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Media Officials Slam BBC's Biased
Reporting on Israeli Assassinations Policy
RAMALLAH, August 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Ministers of information in both Palestine and Lebanon have shown their dismay at BBC's initiative towards biased reporting.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo accused the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of hypocrisy, saying the media organization was playing down the killings of Palestinian leaders and children by Israeli forces, French News Agency AFP reported.
"The BBC wants to... give each kind of assassination or killing a different term or different classification," Abed Rabbo told reporters at the Palestine Media Center in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"But... how do they classify the killings of children - targeted killings, assassination or just a killing by mistake?" he added.
"They want to use the word assassination only when there are high political leaders or high religious leaders killed. The most polite English word I can use towards (the) BBC is hypocrisy," said Abed Rabbo, according to AFP.
His comments followed a report in the British newspaper, 'The Independent' Saturday that BBC management had banned its staff from referring to Israeli killings of Palestinians as "assassinations."
Prominent journalist Robert Fisk described the BBC decision as "scandalous".
"But yesterday, its (the BBC's) World Service television presenters were obeying a scandalous new edict from their London editors that they must in future refer to the Israeli assassinations as "targeted killings" - the anodyne phrase Israel wishes journalists to use," Fisk wrote. "The phrase is in any case a lie."
Fisk said this was because last week's "targeted killings" cost the lives of a Palestinian journalist and two children as well as political leaders, rather than armed activits of the Palestinian Islamic occupation resistance movement Hamas.
The BBC immediately described the report as misleading and inaccurate, maintaining it would still use the term "assassination" when appropriate.
"As part of a routine discussion on terminology, it was felt that 'assassination' should be used to refer to the killing of high-ranking political or religious leaders - the dictionary definition - rather than every killing which takes place," the BBC said in a statement.
Abed Rabbo challenged the BBC to be guided by international law, rather than the dictionary, to report on the ongoing conflict.
Meanwhile, Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Al Aridi condemned BBC's News Department Head, Malcom Downing's memo saying that such as request is considered dangerous, reported National News Agency, Lebanon's official news agency.
He noted that the memorandum denotes a violation of objectivity and it represents an encouragement to Israel's killing acts against Palestinians.
In a letter addressed to Downing, Al Aridi said he hoped this request will be reconsidered, so as to maintain BBC's objectivity, refraining from providing any kind of support to any form of racism, especially that of Israel.
The BBC is based at Bush House in central London, with national regional newsrooms in Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff and has an increasing number of international bureaus worldwide. The British government funds the BBC.
It was first formed as a company in 1922, five years before it received its first Royal Charter and became the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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