Haaretz
Cheshvan 24, 5766
LONDON - The British Broadcasting
Corporation has upheld a complaint against one of its journalists who said
in a radio report she cried when a dying Yasser Arafat was flown from the
West Bank in 2004.
Barbara Plett made the remark in a dispatch for
the From Our Own Correspondent program describing how she felt when a
helicopter carrying Arafat, who was gravely ill, took off from his
compound, according to a BBC Web site.
"When the helicopter
carrying the frail old man rose from his ruined compound, I started to
cry," she said in the 30 October, 2004 broadcast.
Arafat died at a
French military hospital in Paris on November 11, 2004, aged
75.
The BBC Governors' Program Complaints Committee initially
cleared Plett after hundreds of listeners complained but upheld part of an
appeal and said she "breached the requirements of due
impartiality."
The complaint considered by the committee claimed
this "tearful eulogy" would not be matched by a BBC report extolling Ariel
Sharon.
The BBC director of news Helen Boaden later apologised for
what she described as "an editorial misjudgment."