The BBCs impartial reporting [Archives:2002/20/Focus]

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May 13 2002

BY NADIA AL-SAQQAF
It was greatly appalling to see the bias that the BBC news has. The news on the 6th May reported the Jewish Rally that took place in London. It was a true example of how untrue facts were reported.
First of all, they claimed that there were more than 30,000 people, in fact in the on-line site of BBC they said more than 55,000 people were there. In reality there were barely more than 6,000 people, out of which, around 500 were demonstrating against Israel.
Then they took a senseless amount of effort to follow up a certain family: from the morning they were packing their food and getting ready to protest to how they left their home, walked to Trafalgar Square…etc.. I wonder why they did not show us how the family dressed up for the occasion and why they chose that colour or the other to wear.
The irony of this is that the same or even close was not done for the pro-Palestine rally on the 13th of April when more than 20,000 real people were there on the streets protesting, not an imaginary 30,000.
BBC claims to be impartial. In fact it has a values book in which Chapter-2 talks about being neutral.
Such a shame that one of the worlds media leaders is like that. But why blame them? After all we know where they stand, dont we? The question is, where does the Arabic media stand?

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