PREMIUM
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Rockets streamed out of Gaza and Israel pounded the territory with airstrikes early Wednesday as the most severe outbreak of violence since the 2014 war took on many of the AFTER 54 years of struggle against the illegal occupation of their country, Palestinians have turned a corner. “What is happening in Palestine is not complicated; it’s settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing.” That’s just one of the much-shared Instagram posts marking a shift in public perception. Something has changed when people who usually post pictures of their breakfast blueberry pancakes are replacing them with statements about Gaza.
His television plays
Cathy Come Home (1966), and his film
Poor Cow (1967), caused national debate about housing provision, social deprivation, and lone motherhood. He has also directed numerous television plays in support of trade unionism, of which
The Big Flame (1969),
The Rank and File (1971) and
The Price of Coal (1977) are indicative. He also raised the issue of mental health provision and methods in his television play
In Two Minds (1967).
In 1990, he risked and subsequently received a battering from the establishment media for representing British state terrorism and the assassination of Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland in his film
Hidden Agenda. Loach’s
When we politely asked
Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson to explain the basis for a cartoon he had drawn on the Syrian conflict, toys flew to all corners of the room:
[Media Lens] has succeeded in riling me. Well done. If I’m proved worng [sic] I’ll apologise. Meanwhile, fuck off & annoy someone else… No time for this anymore. Sorry. I stand convicted as a cunt. End of …
Journalists with more self-restraint have worked hard to smile through gritted teeth, dismissing our arguments with surreal ‘humour’. In 2005, we challenged John Rentoul, chief political correspondent at the
Independent on Sunday, and currently a visiting professor at King’s College, London, about his dismissal of the first Lancet study into Iraq mortality following the 2003 invasion. His sage reply:
On Richard Sharp, the BBC and Israel/Palestine Coverage
Former GoldmanSachs banker Richard Sharp is the new chairman of the BBC chairman. John Mitchell asks: will Richard Sharp the new Chairman of the BBC pursue ‘impartiality’ in the Israel/Palestine coverage?
Richard Sharp the BBC’s newly appointed chairman, begins his incumbency this month against the background of concern over equal pay, the increasing commercial competition from various online streaming companies and brings into focus the question of the licence fee. Whilst not at the forefront of these immediate issues there is a long-standing controversial one which Sharp will no doubt influence – coverage of the Israel/Palestine question.