A devastating letter signed by over 100 BBC journalists underlines one of the great scandals of our age

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32644220

More than a hundred BBC employees have written a letter to the director general, Tim Davie, complaining that the Corporation has become a mouthpiece for Israel. It was also signed by 300 other journalists and media professionals: one of them was yours truly. The BBC employees, as you would expect, are all anonymous, because otherwise they would face grave consequences to their careers.

The letter says:

We’re writing to express our concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine. We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions. It demonstrates, once again, that the BBC is not reporting “without fear or favour” when it comes to Israel.

It goes on to note that the decision not to broadcast the investigation was taken by BBC management despite the content being signed off in accordance with BBC guidelines and editorial policy, which it says “Appears to be a political decision”, adding that the BBC response shows the organisation “is crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government.”

  • catty@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 day ago

    The BBC have always been ‘aunty’ from the war periods onwards, broadcasting exactly what it’s told to do, and it’s the same for the radio stations where broadcasts would go on as normal because each DJ has to record a session that would be played in the event of a nuclear crisis.

    • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPMEnglish
      14·
      2 days ago

      Yeah they are heavy on State propaganda and always have been. Starmer is so terrified of being called antisemitic after the bullshit way Corbyn was hounded out of office on similar bogus claims, that he is never going to stand up to Israel.

      • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneM
        5·
        1 day ago

        It’s so bad. They reported more times on their opinion the “welfare reforms” were necessary, than the fact the government’s own report found it would put 150’000 people into poverty.

        Over the years I’ve realised that whenever I’m well informed about a topic it strikes me how biased the BBC is at reporting about it. While for some reason when I don’t know the topic I somehow imagine they’re decent. I think my brain has finally got the message that they are no better than the economist.

      • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
        15·
        2 days ago

        They were more independent until several years back when the Tory Brexit party brought them to heel by installing loyalists at the top, due to their bad habit of reporting the facts about how things were going. Of course even before that they were masters of the false-equivalence-dialectic style where they’ll force an expert in something to debate against a man who lives in a shed who thinks women are genetically identical to crabs - all in the interest of showing both sides of the debate.

    • Kobibi@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      1 day ago

      I think it’s important to note that the BBC isn’t ‘state run media’, if only to highlight the ways that it’s more intertwined with the state than it should be.

      The government officially holds some sway in the appointment of its chair, which is kinda sus. But the main issue I think is this more unofficial ‘revolving door’ appointment of it’s heads and high level figures

      They all seem to come from ex-government and business positions, very much from the same class and background as most of our political leaders

      And as such, this same pro-status-quo worldview is present. Add to this that there are clearly many successions made to retain access to important figures…

      The BBC in some spheres clearly feels able to critiscise the government, even quite harshly sometimes. But in other cases - notably gaza and climate change, activism etc - waves the same stick around

      For my money it’s not so much that the government tells the BBC how to report on this, per se, but that the editorial leaders of the BBC are of the same worldview and agenda of the Government leaders.

      Although yes, there probably have been conversations over lunch at clubs and the vague threat of government interference if the BBC goes too far astray…

      But above all, I think the BBC is against rocking the boat, and the boat in this case is neoliberalism

    • catty@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 day ago

      It doesn’t stop there, it spills over to other religions to. e.g. in a documentary about the origin of man, when referring to the first woman that RNA evidence shows existed as evidenced in all of our RNA, they referred to her as ‘mother’ instead of ‘eve’ as the scientists do.