One man's terrorist....

The BBC -- like The Guardian before it -- has been celebrating a new study by the Media Group at Scotland's Glasgow University, "proving" that the main UK television television stations are convincingly biased in favor of... the Israelis.
Which just goes to show you can "prove" anything if you want to; on this issue, it certainly helps if your idea of "unbiased truth" clearly squares with the Palestinian narrative.
According to the claims:

• Israelis were quoted more than twice as much as Palestinians in reports
• US politicians who support Israel were "very strongly featured" in news programmes, appearing more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain
• Coverage does not stress what military occupation is like
• [There is] a tendency in the media to present the problem as "starting" with Palestinian action, while Israelis were seen to be "responding" with actions that were explained and contextualised
• Researchers also found a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties on the news despite the number of Palestinian deaths being considerably greater
• Words such as 'atrocity', 'brutal murder', 'mass murder', 'savage cold blooded killing', 'lynching' and 'slaughter' were used about Israeli deaths but not Palestinian
• The word 'terrorist' was used to describe Palestinians by journalists but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as 'extremists' or 'vigilantes'.

Some of these are just blatant untruths, others are just complaints that the BBC is not acting as the official spokesman for the Palestinians. But why argue over details? On a whim, I clicked on one of the links to the right of this story, looking forward to a good old, reassuring pro-Israel read.
And would you believe it? The story, on the Gaza town of Rafah, begins by featuring Jaqueline Abu Tueimah, who is forced to sleep in a classroom with her 10 siblings because "The Israeli army destroyed their house last month in a major operation during which more than 60 Palestinians were killed."
Why would the Israelis do such a thing? There's no answer for another eight paragraphs, until reporter Barbara Plett explains rather vaguely: "Because, say Israelis, Rafah is a key entry port for smuggled Palestinian weapons."
A little lower down we have "Palestinian militias" and "the militant group Hamas" (I thought that Palestinians were described by the BBC as 'terrorists'?); there is no mention of Israeli civilian casualties anywhere in the article; and while the report complained that "news programmes did not provide enough information about the conflict's history and origins," this report did mention 1948 -- which, it explains, is "when Israel was established and they [the Palestinians] were made refugees."
I could go on and on. But I'm afraid I don't have time; I have to go change my home page from The Jerusalem Post to the BBC. Honest reporting, you see.