A London-based Jewish weekly last week castigated the British Broadcasting Corporation's Arabic service as "systematically promoting anti-Israel bias by allowing gross inaccuracies in its reports" about the Jewish state.
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This places BBC Arabic in direct violation of the media conglomerate's own impartiality guidelines, the Jewish Chronicle accused.
The report listed alleged infringements as including "systematically downplaying terrorist attacks on Israelis; repeatedly using Hamas-inspired language; showcasing extreme views without challenge; and publishing a map in which Israel was erased."
A BBC spokesperson told the weekly, "BBC Arabic shares exactly the same principles of accuracy and impartiality as BBC News in English, and we strongly reject the suggestion that its impartiality is compromised."
The report further noted that the BBC "was forced to acknowledge 25 mistakes in its Arabic coverage of Israel in just over two years, issuing on average nearly one correction every month."
One particularly high-profile BBC apology came after Ahlam Al-Tamimi, a Hamas terrorist who enjoys celebrity status in Jordan, was the focus of a flattering BBC item in October 2020, severely distressing the victims' families.
"I apologize for this lapse in our editorial standards," Jamie Angus, head of the World Service, said in response to the outrage. "[We] will ensure that the appropriate lessons are learned."
The British media powerhouse also apologized for describing Jerusalem as "the occupied city," the IDF as the "Israeli Occupation Forces" and the PLO as "the Palestinian Resistance" in Arabic language coverage, the JC noted.
Moreover, the London weekly's investigation revealed that BBC Arabic repeatedly referred |to the West Bank, Gaza and even Israel as 'Palestine' despite its own style guide outlawing the term, as 'there is no independent state of Palestine,'" at this time.
"When Israel conducts military action in Gaza, Arabic language viewers don't understand the reasons for the incursion because they haven't had the full background," Hadar Selah of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis told the Jewish Chronicle.
The pattern of infractions is an example of "revealed preferences" and contravenes the corporation's own standards, a former senior BBC insider told the JC. "If the trend is to stick to issues or analysis only from one side, then you have a problem. This is what we call 'revealed preferences.
"While you can explain away individual examples, you need to ask yourself why you are always explaining away in one direction and never the other. That suggests a problem. If the BBC wants to protect its reputation for impartiality, it needs to reform its Arabic channel," he said.
The JC cited Dr. Noha Mellor an expert on journalism in the Arab world, as saying that journalists working for BBC Arabic see themselves as "non-elected representatives of their people" and as such, "some follow their own ideologies rather than BBC guidelines.
"In pan-Arab newsrooms, each Arab journalist tends to come with a different kind of baggage of ideologies, working traditions, values and practices," she said. "I have seen Palestinian journalists who see themselves as the expert when it comes to Palestinian affairs."
She further noted that the BBC Arabic's coverage of the Abraham Accords "had been overly negative," despite the fact that they were welcomed by the moderate Arab world.
"Maybe they were afraid that if they tried to portray the normalization as a fantastic thing, their audience might think of them as making propaganda," she said. "I have seen many journalists thinking this way. I think they're wrong. We can see the Gulf channels, for example, Al-Arabiya based in Dubai, saying positive things about normalization."
A spokesman for the corporation tolf the Jewish Chronicle: "BBC Arabic's team of experienced editors and journalists come from across the Middle East and around the world and are subject to the same strict editorial guidelines that shape all of BBC output.
"BBC Arabic shares exactly the same principles of accuracy and impartiality as BBC News in English and we strongly reject the suggestion that its impartiality is compromised.
"BBC Arabic is an award-winning service and valued as a trustworthy and impartial source of news in what is a highly polarised media landscape; its large audience across the Middle East, and on all sides of the conflicts which divide the region, is testament to this."
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