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Thursday 3 July 2014

Judge to decide if BBC’s misreporting on Jerusalem is propaganda or journalism


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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