This Is Your Brain on the BBC
At the March 11 daily press briefing by the Office of the Spokesman for the U.N. Secretary General, the press corps demonstrated the damaging side effects of exposure to the BBC.
The following is a real-life exchange between an unidentified (for good reason!) journalist and spokeswoman Michele Montas:
Journalist: Do you consider the demolition of houses of the Palestinians as terrorist acts?
Montas: We’re not going to discuss that again. As I said earlier, the United Nations as a body of 192 countries, has not reached a conclusion on the definition. . .
Journalist: I’m talking about the act, not the definition. Is it a terrrorist act to demolish somebody’s home and make him homeless?
Montas: I can’t go into specifics on this.
Journalist: But we’re talking about specific acts. The Speaker of the Knesset yesterday called for demolition of houses. She’s a district judge. She’s a judge and she’s supposed to be a lawmaker. What do you say about that?
Montas: We don’t say anything about what people say in hypothetical situations.
Journalist: No, they already demolished the house of the [Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva] attacker.
Montas: As far as I could confirm this morning, the house was not destroyed.
Journalist: It was destroyed Thursday.
Montas: I checked this morning. Before I came here, I checked with our Mission over there. The house is not destroyed.
Journalist: But yesterday, she asked the General Attorney to destroy the house, and it was done this morning.
Montas: Whatever she asked is irrelevant. I’m just telling you the facts that I got from the field. As far as I know, and this is the last information we got from the field, the house was not destroyed.
On March 7, BBC’s World News falsely reported: “In the hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his [the Merkaz HaRav terrorist’s] family home.” The report included footage filmed at a different demolition. On March 13, the network aired a correction, and to this day the house has not been demolished.
Any questions?
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