Media Bias

Znet

But in the BBC’s lexicon, escalation has nothing to do with the enormous destruction Israel can unleash on Lebanon; only the occasional, smaller-scale blow Hizbullah scores against Israel.

At noon James Reynolds as good as gave the game away: the Hizbullah strike on Haifa, he said, proved that the rockets are “no longer just an irritant”. Now it was clear why a “serious escalation” had begun: Israel was actually being harmed by Hizbullah’s rockets rather than just irritated. Until then the harm had been mainly inflicted on Lebanese civilians, so no escalation was taking place.

It wasn’t till the 7pm news that I saw meaningful images from Lebanon, as Gavin Hewitt followed a fire crew trying to put out an enormous oil refinery blaze in Tyre. Although we saw some of the suffering of the Lebanese population, the anchor felt obliged to preface the scenes from Lebanon with the statement that they were Israeli “retaliation” for the Haifa attack, even though Israel had been launching such strikes for four days before the lethal rocket strike on Haifa.

In the same broadcast, an Israeli cabinet minister, Shaul Mofaz, was given air time to make the claim that parts of the rockets that landed in Haifa were Syrian-made. Allegations by the Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, widely shown on Arab TV that Israel had been using phosphorus incendiary bombs -- illegal under international law -- received no coverage at all.