Trevor Asserson, who has authored three studies of BBC bias against Israel, is interviewed at JCPA, in a long and worthwhile article entitled ‘What Went Wrong at the BBC’. Says Asserson:
“In private conversations with senior BBC journalists, we have been told that anti-Israel feeling is rife within the BBC. Israel is considered a hated state. Anybody who has a different view has great difficulty being heard or getting his story out. I would not be surprised if that stretches to the point where some people there think that Israel should not exist, because that is now the position taken by some detractors of Israel. It would, however, be na?ve to think that there is a stated, written BBC policy to be anti-Israel. There is no such thing as an unspoken Protocols of the Elders of Palestine in the BBC, whereby senior members of the Board of Governors say: ‘Let’s be anti-Israel, but don’t write that down.’
“In the BBC’s anti-Israeli atmosphere, the system works informally. It is full of reporters holding left-wing, so-called ‘liberal’ viewpoints, including very negative ones about Israel. They then recruit people under them who have a similar outlook. In this way, the liberal left-wing system propagates itself.
“Our own analysis of its output is consistent with this. There are other proofs as well. The name of a BBC journalist, Ian Haddow, signed in his private capacity, was found on an email petition against Israel. He had added the words, ‘save us from Israel,’ after his name.”
