George Galloway has announced that he will establish his own public enquiry into the BBC’s role in reporting the events of the past few weeks in Gaza.

The Bradford West MP had previously announced that he is refusing to pay his licence fee until the BBC demonstrated a more impartial standard of broadcasting on the conflict. Galloway has been openly critical of the its editorial standpoint on the conflict, arguing that the BBC has a duty, as a publicly funded organisation, to adopt an unbiased approach to such major stories. Many in the country were outraged when the BBC failed to report on the July 19th national demonstration which had been attended by tens of thousands of demonstrators.

It belatedly addressed this with a hastily-arranged piece on its website, for which it had to borrow an image from a rival broadcaster. It has also been commented that since the outcry, the BBC’s reporting had apparently become more balanced. This was in part down to the reporting of Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen from the front-line in Gaza. Strangely - indeed, inexplicably - Bowen is absent from the reporting this week as he is, according to Twitter, ‘on holiday’.

The BBC has been dogged by scandals in the past year and has faced questioning on its integrity, from the child abuse scandal to questions about executive pay-offs, with licence fee payers increasingly turning their backs on the institution in favour of other media outlets.

We will keep you up to date with the developments on the public enquiry. If you can help in any way with the enquiry, please email gallowayg@parliament.uk

www.respectparty.org/2014/08/04/galloway...ic-enquiry-into-bbc/