Thursday 15 October 2015

For FOOC's sake!



Today's From Our Own Correspondent began with events in Israel. 

Being FOOC on this subject, impartiality largely went out of the window - especially as the featured correspondent was Yolande Knell.

Here's how Kate Adie introduced the report [with annotations in italics from me]:
The Israeli army has been deploying hundreds of troops across the country to try to combat the worst surge in violence there in months. Yesterday police in Jerusalem shot dead two Palestinians who they say tried to stab Israelis in separate incidents[Note the ordering of this, placing the emphasis on killings by the Israeli, when the story ought to have focused on the killing of Israeli in horrific terrorist attacks. Note also the emphasis - and it was Kate Adie's emphasis - on "they say" (meaning the Israelis), casting doubt on what the Israelis are saying]. So far this month seven Israelis have been killed in attacks and at least 30 Palestinians have died [the BBC's ghoulish body count returns], including alleged [there's nothing "alleged" about most of them] assailants and several children. The Palestinian Authority president Mahmood Abbas accused Israel of "executing Palestinian children in cold blood" [referring to a false claim by Abbas that a 13-year-old boy had been executed by Israel - even though the boy is still alive] - a remark denounced as "lies" [well, it certainly wasn't true!] and "incitement" by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yolande Knell says the violence is fuelling a sense of panic in Israel and raising fears of a new Palestinian intifada or uprising. 
I could go on to transcribe Yolande Knell's extraordinarily biased report, which was much worse, but you can hear it for yourselves just as easily - and you'd be better doing so to get the full effect

Just to give you an idea of how bad this was, let me quote two positive tweets about it: 



When you check out their Twitter feed you discover that both Alison and Hugh are obsessive pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel social media activists. 

So if they find Yolande Knell's piece "unbiased" and "balanced" then you'll probably get a sense of just how strongly biased against Israel it actually was.


PS Yolande's new 'explainer' on the significance of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif  receives a fine fisking here (from Nota Sheep). Well worth a read.

I probably should have fisked her FOOC piece, but transcribing it and fisking it would have taken hours. Maybe tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. The issue surely is why FOOC and other programmes obsess, week after week, about Israel/Palestine (even by their count only 37 deaths in the last few weeks) when hundreds, thousands and hundreds of thousands are being killed in conflicts around the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Certainly easy to see how Mark Urban feels 'we' have all forgotten about this conflict

    ReplyDelete

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