Friday, December 10, 2004

Context

According to the UK's Jewish Chronicle,
"The BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, this week announced that enhanced Middle East news coverage would be part of the sweeping changes he was planning for the corporation.
Mr Thompson told the BBC’s 27,000 staff in a live relay that savings from job cuts and the moving of some departments to Manchester would be invested in programming, with more time devoted to current affairs and “enhanced” Middle East coverage."
'Sources' in the Beeb suggest that 'enhanced' meant 'fuller context,' as recommended by the BBC’s senior editorial adviser on the Middle East, Malcolm Balen, who spent a year looking into allegations of bias. While any recognition that coverage has not been fair in the past and should change is welcome, I would hate to think what extra 'context' some of the BBC's Israel reporters, eg. the infamous Barbara Plett, are going to come up with.

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