“INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM” AT THE BBC: “A senior BBC correspondent in the Gaza Strip is reported to have told a Hamas gathering that journalists and media organizations are ‘waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.'”

Then there’s the New York Times . . .

UPDATE: Reader David Gerstman emails that the BBC story is 3 years old, and cites this item from 2002. He’s right, and here’s what I think is the original report. I don’t think that makes it any less revealing, though — and, in retrospect, certainly explains a lot about media coverage in the Middle East since 9/11.

Here’s more on the BBC’s own foreign policy in the Mideast, which would seem to contradict its claims of impartiality. And don’t miss this bit:

The BBC efforts not to “offend” Arab extremists even extend to their reports on ethnic cleansing and genocide. On both the occasions in the last week when I heard BBC World Service Radio refer to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the BBC took scrupulous care to avoid saying who the perpetrators were (they are Arab militias) and who the victims are (hundreds of thousands of Black Sudanese Africans — Muslims, Christians, and Animists). The BBC didn’t make any mention whatever of the long history of mass slavery in Sudan, carried out by Arabs with non-Arabs as their victims; nor of the scorched-earth policies, and systematic rape being carried out there by Arabs.

Yet in one of these very same news bulletins, the BBC mentioned that “settlers” in Gaza were “Jewish” and the land they were settling is “Palestinian.” . . .

The BBC’s Middle East problem is not just a British problem but also an international one. The BBC pours forth its worldview not just in English, but in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Turkish.

I’ll bet it’s all “Vulfervitz’s” fault.

UPDATE: Hmm. Tough question.