Tuesday, November 20, 2012

BBC coverage of Gaza in 2008

A. sent me this:  ""There is less to fear in criticising the Palestinians, but to criticise Israel can create major problems. Journalists spoke to us of the extraordinary number of complaints which they receive. We have presented our findings to many groups of media practitioners. After one such meeting a senior editor from a major BBC news programme told us: ‘we wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis’. He then said that the main issues they would face were from how high up had the call come (e.g., a monitoring group, or the Israeli embassy), and then how high up the BBC had the complaint gone (e.g. to the duty editor or the director general). He described how journalists had checked with him minutes before a programme was broadcast on which words to describe the conflict, should now be used."

(Philo, Greg; Berry, Mike (2011). More bad news from Israel. London: Pluto Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780745329789.)