Israel has not been much in favor in the past couple of years. There are those that will exploit any opportunity to present the country in the most negative possible light. Some do so among friends, but some do it via the mass communications media, and there's a big difference.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), funded by license fees from British taxpayers, includes both television and radio stations. Its reporting on the Middle East is considered damaging to Israel’s image. The network has 254 million viewers and listeners worldwide, and its popularity is continually rising, including a 27% increase this year, compared with 2002. Experts believe the BBC is in an ideal position to become a commercial network, with a promising business future.
Trevor Asserson, a London attorney, and the founder of the bbcwatch.com website, has been regularly monitoring the BBC’s coverage of Israel for the past three years. Together with Lee Kern, he has conducted a comparitive study of the way the BBC handled events of a similar character in Israel, and in the war in Iraq. For example, the BBC reported in April 2003, “… At least nine civilians are reported to have died when a bomb hit a residential neighborhood in central Baghdad…” The report does not state who was responsible for dropping the bomb. When Israel is involved, however, the BBC clearly identifies the responsible party, saying, “… At least five Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air raid on Gaza city…” In Iraq, the BBC mentioned “… bombing raids by F-15 and F-16 jets…,” whereas in another report it said, “… an Israeli F-16 warplane fired two missiles…”
The BBC lessened the gravity of the news from Iraq by saying, “… two journalists were killed by a tank shell, a third died in a strike on Al-Jazeera’s headquarters…” The report does not say whether the shooters were Iraqi or British; the army doing the shooting is not identified. When Israel is involved, however, the identification is unequivocal: “… A Palestinian was killed, and two others injured, when they were fired at by an Israeli helicopter gunship in Gaza city…”
The BBC has severely criticized Israel whenever it committed targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists, and civilians were also injured. In the Iraq war, on the other hand, the BBC expressed understanding of the circumstances, and excused them to its viewers and listeners.
The BBC reported in April, “… The Americans and British forces pride themselves on hitting military targets and sparing civilian lives. But the bombs don’t always fall where they’re meant to…” and “… these (cluster bombs) are being fired, we are told by the military, only into open areas on the outskirts of Basra not into the city center…”
There are many examples, but the worst case of all is BBC News director Richard Sambrook’s attempted vindication of a hostile approach by saying that attacks on Israeli citizens by suicide bombers are politically justified. In every other case around the world of suicide attacks against the civilian population, Sembrook portrays the attackers as terrorists, but when the victims are Israeli citizens, the suicide bombers are termed “radicals”.
The BBC’s hostility towards Israel has been constant for years. A previous bbcwatch report a year ago pointed out that the BBC had reported, “The battle of Jenin reduced a whole refugee camp to rubble. This was not part of the plan when Arafat embraced peace with Israel.”
Israel’s decision to boycott the BBC and its reporters, and refrain from cooperating with them, appears exceptional. It is hard to understand the logic behind this measure, since the BBC will now be able to present its hostile positions with any offsetting Israeli views whatsoever, and conclude every such report with a laconically evasive statement, such as, “So far, we have not managed to obtain any official Israeli response.”
The boycott of the BBC is almost meaningless, since the network does not depend on Israel in any way for its reports, and is not a commercial network, and can therefore not be damaged by an advertising boycott. At the same time, it is possible and desirable to adopt a series of measures to hit the BBC where it is vulnerable in its reputation for objective reliability. The BBC “Online Editorial Guidelines” [15] which are applicable to all BBC material on the Internet, state that “Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC. All BBC programs and services should be open minded, fair and show a respect for truth…"
It should be kept in mind that the BBC has a 12-member board of governors with spotless reputations, which they value highly. They bear the responsibility for maintaining the principles under which the BBC operates. “Their duty is to protect the BBC norms from political and commercial pressures. They report annually to license fee payers and the British Parliament,” the BBC website states.
Each of the directors can and should be reached through focused exposure, which will unmistakably highlight their part in and responsibility for the BBC’s ethical decline, and the methods which its editors and managers employ to bend the facts in order to portray Israel in a negative, one-sided way. Such actions, which can be publicized in the British and international media, are likely to prove more useful to Israel than a boycott, which is actually a do-nothing policy.
Another means of exploiting the BBC’s sensitivity is to address a reasoned complaint directly to the viewers. Every quarter, the BBC publishes a report listing the viewers and listeners’ complaints, and the ways in which those complaints were handled. 1,596 complaints were submitted in the first quarter of 2003, of which 709 were answered, but only 71 of which concerned the news.
It is hard to understand the paucity of complaints against the BBC’s news broadcasts, particularly considering that it has been possible to submit complaints for the past six months over the Internet. Where are the Israelis and Jews who should be flooding the BBC with dozens of well-founded and detailed complaints, which would force BBC management, and especially its board of governors, to answer them? The report on the complaints for the first quarter cites representative examples, not a single one of which concerns the BBC’s bias against Israel.
These and other ideas, however, can be useful only when they are part of a comprehensive marketing strategy by Israel for neutralizing the BBC’s hostility. Meanwhile, the main question remains unanswered are the BBC’s positions against Israel a case of anti-Semitism for its own sake, or a result of Israel’s unsuccessful public relations? A systematic and thorough inquiry into the circumstances that have brought about the current grave state of affairs might also supply solutions to this difficult problem.
At the same time, it can justifiably be asked whether there is any point in taking such measures against the BBC, and whether there is any chance of influencing the powerful and influential communications giant, which prides itself on its independence. Well, it seems there is. Last month, Britain seethed over accusations reported by the BBC that Prime Minister Tony Blair was aware that intelligence reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and which were the main justification for the war in Iraq, were biased and incorrect. As reported by “The Guardian”, the British Prime Minister’s Office accused the BBC of airing reports with no credible evidence. The worst blow to the BBC, however, came from its own ranks Ben Bradshaw, a junior minister in the Blair government, and a former senior BBC TV reporter. Bradshaw complained in writing to the BBC ombudsman that the BBC had abandoned its stringent ethical norms, and that “many BBC journalists agreed with him.”
The British Prime Minister’s Office is unquestionably in a stronger position vis-à-vis the BBC than any Israeli party. A communications strategy must be found to continually attack the BBC in its most sensitive place its credibility and objectivity. After all, the BBC is a public network, which insists on calling the Hamas and Islamic Jihad “radical” and “militant” organizations, even though Blair not long ago said they were terrorist organizations.
Aggressive Israeli action is essential, because Israel is suffering economic and political damage all over the world, including the US. The BBC’s influence in the US is increasing. In its issue at the end of April 2003, “Business Week” reported that many viewers around the world now prefer the BBC’s coverage to CNN and other US round-the-clock news networks.
”I can’t rely on other networks to tell the truth,” says Elta Carleton from Connecticut. “It seems to me that other networks conceal facts that might be critical of the US, while the BBC never ignores any scrap of information.”
The BBC broadcasts in the US on 221 public broadcasting stations, and its Nielsen rating rose 28% during the war in Iraq. Israel would do well to act quickly, and not bury its head in the sand.
Published by Globes [online] -l www.globes.co.il - on July 16, 2003