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Once again the BBC rears its ugly head. Nick Thorpe is a BBC correspondent and has been reporting from near the Lebanese-Israeli border. He was explaining that he and his little entourage were on the way to Jenin to check out reports that Palestinian militants were building Qassam rockets when a phone call diverted them to Lebanon. Get a load of this crap that follows,

Driving down Highway 60 - the spine of the superstructure Israel has built on the West Bank - one understands the resentment and the sense of oppression the Palestinians feel.Smart, middle-class Israeli settlements have sprung up on virgin hillsides, watered by springs often diverted from Palestinian villages.

Tunnels and fences have been erected by the occupier to keep Palestinians away from Israeli roads, Israeli settlements and Israeli soldiers.

Increasingly confined by barriers and checkpoints into little reservations, it is little wonder that Palestinians applaud Sheikh Nasrallah, the spiritual head of the Hezbollah, when he calls for the release of some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Are we reporting the news or filing editorials Nick? And people wonder why blogs are so quick to dump all over the MSM. However it doesn’t stop there. Check out this little slideshow the BBC put together. Notice how they refer to Lebanese civilians as being “killed” by Israeli air attacks while Israeli civilians have merely “died” during Hezbollah rocket attacks. Think the choice of words is accidental?

This type of overtly biased reporting is nothing new for the BBC. One of the more prominent examples that stand out in my memory, and one that I previously blogged about, is a story penned by BBC correspondent Barbara Plett in which she practically swooned at the feet of then PA leader Yasser Arafat. To give you a brief refresher, the timeline is late 2004 and the state of Arafat’s health is uncertain as his headquarters was under siege. A group of journalists gathered outside the compound waiting for some word. I’ll let Barbara take it from here,

Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry… without warning.

Cry? For a terrorist? Puh-leeze. As I said at that time, just who are we talking about here, Elvis or a terrorist? This is just another example of the mindset of the BBC. If you’re hoping to get a fair and unbalanced accounting of events in Lebanon don’t look to the British Broadcasting Corp.

Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Lebanon, terrorism, Middle East, BBC