This is not a political broadcast!!!

In January 2009, when Operation Cast Lead was in full swing with Gaza being reduced to rubble, and its inhabitants had nowhere to flee, the Disasters Emergency Committee issued an appeal on behalf of the Gazan people. DEC is made up of 14 leading UK aid charities. When some major humanitarian crisis occurs they combine their fundraising efforts. The appeal is broadcast on all major TV and radio stations and large adverts appear in the press. The BBC refused to air the appeal and the other channels felt they had to follow suit.


The Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, made the following statement, justifying his decision:
“Inevitably, an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations, …The danger … is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story. When we’ve turned down DEC appeals in the past on impartiality grounds, it has been because of this risk of giving … the impression that the BBC was taking sides in an ongoing conflict.”

Fair enough, SOYMB supposes...but wait a moment. Hasn’t the BBC just broadcast an appeal by the DEC on the current Syrian humanitarian crisis? Isn’t there an on-going conflict there that surely the impartial BBC does not want to take sides on? Apparently not, it seems.