BBC Middle East "bias"

Have not seen any coverage at all by the BBC, but I understand the the BBC's Orla Guerin has been pulled out of the region after the Israeli government accused her of bias.

This comes of course soon after it was announced that a report by the BBC's Barbara Plett broke rules on balanced journalism. An article on that can be seen here.

Utter nonsense. But, I have to say that here in the Middle East, the BBC is not really favoured amongst anyone these day - the locals here in the UAE for example, are huge fans of local news providers (including the proverbial Al Jazeera of Qatar). CNN tends to be better received nowadays than BBC World, which was not the case a while back.

I have no idea why this is the case, but it is!

James

The BBC's line is that she had already been in Jerusalem for five years, longer than the average posting, so she's gone to Johannesburg as Africa correpsondent.

Yes - it is BBC policy to rotate reporters after about 2 years normally. You often see people move around a bit.

And it is Israeli Government policy to label any criticism of Israel as 'bias'

(although this is similar to criticism of the US Government being in some people's eyes being seen as 'Anti-Americanism')

According to Broadcast magazine, Orla Guerin is replacing Hillary Andersson, who is moving to Panorama, and interestingly, Caroline Hawley is coming out of Baghdad after 3 years to move to Jerusalem to replace Orla Guerin.

The question is: who gets Caroline Hawley's posting? I doubt people are queueing up for it...

They seem to have been trying out various people in that role recently, including David Willis and Jon Brain; it will be interesting to see how that develops...

To be fair, Barbara Plett's idiocy has made life quite difficult for her BBC colleagues running out of Israel.

Perhaps the BBC feel the need to show a fresh face to the Israeli government, as a kind of clean slate after the difficulties of the last 12 months.

That's not trying people out, that's just the normal rotation of additional reporters which has been going on since the war.

The Baghdad post is currently being advertised.

I think that's an incredibly ridiculous statement. Barbara Plett is an experienced journalist and that one moment when she said she cried at Arafat's body being flown out of Israel was, in some peoples', and indeed in the governors' view, a lapse in judgement. It shouldn't be held against her, IMO.

And the programme was 'From Our Own Correspondant'..... which is an opinion piece, the one piece of journalism where they are allowed to express your views