As we saw in part one of this post two programmes aired on BBC Radio 4 on November 18th and November 19th promoted the myth that a statement made earlier in the day by the US Secretary of State reversed a “four-decades-old position”.
Listeners to the November 19th edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme heard about that statement in three news bulletins, two of which (from 1:02:31 and from 2:02:29 here) included the same spin. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Newsreader: “Palestinians have expressed anger after the Trump administration said it no longer considers Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank to be illegal. The move, announced by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reverses a forty-year-old US policy and puts Washington at odds with virtually all other countries as well as the UN Security Council’s resolutions.”
The programme also included an item relating to the same story (from 2:31:00) in which the BBC’s North America editor Jon Sopel told listeners that:
Sopel: “It is significant in the sense that, you know, that what happens to the West Bank and the settlements on the West Bank is kind of one of the key contested areas. For forty years it has been seen as a breach of international law that Israel were [sic] building settlements on that land and it was gonna be one of the key negotiating areas in any final settlement talks. And at a stroke Donald Trump has overturned this with the State Department saying ‘you know what? We don’t think it is illegal now and so we’re coming out and saying so’.”
Later on in the same item Sopel misled listeners with another inaccuracy.
Sopel: “But you know we’ve now seen it with…ahm…the Golan Heights which was annexed by Israel in the Six Day War that Donald Trump says ‘we think that is Israeli territory’. He surprised everybody by saying that.”
Israeli law was of course applied to the Golan Heights in December 1981 – fourteen and a half years after the Six Day War.
As noted here earlier, we can determine that the BBC knows full well that Secretary Pompeo’s statement did not ‘reverse a forty-year-old US policy’ because in a report published on the BBC News website it clarified that:
“In 1978, the Jimmy Carter administration concluded that the establishment of civilian settlements was inconsistent with international law. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan disagreed with that conclusion, saying he did not believe the settlements were inherently illegal.
Since then, the US adopted a position of describing the settlements as “illegitimate” – though not “illegal” – and sheltering Israel from condemnatory resolutions on the issue at the United Nations.
However one of the last acts of the Obama administration, at the end of 2016, was to break with US practice by not vetoing a UN resolution that urged an end to illegal Israeli settlements.”
Nevertheless, the BBC allowed that ‘forty years’ spin to be repeatedly promoted to its domestic audiences, even in supposedly factual news bulletins.
Related Articles:
BBC Radio 4 promotes the ‘four decades of US policy’ myth – part one
Reviewing three BBC reports on the US statement on ‘settlements’ – part one
Reviewing three BBC reports on the US statement on ‘settlements’ – part two
Financial Times corrects editorial alleging ’40 year US policy’ calling settlements “illegal” (UK Media Watch)
Economist corrects article alleging ’40 year US policy’ that settlements are “illegal” (UK Media Watch)
Political advocacy journalism distorts coverage of US Policy on settlements (CAMERA)
