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| July | 20 |
| 2006 |
A nice start to the BBC's oh-so-objective coverage of the IDF's action in Lebanon. Asked by Sarah Montague on the Today programme this morning how the action is going down in Israel, correspondent Paul Adams put it this way:
It may sound bizarre to you, but this war has overwhelming public support here in Israel.
Now Mr Adams could of course have been making a dig at Ms Montague and other BBC coverage, but somehow I doubt it. More likely, surely, is that he was adopting the same slant himself - that it is somehow 'bizarre' for the Israeli government to take action to protect Israeli citizens from terror.
UPDATE: I have it on good authority that I am wrong, and have been unfair on Mr Adams. As my corresondent puts it: "Explaining that there is such a thing as an Israeli street has long been his lonely duty". In which case, Mr Adams deserves praise, not censure, for his remark.
MessageSpace
I was listening this morning as well, and I don't think you were unfair at all. Mr Adams said "It may sound bizarre to you" as a preface to his comment not only that the war had overwhelming public support in Israel, but that the public saw it as absolutely justified. I think that is what he was labelling as "bizarre" above all - that the public could see this as just. I thought it was blatant editorialising and also revealed a weird naivety about the issue. Evidently BBC reporters are so steeped in the superior morality of near-pacifism that they cannot understand when force might be justified. The BBC are so far removed from reality when it comes to Israel, that nothing surprises me.
The BBC seem to have expected that Shimon Peres would be also in the pacificst crowd - but he hasn't been. Yesterday he completely shredded some BBC woman interviewing him on BBC world and while that interview doesn't seem to be up on any BBC site the interview he did on newsnight is - http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ifs_news/hi/newsid_5190000/newsid_5193300/nb_rm_5193362.stm and it's pretty much the same story.