I‘VE BEEN an active and vocal supporter of the BBC for the whole of my adult life, admiring its courage and commitment to the values of fairness that we in England claim to cherish. The BBC‘s famous impartiality made it a global standard of honest journalism. But now that reputation is being eroded. It‘s a drift I started to notice a few years ago, and which I think has become very obvious.
The most recent incident concerns the killing of three Israeli teenagers in Hebron. This admittedly disgusting crime has received an entirely disproportionate treatment: listening to the BBC one would be left with the impression that killing children had never happened in Israel before.
But it has. And it happens with monotonous regularity. Not, by and large, to Israeli children, but to Palestinians. And not only killing, but imprisonment and torture and day-to-day harassment and brutality.
This goes on all the time – and I see little reaction to it from the international media. Unfortunately, that increasingly includes the BBC, which now, like many others, seems to regard Palestinian lives as less valuable, less newsworthy.
The following is taken from the recent UN general assembly security council report A/68/878-S/2014/339 – Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Children: