BBC: keep the pressure on posted by Richard Seymour

Let's see: we have a campaign of protests and returning license fees. We have the initiatives of celebrities (see David Soul, Ursula Le Guin and China Mieville on the Stop the War website). We have had three BBC HQs occupied, the latest of which was BBC Manchester. There was also a new protest outside BBC Scotland yesterday. We have 112 170 MPs backing a motion to force the BBC to change its stance on the Gaza Crisis Appeal. We have the Archbishop of Canterbury sticking his beard in. Now we have the nobel prize winning head of the IAEA boycotting the BBC. Every time Mark Thomspon restates his position, he only sounds more incoherent. He cannot explain how ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 managed to show the appeal without a sudden collapse in viewer confidence. And now the UN, as if to underline the terrible needfulness of the situation in Gaza and the callousness of those who would withhold aid, has launched an appeal for $613m. Could the UN be... good Lord... taking sides? And amid all this talk about impartiality, what has been brought out in striking clarity, and even reported in some right-wing papers, is the BBC's manifest bias toward Israel. I tell you, even if the BBC doesn't back down on this, this campaign is going to make them rue the day. We can and should make it the worst decision Mark Thompson ever made.

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, Israel, war crimes, zionism