The BBC is wrong on Gaza appeal

I watched Newsnight on Friday when Caroline Thomson, Chief Operating Officer at the BBC attempted to justify the broadcaster's decision not to broadcast an appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for humanitarian aid to Gaza. She didn't do so well.

This is not about the rights or wrongs of Israel's invasion of Gaza or the rocket attacks on Israel that provoked it. That intervention is thankfully now over and innocent civilians need help.

The DEC is not some fly-by-night partisan organisation: it's the international body that co-ordinated help after the Pakistan and Iranian earthquakes, the Burma hurricane, and the Thailand tsunami. In several - if not all - of these natural disasters, the BBC has broadcast appeals by the DEC.

Of course the situation in Gaza is not a natural disaster - nor was Darfur, yet they broadcast DEC appeals for help with that crisis.

This is not about taking sides - it would take an exceptionally blinkered person to misinterpret a broadcast for aid on behalf of Gaza's civilians as BBC partiality on behalf of Hamas.

The Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander, has urged the BBC to rethink this mistake. He is right to do so. Our Labour Government has already agreed to £30 million in additional aid going to Gaza since the crisis began after Christmas. If that aid can be doubled, trebled or quadrupled by an appeal on the BBC then isn't that exactly the sort of public service we should expect of a public service broadcaster?

UPDATE: BBC Director General Mark Thompson sets out his reasons for rejecting the DEC request here. This is the strongest defence of the BBC position I've seen, but I personally would still have taken the opposite decision.

Should you wish to make a donation to the DEC appeal, please use the following link: http://www.dec.org.uk/item/200