The BBC Governors have announced their panel to review the corporation's Middle East coverage. It will be headed by Sir Quentin Thomas, President of the British Board of Film Classification. He is a former senior civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office and Home Office, where he had responsibility for broadcasting policy prior to the creation of the then Department for National Heritage. He also chaired the panel of experts which pulled together a range of papers in advance of the 2000 Communications White Paper.
The terms of reference are:
"To assess the impartiality of BBC news and current affairs coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with particular regard to accuracy, fairness, context, balance and bias, actual or perceived."
Other panel members include:
Lord Eames: Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
Stewart Purvis: former Editor-in-Chief and Chief Executive, ITN; Professor of Television Journalism, City University
Philip Stephens: Associate Editor and Columnist, Financial Times
Dr Elizabeth Vallance JP: former Head, Department of Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London; Member, Chair of Council, Institute of Education; Committee on Standards in Public Life; Author
As the Guardian notes, this is an area where the BBC has attracted criticism from all sides recently.
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