>>Well.... the BBC is generally regarded as heavily influenced by the British Foreign Office, which has a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bias (for example, the egregious misquoting of a White House official in which the word "terrorist" was replaced by "activist"). The BBC was recently singled out for banning from one of Sharon's press conferences for its persistent anti-Israel slant.
Avital<< I'm not sure how fair that is. The BBC is independent of the Government, to the extent that it regularly gets criticised by governments of both colours of being anti-government - one minute the BBC is being accused of left-wing bias, and the next of right-wing bias. I cannot know what goes on behind the scenes between the BBC and the Foreign Office, so there may be informal pressures on it to conform, but there's certainly no formal requirement for it to toe the Foreign Office line. When the Government tries to influence the BBC, the BBC often makes that public. For example, a government Minister recently wrote to the Director General of the BBC to try to get an investigation into her past by the BBC Today programme stopped (she had been leader of London council in the 80s, when many children in Islington care homes were being regularly sexually abused by staff). The Today programme promptly broadcast this letter and continued its investigation. As a result, the Minister may lose her job. The BBC is a British institution and will naturally reflect the prevailing world view of mainstream Britain. That will inevitably include a less favourable opinion of Israel than the USA has. The USA is perceived by many outside North America of being heavily pro-Israel, so any view less pro-Israel may be perceived as pro-Palestinian by America. If the BBC is peddling a Foreign Office-inspired pro-Palestianian bias, then it's passed me by. For 30 years the BBC has been one of my main sources of news. Yet until recently, I thought the Israelis were the good guys, surrounded by hostile Arab states, while the Palestinians were the bad guys, who kept trying to blow up Jews. A year or two ago I took the trouble to read a little of the history of Israel and Palestine, and as a result, I now have a rather different view of matters. I'm neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian. But I can now understand what the grievances of the Palestinians are, and am critical of many of the actions of the present Israeli government. I don't know the details of the BBC's banning from Sharon's press conferences. But it might have been for similar reasons to those that got the BBC banned by Robert Mugabe from reporting in Zimbabwe - he didn't like the fact that the BBC was trying to tell the truth about what Mugabe was doing to his citizens and his country. I can't say that the BBC is accurate in all its reporting, and any news organisation inevitably has biases. But I'd trust it more than most other news organisations in the world to get it roughly right most of the time. Incidentally, this whole mess in the Middle East might have been avoided. If I remember correctly, the Zionists of the 19th century had two possible places in mind for a Jewish homeland - Palestine and some land in Argentina. If only they'd chosen Argentina... Regards, Annette ________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
