• Home
• About Sara
• RSS

A broadcaster, not a referee

Many years ago in my youth, I became the youngest female football referee in the UK. And whilst I never eached the heights of Graham Poll, or one of my early colleagues, Phil Sharp, I certainly followed the unwritten rule of the game – a good referee is one that you don’t notice.

Unfortunately in the case of the vetoed DEC appeal for Gaza, the BBC has become the story. Far from being the vehicle for broadcasts, it has become the broadcast itself. Like the Ross-Brand saga (which I thankfully missed most of by being on the other side of the world!), it is not simply giving us the news, but making it too.

The BBC Director General Mark Thompson firstly says that the BBC won’t broadcast the appeal because they are not sure that the aid will get through. I’d rather take the word of organisations such as Red Cross, Save the Children and Oxfam on that one, Mr Thompson. This was used as the reason not to broadcast a similar DEC appeal for East Africa in 2006 and also initially for the Burma appeal last year. Thompson’s second reason is that showing the appeal would prejudice the BBC’s impartiality and give the impression it was “backing one side” over the other. The only other time that this has been used as an excuse (for that is what it is) is in Lebanon 2006, for an appeal for victims of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

Impartial about what – the terrible conditions endured by fellow human beings, many of them children? Backing which side, that of life over death?

For a real understanding, I must once again applaud the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who said:

“This is not a row about impartiality but rather about humanity. This situation is akin to that of British military hospitals who treat prisoners of war as a result of their duty under the Geneva convention. They do so because they identify need rather than cause.

“This is not an appeal by Hamas asking for arms but by the Disasters Emergency Committee asking for relief. By declining their request, the BBC has already taken sides and forsaken impartiality.”

LibDem leader Nick Clegg also got it right when he told Andrew Marr:

“It’s an insult to the viewing public to suggest they can’t distinguish between the humanitarian needs of thousands of children and families in Gaza and the political sensitivities of the Middle East.  It’s a distinction which anyone can make and to suggest the BBC should somehow not allow people to show their compassion because of the wider controversies in the Middle East is a case, in this instance, of the BBC totally getting its priorities upside down.”

I’ve not commented on events in Gaza previously, because I know from experience that it will simply descend into a slanging match between others. There are enough places for that sort of closed minds to ‘debate’. But I’m not prepared to sit back and watch the terrible conditions that people in Gaza are having to live in. So my little protest is to place an appeal for Gaza on the sidebar of this blog and to double the amount that I would otherwise have given to the appeal. I urge you to do likewise. And whilst you are on the web, go to the web site for Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and light an e-candle. Because there’s nothing wrong with favouring humanity over hatred, wherever it is in the world.

Related posts:

1. BBC 'impartiality' – Obama's inauguration speech 'misrecorded'
2. Don’t you know what the whistle’s for, ‘Arry?
3. Britain's gone topless