Raffi Berg, the online editor for BBC News coverage on the Middle East, has been at the centre of a massive controversy in recent weeks. But a new petition from former Channel 4 editor Tamara Abood insists that “Raffi is the tip of the iceberg”. And she calls for the sacking of people even higher up than Berg over the BBC‘s shameful (and longstanding) pro-Israel bias, specifically during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Raffi Berg: his job is to water down
Public attention focused in on Berg after journalist Owen Jones published an investigation in December about pro-Israel bias at the BBC.
Having interviewed journalists and other staff at the public service broadcaster, Jones revealed that “senior figures” had been skewing coverage to be more favourable to Israel while dismissing regular objections from employees who demanded the corporation uphold its supposed commitment to providing fair and impartial reporting. And in particular, Jones highlighted the malign role that Berg played. According to one former BBC journalist:
This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.
Others said he “micromanages” coverage, with one insisting that he “has the power to reframe every story”.
Even worse are his connections to the CIA, Mossad, and war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Abood: The BBC is “packed to the rafters with Zionists”
As Jewish Voice for Peace explains:
Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism, and is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of Israel.
It adds that:
While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others.
The pro-Israel (or Zionist) lobby in Britain has a massive influence. In the last parliament, it donated money to a quarter of British MPs, and reportedly had significant sway in the government. Half of the initial cabinet of the current Labour government, meanwhile, had received such funds.
Abood argues that the same is true in the British media sector. As she said in the petition text:
I have first hand experience of the extraordinary and malign influence that Zionist lobby groups exert over programme makers and broadcasters.
I have spent the last 15 months watching in disgust as mainstream broadcasters in the UK have framed what is happening in Gaza through the lens of Israeli propagandists.
But Berg is just a part of this, she stressed:
Raffi is the tip of the iceberg. Scratch the surface of the BBC and you will find it packed to the rafters with Zionists who will quash ideas for programmes that are critical of Israel and who will frame the reporting on Gaza to centre Israeli interests.
Lawyers analysing journalists ‘complicity in genocide’
Abood also insisted:
It is my belief as a former lawyer and tv producer that, in time, our mainstream media will be judged to have been complicit in a genocide by providing cover for Israel’s crimes. In fact, as I write, lawyers who specialise in international law and human rights have many of these so-called “journalists” in their sights.
And she argued that:
BBC license payers are being deliberately mislead about the nature and extent of Israel’s depravity in Gaza. The BBC is breaching its own requirements, and that of Ofcom, for due impartiality. As a license payer, you should be able to trust the BBC as a credible news source. The BBC is no longer credible. It has shown itself to be an outpost of the Israeli Ministry of Misinformation.
Overall, her comments were damning. She said “the BBC subverts the truth in order to influence the public’s response in favour of Israel”, and that there has been “a deliberate strategy of lies and omissions by broadcasters like the BBC“.
Rather than focusing on Raffi Berg, though, she looks to BBC News CEO Deborah Turness. As she emphasised:
Your license fee pays her £400K + salary.
Deborah Turness must go
For her, licence-fee payers deserve so much better. And we completely agree. That’s why we should all support the petition and demand change.
Featured image via screengrab
