Questions Remain Over BBC Response

i have complained several times to the BBC about their cover of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They never write back. Is there a higher authority above the BBC that can be contacted and complaints about BBC bias sent to?

Posted by: e. lederman at Jun 17, 2008 4:45:37 PM

Every responsible foreign correspondent and professional reporter -- whether print or radio --these days carries a digital camera, or a cell-phone that can take pictures. I asked BBC Complaints to show photos that Aleem Magbool would have taken of the scene and incident, his being a BBC correspondent. In the BBC's reply, they did not answer the question about photos. If Aleem Bagbool took photos, he and the BBC are hiding them. If he did not take photos why didn't BBC say so? You can draw your own conclusions.

Posted by: Robert Skole at Jun 17, 2008 4:59:10 PM

I hope you will ont censor this comment.
I have a really big secret.
1. I readily agree that the BBC has lost its veneer of impartiality, objectivity, unbiased nature a long ago - perhaps it has been when it started (the BBC World Service in 1932), but it is not really important.
What is more important is that - in my view - this news broadcaster is simply poorer in terms of its journalistic abilities virtually by the day. It is going down (accelarating) on a downward spiral. It is stuffef with many young journalist - one is more incompetent and more limited in their journalistic skills than the other - who are untalented and extreamely superficial, like Tim Franks, Katya Adler, their primitive anchorwomen at the studio and the hundreds of others. The BBC has simply turned into a second hand news source. And what do you think can the most painful insult to them be? That nowadays even CNN is more professional and better than them. I know I am watching both round the clock like an obsessed person.
But yes overall I agree: they are exhibiting criminal bias and sometimes outright libels. Stinking corpse.

Gábor Fränkl
freelance journalist, economist

Posted by: Gábor Fränkl at Jun 17, 2008 7:33:51 PM

First, eye witness accounts are the worst possible accounts possible. I was once picked out of a photo lineup as the person who had held up a bank near my apartment. There was only a few problems with the "eye witness account," the person in question was a man, black and over six feet high. I am a white woman who stands five feet, five inches. Some accuracy, huh?

Today I got a video from the Collective in which once and for all,it was made clear that Jerusalem was never mentioned in the Koran, never. And further that the West Bank has never been under the sovereign control control of any country. It was beautiful to see the al-Jeerza correspondent squirm in his seat.

I'll complain to the BBC for all the good that it won't do. I do not sponsor my local PBS radio station because they air the BBC programming all night long, complete with its anti-Israeli propaganda. PBS needs to be targeted also.

Posted by: Beverly Kurtin at Jun 17, 2008 10:07:08 PM

I appreciate very much HR's thorough article criticising the BBC's complaints procedure. However it seems maybe a bit naive to see the main difficulties in their cumbersomeme complaints website. The experience of our people is more similar to "lederman"'s: ("i have complained several times to the BBC... They never write back"). To his question "Is there a higher authority above the BBC...?", I can warmly suggest to turn major complaints (on larger than a one-time local problem) to the Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, which is above and not part of the current BBC activity.
A most relevant reading is: "Handling Major Complaints by the BBC" - http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art21112005.htm

Posted by: Take-A-Pen at Jun 18, 2008 2:51:09 AM

The latest BBC outrage is the distribution of a video purporting to be four 'settlers' beating up on an elderly Palestinian couple. The video looks so fake that it seems the BBC wants to compete with Charles Enderlin for PALLYWOOD honours.

The four youths don't look or dress like settlers, faces masked with keffiyas(!); no visible tzitzis; one is bare chested almost unheard of for a religious male and two look remarkably swarthy to be Jewish Ashkenazim.

The sound somehow fails to pick up one word of any language. Neither Arabic, Hebrew or English can be heard so it is not possible to judge by the accents.

The blurred image also never catches a single blow landing.

I am no doctor although I find it hard to believe an elderly woman suffering from a 'fractured jaw' could have been talking without obvious swelling or any impediment to speech in a week.

Posted by: David Guy at Jun 18, 2008 4:43:39 PM

I would like to help. In your communique you did not mention where this story was run and the complaint site asks for that. Would you let me know where the original story was presented to the public?
Thank you.
Richard

Posted by: Richard Bien at Jun 18, 2008 4:46:49 PM

David, I know the journalist who has blown the material. His name is a certain Tim Franks, a conspicuously poor journalist (pseudo-journalist I must say). The guy sometimes plagiarizes fancy well-sounding formulas he did not used before, alluding to "the five tribes of Israel" - apparetnly from a high-profile JPost Ami Ayalon interview.
Tim Franks is obviously colluding with his pals at B'Tselem - it is clear thathe is used as an intermediary propaganda tool.
If you want to send protest letters to him, you can do, his mail-addres is:
tim.franks@bbc.co.uk

Gábor Fränkl

Posted by: Gábor Fränkl at Jun 18, 2008 5:55:15 PM

Thanks to Honest Reporting for always reporting the true!

Posted by: Joan Green at Jun 18, 2008 8:23:16 PM

The BBC says:"the IDF, who he spoke to on the phone from the scene, said they had...".
No formal or knowledgable army personnel would be talking to reporters on the phone *during* the actual incident (or for a while afterwards - before debriefing the soldiers and getting the whole picture), giving this kind of information.
That claim must be fake. Either he didn't really talk to anyone at the time, or he talked to someone who's guess is as good as any Arab reporter on the scene.

Posted by: Eli at Jun 24, 2008 5:46:58 PM

Absolutely amazing, the garbage that you guys spew out....moan, moan, oh look how we are treated!!! you guys are responsible for a full half of the evil in the world, and you love to complain like its the other way around...did you know that Zionists are anti-semites, cos the palestinians are also semites (being indigenous to the region of course)? :)

Posted by: Shahid Majeed at Jun 25, 2008 5:10:23 PM