The BBC isn't so keen on being at the receiving end;
The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.
The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.
The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.
Staying with the BBC, check out the reader responses to the new BBC Israeli-Palestinian language guidelines - or as they term it, the "style guide". One reader helpfully offers that they've "missed a couple".
My favourite comment:
"Stylist Guide" implied hairdressers, interior designers, and fashion consultants until BBC redefined it to disguise what is fictitious history”
It’s great to see the “fake but accurate” reports of the BBC are getting exposed as opinions not fact. I’m pleasantly surprised that so many reader responses are very anti-BBC , that should weaken their self-importance.
I think one of the biggest skills lacking with journalists is that they don’t know what they don’t know … or at least they won’t admit it.
BBC News Editor speaks out and brings us up to speed.
**It's an increasingly crowded market. CNN has been there for 25 years and BBC World Service Television - later to become BBC World - launched 15 years ago.
There are four more English channels either on air or planned to launch...Russia Today (you can watch it here)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/lingua_franca_1.html
is on air and of course the much-hyped Al Jazeera International is due to launch at some point, although nobody is saying exactly when.
Even the Iranians are getting in on the act, announcing this month the intention to launch a 24 hour news channel in English, to be called *Press*. **
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So it takes the Iranians to kick the sleepy French off their butts. = TG
It's just a pity that Canadians do not do the same thing with their very biased news services instead of going after foreign ones. Lets face it Canada does not have one unbiased MSM. There papers in the UK that are not leftist biased.
The BBC represents the Islamic Republic of Britain only, their middle east coverage has not been worth watching in a long time.
"The BBC" represents the Islamic Republic of Britain only
That could be changed to CBC, CTV and any other of Canadas' MSM. So I am still Asking When are Canadians going to use their freeedom of information act to ask questions of their broadcasters. Or do you intent to keep whineing about other countries.
Depending on the outcome of the British case, one would have to think the CBC will be in the crosshairs. The government has absolutely no place running a "news business". If the CBC went off the air right now, nobody would notice until Saturday night (Hockey Night In Canada).
Of the comments at the *BBC Editors*, this seems to most clear and direct.
**on 16 Oct 2006, Mark wrote:
I have yet to see BBC investigate why so many Arab civilians are killed in the course of an armed conflict with Palestinian militants or recently in Lebanon.
I have yet to hear a BBC reporter ask a Palestinian militant why they surround themselves with women and children when they know the danger they put innocent people in.
I have yet to hear BBC talk about crimes against humanity committed by those who indiscriminately fire rockets at purely civilian targets such as Israeli residential communities with the sole objective of killing as many non combatants as possible and no conceivable military objective at the same time.
I have yet to hear BBC ask Islamic militants why they attack civilian targets almost completely to the exclusion of military targets.
I have yet to see BBC discuss the widespread Islamic militants' practice of using civilians as human shields as a deterrent and if that fails, of creating martyrs of them when they are wounded or killed. We see it everywhere. Hez*s anti- aircraft guns emplaced on the roofs of high rise apartment houses. Hezbollah missiles stored in private homes.
Who can forget the images of Saddam Hussein with a small British boy asking him *have you had your milk today Stuart* just prior to the war in 1991?
When will BBCzeera expose these monsters for what they really are, criminals and terrorists?
I think not until the current crop of those running it for their pro Islaminc anti Israeli anti American agenda are removed and replaced with real journalists, not the *so called* journalists staffing and managing it now.
=========== Mark*s opinions . . .
could well apply to the CBC and a number of North American Media.
By comparison, the BBC is a saint. = TG
"We believe that the case has wider implications for the way the Freedom of Information Act applies to public service broadcasters," a BBC spokeswoman said.
Being the only public sector broadcaster in the UK, this nmeans the BBC says: "It doesn't apply to us".
Pissdoff, it has been a long time that I watched BBC, CBC, CTV or even CNN (except in real-time situations) for news coverage, or anything else for that matter. These are ossified, bureaucratic, monopolisers of thought.
I get my news from many sources, including TV, but also radio, newspapers, via web. If there is a story of interest, I'll go to a couple of Indian newspapers, or french (waste of time that) the internet has freed the mind. The MSN are losing it.