In this post we continue to take a look at some of the topics that the BBC chose to promote during 2018 in a manner that went beyond ordinary reporting both in terms of the amount of content produced and adherence to standards of ‘due impartiality’.
Another campaign amplified by the BBC related to the Bedouin encampment of Khan al Ahmar. On September 5th Israel’s High Court rejected a petition to prevent the demolition of the illegally constructed encampment after a protracted court case. That story was reported on the BBC News website on the same day.
5th September 2018, BBC News website:
Khan al-Ahmar: Israel court approves demolition of Bedouin village
Discussed here.
“…in addition to the serious omissions in the BBC’s representation of this story, audiences saw four times more comment (and two links) from outside sources opposing the evacuation of the illegally constructed settlement than they did opinions in favour.”
A week later – as the demolition order was due to be lifted – the BBC’s London-based Middle East editor flew in and the corporation’s radio and TV audiences saw and heard a further five reports in the space of six days.
13th September 2018, BBC World Service radio, ‘Newshour’, Jeremy Bowen:
Discussed here.
“…despite Bowen’s faulty geography, his amplification of the ‘contiguity’ myth and his failure to provide BBC audiences with the full background to this story (not least the fact that related court cases have been going on for nine years and the residents of Khan al Ahmar have been offered free plots of land on which to build homes nearby) and notwithstanding his erasure of the politically motivated interventions by the Palestinian Authority and the EU in this case, BBC World Service listeners were told that they had just heard an ‘expert’ explanation.”
17th September 2018, BBC One, BBC News channel, Jeremy Bowen:
The West Bank village facing demolition
Discussed here.
“Notably the BBC’s Middle East editor – whose job it is to “make a complex story more comprehensive or comprehensible for the audience” – chose yet again not to tell the BBC’s funding public that the EU has also carried out illegal construction at Khan al Ahmar and other sites in the vicinity or that the Palestinian Authority and various NGOs have for years used the encampment’s residents as political pawns. To do so would of course hamper the narrative to which Jeremy Bowen has self-conscripted and which he elected to promote in this report…”
17th September 2018, BBC World Service radio, ‘Newshour’, Jeremy Bowen:
Discussed here.
17th September 2018, BBC Radio 4, ‘The World Tonight’, Jeremy Bowen:
Discussed here.
18th September 2018, BBC World Service radio, ‘World Update’, Jeremy Bowen:
Discussed here.
“Once again Bowen deliberately refrained from informing listeners that if the residents of Khan al Ahmar had not been exploited by the Palestinian Authority for entirely political purposes they could, like other members of their tribe, have relocated to a site nearby offering free plots of land, utilities and a school, with no need whatsoever for the community to ‘suffer’. Those facts, however, do not help advance the political narrative to which Jeremy Bowen has self-conscripted and so in these three radio items – just as in his previous filmed and audio reports – they were erased from the one-sided and politicised picture he presented.”
When the demolition of Khan al Ahmar did not take place as he had anticipated, Jeremy Bowen jetted off back to London. The encampment’s residents were subsequently given until October 1st to demolish the illegally constructed structures themselves. That did not happen and the encampment remains in situ, with the BBC having – for the time being at least – lost interest in the story to which it provided one-sided, politicised amplification in six reports in less than two weeks.
Related Articles:
Reviewing a BBC slap to the face of impartial journalism
BBC’s Wyre Davies plays wingman to anti-Israel NGOs
The LA Times, The Bedouin of Khan Al Ahmar and ‘Their Land’ (CAMERA)