By Peter Lazenby
Dec. 8, 2019
EWISH Labour supporters protested outside the BBC’s Portland Place headquarters in London today over the corporation’s blatant bias in coverage of the general election campaign.
Members and supporters of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) said the corporation’s election coverage “falls disastrously short of its own formal standards of accuracy and balance.”
The campaign group said that repeated and unproven allegations that the Labour Party “is riddled with anti-semitism” were being reported by the BBC as “quasi-factual, with no indication that they are fiercely contested.”
JVL said the BBC was “persistently sidelining expert Jewish commentators critical of the attacks on Labour.”
In a letter to BBC director-general Tony Hall and director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth, JVL co-chairs Jenny Manson and Leah Levane said: “In the closing stages of an acrimonious election campaign, the BBC’s coverage of anti-semitism charges against the Labour Party has been both unbalanced and uncritical.”
The group said the most recent example of BBC bias was its uncritical reporting of the Jewish Labour Movement’s “leak” of its own submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
“JLM re-ran long-debunked allegations against Jeremy Corbyn and the party, adding uncorroborated charges from individuals, many of whom have already had their testimony powerfully challenged,” the group said.
“BBC coverage of JLM’s manufactured ‘news’ entirely disregarded JVL’s own submission to the EHRC which is freely available online. This was yet another example of the corporation’s disgraceful practice of editing out of the news stream material that challenges the ‘Labour is anti-semitic’ narrative.”
Published at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jewish-labour-supporters-protest-against-bbc-bias
