Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Israeli tabloid flaunts its ignorance

Ma'ariv has discovered something shocking about the BBC:
"The British Broadcasting Corporation has been secretly preparing a program on the life of Ariel Sharon, which is to be broadcast after his death…
The network began collecting material about six months ago, after the disengagement plan came into the world and the threats of assassination resurfaced....
A film crew arrived in Israel several weeks ago, and interviewed a large number of people including Uri Avneri, Jibril Rajoub and Maj. Gen. Avraham Adan.
The movie reviews Sharon’s life from his teenage years till the present day. The filming lasted for about two weeks and is currently in the editing stages in London."
It adds with fascination: "The BBC is known to make films about world leaders ahead of their expected passing, and broadcast them on the day the leader dies."
Yes, they're called obituaries, and since they're a professional news organization they like to be prepared ahead of time. Apparently both these concepts are unknown to Ma'ariv. The only suprising thing here is that the BBC didn't have an obit for Sharon already (something which I find hard to believe -- I'm sure they were just updating an older version). When I was an intern at the BBC when I was 16, I actually wandered one day into the room where they keep their obits. It's enormous and covers everyone you can possibly think of. (I also had a look at their selection of sound-effects for the evening news. They had one tape labeled 'shouting Israelis'). So, Ma'ariv, this is hardly news, hardly proof that the BBC is hoping for Sharon's death (as some of the comments seem to take it) and hardly proof of how real they think the threats against his life are. What are you going to come up with next? "Yediot prepares weather report, secretly interviews weatherman"????

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