Israel has attacked Gaza Flotilla (dead and wounded)

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here is the Guardian's headline about the BBC's investigation of a BBC documentary about the Gaza flotilla:

BBC film on Gaza aid flotilla praised by trust despite breaching guidelines

BBC Trust clears Panorama documentary on Mavi Marmara over majority of complaints, but upholds three out of 51 points

All sounds very promising.

The BBC standing up to the Israeli lobby.

Uh - no. Here's the detail:

The accuracy breaches related to the failure to include preliminary autopsy reports into how activists died and more details of the exact nature of the aid for Gaza being carried by the flotilla.

Panorama was also found by the BBC Trust to have breached impartiality guidelines by not verifying that the Israelis took proper care of the badly wounded following allegations of mistreatment of some of the casualties.

(snip)

The three key complaints relating to the points that were upheld included, "insufficient detail about the circumstances of the deaths", "the omission of allegations about Israeli mistreatment of the passengers after the flotilla was taken over" and "the misrepresentation of the humanitarian aims of the flotilla and of the Turkish humanitarian organisation, the IHH".

Regarding the claim that the manner in which the nine people killed was fundamental to the accuracy of the Panorama documentary, the BBC Trust agreed that because of the lack of clear video footage of anyone being shot, details from the preliminary autopsy reports would have "given a broader picture and added to the programme's description of how the activists died".

The ESC decided that "the information about the volume and nature of the gunshot wounds detailed in the preliminary autopsy reports gave a fuller picture of the manner in which the Israelis killed nine people and the level of force deployed by the Israeli commandos."

It also said that on the matter of the treatment of casualties by the Israelis, "the imagery and the accompanying script line ('The Israelis evacuated the badly wounded to hospital') would have left viewers with the impression that the badly wounded were all promptly and appropriately cared for. The committee noted that, although not proven, there are detailed allegations of mistreatment of at least some of the casualties."

Those three points are absolutely fundamental.

This is not a documentary to be praised. Rather it is a documentary to be thrown in the trash....