There is little likelihood, without firm intervention by the British government, that the BBC will relinquish its leadership of the global anti-Israel movement that has contributed to so much suffering, misery and bloodshed.
Following accusations of slanted reporting of the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000, and the rise in Jew-hatred caused by it, in 2004 the BBC was pressured to open an inquiry into its coverage, by Malcolm Balen, former BBC News editor. For
This biased journalism was crowned by commentary direct from Jeremy Bowen, whose report from Gaza at the end of the conflict looked more like pro-Hamas propaganda than objective reporting.
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The veteran correspondent on wanderlust, surviving ageism – and the brush with death that still haunts him today
10 July 2021 • 5:00am I miss a bit of excitement’: John Simpson photographed at home in Oxford, June 2021
Credit: Ben Quinton
All novelists draw on their own experiences to some extent in their writing, but John Simpson goes much further. In Our Friends in Beijing, his second foray into fiction, the BBC’s long-serving world affairs editor reveals in public for the first time an old wound from one of the 30-plus war zones from which he has reported.
His alter ego in the thriller, veteran foreign correspondent Jon Swift (‘70 per cent of what’s in the novel happened to me in one way or another’), suffers a brutal beating and a chilling mock execution. It is based on what happened to Simpson himself in the summer of 1982 during a war in Lebanon. It has haunted this renowned broadcasting elder statesman ever since.