Does the BBC boost terrorists???

Sounds like their Arabic service is a winner....

A BRITISH solicitor who set up a website to monitor the BBC’s coverage of events in the Middle East this week released a report claiming that the corporation’s Arabic-language radio programming provided a platform for terrorist organisations who hate Israel.

Trevor Asserson presented his report, co-written by Deena Pinson, at a Jerusalem seminar opened by Tzipi Livni, Israeli’s foreign minister, on Wednesday.

In 2000, Mr Asserson set up www.bbcwatch.co.uk. His latest report ,The BBC Goes Native, has been released in the month that the Corporation launches BBC Arabic Television.

The report accuses the broadcasting network’s Arabic radio output of being “out of control”, and providing a respectable platform to “those who hate the USA and Israel”.

Mr Asserson’s comments are based on a study of the Arabic radio station’s main news-analysis programme, Hadeeth Al-Sa’a, over a four-week period in July and August 2006, at the time of the war between Israel and Hizbollah in Southern Lebanon.

In his report, Mr Asserson says: “We identified 17 spokespeople for Hizbollah and Iran amongst programme guests, and only five for Israel.

“The airtime given by BBC Arabic radio to the pro-Hizbollah position outweighed that given to the pro-Israel position by a ratio of some 4.5 to one.”

He adds that while the programme gave little indication of the destruction caused by the Hizbollah rockets fired into Israel, some of the language used to describe Israel was “hysterical in tone”.

The report also accuses the Corporation of giving a platform to those with extreme anti-American views.