Blogger Edgar Davidson takes a swipe at BBC claims of evenhandedness regarding a pair of interviews with the family of an imprisoned terrorist and the Israeli widow who survived the attack. After interviewing Basem Quntar, the brother of Samir Quntar (pictured), the BBC cancelled an interview with Smadar Haran Kaiser. Davidson explains:
Basem Quntar’s interview took place in full and then the BBC switched to the interview with Smadar. But seconds into the interview the production team were told that the interview had to stop because of ‘technical issues’. The BBC team at the hotel could not understand this as there had never before been ‘technical’ issues to stop doing such an interview. So the BBC ran an interview with the terrorist’s brother but ‘for technical reasons’ were unable to provide an interview with the terrorist’s victim.
Mrs. Kaiser told Davidson:
A short time after, the producer called and said that he has received many angry mails from listeners who were not willing to accept all this kind of behaviour.
To our knowledge, the BBC has made no attempt to reschedule Mrs. Kaiser’s interview; fortunately, Time talked to her without any “technical issues.”
