As reported in today’s British media:
The Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee, the BBC’s highest grievance body, has ruled valid complaints against a BBC TV programme which exaggerated the use of force by the IDF and claimed that the Israelis sought to destroy Palestinian history.
The programme, “Dan Cruickshank on the Road to Armageddon,” was broadcast on BBC2 in June 2003 and attracted ten official complaints. In the programme, architecture expert Professor Cruickshank sought to examine the impact of centuries of conflict on [the region’s] ancient heritage, but the committee admitted that it “failed to focus on affected Jewish sites, such as the destruction of ancient synagogues in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967.”
In a statement released by the BBC, the Governors stated that the programme “fell short of the BBC’s editorial requirements on impartiality”, and that disparaging comments about Jewish settlers “did not consider that such speculation lay within the frame of reference of a programme about historical sites, or within Professor Cruickshank’s field of experience.”
(Hat tip: Tom Gross)
