On BBC Bias in its ME Reporting

Part of the dialogue in The Finkler Question, "...the story of Julian Treslove, once of the BBC (pleasingly satirised)...":

"Considering that he believes the BBC is biased in its reporting of the Middle East, it's something of a surprise he chose me," she told Tresove...


"...Now I do, I remember what anti-Semites they all were there, expecially the Jews."


For a moment he wondered if that was the reason he had fared so badly at the BBC himself - anti-Semitism.


"Then you must have known very different Jews at the Beeb to those I knew," she told him.


"The Jews I knew pretended they weren't Jewish. That was why they went ot the BBC - to get a new identity. It was the next best thing to joining the Roman Catholic Church."


"Bullocks," she said. "I didn't go there to get a new identity."


"Because you're the exception, as I have said. The ones I met couldn't wait to put their Jewish history behind them. They dressed like debutantes, spoke like minor royalty, took the Guardian, and shrank from horror if you so much as mentioned Isrrrae..."

Now read this (k/t=BPO):

Widow takes on BBC over Israel 'bias’

The BBC faces a legal challenge over a report it has kept secret - but the case is being brought from beyond the grave.

For six years, Steven Sugar pursued a one-man legal battle against the BBC in an attempt to force it to disclose a secret report...Now, his widow, Fiona Paveley, has taken up the fight to reveal the contents of the 20,000-word document and the case is to be heard at the Supreme Court.

The BBC has spent more than £270,000 on legal fees to prevent the public from seeing the report, written in 2004 by Malcolm Balen, a senior journalist, for Richard Sambrook, then BBC director of news. But a defeat for the BBC could cost the corporation even more because it could weaken its ability to deny requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Mr Sugar lost at the Information Tribunal, the High Court and the Court of Appeal, but his legal team - who have waived their fees - are hopeful of success in the Supreme Court.

...The corporation successfully argued in the past that the report should not be released because it was held for “the purposes of journalism, art or literature” and, as such, was exempt. It was commissioned to analyse the BBC’s coverage of Middle East issues and make recommendations for improvement...Mrs Paveley said: “Steven thought that reporting should be balanced. As a publicly-funded body, it seems wrong that the BBC is afraid and reluctant to be more transparent.”

Another reporter, Barbara Plett, was found by BBC governors to have “breached the requirements of due impartiality” after she said she cried as a dying Yasser Arafat left the West Bank in 2004. More recently, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, was also found to have breached rules on accuracy and impartiality in two reports about the Arab-Israeli conflict.  A BBC spokesman said: “If we are not able to pursue our journalism freely and have honest debate and analysis over how we are covering important issues, then how effectively we can serve the public will be diminished.”

A Supreme Court spokesman said: “This is an interesting case which the Justices have decided raises an issue of general public importance. “It will effectively establish the test for what constitutes a document held for journalistic purposes.”

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