Israeli media pick up on BBC 3’s crude national stereotyping

As regular readers of BBC Watch will be aware, a couple of weeks ago we drew attention to an episode of a BBC 3 programme titled ‘The Revolution Will Be Televised’ in which actors posed as planners for the Israeli Embassy in London in a segment promoted with the blurb “The Israeli Embassy is expanding, no planning permission required”. TRWBT clip

As we noted at the time:

“Like humour itself, the perception of something as being offensive or not is very much a matter of personal taste. Certainly in this case, it is safe to assume that the BBC can cite “audience expectations” (whatever those are and however they are measured) as justification for this crude national stereotyping of Israelis because, after all, the BBC has put much effort into creating and promoting just such a stereotype in its news and current affairs content for years, meaning that British audiences are highly unlikely to develop any alternative, more realistic, “expectations”. “

That story has now been picked up by the Times of Israel, featured in Channel 10’s late night news programme on January 2nd and is the subject of additional comment on other media platforms and social media. 

More from Hadar Sela
BBC misleads audiences regarding cause of Operation Protective Edge
On September 23rd the BBC News website’s Middle East page published an...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *