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IPI defends BBC war coverage

VIENNA MARCH 31. The International Press Institute (IPI), global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, has condemned recent attempts by British Cabinet Ministers to undermine the reporting of the British Broadcasting Corporation on the war in Iraq.

In a statement here, the IPI said that according to information provided to it there have been a number of instances of Ministers criticising the BBC for providing 24-hour coverage that is allegedly distorting the public's perspective of the Iraqi war.

Moreover, Ministers are apparently alleging that the BBC is failing to properly distinguish between the Iraqi regime and the allied forces.

Such accusations have led to claims that the BBC is behaving as if there were a "moral equivalence" between the two sides in the war. A claim that led an article in The Guardian on March 30 to quote a "senior" Government figure as saying, "on the one side is a dictatorship that allows no scrutiny of what it does; on the other are democracies which have a policy of openness and allow themselves to be questioned".

On the question of the 24-hour news cycle, the IPI director, Johann P. Fritz, said, "the BBC has both a right and an absolute duty to report on this war. It is vital to the viewing public that they receive a plurality of views in order to understand what is happening in Iraq." "Politicians have assiduously cultivated the news cycle for their own benefit in peace time and it would seem to me to be both wrong and irresponsible for politicians to criticise the media during a time of war purely because they do not like what they are seeing on their television screens."

On the subject of news reporting, Mr. Fritz commented, "the U.K. Government must accept the fact that the best people to decide news are not politicians, but the broadcasters themselves".

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