De Commerciele Massamedia 188

'Britain’s commercial terrestrial broadcasters this evening went ahead with a humanitarian aid appeal for Gaza, despite Sky News joining the BBC in refusing to screen it.
Pressure mounted on the BBC throughout the day to back down on its decision to reject the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella group of humanitarian charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Red Cross, but it resisted, saying to broadcast the film risked compromising its impartiality.
The BBC confirmed it had received 15,500 complaints over its decision, while its own staff and broadcasting unions joined in the criticism.
The two-minute appeal, which featured a professional voiceover on top of images of the recent conflict in Gaza, aired first on ITV1 at 6.25pm, just before the channel’s main evening news. It was due to be followed by Channel Five at 7.25pm and Channel 4 at 7.50pm.
Before the appeal aired on ITV1, a continuity announcer warned: “Viewers might find some images distressing.”
At the beginning of the film, the voiceover said: “This is not about the rights and wrongs of the conflict, these people simply need your help.”
However, Sky News this morning joined the BBC in refusing to show the film. “The absolute impartiality of our output is fundamental to Sky News and its journalism,” the head of Sky News, John Ryley, said.
“That is why, after very careful consideration, we have concluded that broadcasting an appeal for Gaza at this time is incompatible with our role in providing balanced and objective reporting of this continuing situation to our audiences in the UK and around the world.”
The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, ruled out a change of policy, saying the corporation had a duty to cover the issue in a “balanced, objective way”.
“Of course, everyone is struck by the human consequences of what has happened,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme. “And we will, I promise you, continue to report that as fully and as compassionately as we can. But we are going to do it in a way where we can hold it up to scrutiny. It’s our job as journalists.”
He denied his “arm had been twisted” by pro-Israeli lobbyists and said the BBC would continue to cover the humanitarian dimension of a “complicated and deeply contentious story”.
However, he conceded that one of the BBC’s initial objections to the DEC appeal – that delivering aid to victims would be difficult – had “diminished” as a barrier.
Most of the hostile reaction from critics of the decision was directed towards the publicly funded BBC. The Stop the War Coalition said there would be a “collective return” of television licences at protests outside Broadcasting House in London and other BBC centres around the country.
A statement from the coalition said that a number of its supporters had already informed them that they had written to the BBC saying they had cancelled their direct debit for their television licence.
The BBC was also condemned by the general secretaries of broadcasting unions the National Union of Journalists and Bectu, who branded the decision not to screen the appeal as “cowardly.”
In a joint letter, Jeremy Dear and Gerry Morrissey – who together represent thousands of BBC staff – said the move risked being seen as “politically motivated”.
“The humanitarian crisis, in which innocent children are suffering, is likely to be prolonged as a result of the corporation’s decision,” they said.
“The justifications given for the decision … appear to us cowardly and in danger of being seen as politically motivated and biased in favour of Israel.
“We, above all, understand the BBC’s need to maintain editorial impartiality and we also understand the pressure journalists and the BBC come under from those who accuse the BBC of bias in reporting the Middle East.
“That said, we agree with those senior BBC journalists who say this is a decision taken as a result of timidity by BBC management in the face of such pressures.
“Far from avoiding the compromise of the BBC’s impartiality, this move has breached those same BBC rules by showing a bias in favour of Israel at the expense of 1.5 million Palestinian civilians suffering an acute humanitarian crisis.”'

Lees verder: Channels air Gaza aid appeal despite BBC and Sky refusal — (Video)