While scanning the BBC News page, I came across this throwaway paragraph, which I think perfectly demonstrates BBC impartiality, or lack thereof, imbedded in an article about the deportation of a Hezbollah spy:

"A more extensive prisoner swap between the two sides could involve two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in 2006 - an act which prompted the 33-day war between Israel and the Shia militant group - and a number of Lebanese citizens held by Israel."

Now it's parahraphs like this that make the more "respectable" mainstream media outlets arguably far more dangerous than the rabid frothing of tabloids like the Daily Mail and TV stations like Fox News. This paragraph, on first glance, looks true enough. Hezbollah did capture 2 Israeli soldiers in 2006, which saw the start of hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah (though clearly the Lebanese people suffered the greatest from this conflict, and not by any accident on Israel's part).

The problem  here is not outright distortion of facts, but rather a sin of ommission, as is usual in BBC coverage. They fail to mention 2 crucial facts:

1) Plans to attack Hezbollah, and by extension Lebanon, were drawn up before the raid by Hizbollah. The killing of 5, and capture of 2, Israeli soldiers was nothing by a pretext to put into action a pre-planned operation, a fact not unknown by the BBC.[1]

2) No connection is made between the Hezbollah raid and the Lebanese civilians held in Israel. Israel's attack on Lebanon was prompted by the capture of Israeli soldiers, according to the BBC, but they do not tell us why these soldiers were captured. Liekwise they do not mention the frequent boarder skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah, or the violations of Lebanese airspace by the Israeli airforce. As a result, the motives for the Hezbollah are left far more open, and we are left to make the connection ourselves, which given the BBC's shoddy reporting is not an easy task for the casual reader.

No doubt if pressed on this issue the BBC will offer the standard media excuses. 'There's not enough room', they'll claim, even though there was enough room to frame Israel's shocking assault on Lebanon as a response to a Hezbollah raid, or they'll point to an article in their archives, and point out that 'Yeah, we have reported that.' Well what a fat lot of good it is reporting it once and never bringing it up again is. The average news reader doesn't have time to trawl through years-worth of BBC news articles for the context behind a 12 paragraph news piece.

As it is, the "context" provided by most BBC news articles is extremely lacking, and strongly biased in favour of certain interests.


Notes
[1] This article itself is extremely hypocritical. The author goes to great lengths to remind readers that Hersh's sources are unnamed, in fact they stress it so much that it's almost as if they're secretly screaming "HERSH IS TALKING CRAP". When it comes to unnamed sources that support the "official" line, however, the BBC does not feel the same need to stress the sources anonymity.

A look at BBC Editorial Guidlines for anonymous sources suggests that it is not a requirement, or even a recommendation, of the BBC that anonymous sources be identified as anonymous, just that their identities be protected. This suggests that it was a concious decision to describe Hersh's sources "anonymous" ad nauseam, rather than a journalistic requirement.