Exclusive: World Service director Fiona Crack says platform pursues stories ignored by the Gulf’s state-owned media
A senior BBC executive has defended BBC Arabic as a lone voice in the region covering the “Israeli perspective”, as she warned its critics that it pursued stories ignored by the Gulf’s state-owned media.
The corporation’s Arabic service has come under sustained criticism in recent years, for its selection of coverage and for featuring some guests that had expressed antisemitic views on social media. There have even been calls for the service to be closed down.
In an interview with the Guardian, Fiona Crack, the director of the BBC World Service, said the corporation had apologised for the service’s mistakes and acted to fix them.
However, she also cautioned BBC Arabic’s critics that without it, the Arab world would lose one of the only independent and impartial outlets reaching nearly 40 million people in the region each week. “What would it be without BBC Arabic? For example, in the Gaza war we wouldn’t have heard Israeli perspective, Israeli experience,” she said. “We wouldn’t have heard the kind of internal Israeli political arguments.
