This press release from the Palestine Campaign beggars belief...

PRESS RELEASE
for immediate release: 31st January 2012 *
*BBC Trust rules in favour of censoring ‘Palestine’
The BBC has admitted it was ‘overcautious’ in editing the word ‘Palestine’ from an artist’s performance on Radio 1Xtra and has said it is ‘looking to learn’ from the way it handled the situation.

However, in a ruling released today (31/01/12), the BBC Trust said the final content that was broadcast on the Charlie Sloth Hip Hop M1X – a music programme – was not biased and therefore did not breach its editorial guidelines.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has spent eight months trying to find out why the decision was made to censor the lyrics of a freestyle performance by the rapper, Mic Righteous. Appearing on the Charlie Sloth show in February 2011, he sang: ‘I can scream Free Palestine for my beliefs’.

BBC producers replaced the word ‘Palestine’ with the sound of breaking glass, and the censored performance was repeated in April on the same show.

Amena Saleem, of PSC, said: ‘In its correspondence with us, the BBC said the word Palestine isn’t offensive, but ‘implying that it is not free is the contentious issue’, and this is why the edit was made.

‘Putting aside the BBC’s ignorance of international law, which states unambiguously that Palestine is under occupation, we have argued that this decision clearly shows the BBC’s bias against Palestine. Unable to counter this point, the BBC Trust has moved the goalposts and decided to look at the censored content that was broadcast in February and April 2011.

‘And the Trustees have decided that the content from which the word ‘Palestine’ had been edited was not biased against Palestine. This level of manipulation and duplicity would not be out of place in Catch 22.’

Ms Saleem added: ‘It’s a great shame that, in the year of the Arab Spring when the BBC was covering the struggle of millions of people for freedom, it remained wedded to its institutionalised bias against the Palestinians and refused to even recognise the fact of their occupation.’

In May 2011, 19 artists, MPs, academics and lawyers signed a letter to the Guardian protesting at the edit as ‘an attack on the principles of free speech’. Signatories included the director Ken Loach, and comedians Mark Thomas, Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel and Alexei Sayle. Ends

Contact
Media contact: Amena Saleem
T: 020 7700 6192
E: amena.saleem@palestinecampaign.org

The Libyan regime thinks it's a good idea to do this to journalists:

Three members of the BBC Arabic team in Tripoli were detained and beaten while reporting on the situation in Libya. They were arrested on Monday (07 March) and taken to various barracks where they suffered repeated assaults, were masked and handcuffed, and were subject to a mock execution.

There's a full transcript from the BBC on Christopher Dickey's blog, pretty harrowing stuff:

G: "there was a big iron gate. It looked like a film set, like an execution place. They took us out of the car and the middle of the compound there was a cage, they put three of us in the cage and the last thing I saw before the door shut they hit Feras with an AK 47. We started hearing him groaning. They turned up the radio, all Qaddafi songs."

C: "They were wearing uniforms with no badges of rank. Some of then had their faces covered."

F: "they were kicking and punching me, 4 or 5 men. I went down on to my knees. They attacked me as soon as I got out of the car. They knocked me down to the ground with their guns, AK-47s. I was down on my knees and I heard them cocking their guns. I thought they were going to shoot me. It was a fake execution. Then they took me into the room."

It seemed to be something like a guard room. Plain concrete with a heavy door, looked like a cell though they wondered if the guards slept there.

F: "They took me inside and left me alone for a few minutes and then they started. It was three by four, iron door, like a cell. After 15 minutes they were hitting me and kicking me very hard, the worst since I arrived, they put cuffs on my legs. They put three layers over my face, something like a surgical hat, the thing a nurse would wear but over my face."

"I was on the floor on my side, hands and feet cuffed, lying half on a mattress, and they were beating me."

"Before they covered my face up a big black guy, a very strong guy pulled my head back by my hair and hit me on the face."

"They were saying I’m a spy working for British intelligence, they asked me about the $400 and £60 and some dinars I was carrying. They asked if I was given the money from the intelligence department I worked for."

"I can’t remember how long it went for."

Unbelievable — glad they made it out alive.

Automatically posted links for December 12th through December 18th:

• Democracy Digest - Newsletter on democracy developments in Arab world and elsewhere, current issue has article on MB
• BBC World Service | 'Free to Speak' Events - Is new media the only truly independent media in the Arab world today?
• GWOT: Egypt - Negar Azimi on Egypt and the "Global War On Terror"
• Islamist calls for boycott of Egypt billionaire - "An Islamist shaikh on Monday called for a boycott of the companies of telecommunications billionaire Naguib Sawiris for speaking out against the influence of Islam on public life in Egypt."
• YEARENDER: In Egypt, unrest will spill over into 2008 - corrected : Middle East World - In the last few months of 2007, Egypt has experienced a series of massive workers strikes, motivated by none other than poor standards of living and lack of privileges, foreboding the beginning of a possible "uprising" by Egypt's poor.
• Incumbent Regimes and the ?King?s Dilemma? in the Arab World: Promise and Threat of Managed Reform - Carnegie report says political stagnation seen as more likely outcome if regimes not serious about reform
• Arab Reform Bulletin: December 2007 - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World - New book by Carnegie Endowment
• Le Monde.fr : Le 10 était parfait pour le colonel Kadhafi - On Qadhafi's visit to Paris coinciding with international human rights day
• Anthropologists on the Front Lines - TIME - TIME looks at debates in academic community about Human Terrain Teams
• The Press Association: Army chief among Beirut blast dead - Michel Suleiman successor killed