Protestors storm BBC building over Gaza appeal
MPs lend support to parliamentary motion over BBC screening Gaza appeal
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Sunday, 25, Jan 2009 07:24
Dozens of protestors have occupied the BBC's headquarters in Glasgow over the corporation's refusal to screen a Gaza charity appeal.
Members of the Stop the War Coalition and Palestinian groups moved into the building's lobby to place extra pressure on the BBC to reverse its decision.
More than 50 MPs have already lent their support to a parliamentary motion urging the BBC to screen the Gaza charity appeal.
Labour MP Richard Burden is to table an early day motion in the Commons on Monday with the backing of 51 Mps from across the House.
The Archbishop of York has also joined critics of the BBC as the corporation continues to resist pressure to screen the appeal in question.
ITV, Channel 4 and Five all announced on Saturday that they planned to screen the Disaster Emergency Committee's (DEC) film from Monday but the BBC has declared broadcasting the appeal could damage its stance of political impartiality.
The move has provoked public outcry, with some 2,000 protesters demonstrating outside Broadcasting House in London on Saturday and now Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu has criticised the BBC's approach.
In a statement he said the controversy over the appeal was "not a row about impartiality but rather about humanity".
"This situation is akin to that of British military hospitals who treat prisoners of war as a result of their duty under the Geneva convention," he went on.
"They do so because they identify need rather than cause.
"This is not an appeal by Hamas asking for arms but by the Disasters Emergency Committee asking for relief. By declining their request, the BBC has already taken sides and forsaken impartiality."
The BBC's director general Mark Thompson earlier outlined the corporation's decision, saying that airing the appeal could see the public questioning the BBC's impartiality in covering conflict in Gaza.
"Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations," he wrote in a blog for the BBC website.
"The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story."
However, Michael Lyons, chairman of the corporation's governing body the BBC Trust, has contacted Mr Thompson expressing concern over "undue interference" in the BBC's "editorial independence", after a number of politicians criticised the corporation.
In a letter to Mr Thompson on Saturday, he stressed the Trust would "do everything in our power to ensure that you are given the space to make the editorial decisions you feel, after due consideration, are right in the circumstances".
The DEC - which represents several major aid organisations - has raised millions of pounds in the past for victims of wars and natural disasters through its broadcast appeals.