and which part was the conspiracy? The ownership is factual.

What are the 'facts' about ownership "all over western media"?

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

#289

Post by ithkuil »

parineum wrote: post #273
jhanschoo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on that definition alone, the occupation of the West Bank and the discrimination against its original people breaks international law, is enforced by violence and intimidation against civilians, and from the unlawful settlement in it, seems to be in service of the political Zionist aim of settling the region, let alone Gaza.

Traffic laws are enforced by violence and intimidation.

If any form of coercion and prevarication is labeled terrorism we then lack a word to describe the act of plowing through a crowd with a truck or planting a bomb in an everyday place with the intention of instilling terror in the population.

Those acts are different from military occupation or apartheid or genocide. It's not a judgement of value. It's a description of a method.

My point is that the word "terrorism" transcended the description of a technique for reaching certain goals, to a general blanket term used to describe "pure evil" and so people started to use it to describe very bad things even if they are not technically terrorism

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

#290

Post by physicsguy »

tareqak wrote: post #36
epja wrote: post #13

It's worth noting the BBC has also been accused of an anti-Israel bias including but not limited to airing a documentary produced by a Hamas linked individuals[1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07zz5937llo

From the article > The only other BBC documentary which focused on the apocalyptic plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza was taken down as a result of a hysterical pro-Israel campaign - because the father of the child narrator’s son had a junior technocratic position in the Hamas administration. Irrelevant, given the narrator’s words were written for him by the documentary producers.

The kid was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who yes is a Hamas minor official, but the thing was that the documentary makers knew that and hid it from the BBC who commissioned the documentary by pretending he had a different surname. The documentary showed the boy's "father" but it was actually his uncle. The kid's grandad, Ibrahim al-Yazouri, was one of the founding members of Hamas.

They translated the documentary's participants use of the word Yehud i.e. Jew into 'Israeli'. One of the cameramen Amjad Al Fayoumi (who effectively directed it, since the 'directors' were based in the UK) had posted on Facebook support about the 7th October terrorist attacks that kicked all of this off.

The problem is that the BBC and other media producers need to be squeaky clean when doing reporting on this, on both sides. It's not even like this was a quick news broadcast where accuracy needed to be checked, it was commissioned well in advance, they followed the boy around for months.

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