The BBC’s editorial guidelines on impartiality include a section headed “Campaigns and Initiatives”.
“4.3.17 The BBC must remain independent and distanced from government initiatives, campaigners, charities and their agendas, no matter how apparently worthy the cause or how much their message appears to be accepted or uncontroversial.”
Another section in those guidelines is titled “Personal View Content” and it includes the following:
“4.3.30 BBC staff and regular BBC presenters or reporters associated with news or public policy-related output may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence. However, it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view content on public policy, matters of political or industrial controversy, or ‘controversial subjects’ in any area.”
As was previously documented here, in late February the BBC News website reported that:
“Earlier this week, the BBC was criticised for pulling the programme by more than 500 media figures, including Gary Lineker, Anita Rani and Riz Ahmed.”
The programme concerned is the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” and the ‘open letter’ signed by at least fifteen BBC employees – mostly anonymously – was organised by the anti-Israel campaign group ‘Artists for Palestine UK’.
On March 12th, ‘Artists for Palestine UK’ published another ‘open letter’, this time addressed to the Royal Television Society and concerning the cancellation (since reversed) of its “Special Award for journalists in Gaza”.
That letter was also signed by some BBC journalists.
“Earlier this week, current affairs veteran Jonathan Dimbleby, Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Sky News journalist Alex Crawford and BBC journalists Fergal Keane and Orla Guerin were among those who signed a letter expressing their “shock and disgust” at not recognising the journalists of Gaza.” [emphasis added]
Orla Guerin and Fergal Keane – along with another signatory, Alice Doyard – have all reported on the conflict in the Gaza Strip throughout the past seventeen months. Guerin has also reported from Lebanon on the conflict between Israel and Hizballah.
Some of the reports by Keane and Doyard have included statements along the following lines:
“The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international news organisations from entering Gaza and reporting independently. We depend on trusted local journalists to record the experiences of people like those who are searching for the missing.” [source]
“To try to tell the story of how the people of Gaza experienced this war, I and BBC colleagues have depended on the tireless efforts of local journalists working on our behalf.
Israel banned the foreign media from entering Gaza to report the war independently.” [source]
“Israel does not allow the BBC or other international media access to Gaza to report independently, so the BBC depends on a trusted network of freelance journalists.” [source]
Those “trusted local journalists” usually go unnamed in BBC English language content but clearly it is difficult to disconnect the signing of this campaign letter by BBC employees from their reliance on freelancers in the Gaza Strip.
When BBC employees openly flout the corporation’s editorial guidelines on impartiality by publicly signing up to a campaign which obviously reflects their personal views, it should come as no surprise that serious questions arise concerning the impartiality of their reporting on topics related to the agenda of the organisers of that campaign, which is facilitated by the very Gaza journalists that the campaign seeks to support.
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