The trouble is that the BBC's requirement for impartiality has enabled it, yet again, to do nothing. Yet that inactivity does not have a neutral result. It means an appeal is not heard; that some money is not raised; an instance of suffering is not alleviated; that another child dies. Just so [the BBC's Chief Operating Officer Caroline] Thomson can rest in her bed, assured that she has not upset a correspondent who believes a hospital was really a bomb factory, that there was never any white phosphorus fired at civilians, and that dead toddler was really a suicide bomber. Never has impartiality seemed so very far from moral neutrality.
I don't disagree with Philip Hensher, witing in the Independent; my instinct is the same as his, and had I been deciding this, I'd probably have approved the broadcast. It does seem extreme to categorise a broadcast by the Disasters Emergency Committee as being unacceptably political in nature. And yet. Although I think this judgment is wrong, I am very glad that the BBC has shown it's prepared to face unpopularity in pursuit of impartiality, and that its autocritique plainly goes beyond simply asking itself whether carrying a broadcast would be acceptable to the public. I supported the cautious and thoughtful, though admittedly complex approach to impartiality taken by the BBC Trust in this 2007 report following its misjudged semi-campaigning for the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005; so any sign that the BBC is taking impartiality seriously is good, I think. What's certain is that impartiality requires that the BBC not cave in to pressure from ministers.
A final, and perhaps unpopular thought. I do not accuse the DEC or any of its member of pro-Palestininian or anti-Israeli bias, not does it seem that the BBC is doing so. But it is not right simply to assume that charities like Oxfam, Care International and Save the Children are themselves impartial, however high their reputations: organisations like that often attract liberal-minded and left-wing workers whose values and pet causes can permeate their campaigning - it certainly did when I was an Oxfam volunteer in the 1980s, when many of my colleagues seemed to be more interested in fighting apartheid (a good thing but not directly what Oxfam was there for) and defending the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua than in promoting development. While that kind of bias is far from the worst thing in the world, it's right for the BBC and the public to be watchful about it rather than uncritical.
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