NOVANEWS
The pictures of protesters facing clouds of tear gas in Turkey’s Takism Square is something I’ll never forget and will be familiar to anyone watching the news in the UK these past few weeks.
But when protests first broke out the BBC’s broadcast partner in Turkey, NTV News, censored the protests and has since been caught doctoring the images it shows to its viewers. The channel has even admitted publicly that its lack of coverage of the outbreak of protests was in direct response to government pressure. That’s why I have started a petition calling on the BBC to stop its partnership with NTV.
The BBC’s UK coverage of the protests says NTV has “tended to steer clear of covering the demonstrations” and is “loth to irritate the government because their owners’ business interests at times rely on government support.” [1] And yet the BBC guidelines state: “Any external relationship must not undermine the BBC’s core values of impartiality, editorial integrity, and independence.” The petition has already reached the attention of the BBC Director of Global News but the BBC is refusing to reconsider its partnership and still lets the channel re-broadcast BBC news daily even while NTV continues to show bias in its reporting. Please sign my petition to make sure BBC takes action to uphold standards of independent journalism around the world.
Thank you,
Ziad 1. BBC – Turks deprived of TV turn to Twitter for protest news
