The remit of the BBC is to be impartial in reporting on local and national politics and events.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, they really don't have any duty to report anything impartially except where it impacts on British interests, foreign or domestic. I'm sure they try to do so impartially, although everyone's definition of impartial seems to be different to everyone else's.

I have no comment on the story above although it does seem more than a little fantastic to the outside observer. One wonders who Auntie Beeb first bought that story from and who was actually responsible for filming and reporting it.

If there is any domestic problem with the BBC's news reportage, it is a massive tendency toward sensationalist, tabloidesque stories and scaremongering.

Remember all the hysteria over BSE? We were all going to die, they had experts predicting mass epidemics of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This was, of course, a huge lie.

Going on further, we have the BBC whipping up a revolting grief-frenzy over Princess Diana and declaring her the People's Princess along with all that other frankly disgusting self-indulgent crap.

Tabloid Television is the only way to describe it, and it's probably what was responsible for the gross misrepresentation detailed in the writeup above.

See also: Checkbook Journalism, Rupert Murdoch.

Addendum:I dont see how the Israeli episode above can be called racially slanted. Politically slanted, yes, but I see no evidence of racism in the story. Given that Jews and Palestinians are all Semites, a racial motivation seems, to say the least, unlikely.