Apologists for Israel take top posts at BBC

by Amena Saleem

The American poet T.S. Eliot wrote that ‘April is the cruelest month’. The phrase springs to mind in April 2013, the month that a new director-general took up his post at the BBC and, within two weeks, had installed a line-up of hardline Zionists at the top of the world’s largest publicly-funded news organization.

Tony Hall, whose role as director-general commenced on 2 April, is a former BBC director of news and can boast a total of nearly 30 years working at the corporation. As such, he is well-versed in the BBC’s values — he knows what the BBC wants.

Soon after his own appointment, Hall named James Harding as the BBC’s new director of news and current affairs. Until December, Harding was editor of The Times, an avowedly right-wing, pro-Israeli paper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International group.

In 2011, Harding spoke at a media event organized by The Jewish Chronicle, telling his audience: “I am pro-Israel. I believe in the State of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper [The Times] with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”

Glee

The strongly Zionist Jewish Chronicle reprinted those words with glee as news of Harding’s BBC appointment broke. And it also took the opportunity to remind its readers that, during the Israeli massacre in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered, Harding wrote a Times editorial titled, 'In defense of Israel'.

Now bringing his pro-Israel biases into the top ranks of the BBC, Harding will be in charge of its flagship news and current affairs programs including Today, Newsnight, Panorama and Question Time. He will also be responsible for daily news bulletins on the BBC’s main television channels and radio stations.

According to the Guardian, Harding now holds “arguably the most important editorial job in Britain”.

The news of his appointment to the £340,000 ($518,000) per year post comes just a fortnight after the former Labour Party minister James Purnell took up his new position at the BBC as director of strategy and digital.

Purnell, who was one of Hall’s first appointments, served for two years while in Parliament as chairman of the Westminster lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. Hugely influential, Labour Friends of Israel has drawn support from senior figures within the party, including the former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Unsurprisingly, Purnell subscribes to the Zionist view, often taken in BBC news reporting, that Israel can do no wrong. Rather than as an aggressive occupier, Purnell portrays Israel as a victim of hostile, terrorist Arab neighbors. In a letter to Prospect magazine in 2004, Purnell wrote of the comparison made by campaigners between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, saying: “I find it hard to reconcile that image to the reality on the ground. Israel is a democracy, suffering terrorist attacks, surrounded by countries that don’t recognize its existence, the victim of well-funded terrorist organizations that preach anti-Semitic hate”.

Fact-free propaganda

Israel, with more than 60 laws discriminating against its Palestinian citizens in all areas of life, including political and civil rights, can hardly be called a democracy if a democracy is a state for all its people. And two of its closest geographical neighbors, Jordan and Egypt, have long-standing peace treaties with Israel, something which would scarcely be possible if they didn’t recognize its existence.

However, Purnell’s fact-free, propagandized view of Israel will not be out of place at the BBC. The irony of course is that, under the terms of its Royal Charter, the BBC is meant to be committed to impartiality in its broadcasting.

That it is not can be evidenced in Hall’s third appointment — the promotion of former Today editor Ceri Thomas to the post of BBC head of programming. In his last full year as editor of Today, Thomas presided over a program that interviewed a senior Israeli politician or ambassador on average once every two months. Interviewees included Danny Ayalon, then Israel’s deputy foreign minister, and Tzipi Livni, an architect of the 2008-‘09 Gaza massacre.

Airbrushed

During the same period, not a single Palestinian leader or spokesperson was accorded a similar honor. There was no serious recognition, under Thomas’ reign at Today, of the Palestinian viewpoint.

Thomas may well have felt that a Palestinian viewpoint was unnecessary on Today — widely seen in British media circles as the morning program which sets the news agenda for the rest of the day. After all, Palestine itself did not register in any of the aforementioned interviews, which were conducted by the BBC’s heavyweight journalists, including James Naughtie and John Humphrys.

Every single interview focused on a BBC obsession, embodied in Harding and Purnell, and practiced by Thomas at Today, of the 'threat' to Israel from its Arab neighbors and Iran. There was no grilling of any interviewee on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, its violence against Palestinian civilians, or its arsenal of nuclear weapons which threaten the whole of the Middle East.

After each interview, the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote to the Today program to ask why Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, in the face of international condemnation, had been airbrushed from the conversation.

Each time, this reply was received: “It simply wouldn’t be possible to discuss the complexities of the Middle East conflict during such a brief interview.”

So, over the course of six interviews in 12 months, each one about five or six minutes long, the Today program under Thomas couldn’t find a moment to bring up the Israeli occupation with the Israeli top brass it was interviewing. All of that airtime was needed to discuss not Israel’s aggression, but its own perceived victimhood.

One other moment from that year, 2011, stands out. On 23 March, Israel had carried out air and tank bombardments on Gaza, killing eight Palestinians, including two children and their grandfather. This was followed late at night by two rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel, which resulted in no injuries or deaths.

The next morning’s news bulletins on the Today program reported on the rockets which had hit Israel, but there was absolutely no mention of the death and destruction wreaked on Gaza by Israeli forces.

As ‘journalism’, it was beyond disgraceful. However, the presentation of some facts and the complete omission of others which resulted in the portrayal of Israel as a country under attack, while trying to live peacefully, was entirely consistent with BBC news reporting.

The BBC’s response to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign when questioned on why it hadn’t felt the deaths of eight Palestinians — two of them children — newsworthy, while giving coverage to non-fatal rocket attacks which took place in the same time period, was this: “Choosing the stories to include in our bulletins; the order in which they appear and the length of time devoted to them is a subjective matter and one which we know not every viewer and listener will feel we get right every time.”

This, then, is the history that Thomas brings with him to his new role as head of programming. Harding and Purnell carry with them their dedicated commitment to the Zionist cause. What hope now for Palestine at the BBC? April is indeed a cruel month.

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/

So James Harding, who was the youngest ever editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times, will soon take charge of 3,000-plus BBC News journalists as they settle into their 'capacious new home, which includes a double-atrium newsroom and 11 floors, in the £1bn New Broadcasting House refurbishment in central London.'

Harding has stated that:

'I am pro-Israel' and that in reporting on the Middle East, 'I haven't found it too hard' because 'The Times has been pro-Israel for a long time.'

Indeed, the recent case of Murdoch apologising for a Gerald Scarfe cartoon in the Sunday Times which actually dared to be critical of Israel is a case in point.

As Amena Saleem of Palestine Solidarity Campaign in her article notes, another new senior BBC appointee, James Purnell, who recently became 'Director of Strategy and Digital', is also avowedly pro-Israel. Purnell actually served as chair of the pro-Israeli parliamentary lobby group Labour Friends of Israel from 2002-2004.

Saleem has also previously reported that BBC 'gave up all claims to impartiality when it spectacularly pulled from its schedule a documentary questioning the scale of the Jewish exodus from Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago – the exodus on which Zionists base the Jewish "right to return" and to colonize what was once Palestine.'

The documentary, scheduled to appear as part of the current BBC Four series on archaeology, was dropped at the eleventh hour. When questioned about this late and dramatic development, a BBC email offered the limp excuse that 'we have decided that it doesn't fit editorially and are no longer planning to show it as part of the season.'

But, added Saleem, 'Ilan Ziv, the Israeli-born documentary maker who made the hour-long film, has said that the official reason given by the BBC for pulling the documentary contradicts the reasons given to him in private.' Ziv gives his side of the BBC's sudden dropping of the film, and the broadcaster's lack of candour in explaining its decision, summing up:

'This is ultimately a sad saga of what I believe is a mixture of incompetence, political naiveté [and] conscious or subconscious political pressure'.

Tim Llewellyn, the BBC's former Middle East correspondent, has seen it all before and he told Saleem:

'The BBC is now culturally and socially stuck in the Zionist frame. Whether this is fear of the Zionist lobby and its many friends in the three British political parties, sheer inbuilt prejudice, ignorance of the facts, history and nuances that every reporter, producer and editor should by now know, I am not sure. I suspect a combination of all three.'

James Harding, the incoming head of BBC News has already shown himself to be comfortable with this pro-Israel frame. As a former colleague said of Harding: 'He will fit in very well at the BBC.'

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/...-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html

 

I'm wondering if the day of large-scale organised media is done. Now that the BBC has conditioned rats at the helm it is signaling the ascent of social media as the primary news source.

 

Sadly, most people still get their brainwashing from propaganda organs like the BBC and seem to metaphorically regard wall-to-wall saturation mainstream news coverage as akin to the comfort eating of junk food. However, thankfully, organised media IS in decline. Whether we are able to smash the final nail into its coffin, is largely dependent upon the extent to which alternative new forms of media are prone to the same forms of corporate control that has befallen the more traditional forms.

 

There is now, I think, a strong case for abolishing the BBC:

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

It must be a fundamental human right not to have to pay James Purnell. The obnoxious Blair clone is on £420,000 a year at the BBC. I found this article absolutely horrifying; the BBC has appointed as director of news and current affairs James Harding, a man who wrote a defence of the 2008/9 massacre of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza, which used illegal and horrifying white phosphorous bombs as well as depleted uranium, and killed hundreds of small children. That attack was so shocking it reintroduced a significant proportion of the British student population to the idea of radical politics.

That the BBC should appoint the openly politically partisan to top positions – and that they should be openly neo-con – is not shocking because we have come to accept the depredations of the political class as normal.

The purpose of the BBC ended when Grag Dyke and Andrew Gilligan were forced out and the BBC issued a formal apology – in effect to Tony Blair – an apology for telling the truth about Iraqi WMD and the “dodgy dossier” which Blair, Campbell and Scarlett conducted. The BBC has seldom made the mistake of telling the truth since.

I increasingly find myself advocating political opinions I would have found anathema five years ago. I am forced to the opinion that now it is time to abolish the licence fee and end all public funding to the BBC. We should not be blinded by nostalgia; the BBC has no claim to impartiality or “public service ethic.” Nor, for the most part, to quality. Talent shows, reality TV and endless cooking and property auction programmes are not something everybody should be obliged to pay for, on penalty of not owning a television.

Doubtless bits of the BBC would survive in the private sector. World Service broadcasting might be taken over by DFID – another “fake independent agency” can be interposed if desired. But even if some good were lost, the overall harm done by this inflated structure and its all-pervading propaganda is such that it would be worth the sacrifice.

The Leveson Inquiry was a brilliant sleight of hand which managed to get liberals arguing for more government control of the media, while the real problem – the need for a radical breaking up of media ownership – was ignored. If we fracture the Murdoch empire and break up the BBC, with radically tough regulations restricting the percentage of the market any owner can have, we have a real chance to have a diverse media and broader political debate.

All institutions tend to corruption the longer they have existed. Over time those who control the structures of power develop ways to make sure large institutions are twisted to their personal interests. There is not much the rest of us can in truth do about it, except to give the kaleidoscope a good hard shake every now and then.

It is time to shake the kaleidoscope and abolish the BBC.

UPDATE

Just received from BBC Press Office:

Hi Craig

We wanted to draw your attention to our release from 14 Feb this year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/tony-hall-senior-team.html

James Purnell’s salary as Director, Strategy and Digital, will be a total of £295,000 not £420,000.

Best wishes
BBC Press Office

So that’s OK then.

 

Yes, I would go with abolishing the BBC. Weird to think that only a few years ago the very place was admitting to having a liberal bias as that represented the people of the UK which she represented.

Unfortunately she has just become another State TV working hard on propaganda and by her information creating an ill informed right wing population.

Her time is up.

 

Let me get that straight, the BBC should be kept while it touts your political views and should be abolished the moment it deviates from the leftist orthodoxy, right? Did I miss anything?

 

And this is a problem, how? Do you think there should be a litmus test in the British media, do you suppose people with pro-israel views should be banned from leadership positions and discriminated against, do you think no pro-Israel views should ever be aired in the UK?

 

The BBC should be kept when it does it's job which was is to inform the British people of what is going on with as little bias as is humanely possible while still remaining human. That is, it is not possible to look at things such as politics totally objectively because we all have values and we judge things from that.

When the BBC admitted she had a liberal bias because that was what the British people stood for, I would have said she was correct.

Now that she is wanting to have a right/far right stance there is no way she reflects the people of the country I come from. As she is not representative to the people who pay for her, she should be done away with. She has become a propaganda machine.

 

Borat, put it this way, things like human, political and civil rights, freedom from oppression and so on are or certainly were fundamental issues on which our country stood. That the BBC no longer stands by this shows that she is trying to change the very basis on which our country stands and is no use except as a propaganda machine,


....and I am sure it is not without reason that these changes happened in consequence to the BBC's reporting of the run up to the Iraq war!

 

From April 23rd on PF..http://www.politicalforum.com/lates...people-must-refuse-pay-their-licence-fee.html

 

I hadn't realized the duplicate article. Good work, Jack.

 

Wow, are you for real? To begin with the UK has a right-wing government now so your claim of a liberal bias of the british public is absurd. Moreover the idea that a public media company should unquestionably follow the majority opinion on all issues of the day is as absurd and as undemocratic as they get. Last but not the least if people don't like the BBC slant they will vote with their feet.

What you seem to advocate instead is the stifling of the debate or any public discourse and liberal witch hunt against the opinions disagreeing with yours, nothing less. No wonder you are such a big proponent of all things and entitites non-western.

 

And you have a lock on all these things and if/when the BBC has different views on rights, freedoms and oppression, the BBC should be stopped and their rights and freedom to express their views should be immediately denied. Duh!

 

The BBC should not be the servant of the Government. It is not a State TV station. It is paid for by me and every other household in the UK which has a license. We pay for everything everyone in the world sees from the BBC. Now as it happens my country only voted for one right wing person into the Westminster Government. One. Hardly right wing.

For the UK as a whole in the last election we had 306 Conservatives, 258 Labour and 57 Lib Dems so how you decide that the public voted right wing is beyond me.

The previous ten years had all been Labour and yes, the public were pissed off that nuLabour did not act as Labour but to pretend this country has been voting for right wing people and to imagine that if we do our news reporting should become more right wing shows no concept of what democracy is. Reporting in a democracy is about giving as unbiased reporting as possible based on the principles of that democracy which are democratic rights, protections over injustices and each person having human, political and civil rights. For us to go against that in news reporting suggests a collusion between our broadcasters and some other influence....and yes, something happened after the Iraq war where the BBC, unlike the US gave honest reporting and the Government was extremely miffed.

Do you not understand how important unbiased reporting is for democracy. You may not care for democracy but for those who do it is very important.

The BBC also changed it's position towards Israel as a direct consequence of the reporting of the Iraq war resulting in a new Director, Mark Thompson, married I understand to a Zionist, who made an unholy alliance with Sharon. Since then this country has been a patsy to the US and Israel.

The BBC should follow the values of this country and they are Liberal Democratic Values. These believe in human, political and civil rights and object to oppression. That is the only place where any broadcasting that is in the name of the British people can have it's bias.

You could not be more wrong. What has been done is the stifling of debate to make us a patsy to the US and Israel not a free independent liberal democratic country with Freedom of Speech.

 

I will give you an example of the typical way in which the BBC shows it's bias. I was listening to the BBC interviewing someone on the Israeli bombing of Syria. The BBC put the Syrian argument. The respondent replied something of the order 'well what do you expect from an 'oppressive authoritarian' government. They are not going to tell the truth'. I thought 'true enough an 'oppressive authoritarian' government will not necessarily tell the truth.' .....and then I thought. 'ah well, lets see if this is the beeb yet again getting a biased view and not only that but the only view they are giving being biased'. When I had heard the words, 'oppressive, authoritarian, ruthless, undemocratic' and god knows how many negative descriptions made I was in no doubt that the BBC was only bringing to her viewers a biased view.

The BBC then asked this person what we should do and he mentioned three things two of which I have forgotten but one of which was a no fly zone.

That is biased reporting and has unfortunately become mainstay of the BBC. They were pretending to provide expert opininion. They provided propaganda. It was on this day that you said you had heard a good report from the BBC. I remember wondering if it was the same one I had listened to.

Unbiased reporting would have got two experts who actually thought they were lacking in bias to speak from the different positions.

For people who are not educated in the media and do not understand how bias can be used to give them a false view, this kind of thing is unthinkingly swallowed. This is propaganda not unbiased reporting.

Again, the BBC only gave one view and that was a pro Israeli biased view. Not acceptable for an organisation which is supposed to be bringing unbiased reporting.

 

This is v easily addressed.

Don't pay the licence and better still, get rid of your TV sets.

Done.

 

Essential viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q

 

I think he probably had a good chance with that lassie, after that, going by her face -

 

As opposed to decades of pro-liberal, ultra-leftist bias and propaganda which to the best of my understanding did not bother you in the slightest. Now that/if the bias changes a tad you are all for shutting down the BBC altogether. Duh, some democratic values you have

Did I mention that you seem to hold your compatriots in very low regard? Are they really that dumb and fall for obvious propaganda hook line and sinker?

 

Not sure what they call 'em in Kazakhstan, but in the US a Conservative usually IS a right-winger, and anything called "Labor" tends to be viewed of as left-wing. That might be what's confusing here.

Believe me, I know. Had OUR press not been in the tank for Their Chosen One, Romney would have won easily. I've read estimates that their cheerleading for Obama added around 10% to the vote he received,t give or take. Who knows how several of our elections would have turned out instead had our press not been so openly partisan?

 

The people's vote did not bring in a Conservation Party. It was not sufficient. In Scotland, my country, the Conservatives received only 1 vote. We have not yet in the UK given up our Liberal Democracy, dislike of oppression and injustice or our human, civil and political rights. I do not deny that England looks like she may move in that direction.

Scotland however not so, making Independence more likely for Scotland. In such a situation I would no longer be forced to pay a BBC License.

The BBC has a responsibility to provide accurate unbiased reporting. What it needs is people taking the time to report her ever time she does not.

Ah Canada. A country I once loved. The BBC is supposed to be free of both political and financial pressure. In such a situation new Managers coming in and declaring their Pro Israel - and Pro Israel means biased towards Israel not agreeing with the State of Israel, have already declared a bias and really should be dismissed. Tis part of the worrying situation we live in today which appears to become more like '1984' or was it 'brave new world', every day.

 

No. as opposed to several decades of unbiased reporting where if any bias could possibly be said to be there it was a liberal bias due to us being a Liberal Democracy believing in political, human and civil rights and opposing oppression and injustice. That would come simply because it is not true to say it is possible that political science can be without values. These values are as near as you can get to an unbiased start position. Treat each persons rights the same.

To replace these values with no respect for political, civil and human rights or respect for liberal democracy and to support instead oppression and lack of justice is indeed changing from free and unbiased reporting to presenting propaganda to support the most powerful. The BBC's own Charter does not allow this.

The point is there should be NO bias. The BBC did at one time agree she had a liberal bias and only on that am I saying that if she has any bias then that must come from the values of our society. Those values being believing in human, political and civil rights for all and being in opposition to injustice and oppression. An unbiased press would start from this position. That is the only position which gives equal rights for all. Only a system which believes equal rights for all is capable of giving unbiased reporting. Anything else is biased in favour of someone.

Well if you only have ad hominem attacks left. I suggest you look to your own projections first.

 

Alexa, I understood your views the first time, the decades of liberal bias on the BBC were fine with you, in fact you considered the coverage unbiased reporting because you agreed. Now that allegedly the BBC makes a slight shift to the right, they must be immediately stopped as a source of non-liberal propaganda which can't possibly be allowed in a democracy practicing freedom of speech. LOL Nice values you have there.

 

I have given clear guidance on what I base that. Only if you start from a position that all people have equality of rights can you possibly give an unbiased position.

an unbiased source can not make a shift to the right.

Further I gave you an example of how this prejudice shows itself in post 15 http://www.politicalforum.com/lates...rael-take-top-posts-bbc-2.html#post1062623376 which you have failed to address. I suggest you do that rather than try to continue to repeat disproved things and pretend hardly veiled sarcasm is understanding. I have studied bias in the media. I doubt you have.

It is part of the BBC Charter that is must be unbiased. Reporting such as I reported in post 15 is against the BBC's Charter and is propaganda not unbiased reporting.

 

LOL, it was not unbiased, it had a heavy liberal bias, just like your views are and it was perfectly fine with you for decades...No that they allegedly make a tiny shift to the right you are up in arms supporting the 'liberal' and 'democratic' idea that they need to be immediately shut down.