This Academic Research Smells

This academic article is interesting.

Review Commentary: Is the BBC biased?
The Corporation and the coverage of the 2006 Israeli—Hezbollah war

by Ivor Gaber, Emily Seymour and Lisa Thomas
(author Affiliations (respectively) University of Bedfordshire, UK, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, University of Bedfordshire, UK)
From Journalism , April 2009 vol. 10 no. 2 239-259

Abstract

In the light of the findings of the BBC's 2006 impartiality review of their coverage of the Arab—Israeli conflict, and the fact that most of the accusations of bias against the BBC continue to come from pro-Israel lobbyists, this research sought to investigate whether their claims of anti-Israel bias during the BBC's reporting of the 2006 Israeli— Hezbollah war could be validated. Using ITV News as a control group, these claims were measured against the BBC's revised editorial guidelines for covering the Middle East. The article demonstrates that, whilst certain aspects of the coverage were problematic, BBC journalists broadly adhered to the Governors' revised editorial guidelines, and covered the conflict more or less impartially — if there was any bias it was towards, rather than against, Israel. ITV News coverage was more problematic but still achieved a significant degree of impartiality.

And there's this:

The BBC World Service in the Middle East: Claims to impartiality, or a politics of translation?


Michael Jaber, Cardiff University, UK, and Gerd Baumann, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
From Journalism March 9, 2011 vol. 12 no. 2 171-182



Abstract

As the World Service’s first foray into foreign-language broadcasting (Guardian, 1938) and its first initiative to branch out into non-English-language television (1994—96; 2008 to present), BBC Arabic has played a central role for the Corporation. Distrust of its claims to impartiality, however, persists. To assess both claims and critiques, we examine its politics of translation under four headings: transporting data from the field to the broadcaster; translating from one language into another; transposing data and message by inflexions of tone; and transmitting the result to selected audiences at selected times. We do so from both an etic (‘outsiders’) analysis of BBC output and an emic (‘insiders’) analysis of what audiences perceive and react to by way of critical receptions and reactions.

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