BBC’s Jeremy Bowen Follows PLO Dictates
CAMERA has long criticized BBC’s Jeremy Bowen for his biased reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in March 2009, the BBC’s highest body upheld a complaint by CAMERA that Bowen violated the broadcasters’ guidelines requiring impartiality and accuracy. (For a full analysis of that BBC ruling and the CAMERA complaint that led up to it, see here.) As CAMERA’s BBC-Watch often documents, Bowen has not since ceased his biased reporting.
The latest example comes in a May 4 web article and a World Service radio broadcast that aired on May 6 about the violence in Jerusalem in the wake of a bus bombing carried out by a Palestinian terrorist last month. After creating a tale of equivalent mutual hatred and violence on each side, Bowen attempts to dispel the Israeli charge that Palestinian attacks are a result of relentless incitement by the Palestinian leadership. The BBC journalist imposes a blame-Israel narrative on his audience as he “explains” the “core of the conflict”:
But hundreds of conversations with Palestinians over many years here have convinced me that the biggest factor that shapes their attitudes to Israel is not the incitement to hate but the occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, that started after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Middle East war.
When Palestinians who agitate against Israel find an audience, it is because of the way that the occupation, which is inherently violent, has overshadowed and controlled Palestinian lives for almost 50 years.
Not only does Bowen echo the Palestinian narrative by describing disputed territories meant to be defined in bilateral negotiations as “Palestinian territories” but he servilely obeys the PLO’s media advisory to journalists laying out what they should emphasize in their reporting, namely, that the conflict is totally and singularly about “the occupation.”
As long as the BBC continues to allow the PLO to dictate the terms of how the Arab-Israeli conflict is reported, readers and listeners cannot expect to be accurately informed about what is really going on in that part of the world.
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