Media outlet: BBC TV
Date of publication or broadcast: January 5 2009
Journalist: Jeremy Bowen
Description: TV report on Israel's Gaza operations.
SHORTCOMINGS: FAILURE TO SEPARATE COMMENT AND OPINION FROM NEWS-REPORTING
Transcript of BBC Ten O'Clock News
Jeremy Bowen: From the Israeli side of the border, the fighting in Gaza seemed to intensify after dark. Israeli artillery fired flares to help their ground troops who were moving into built up areas for the first time. Helicopters and fast jets clattered and roared in the night sky. Away from the cameras, Israeli military ambulances moved past the BBC position.
JB: The daylight hours were hard too. This was further south. An attack on the crowded streets of Rafa on Gaza’s border with Egypt. The message from Israel is that it is interested in a ceasefire, but not yet. That means no respite for Gaza’s civilians. [images of people carrying wounded children]. Israel says it tries not to hurt them – all this is the fault of Hamas. Try telling that to the people in Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals [images of children on hospital beds]. This is what happens when a modern army uses heavy weapons in a place packed with young families.
FAILURE TO SEPARATE COMMENT AND OPINION FROM NEWS REPORTING:
The BBC Editorial Guidelines state, ‘Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal views of our journalists and presenters on [matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy].’ By saying, “Try telling that to the people in Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals” the journalist crosses the boundary between news-reporting and expressing opinion.
JB: International journalists have not been allowed into Gaza by Israel. But Rushdi Allouf, one of the BBC’s Gaza-based producers, is there.
Rushdi Allouf (inside hospital): We are inside the emergency room of Shipa hospital where hundreds of kids, womens and childrens have been brought to this hospital for medical treatment. Doctors are struggling to cope with the situation. We have seen as many as 900 people are being treated in this hospital. The doctors are talking about running out of medicine; every essential medication is in heavy shortage here in Gaza as well as blood.
Dr Mads Gilbert (Al Shipa Hospital, Gaza): We have many amputations, head injuries and, of course for a hospital, in this situation to have every day more and more disaster patients coming in is extremely difficult to handle.
RA: How you are coping?
Dr Mads Gilbert: I’m not coping. The Palestinians are coping. And the Palestinians do all they can. The patients have to wait a long time for surgery and they are dying waiting for surgery. So this is a complete disaster.
JB: Israel wants to keep on fighting until it has destroyed Hamas’s capacity to hit its soldiers and civilians. It says any ceasefire must include a way to stop Hamas rearming itself. That’s the reason why Israel has also been bombing the tunnels that run between Egypt and Gaza.
JB: [Image of elderly woman crying being led into ambulance.] Hamas rockets are still hitting Israel. Israel argues that any country in the world will do what it is doing to protect its people. The Israel Finance Minister was caught up in an alert [images of him being led into a car].Foreign envoys, including President Sarkozy of France, are here looking for a ceasefire. Their work will be slow until the Americans decide that Israel is as close as it can be to securing its objectives.
[Tzipi Livni giving press conference]: I can understand the eagerness of the international community to see the region calm. This is our dream as well. This is what we are looking for. Unfortunately there are those who cannot accept the idea of living in peace in this region.
JB: [image of Mahmoud Zahar on TV] From his hiding place in Gaza the senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, sent out a message. He told Palestinians they were paying attacks for resisting Israel and that victory would come.
JB: [Boy on hospital bed and an elderly man crying.] Israel wants its enemies elsewhere in the Middle East, not least Iran, to fear what it might do. And Israel wants Palestinians to start blaming Hamas for the price they are paying. There’s no sign of that yet.
JB: [Image of man kissing his son on hospital bed and grieving.] This man in Gaza is saying goodbye to his dead son. His wife and two other children were also killed. We don’t know if he supports Hamas but he’s paid the heaviest price imaginable and he won’t be the last.
Posts
