Beau Bo D'Or

After deleting comments and changing content in news articles on its website, Sky News has now publicly stated that it will not broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal.

It’s pretty obvious that the plan, as I mentioned here was to  let The BBC take the flak (and stoke the flames in its reports) over the weekend while falsely claiming Sky was still discussing whether or not to run the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza.

The TV station had help from its sister company The Times in its deception which, on Friday, said “Sky immediately denied that it had also had reservations.” but Sky News slipped up in an article titled “BBC Under Fire Over Gaza Appeal“, when it published “Mr Thompson said he was concerned that broadcasting the appeal to help Gazans in need of food and shelter might compromise the BBC’s impartiality.
Sky has also refused to run the appeal for the same reason.”
Later, Sky changed the article and removed the comments feature.

If you search for the removed text via Google you will see a listing for the article, but the story is not cached and the url redirects.  However, Yahoo uses Sky as a news provider and you can still see its version of the original article (minus comments) here.

And I thought the BBC was cowardly.
Sky manipulated the news for their own benefit and majored on the BBC angle until the day the DEC broadcast was due to run.

Sky News – First for breaking news word.

Further update :
Sky News has redirected the page linked in my initial post. The new page has a different url, title and contains much of what was in the original linked page. However, Sky has removed the line about it refusing to run the appeal for the same reason as The BBC. There were several comments posted on the old page which is no longer accessible. The new page has no comments – None were carried over.

Original Post

After using weasel words to shift all responsibility onto the BBC, Sky has admitted it will not broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza appeal.

From yesterday’s Times:

Sky immediately denied that it had also had reservations. “We were considering this request internally when the DEC contacted us to let us know that the BBC had decided not to broadcast the appeal at this time. As, by convention, if all broadcasters do not carry the appeal then none do, the decision was effectively made for us,” a spokesman said.

Now that ITV has commendably agreed to run the appeal, today, Sky News website says :

“Mr Thompson said he was concerned that broadcasting the appeal to help Gazans in need of food and shelter might compromise the BBC’s impartiality.
Sky has also refused to run the appeal for the same reason.“, under the headline:
“BBC Under Fire Over Gaza Appeal“

Update:

Maybe I missed it first time (I don’t think so) but the linked page now contains the words :

” A spokesman for Sky said: “We have been in discussions with other broadcasters today and we continue to consider the DEC’s request.”"

We shall wait and see now that Channel 4 has also agreed to show the appeal.

I believe the BBC was concerned about the reaction of a vocal minority had it run the appeal, not because they received any direct pressure.
For this reason, I think Tony Benn’s strategy of atack on te BBC (broadcast on BBC News) was totally wrong. By stating with (as far as I am aware) no proof whatsoever that ‘Israel’ put (direct) pressure on the BBC over this, he has moved the issue clearly into the political arena. Despite anyone’s suspicions, the argument for running the DEC appeal should have been solely on humanitarian grounds.