Partisan Reporting

The Beeb has long been regarded as ever so slightly left of centre. When all is said and done it is a nationalised industry. The Daily Mail has been criticising Auntie for this as long as I can remember and to be honest the Corporation's recent actions over Gaza and the DEC has done little to alter the impression.

Ironically, the BBC decided not to screen the DEC appeal because it feared that it could be regarded as biased reporting. By making this decision however, controversially it should be added, it has 'become the news' rather than being the body who reports on it. This conscious desire to distance itself from the Palastinians could be seen, by cynics, as tacit acceptance of hitherto partisan reporting. The Corporation has been criticised even more lately, however, with Gazans effectively 'ghettoized' and pummelled into submission by the military might of Israel (backed up by the US), who can blame them?

Nevertheless, the BBC has not done itself any favours by tying itself in knots over this issue. I think that it would have been better to show the appeal and then use opportunity afforded by Holocaust Memorial Day in order to restate the case for the existence of the state of Israel. Now that would have been balanced reporting...