An April 7th BBC News television report on the subject of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Turkey opens with announcer Julie Peacock saying:
“John Kerry arrives in Istanbul two weeks after Barack Obama brokered a reconciliation between Turkey and Israel. It saw the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu formally apologising for its raid of a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza three years ago in which nine Turkish citizens were killed.”
As well as the fact that this sanitised description of the flotilla, its aims and the IHH activists who initiated violence against the soldiers does nothing to clarify the real circumstances of the incident to BBC audiences, Peacock also repeats the same inaccuracy which has appeared in previous BBC reports on the same subject.
The apology tendered by PM Netanyahu did not relate to the attempt to prevent the flotilla from breaching the maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip, but to “any [operational] mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury”. As for the “reconciliation” described by the BBC; that definition would at present appear to be somewhat premature.
The BBC’s recurrent failure to abide by its own editorial guidelines on accuracy on this subject is not only misleading audiences; it is also making the BBC appear as though it does not have a clue what it is talking about.
