Monday, March 31, 2008

Which is worse, Sky or BBC?

It's a difficult choice in this instance. Sky News managed to get an interview with Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal in Syria. During the discussion Mashaal said that kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was still alive. He also said that the Holocaust was exaggerated by Zionists and, incredibly, that Hamas doesn't deliberately kill anyone.

The BBC also reports that:

Mr Meshaal also urged Israel to agree that civilians should not be part of the current conflict, which has recently seen Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants.
This is some spin on what happened. Here is the Sky News transcript:

TM: It's 2008, can you make an offer that you would only have action against military personnel.

KM: We renew our offer to Israel to let the civilian people from the two sides be free from our conflict. Israel should respond to this offer.

This is an offer which we would like to renew. The problem is on the Israel side.

So which is worse? That Tim Marshall of Sky News considers it an "offer" to not murder civilians deliberately in terrorist attacks or that the BBC spins this "offer" into an urging that Israel stop killing civilians during their targeting of terrorists? It's a close one. But perhaps Sky has an excuse - they were in enemy territory and perhaps they didn't want to end up like Andrew Johnson. What's the BBC's excuse?