Tuesday, April 4, 2006
A superficially minor thing at first glance, but this misstatement of fact, repeated again and again becomes part of the common misperception.
BBC online censured for anti-Israel bias
The article, published late last year, suggested the UN called for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from territories seized during the six-day war when in fact it called for a negotiated "land for peace" settlement between Israel and "every state in the area".
The governors report, which specifically singled out the reporting of the UN resolution after the 1967 Israeli-Arab ’Six-day war’, stated that the piece on the BBC news website did not give a balanced view of events.
Absence of factual reporting
The UN Security Council 242 is very specific when it calls for a connection between a "withdrawal from territories" and all nations in the region’s "right to live in peace".
The wording of the resolution refers to "territories" and not "the territories" meaning that the resolution never calls on Israel to withdraw from all territory captured during the war.
At the time the British Ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon said: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.”
The BBC governors’ report concluded: "The committee considered that by selecting only references to Israel, the online article did not accurately reflect this balance and gave a biased impression. It therefore breached editorial standards on both accuracy and impartiality"...
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, p.44
Thomas Sowell has an intersting article here on the same topic, the lack of facts, particularly in academia.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2006/04/04/192338.html