Further to Craig’s ‘Not upheld’ post, here’s one way of conceding a point without admitting they’d done anything wrong. (People always seem to be saying they haven’t done anything wrong these days.) The BBC Trust has reviewed viewers' complaints and come up with their verdict.
Honest Reporting:
Orla Geurin said there had been “no evidence that Hamas had been using human shields”.
But of course there was plenty. Instead of apologising for airing a factually incorrect statement about a highly sensitive topic, the BBC claimed only that it might have been better worded.
Quite funny though, as euphemisms go. If the BBC asserted that the moon’s a balloon, Elvis is alive and their reporting is 100% impartial but later claimed that these statements ‘might have been better worded’, we’d have a good laugh at their wit.
“Might have been better worded” is a phrase that will come in handy for the comedians amongst us.
The BBC seems to have floated the idea that since there was in fact massive evidence of Hamas using this tactic, and during the piece in question Orla did refer to rockets being fired in close proximity to residential neighbourhoods, viewers should have been able to figure out for themselves whether she was telling the truth or talking nonsense.
That defence is hardly a glowing endorsement of their reporter’s observational and journalistic ability.
It sort of sidelines much, if not all reporting. Say anything you like, the audience can make of it what they will.
That is damning.
ReplyDeleteIt certainty isn't a glowing endorsing. Orla 'Laugh-a-minute' Geurin was certainly damned with faint praise there.
She should be damned with a heck of a lot more.
I really hope people click on your link to Honest Reporting, because it's as plain as a pikestaff (as we say here up north in the Middle Ages) that Orla went way, way too far in her dismissal of claims that Hamas made use of human shields, and the BBC knows it...
...yet the BBC can't quite bring itself to admit it.