Tony Benn Owns The BBC

[kimzor]

Good on him.

[ame="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=E21MdXe3BOQ"]YouTube - Tony Benn to BBC "If you wont broadcast the Gaza appeal then I will myself"[/ame]

[LesMTS]

I love Tony Benn.

[kimzor]

He is a hero.

[ame="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZLGHy2WS_M"]YouTube - Tony Benn Beats Bolton To A Pulp[/ame]

[Jaemi]

I have a lot of admiration of Tony Benn.

[LesMTS]

The BBC's official response to the controversy (bullshit, basically):

Complaint

We received complaints about the BBC's decision not to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee to raise funds for Gaza.

The BBC's response

We decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal because we wished to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of covering a continuing news story where issues of responsibility for civilian suffering and distress are intrinsic to the story and remain highly contentious. We also could not be confident that the aid resulting from audience donations could reach those it was intended for at a time of a fragile ceasefire and sporadic border access. We will of course continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza.

The BBC's director-general Mark Thompson has therefore explained the decision in more detail in a number of television and radio broadcasts and online at our Editors' blog. Please follow the link on this page to read his explanation in full.

The link from the last sentence: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditor...za_appeal.html

humanitarian issues - the suffering and distress of civilians and combatants on both sides of the conflict, the debate about who is responsible for causing it and what should be done about it - are both at the heart of the story and contentious.

(emphasis mine)

LOLOLOLOLOL

[erithromycin]

There was an amazing moment on BBC News 24 at about 4 o'clock today where, while reporting this story on BBC News 24 from the studio, they cut to someone who was reporting live from outside Broadcasting House.

Genius.

[erithromycin]

There's another story here though, if you want to take a difficult position on it, which relates not to the political side but the capability of DEC to deliver aid in the region. Suppose you do raise money for Gaza, and it gets to the aid agencies there (as I would expect it would, because these aren't exactly cowboy charities); what are the odds of the supplies and services those monies have paid for being used? Israel can and does shut down the border on what amounts to a whim. Other supplies get smuggled in from Egypt in tunnels at the kind of margins one would expect from war profiteering; there's no way the agencies can use that to get supplies in because Israel would do everything within their power to get them kicked out.

So the ability to distribute aid is, in effect, entirely governed by the whims of the State of Israel. Ignoring the politics and the history as much as we can, recent events illustrate that Israel can and will act without warning to shut down the border, to bomb targets in Gaza and so on. As such, the emergency can effectively be argued to be still ongoing in such a way as to prevent humanitarian relief from being delivered. Since there's only a finite amount of charitable giving, isn't it better it goes somewhere it can be used, rather than to somewhere where it is clearly needed?

[Dec]

Here, leave me out of it.

[erithromycin]

Here, leave me out of it.

We all know what you did. We can understand why you did it, even empathise, but we can't condone it. You know why. So we can't "leave you out of it". You're too involved. You may in fact be so involved you can't even tell.

[Jaemi]

The bbc report last night (10pm i think), had the website all over it.

[metallideth]

Feckin' love Tony Benn, what a legend.

[Shannow]

Tony Benn won the 'pipesmoker of the year' award in 1992. So he's awright by me.