Campaigners are taking the BBC to a tribunal in a bid to
find out why the corporation insists on promoting Jerusalem as an
“Israeli city.”
An appeal was filed last week with the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights), part of the UK court system, by two UK-based human rights organizations.
The two groups, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Friends of Al Aqsa,
are attempting to force the release of BBC documents which would reveal
how the BBC Trust reached a decision in 2013 that BBC journalists are
can refer to the whole of Jerusalem as “Israeli.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has been challenging the BBC since 2012 over its reporting on its online pages
and radio broadcasts that Jerusalem is an “Israeli city,” with no
distinction being made between East Jerusalem, considered by the United
Nations to be occupied Palestinian territory, and West Jerusalem.
These challenges led to the BBC Trust confirming
in May 2013 that the BBC is justified in referring to Jerusalem as an
Israeli city, because of the facts on the ground created by Israel. At
that time, the Trust wrote to PSC saying it had sought advice from its
senior editorial strategy advisor, Leanne Buckle. Buckle concluded that
there was no inaccuracy or bias in the BBC preferring to use the Israeli
government’s territorial claims to the whole of Jerusalem in its
reporting.
The Trust wrote:
“The advisor [Buckle] acknowledged that Israel’s sovereignty over the
whole of Jerusalem was not recognized under international law. However,
she considered that Israel had de facto control over the entire
city in a political, administrative and military sense. She also noted
that Jerusalem was administered as a single entity by the Jerusalem
municipal authority which made no distinction between East and West.”
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