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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is anti-Israel

Ros Atkins Ros Atkins | 15:10 UK time, Thursday, 3 August 2006

Just looking through some of the comments you've been posting and I think two particularly warrant a direct reply from one of us here at World Have Your Say. I'll let Gabi and Ella have their say before having mine....

Gabi writes...
I am a Brit living in Los Angeles and question your news reporting on the Israel vs Hezbollah (terrorists) war. I am a Christian, ergo NOT Jewish, and I am so sad to see a representative media organisation from my home country seeming to be a propaganda tool for Hezbollah. I feel your one-sided inflammatory reports are a distortion of the truth and are in fact dangerous. Where are the pictures of the thousands of Israeli families living for weeks in hot, airless underground bunkers? Where are the reports of the thousands of rockets fired at Israel daily? I am truly appalled and saddened by your obvious anti-semitism. It is a distortion of the way we British feel about the Jews, we are not racists and I resent your depiction. Have you forgotten 9/11 and 7/11? Golda Meier once said "There will be peace when they love their children more than they hate us"

and Ella writes....
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has always been know to have anti-Israeli tendencies but this latest eruption in the middle east has let the ´óÏó´«Ã½ show just how dangerously one sided their reporting is. Please read .

The issue of how the media (not just the ´óÏó´«Ã½) has covered this conflict was one we turned to last week. Sadly we are only able to let you listen back to our programmes for a week, so you can't hear the programme. But you can read and contribute to the debate we had on the blog.

Certainly here at World Have Your Say we have made great efforts to hear from all sides of this conflict. I can't think of any country or opinion that has not been well-represented on the programme in the past three weeks.

The that Ella links to says, 'The ´óÏó´«Ã½ and others have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese tourist industry, but none on the damaged Israeli one, even though at least one hotel in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hizbullah rocket.' On Tuesday we spent half an hour hearing from Lebanese and Israelis about how their lives have been affected by the conflict. One of the Israelis who came on air lives in Tiberias and spoke at length about the damage that is being done to the tourism industry there. You can still hear that programme on the listen back function (until August 7th).

But Ella and Gabi you aren't the only ones accusing the ´óÏó´«Ã½ of being anti-Israel. While reading earlier I spotted that ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV programme deals with just that accusation this week. I'd be interested to hear what you make of it.

There's an fascinating debate to be had about whether any news broadcaster can be truly objective. Some of you I know think no news is objective and you just to have to bear in mind who's doing the reporting. All I can promise you is that no issue has come up more in editorial meetings I've sat in than how to ensure we accurately and fairly represent the dual narrative that runs through this conflict and the history of the Middle East.

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