BBC downplays Hezbollah's history of violence

Just Journalism
10 July '10

This week saw the occurrence of two separate controversies in relation to the death of leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah. The Lebanese figure, closely associated with Hezbollah, was eulogised online by both the CNN Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, and the UK’s envoy to Lebanon, Frances Guy.

While neither praised Fadlallah in an official capacity - Nasr made the comment on her Twitter account, while Guy wrote about her personal encounters with him on her blog - both soon came under heavy criticism for their statements. In the case of Nasr, CNN announced that she would no longer be working for the company, and that her tweet ‘did not meet CNN's editorial standards.’

Both of these stories received coverage in the UK media, with all the outlets explaining that Fadlallah was seen as a controversial figure because of his ties to Hezbollah. However, there were noticeable differences in the way that publications presented the militant group.

The Daily Telegraph was the most critical, with its article providing a substantive background on Hezbollah’s history of violence. In ‘Britain's Lebanese ambassador praises Hizbollah founder’, Damien McElroy and Adrian Blomfield noted how the group ‘has been proscribed by the UK as a terrorist organisation since 2008’, and that, after being formed, it had taken ‘dozens of foreigners as hostages, including Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan’. The journalists also cited the outrage of ‘Israeli relatives of those who died during Hizbollah rocket strikes’ and mentioned that Fadlallah had issued fatwas (religious edicts) which ‘authorised suicide bombers who attacked American troops or Israel.’ Hezbollah gained notoriety in 1983 for a suicide attack on a US military base in Lebanon that killed over 300 marines.

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