Posted on 04/25/2005 5:19:29 AM PDT by SJackson
Israeli officials have expressed dismay that BBC reporter Orla Guerin, who has come under sharp attack for what some perceive as an anti-Israeli bias in her coverage, will receive an MBE honor from the British government for "outstanding service to broadcasting."
Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky, who last year wrote a formal letter of complaint to the BBC over Guerin's coverage, said it is a pity that the absence of anti-Semitism was not a criterion for the award.
If it were, he said, Guerin would not be receiving the honor. The MBE stands for Member of the British Empire, one of a number of honors issued each year by the queen.
"It is very sad that something as important as anti-Semitism is not taken into consideration when issuing this award, especially in Britain where the incidents of anti-Semitism are on the rise," Sharansky said.
Guerin, when contacted Wednesday, would not speak without receiving permission from her home office in London. A phone query to the BBC offices in London, followed – as requested – by an e-mail with a short description of the line of questioning, did not yield a response from either the BBC or Guerin.
According to the Sunday Times, the 38-year-old Guerin will be presented the award by Baroness Symons, the minister of state for the Middle East in the British Foreign Office. According to this report, Guerin, who has spent 10 years reporting from war-torn countries, was to receive the honor last year, but the ceremony was postponed so she could report from Ramallah on Yasser Arafat's funeral.
In addition to Jerusalem, she has also reported from Kosovo, Grozny, Moscow, and the Basque country.
One Israeli official, who responded to the news by saying he was "shocked," said Guerin is among the most anti-Israeli journalists reporting from Israel today.
According to this official, granting her an award fits into a pattern that began in 2003 when the United Kingdom's Political Cartoon Society awarded Dave Brown of the Independent its "cartoon of the year" award for a cartoon he drew depicting a naked Ariel Sharon biting off the bloodied head of a Palestinian child.
"It seems if you are anti-Israel, you will get an award," the official said.
Last year, in response to one of Guerin's dispatches about Israel's capture of a mentally challenged 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber, Sharansky wrote the BBC that it employs a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism.
Sharansky protested that Guerin, in her report, portrayed the event as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes." He said this "reveals a deep-seated bias against Israel. Only a total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups would drive a reporter to paint Israel in such an unflattering light instead of placing the focus on the bomber and the organization that recruited him."
The report, he said, "has not only set a new standard for biased journalism, it has also raised concerns that it was tainted by anti-Semitism."
In his letter, Sharansky quoted Guerin as describing to viewers how the IDF "paraded the child in front of the international media," then "produced" the child for reporters, "posed" him a second time for the cameras, and then "rushed him back into a jeep."
Likewise, the Evening Standard, which interviewed Guerin in 2003, wrote that she "questioned Israel's claim to be a democracy, compared its press freedom with Zimbabwe's, and accused its officials of paranoia."
During that interview, Guerin, referring to a period that year when Israel refused to cooperate with the BBC, said "I can't imagine any other government thinking like that – Zimbabwe is the comparison. I'm absolutely stunned that they think it's appropriate."
"Israel talks regularly – at this point, in my view, with less justification – about being the only democracy in the Middle East," she said. "But how can you still be a democracy and try to harass the press? This is not how a democracy behaves."
media-showing-its-colors alert.
I have just awarded the entire BBC the Joseph Goebbels Memorial Award for best anti-semitic propaganada of the year.
My congratulations to the entire staff for their fine work,
and I hope they will proudly display their tiny lapel pin
swastikas, which come with the award.
/sarcasm mode off
To think back, during the war the BBC would rightfully inform the free world of Goebbels' Nazi Big Lie tactics, while today the roles are reversed. Its beyond sick.
You can "enjoy" listening to her reporting on NPR. I listened over the weekend - very vicious.
They don't harass the "press". They harass "you" and the "BBC". Good for them- Some in the media don't report the news, they "invent" the news.
Democracy does not equate to cowering and catering to an agenda pushing media. Israel IS the ONLY real democracy in the region.
The BBC is right on par with CNN. Both are agenda ridden, left oriented media outlets.
Red6
"The MBE stands for Member of the British Empire, one of a number of honors issued each year by the queen."
This award is for excellence in racist propaganda. I wonder why the queen would want to give out an award for that?
Just to clear up a couple of things: generally in our days MBE is basically a government honours title and it is not up to the Queen to decide who gets it. In other words, it was the civil servants (or bureaucrats at Whitehall) and Her Majesty's Government (which, apart from Labour and some other similar-minded Labour ministers, are pretty leftist) who decided to award this lady this award.
In other words, thr blame lays on the HMG and Whitehall.
Thanks for the ping, SJ.
The 'Arabiphile' [Once -- they say] "great" brits -- along their every unwashed fellow-Euro-peon Neo-Soviet satellite-state's every-other sorry subject -- are baring their oft' latent, though none-the-less-inherent, Judophobia, for all the world to see.
Time to reach out with warmth and welcome to every European Jew -- as to every other wherever he may be -- and make sure he knows we have a haven for him here!
[Wonder if JPFO has European Memberships??!]
<< .... The BBC is right on par with CNN. Both are agenda ridden, left oriented media outlets. >>
CNN Overseas service, which is all I ever get to see as I seemingly endlessly wend my way around the world, is so much worse than the truly and execrably-totalitarian-agenda-driven BBC as to quite frequently so enrage me as to momentarily strip me of any recognizable cognitive function!
Both, it goes without saying are virulently-un-and/or-anti-American and are on any given day, at best, only the most-efficacious-imaginable propaganda arm of whatever client-gangster, terrorist, state and/or region [The Indian Sub-continent, Africa and/or Arabia, for example] their in-front-of-camera advocates deign at that time and day to represent [And/or whose Peoples and their interests to misrepresent] -- and both employ only those who communicate in the supercilliously-sanctimonious simpering the limey-bred call "speech" and that is so well adapted to the sneering support of and to adding kerrosene to the fire of every hint of hesperophobia.
But CNN adds insult -- and, by any other name, subversion and treason -- to the mix by virtue of its being an ostensibly American company and by the fact of its making the bulk of the money so much of which it then spends overseas on both misrepresenting America and Americans to foreigners -- and on misrepresenting their "governments" to them and all of them to US!
While at ITS worst the BBC is just another one of the scores of squalidly-fasciSSocialist state propaganda organs of just another squalidly-fasciSSocialist state!
Blessings -- B A
You're on a roll! :)
But you're right. I'm stationed overseas and get CNN (International) and while deployed to Iraq that's nearly all we had. At times it was flat out "offensive" listening to them. Many times they reported outright BS. We knew this because they were reporting about things that had occurred in our sector.
Without getting into the weeds of WHY a lot of their information is wrong, it's obvious to most that they have a strong pro-Clinton, pro-Kerry, pro-Democrat lean.
I believe that with people like Turner (Democrat), the Raging Cajun (Democrat) and many other party members as CEO, influential people within the CNN network, they have become the unofficial press machine of the Democratic Party. CNN is strongly biased and when it comes to any issue that becomes politicized, CNN will toe their “Party Line”. It’s obvious. CNN defines the statement "All is fine in love and war". When it fits into the political agenda of the Democratic Party they will knowingly subversively undermine US policy. Priority is not the greater interests of the US or anyone else. Priority number one is to their profit margin, priority number two goes to their agenda. (Just my opinion)
What strikes me as odd is that CNN does not get more flak. Their international edition is horrible in its “US-bashing”, yet they have a more toned down US version and the American public is completely oblivious of the fact that this network is playing this game.
Red6
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.