Oddly, given what I've just written about Mark Urban's Newsnight report last night, it was his report on Wednesday night's edition which got him into trouble with the BBC.
The last time I checked the BBC Complaints 'Corrections & Clarifications' page, the BBC were apologising for saying that terrorist Richard Dart had been a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir (probably to someone from Hizb ut-Tahrir).
This time it looks as if the anti-Israel brigade have notched up another concession from the BBC:
Newsnight tweeted the decision yesterday:
Checking back through the 'Corrections & Clarifications' page archive for 2015, I've found three other Israeli/Palestinian-related decisions on each month's main page - two 'upheld' and one 'resolved'.
All, like the above, went in favour of critics of Israel.
Is this because they all had a point (while none of the pro-Israeli complaints had a point)? Or is it because there's a serious pattern of anti-Israel bias within the BBC's Complaints process?
Having looked at those other three examples, they are exactly the kind of thing that, say, BBC Watch chronicles week in and week out (from the other side) - such as complaints that a guest's background wasn't described enough (so they seemed more 'independent' than they actually are) or that an interviewee was allowed to make controversial assertions and not challenged enough by the interviewer.
And yet they all seem to get rejected while these anti-Israel ones, on no stronger evidence (and, I'd say, on weaker evidence), are 'upheld'.
All very suspicious, don't you think?
