Ex-BBC Head Slams BBC Coverage of Israel

Critics of the BBC’s coverage of the wave of terror in Israel were joined by none other than its former chairman, Lord Michael Ian Grade, with a letter to the current news director citing instances of bias.

Grade singled out the BBC’s Orla Guerin for her imbalanced reporting. In his complaint to the director of news and current affairs, James Harding, he accused her of equating “Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli security forces in the act of carrying out terror attacks,” The Jerusalem Post reported, quoting the British advocacy group Conservative Friends of Israel.

“An emotional interview is conducted with the father of a dead Palestinian youth who had been killed committing a fatal terror attack. However, the report failed to show the emotional distress caused to Israelis by any of these recent attacks. This is inexcusable,” Grade wrote in the letter.

“Regrettably, this is not the first time the standard of reporting and impartiality has been unsatisfactory in recent weeks” at the BBC, the former chairman wrote.

A BBC spokesperson said in response, “We are committed to reporting all aspects of a very complex conflict in a fair and balanced way, reflecting a range of voices. We believe our impartiality is best measured by considering the full spectrum of the BBC’s reporting, rather than an individual story. We will be sending Lord Grade a full response to his letter.”

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the October 23rd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.