Courtesy of News Sniffer we learn of a change to the headline of an article appearing on the BBC News website’s Middle East page and in its magazine section on June 29th.
Here is the one word change to the headline – although the body of the article has remained untouched, including the sentence which appears to have inspired its original title.
What is illogical, however, is that the BBC can publish an entire feature on Qatar without mentioning its funding of the terrorist organization Hamas or its hosting of a conference on the subject of the “Judaization” of Jerusalem”.
No less illogical is the fact that the BBC confines its use of adjectives when describing the antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic Yusuf Qaradawi to the word “populist”.
“Of all the Gulf countries, Qatar is closest to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation that has swept to power in Egypt.
It is home to its spiritual figurehead, the populist preacher Yousef Al-Qaradawi.”
And then, of course, there is the BBC’s illogical airbrushing of Qatar’s less than pristine human rights record – not least the issue of the migrant labourers who comprise some 94% of Qatar’s workforce, but are apparently invisible to the BBC’s Frank Gardner.
“Using its vast wealth from offshore gas deposits, the once sleepiest and slowest of all six Gulf Arab states has recently fast-tracked itself to become an economic powerhouse.
All very impressive for a country with fewer than 500,000 Qatari citizens.”
Ironically, the BBC claims to “broaden UK audiences’ experience of and exposure to different cultures from around the world” and “build a global understanding of international issues”.
Related posts:
BBC advances political propaganda on Jerusalem
From Fourth Estate to Fifth Column (What the Palestine Papers reveal about the Guardian)
