Don't know if you've been following this story, but the BBC recently refused to air an appeal for aid to Gaza Strip victims, saying it would compromise the network's vow of impartiality in the Arab/Israeli conflict - a decision for which it has been widely criticized. Now the chief U.N. nuclear inspector has canceled a BBC interview because the station won't air this charity fundraiser for humanitarian aid, which all other British stations have agreed to broadcast. Inspector Mohammed ElBaradei, who is Egyptian, said the BBC's decision "violates the rules of basic human decency which are there to help vulnerable people irrespective of who is right or wrong." Meanwhile, thousands of people are protesting outside the BBC's London headquarters.
This is getting way out of hand. Here's the BBC's defense of its position, from Director general Mark Thompson:
Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar
to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with
the objective of encouraging public donations.
The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story... (The BBC will) continue to cover the human side of the conflict in Gaza extensively
across our news services where we can place all of the issues in
context in an objective and balanced way.
Huh. A lot here - firstly, it's true that impartiality might be compromised. Just in searching for Gaza Strip photographs for this post, it was nearly impossible to find any that didn't seem partial to either Israelis or Palestinians. We were going to go with just a map of the Gaza Strip, but that seemed to convey exactly nothing. Whenever you show anything from this conflict, people will think you're biased. Probably people from both sides. So the next question becomes, how important is impartiality in the face of human suffering? And whenever two sides are in a violent dispute, must there always be a moral equivalency? Actual people tend to be pretty Pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel in this conflict; few, complicated as this whole situation is, seem to fall in the middle. So placing impartiality above all other values seems to not reflect the truth of the dispute - in classic British style, it feels a little cold and distant, especially with all this dying, and such a clear need for help. What do you think? Are you outraged by what the BBC is doing?
