When BBC Calls, Don’t Answer.
That is, don’t answer, if you are a certified critic of Israeli policies and practices.
The siren lure of big time media is partly a romancing of the ego, partly a rare moment to intrude a moment or two of truthfulness into the endless spinning of the Israel’s narrative that stresses its extravagantly humane response to Hamas flurries of rockets and alleged human shield tactics.
Four times in the past week I have received invitations to be a guest on BBC programs dealing with Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Each time the female producer, with charming British intonation, expressed her strong interest in arranging my participation at such and such a time. And each time I agreed, although my presence in a Turkish village with limited Internet access made it logistically awkward to do so, yet far from impossible to make the necessary arrangements, usually with the kind cooperation of a neighbor with superior digital facilities.
Each time I was ready at the appointed hour, and each time I was given a last minute explanation for why my appearance was cancelled—a couple of times I was told that I was a casualty of ‘breaking news,’ and the other two times, there was no embellishment, merely “we apologize, but we have to cancel today’s appearance.” And on each occasion, as if part of how producers are trained, I was told that those in charge of planning the program were eager to have me appear as soon as possible, and that I would hear in a day or so. On the basis of my past experience on the few occasions when such last minute news altered programming, I was shifted to later in the program or rescheduled for the next day. My BBC experience in this respect was ‘terminal’ as in disease.
Needless to say, the phone lines have been quiet since each of these ‘dumping’ incidents. I wonder why this pattern of invitation and cancellation. I am quite sure that these were quite separate programming for each of the invitations with no coordination among them. Was there some master censor at the BBC that reviewed the guest list just prior to the scheduled broadcast, somewhat in the manner that the way an ethical submarine commander might review the manifest of an enemy passenger ship in time of war? Perhaps, BBC was rightly concerned that there might be a faint and ugly stain of balance that would tarnish their unsullied reputation of pro-Israeli partisanship. I will probably be forever reliant on such conjectures.
I feel self-conscious relating this little saga at a time when so many in Gaza are dying and bleeding, and all are grieving. As I write I feel humble, not arrogant. It seems that somewhere buried in these trivial rejections there is occasion for concern that the media claim of objectivity in liberal societies is above all else a sham. That even powerful players such as BBC are secretly captive, and its reportage and commentary qualifies less as news than as Hasbara, at least when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
In any event, my advice to the media savvy, is that if you have caller ID, and you can tell that it is BBC calling, don’t bother answering. I hope I have the good sense to follow my own advice should the phone ever ring again!
It is touching how the average Briton believes that the BBC is objective and unbiased and tells the truth. This jibes with their general inherent sense of racial superiority. This dangerous naiveté makes them easy to manipulate and direct. Key topics are of course Israel, the USA, and UK’s foreign policy and actions abroad. There is a strong racist element attached to it too. As a result when they rather smugly think they know a great deal about a topic, they generally know very little. This applies to the non-tabloid print media too. When they are all singing from one song-sheet the lack of dissent makes them very uninteresting. I, an Anglo-Canadian, never read the print media, nor get my news from both BBC and ITV, and rely instead on RT, Al Jazeera and Press TV, and e-mail newsletters I have known for a long time. I have been told there is a Director of Radio One news or whatever who is a Zionist and keeps a close eye on the news content. The biggest obstacle to objectivity is the middle class, who see the Zionists as white “kith and kin” while the Palestinians are “swarthy Arabs”. Look at the racismm in the war memoirs of someone like Spike Miliigan and you’ll see how deep and unconscious anti-Arab racism is in the British psyche.
The BBC became increasingly unreliable as an objective source of news and information since the Thatcher government, a trait that has continued despite the colour of the government of the day. The Maggie-Ron love affair saw the onset of
a characteristic of typical US partisanship across all media.
I have developed a profound distrust of any major presenter of global news as being objective or truthful in the presentation of any important news, shpould they be allowed to carry it by those who control such things.
To Colin Smith: Zionists rule OK? Also, genetically they ARE WHITE; they are Caucasian. They are not Semitic, Hebrew, Sephardic – whatever, and have NO historic claim to the eastern Mediterranean as their homeland. A little research into the history of the Ashkenazis of Europe will soon confirm this.
–anti-Arab racism is in the British psyche–
Because the British kith and kin are the those who erected Israel with the active support of the American grands.