BBC - the Biased Broadcasting Corporation employs 'Hamas Man'

 Ha'aretz reported ("Leading Hamas preacher warns of clash with Islamic Jihad," by Arnon Regular, December 15, 2004) that Fathi Hamad, the leading Hamas preacher responsible for "Hamas' coordination with the international media,

        "has been caught on tape saying that BBC correspondent Faiz Abu Smala slants his reports to favor Muslims."
 
Ha'aretz also reports that Hamad said that
        "Hamas man Faiz Abu Smala works for the BBC" and that "the way he writes the story is in favor of the Islam and Muslims." 
 
Ha'aretz adds: "Hamad believed that he was speaking in a private closed forum, but the session was filmed and then distributed - a copy of which was obtained by Ha'aretz.".  Hamad also says that the Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, Wa'al Dahduah, is a supporter of the terror group Islamic Jihad. ( The full Ha'aretz story is pasted/ or linked from below.)

 On several occasions in the past Tom Gross  has questioned the appropriateness of the BBC employing Fayad Abu Shamala (one of the English transcriptions of his name) as a senior reporter in Gaza, for example, in the following article: 
"The Euro media and the Intifada",  The National Review, 2001, and repeated on several websites, including:
www.honestreporting.com/articles/reports/European_Media_and_Anti-Israel_Bias.asp  . In this  one Tom Gross reported that on May 6, 2001 Abu Shamala told a Hamas rally in Gaza (attended by the then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) that

        journalists and media organizations in Gaza, INCLUDING THE BBC, are  "waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people."

Yet after that revelation, the BBC declined to remove him as one of their main Gaza correspondents and he has continued to file incendiary reports about Israel from Gaza.
 The best the BBC could do in response to these remarks at the time was to issue a statement saying, "Fayad's remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC. He is a senior and experienced journalist who knows the requirements for impartiality." 

Another now famous story of BBC's blunt partiality made the headlines at Honestreporting's "Dishonest Reporting Award, 2004" published yesterday. One of the Dishonest Reporting Award winners is Barbara Plett, of BBC. When Yassir Arafat's health failed in November, BBC's West Bank reporter Plett openly wept real tears for the Great Godfather of Modern Terror.  Plett's weeping revealed an unprofessional (and, some would say, bizarre) identification with one side of the conflict that she had been employed to cover in an objective fashion. The question arises, how could it happen that both she and her editors were incautious enough to publish this shameful fact? The answer is that such an obvious bias does not stand out of today's BBC standards for impartiality.

This admiration of BBC to Arafat which until now radiates through most BBC's reports is in very sharp contrast to the real feelings of the Palestinians, people and leaders alike. People in the streets dared to say to Jerusalem Post reporters already in the days of Arafat's death sentences like: "Are you a journalist? Then I tell you I shall cry for him. But if you are not a journalist I tell you I won't cry". Another man said: "Whatever comes after Arafat can be only better than the nightmare of the rule of his armed thugs", A visible fact today is that Abu Ala and Abu Mazen are cleaning the stables fast from any reminder to the arch-corrupt Arafat, throwing out all six ministers close to the past leader. But the most telling facts and figures about the real feelings of Palestinians to Arafat are the estimated 800 Palestinian mourners present at his funeral. A miniscule figure, particularly when you consider that in such a regime most people come not to mourn but to be seen.

For a summary, one may notice that BBC's own sentence, originally intended to clear Fayyad "His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC" may have two opposite meanings.

It means either that "Abu Shamala's reports match the very high standards of balance of BBC", or:        

        "Abu Shamala's very low standard of balance, fully documented now, matches the usually unbalanced, biased and dishonest reporting of BBC on the Middle East". 

Think the facts over and make your own choice out of the two versions.
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        * Endre Mozes is founder and chairman of Take-A-Pen Multilingual http://www.take-a-pen.org/