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BBC reporter on terrorists and elected politicians - both great leaders

Monday, 18th February 2008

A report last week by the BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley, on what he called "an amazing day for Lebanon" - the day when a memorial rally for Rafik Hariri was followed by Imad Mughniyeh's funeral - concluded with this astonishing sentence:

The army is on full alert as Lebanon remembers two war victims with different visions but both regarded as great national leaders.

That's a former Prime Minister being equated by the BBC with one of the most unspeakable terrorists ther world has ever known.

Not that it went unnoticed. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Don Mell, The Associated Press's former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as "an outrage" and "beyond belief."
American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh's men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP's chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.
...In his letter to the British state broadcaster, Mell wrote: "For you to refer to former prime minister Rafik Hariri and Imad Mughniyeh as 'great national leaders' in the same sentence is beyond belief. One was an elected leader who spent years and millions of his own money rebuilding his country. The other was probably the world's second most notorious terrorist, who was responsible for, in addition to running a major criminal enterprise, destroying the US Embassy, the French and US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; the hijacking of TWA 847; the bombing of the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires, [and] the kidnapping and murder of many Westerners in Lebanon, including Terry Anderson, Terry Waite, John McCarthy."
Mell noted that he personally had "a familiarity with these events" since he had witnessed many of them and "was with Mr. Anderson when he was kidnapped in 1985."
Responding to Mughniyeh's death last week, Anderson called him "the primary actor in my kidnapping and many others."
...In his letter to the BBC, Mell went on, "Most recently, Mr. Mugnhiyeh was responsible for provoking the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006, which one may ask, accomplished what?"
He concluded: "I seldom criticize the reporting of others because of my great belief in the exchange of differing viewpoints regardless of source, and for my great respect for the first amendment of my country's constitution. But today you went too far. You've done your great institution and nation a huge disservice."

This is, of course, far from unusual. The BBC thought it fine for its reporter to openly weep at Yassir Arafat's funeral. This time, however, it has made a semblance of an apology in a statement to the Jerusalem Post:

While there is no doubt that supporters of Hizbullah did regard Mughniyeh in such terms [as a great leader], we accept that the scripting of this phrase was imprecise. The description of Imad Mughniyeh should have been directly attributed to those demonstrating their support for him.

Ah, how sweet of them to be so concerned about the feelings of Mughniyeh's mourners.

I can think other words I'd use to describe Hawkesley's report rather than "imprecise"; I'm sure you can, too. And there was, after all, something of an apology:

We accept that this part of the report was open to misinterpretation. We apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this item.

But it's not that people were offended that's the problem. It's the mindset of the reporter, and the editors who let his words through, that's the real issue.

UPDATEL Apologies - Melanie had already covered this at her blog.