The context of the BBC’s promotion of ‘Breaking the Silence’

As readers no doubt recall, at the beginning of this month the BBC produced three items on various platforms promoting a collection of anonymous ‘testimonies’ issued by the foreign funded political NGO ‘Breaking the Silence’. In clear breach of BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality, none of those reports provided audiences with any meaningful information about the organisation’s political agenda.BtS written

BBC editorial guidelines flouted in promotion of ‘Breaking the Silence’ booklet

Another breach of editorial guidelines in yet more BBC promotion of ‘Breaking the Silence’

Writing at the Mosaic magazine, journalist Matti Friedman brings some crucial context not only to the issue of the claims touted by ‘Breaking the Silence’ but also to the wider – and no less important – topic of the mainstream media’s uncritical promotion and amplification of the story.

“As a reporter, you wouldn’t be able to get away with publishing purely anonymous testimony that you have collected, but it is one of the peculiarities of Israel-related journalism that you are allowed to use anonymous material if it has been pre-packaged for you by a political NGO. […]BtS audio

The vast media coverage devoted over the past week to this little piece of agit-prop from a little country—its claims parroted without proof, shorn of context and comparison, and presented as journalism to people around the world—must lead us to ask what, exactly, is going on. What is motivating all of this? No one observing our planet of violence and injustice in 2015 can claim any longer that Israel is covered the same way other countries are covered; that the coverage is proportional to the scale of events; or that the tone of moral condemnation—growing in its hysteria, and crawling from the fringes deeper and deeper into the mainstream press—is in the realm of reasonable reportage.

In all the talk purporting to be about the Gaza war, many are beginning to see more clearly the outlines of another war entirely. What is the nature of this war? That is where the real silence lies.”

Read the whole article here

 

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