BBC’s curious obsession with ‘balance’ helps Jew-hate flourish

Through its remorseless and absurd obsession with “balance,” BBC News is still helping the Jew-haters. This would, in itself, be ironic for any leftish, liberal organisation (which the BBC clearly considers itself to be) but is particularly paradoxical since it is this leftish, liberal sensibility (and I’m being kind here or I’d say “outright bias”) that has played such a significant part in the rise in antisemitism in the first place – and because of the broadcaster’s reach and renown, the rise in antisemitism across the globe.

This insistence on “balance” – where really there is none – works like this: every single time that any report refers to a rise in UK antisemitism or to some specific antisemitic incident, BBC News finds it impossible to report this without “balancing” it with a “report” about Islamophobia.

While there are numerous examples of this phenomenon, an item on the BBC’s “regional” London news on May 8th offers the perfect example of how to unbalance perception through the illusion of “balance.” It was a disturbing report about a Jewish doctor in a London hospital who was the victim of verbal abuse.

It sounded like a pretty scary incident but BBC News could not bring itself to report this without “balancing” it with a 2-minute segment on “Islamophobia” although there were no examples of Islamophobic behaviours in any hospitals relating to the current conflict, though had they researched they might have found examples of Muslim medics expressing hateful views of Jews such as at Northwick Park Hospital.

But even though there are no screaming mobs on UK college campuses calling for the death of Muslim students; even though there are no screaming mobs on London streets carrying banners describing Muslims as “Nazis” and calling for the destruction of the world’s 50 Muslim-majority states; even though there are no screaming mobs demanding the deaths of Muslims over the activities of jihadists; even though there are no reports of Jewish doctors screaming “baby killer” in the face of any Muslim doctor (even if that would have been closer to factual accuracy since Muslim extremists/jihadists actually targeted Israeli babies for slaughter, butchery and beheading while Gazan babies tragically die because Hamas embeds among civilians to use them as human shields.) Yet despite the gargantuan disparity between the present reality of the Jewish experience and the present reality of the Muslim experience, the BBC persists on equating the assault on a Jewish doctor with generalised UK Islamophobia.

I am not saying, by the way, that Islamophobia does not exist. Of course it does. I am merely asking the BBC to refrain from its absurd, mealy-mouthed attempt to equate and “balance” actual assaults, actual extremism and actual attacks with “ooh, by the way, don’t forget the poor Muslims.”

By continuing to equate these, they are not just enabling the very real Jew-hate in British institutions and on British streets – and elsewhere, too – but they are helping it to flourish.