Balance at the BBC?

An interesting report in Haaretz (via Harry's Place), including an interview with Malcolm Balen, who has been appointed as a "senior editorial adviser" who will to all intents and purposes serve as an ombudsman for Middle East coverage. The BBC's one-sided and even at times partisan reporting from that part of the world has caused concern in many circles, not least among those who still retain a few lingering hopes that the organization can pull itself into the 21st century with at least some of its traditional values still intact.

What does emerge clearly from Balen's interview is that he is well aware of the left-wing bias that is typical of many BBC journalists. He seems to be presenting this as an excuse for the biases in BBC reporting in general, yet he is also asking some questions:

It is perfectly possible that journalism, not just broadcasting journalism, but journalism in general, attracts people of a liberal persuasion, maybe a left-leaning persuasion, but probably a liberal persuasion, and the BBC, quite possibly, is not unlike any other organization in this respect; it just happens to be larger. Therefore I will ask some questions: Are the BBC editorial processes such that people are capable, whatever their private views, of forming a totally separate, neutral professional judgment, or do their backgrounds affect their professional judgment?"

There is also the question of why the BBC - apparently so hostile to Israel - concentrates so hard on that country in its reporting, while reporting from the surrounding Arab states is much thinner:

When Balen is asked about the BBC's focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as compared to the small number of correspondents and reports covering the neighboring Arab countries, he says the reason is that, "Israel is an easy place to work in journalistic terms; it is accessible. Unlike Syria, for instance, where even a simple assignment can take a few weeks to prepare, just to get the permission into the country, work around under supervision and then to try getting out. It is easier to work in a democracy like Israel, but do we reflect that in our reports? Do journalists reflect enough that you can ask the sort of questions of politicians in Israel that you can ask in the UK?"

And then there is the issue of the BBC's perceived antisemitism:

At present Balen insists upon rejecting one key accusation. The BBC, he says, is not anti-Semitic. "I heard several times in the past few months during meetings with Anglo-Jewry figures and elsewhere that `Jews are news.' This is an insulting remark, which suggests that the real interest in Israel or the Jewish community is somehow bent on some sort of malicious intent, bordering on anti-Semitic; nothing can be further from the truth, and it is also factually wrong. The BBC devotes to the Middle East, Israel included, less than people think, based on a seven-month review of coverage on the "10 O'Clock News," our flagship program. There was actually relatively little coverage of the Middle East.

"It is obvious, for cultural, historical and geo-political reasons, that the Middle East has always been in the center of a lot of news coverage, and I also think there is no one person in the BBC who would not fight in a trench against anti-Semitism. Now, to answer questions about that requires answers to a huge number of questions: Is criticism of Israel's government anti-Semitic? What is anti-Semitism? This debate removes us from the challenges of editorial grounds on which I want to center the debate. I want to concentrate on much more pragmatic grounds of what the BBC coverage is actually like, how it is perceived in Israel, and what the balance is between a properly questioning journalistic attitude and being unduly skeptical."


Fight in a trench? Perhaps.