24-Mar-11: British parliamentarian, speaking plainly, hits nail squarely on BBC's head

An item over at the Honest Reporting website praises British MP Louise Bagshawe "for taking the BBC to task for its coverage or rather, lack of coverage of the brutal murders of the Fogel family in Itamar."

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she describes finding out about the attack via Twitter:

Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel’s decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing. As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC’s seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that “five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody”. There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC’s apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC’s broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby’s head? Might we have heard about it then? ... I considered filing a complaint.

The full (short) piece is here. And the incisive and plain-spoken MP's website is here.

Clearly you don't need to be a parliamentarian or British or even a mother of young children to recognize when a global, fabulously well-endowed media colossus (the BBC had an annual operating expenditure of £4.26 billion in 2009/10 according to the BBC's Annual Report and Accounts 2009/20010), along with its editors, reporters, headline writers and managers, has lost its moral compass.