11/06/2004|||109976320845082823||||||

TEARS FOR ARAFAT - THE BBC SAYS SORRY

Barbara Plett's foolish (but somewhat revealing) "I cried for Yasser" dispatch prompts an apology, reports the Daily Telegraph:

A BBC correspondent's on-air admission that she cried at Yasser Arafat's departure from Palestine was a "misjudgment", the corporation said yesterday after it was inundated with complaints. The BBC, which has long faced accusations of anti-Israeli bias, has received 500 complaints over the broadcast last Saturday by its Middle East correspondent, Barbara Plett, on the Radio 4 programme From Our Own Correspondent.

In the report, Plett described her reaction as the helicopter carrying Arafat - who is in intensive care in a Paris hospital - lifted off from his compound in Ramallah. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry . . . without warning," she said.

BBC sources said that senior editors had remonstrated with Plett over her words, adding that she too accepted that they had been "misjudged". A BBC spokesman said: "From Our Own Correspondent is one of the few programmes that offers listeners personal stories behind the headlines, a format which permits correspondents to write freely."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/tears-for-arafat-bbc-says-sorry.html|||11/06/2004 05:45:00 pm|||||||||

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