Blogging the Beeb

Middle East coverage

The BBC Governors yesterday published the review of BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The BBC management response is here.

Invading America

The American right is getting worked up about BBC America:

Beware, patriots of all hues, you have good reason to be fearful. Like the classic sci-fi movie "The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers," the infecting of America's national psyche has already begun but almost nobody has noticed.

Since its inauguration in 1998, the cable channel BBC America has grown such that by July 2004 it was available in 40 million U.S. homes, and it's growing further. In January 2006 the BBC announced a deal with Discovery to bring its 24-hour news channel, BBC World News, to every American home.

BBC Online breaks records

Over 8 million people listened to BBC radio online in January.

Iran continues ban on BBC

Iran continues to block the BBC's online Persian Service.

Maybe they didn't like this

It's the Product, stupid

Ever since Mark Thompson and Greg Dyke highlighted the role of personal video recorders in the year 2000, advertsiing publications have been full of fears about the end of spot advertising as viewers hurtle through the ad breaks - with the obvious conclusion that ad-funded TV is in decline and in future there will have to be more sponsored programming and product placement.

Wired points out that writers for US TV are now having to insert product references, and their unions are calling for a Code of Conduct.

Product Placement rules are to be revised in the new TV Without Frontiers Directive, and OFCOM is consulting on this.

Commercial TV programmes will be even more commercial - a good reason why we need the BBC to provide an alternative.

Newsnight and the war

I missed Newsnight's Allies on Trial episode. Thankfully. Oliver Kamm - not a kneejerk BBC critic - makes some important points about it. He also comments on David Aaronovitch's entertaining Times column on Today programme snorting.

Apologies for lack of recent blogging. Actually trying to write the book....

Empire State

The BBC has an interactive site about the Sceptred Isle series on the British Empire.

BBC Arabic Channel

The Telegraph says that the BBC is reviewing the World Service with a view to creating an Arab Channel to compete with Al-Jazeera.

This is not in fact a new story. The BBC has been discussing this with the Foreign Office for some time.

The BBC has been down this route before, of course, in the 1990s, when it was involved in partnership with a Saudi company in the BBC Arabic TV channel which had to close in 1996 over editorial control issues - Al-Jazeera launched subsequently, recruiting a number of the former BBC employees. This article by its former Managing Editor Ian Richardson gives more.

The BBC has also shared facilities and stories with Al-Jazeera.

BBC Middle East Coverage Review 2

Melanie Phillips comments on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign views of the BBC review. She also has a critical review of a programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on:

the work of the British Jewish defence organisation the Community Security Trust, and the broader issue of the rise in anti-Jewish feeling against which the CST was helping defend the Jewish community in Britain.

Meanwhile, Stephen Pollard cites this post on Start the Week yesterday, arguing Robert Fisk needed more of a 'Fisking' on the programme.

Balance and bias

The Independent gathers some views on balance and bias, in the context of the BBC's review of its Middle East coverage:

Stuart Cosgrove, director of Nations and Regions, Channel 4

Balance is a very evasive concept and is under substantial threat from new means of communication such as internet blogs, VJ video journalism and the proliferation of new niche channels....Balance is a minefield.

Rod Liddle, former editor of Today

There is a naive consensus among an awful lot of individuals at the BBC which sees the world as a perpetual struggle between the strong and the weak - which always equates to the bad and the good.

David Elstein, former chief executive Channel Five, chairman British Screen Advisory Council

I don't believe the BBC as an institution or its reporters as individuals show bias. However, the coverage suffers from the same shortcomings that characterise so much of modern foreign reporting: response rather than analysis.

Jerry Lewis, London correspondent for Israel Radio

Most Israelis view BBC coverage as biased against them and overtly sympathetic to the Palestinians. After a terrorist incident the BBC inevitably focuses on the likely "revenge" by Israel and then gives greater prominence to Palestinian casualties, omitting to mention that their terrorist groups hide among civilians for protection.

Tim Llewellyn, BBC Middle East correspondent 1975-1992

The BBC does not report the conflict entirely honestly because it is not properly enmeshed with the Palestinian side. What the BBC does not do is go into the West Bank and live there and be there. If it did that, and lived life as a Palestinian Arab lives, then it would experience the daily humiliation of that existence.

Professor Greg Philo, head of Glasgow University Media Group

We undertook a study over three years which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and subjected to peer review by independent academics. It was rated outstanding. It concluded that there were clear absences in coverage of the history, origin and causes of the conflict and that these had profound influences on how the public understand the Palestinian case. In contrast the Israeli case was very well represented.