“BBC pays £200,000 to cover up report on anti-Israel bias” (& Live crocodiles seized at Gaza border)

March 27, 2007

* Deliberately blowing up children in cars “is not terrorism”
* Telling the UN the truth, face-to-face, as seen on YouTube
* Saudis prevent entry of Israeli journalist traveling with UN chief
* Live crocodiles seized at Israel-Gaza border crossing

This dispatch mainly concerns the media itself, with an initial item about the United Nations.

 

CONTENTS

1. Drama at UN Human Rights Council 4th session
2. Editor of French weekly found not guilty of insulting Muslims
3. Taliban demands met for Italian journalist
4. BBC accused of “shameful hypocrisy” for covering up Balen Report
5. Deliberately blowing up children in cars “is not terrorism”
6. How many BBC employees does it take to change a light bulb?
7. U.S. Congress passes resolution for persecuted Bangladeshi journalist
8. Newspaper ad revenues plunge
9. Digital decision threatens job cuts at the Guardian
10. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”
11. And finally... Live crocodiles seized at Israel-Gaza border crossing
12. “BBC pays £200,000 to ‘cover up report on anti-Israel bias’” (Daily Mail, March 23, 2007)
13. “Television Takeover” (Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2007)
14. “Saudi Arabia bars Israeli journalist traveling with U.N. chief” (NY Times, March 24, 2007)



[Note by Tom Gross]

DRAMA AT UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL 4TH SESSION

As a follow up to the dispatch titled Saudi gang-rape victim gets 90 lashes for International Women’s Day (March 8, 2007), it is worth watching the speech delivered by a UN Watch representative to the UN Human Rights Council last Thursday in Geneva.

Finally someone tells the truth directly to the faces of what he calls “the despots who run the UN… who seek to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.”

His short speech can be watched here.

An astonished UN Human Rights Council President Luis Alfonso De Alba then responds as follows:

“For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you’d kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the Council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.”

EDITOR OF FRENCH WEEKLY FOUND NOT GUILTY OF INSULTING MUSLIMS

In what is being hailed as an important victory for freedom of speech, a French court has ruled in favor of a French satirical weekly that faced charges brought by two Muslim groups after it republished Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed.

The charges were brought by the Paris Mosque and by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France. They accused the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and its editor-in-chief, Philippe Val, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion.”

If found guilty, Val could have faced a six-month prison term, and the newspaper would have been fined 22,000 euro ($29,000).

On the cover of its February 8, 2006 edition, Charlie Hebdo republished the twelve Danish Mohammed cartoons and an original drawing by the French cartoonist Cabu depicting a crying Mohammed with his head in his hands, saying, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.” The cartoons were published in solidarity with the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, who published them in September 2005, and whose staff then faced death threats from Muslim radicals.

The French court said that given the context of its publication, it saw no “deliberate intention of directly and gratuitously offending the Muslim community.” Last September, a Danish court rejected a similar lawsuit against Jyllands Posten.

Two leading center-right French presidential candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Bayrou, supported the French weekly, while left-wing candidates stayed mum in a bid to court the Muslim fundamentalist vote in France’s upcoming presidential elections.

To view the Mohammed cartoons, see this page.

TALIBAN DEMANDS MET FOR ITALIAN JOURNALIST

An Italian journalist was freed by the Taliban last week after the Afghan government caved in to the kidnappers’ demands, releasing five Taliban prisoners at the urging of Italy’s left-wing government.

The journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, was freed after two weeks in captivity. The reporter’s Afghan driver, who was also seized, was beheaded, and the fate of his translator is not known.

Mastrogiacomo, who writes for Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, and the two Afghans traveling with him were kidnapped by the Taliban on March 5 in Helmand province.

Mastrogiacomo arrived in Rome on a flight from Kabul last week, and was met at the airport by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The journalist raised his fists in exultation as he stepped off the plane and waved at reporters.

Alfredo Mantovano, an opposition senator and member of a parliamentary committee that oversees Italy’s secret service agencies, commented, “Italy is in Afghanistan... to help with the country’s reconstruction, achieving that also by combating terrorism... Now it turns out that terrorists are released in exchange for the release of an Italian. There are no known precedents for that in Italian missions abroad.”

Mastrogiacomo told RAI Tg3 News this week that whilst in captivity he saw his captors cut off the head of one of the two Afghans kidnapped with him and thought he would be next to die.

BBC ACCUSED OF “SHAMEFUL HYPOCRISY” FOR COVERING UP BALEN REPORT

The first article attached below reports that “The BBC is spending £200,000 [$390,000] trying to prevent publication of a report on alleged bias in its Middle East reporting. It will fight a landmark [British] High Court action [brought by a London solicitor, who is Jewish] appealing against a ruling under the Freedom of Information Act that the findings should be revealed. Last night it faced the twin accusation that it was wasting licence payers’ money and that it was guilty of ‘gross hypocrisy’, having used the Freedom of Information legislation itself many times to break news stories.”

The BBC has hired one of Britain’s top barristers to fight the case. The Balen Report was compiled in 2004 by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen after allegations of pro-Palestinian bias in BBC reporting. It is thought the report runs to 20,000 words and is highly critical of the BBC’s coverage in the region.

Conservative MP David Davies said: “An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using taxpayers’ money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is indefensible.

“I think the BBC is guilty of shameful hypocrisy. What could possibly be in this report that could be worth £200,000 to bury? What is it they feel is so awful in this report?”

The BBC is regularly accused of lying about Israel. For example, last year it made up a story that a Lebanese town had been wiped out.

In 2004 the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing its then Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin of anti-Semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups” in a report on a would-be suicide bomber.

I also attach a selection of readers’ comments after the article below as an indication of how Daily Mail readers – so-called “Middle England” – view the BBC, which is very different from the British elites many of whom love the twisted news about Israel and the U.S. which has become a hallmark of BBC news broadcasts.

The Times of London has also followed up the Daily Mail story in an article today titled “BBC asks court to block Israel report.”

DELIBERATELY BLOWING UP CHILDREN IN CARS “IS NOT TERRORISM”

Both the BBC and Reuters, as has been noted on this email list/website before, do not call a terrorist a terrorist. This has long been the case when busloads of Israeli schoolchildren were targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers. Now it is being applied to Iraq too. Reuters yet again failed to mention the word “terror” after a particularly horrendous attack last week in Iraq, in which terrorists sent a car with children into a crowded market in Baghdad, ran out and then detonated it with the children still inside. (Children in the car had lowered the suspicion of guards at a nearby checkpoint.)

Reuters called the attackers “insurgents” and the attack a “militant” one, but nowhere does the word terrorist appear. Apparently it was not an act of terror, according to Reuters.

For more, see the articles “The Case of Reuters, A news agency that will not call a terrorist a terrorist” and “The BBC discovers ‘terrorism,’ briefly, Suicide bombing seems different when closer to home”.

HOW MANY BBC EMPLOYEES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?

Another waste of British taxpayers’ money has come to light, as BBC staff have been stopped from replacing light bulbs.

The corporation is paying up to £10 ($19) for each replacement bulb to be fitted by an electrician. The farcical situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a project manager with the BBC, complained in a letter to the BBC’s in-house magazine.

“I called up to ask for a new light bulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost £10... On telling them I’d buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of £1 for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations.”

U.S. CONGRESS PASSES RESOLUTION FOR PERSECUTED BANGLADESHI JOURNALIST

In a rare show of bi-partisanship, the U.S. Congress has passed House Resolution 64 which makes it the “sense of the U.S. Congress” that charges against crusading Muslim journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury be dropped and all harassment against him ended.

As explained in previous dispatches on this list, Choudhury is the Bangladeshi Muslim jailed and tortured after urging relations with Israel, advocating interfaith dialogue with Jews, and exposing the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh. He faces a possible death penalty for his “crimes”.

In a message, Choudhury thanked the United States, and said that it will “help Muslims who oppose extremism to stand up against it without fleeing to the West, since they know they will have protectors.”

NEWSPAPER AD REVENUES PLUNGE

While many American newspapers still have healthy profit margins, advertising revenue declined dramatically last month. At USA Today, the U.S.’s biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Ads in the print edition of the New York Times declined 7.5 percent to $93.7 million, and at the Wall Street Journal by 10 percent. Whilst ad spending on newspaper web sites rose, many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening problem.

The newspaper companies blamed the declines on the continuing shift of classified advertisers from print to online, especially to mostly free sites like Craig’s List.

DIGITAL DECISION THREATENS JOB CUTS AT THE GUARDIAN

Job cuts at the Guardian group in Britain have become more likely as it became the latest media company to integrate its print and online operations.

The publisher of The Guardian, The Observer and the Guardian Unlimited website has told employees that the group had to cut costs and modernize to progress. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the company was still run in three “silos” – with the newspapers and website run as separate operations – and was hampered by “an old media mentality”.

Cost cuts will help finance more than 100 new jobs in its digital media operations over the next 12 months as the group prepares for a “24/7 news operation”. The paper is aggressively attempting to expand its presence and political agenda globally through the Internet.

For more on Rusbridger, see: “New Prejudices for Old: The European press and the Intifada”.

“IF YOU HAVE A GOOD PRODUCT, YOU MUST SELL IT IN A GOOD WAY. THE UNITED STATES IS A VERY GOOD PRODUCT”

Attached below are three articles. The second, from the Wall Street Journal, is on the U.S.- taxpayer-financed Arabic television station Al-Hurra. According to Iraqi politician Mithal al-Alousi, and others, the television station is “becoming a platform for terrorists.”

Alousi says “until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore.”

Stories that he believes should be investigated further, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And moderate Arab voices, which used to be given airtime on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent.

“Al-Hurra should have the role of transporting democracy, and to help Iraqis understand freedom,” Alousi says. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”

For more on al-Alousi, see Mithal al-Alousi: Paying a heavy price for recognizing Israel’s existence (Feb. 10, 2005).

***

The final article below reports that Saudi Arabia has barred entry to a Washington-based Israeli journalist traveling with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his current Middle East tour.

Orly Azoulay, the Washington bureau chief of Yediot Ahronot, was unable to obtain a visa to Saudi Arabia despite assurances the Saudi mission in New York gave the United Nations last week, said Michele Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman.

No newspaper columnists have compared Saudi Arabia to apartheid South Africa in recent days even though this Israeli journalist was barred from entering a country simply on the basis of her ethnicity. (Israeli Arabs are allowed into Saudi Arabia but not Israeli Jews.)

AND FINALLY... LIVE CROCODILES SEIZED AT ISRAEL-GAZA CROSSING

On Monday, guards at the Rafah crossing between Israel and Gaza noticed a Palestinian woman who looked “unusually fat,” so she was taken to an examination room to be searched by a female guard. Moments later the female guard ran out of the room screaming. She had found three live crocodiles strapped to the woman’s body. She said she wanted to sell them to private crocodile collectors among Palestinian government officials.

Wael Dahab, a spokesman for the Palestinian guards at the crossing, said another woman recently tried to bring in a monkey tied to her chest, and another traveler tried to smuggle in a tiger cub.

-- Tom Gross



FULL ARTICLES

BBC PAYS £200,000 TO “COVER UP REPORT ON ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS”

BBC pays £200,000 to ‘cover up report on anti-Israel bias’
By Paul Revoir
The Daily Mail
March 23, 2007

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444074&in_page_id=1770

The BBC is spending £200,000 trying to prevent publication of a report on alleged bias in its Middle East reporting.

It will fight a landmark High Court action next week appealing against a ruling under the Freedom of Information Act that the findings should be revealed.

Last night it faced the twin accusation that it was wasting licence payers’ money and that it was guilty of “gross hypocrisy”, having used the Freedom of Information legislation itself many times to break news stories.

The Balen Report was compiled in 2004 by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen after allegations of pro-Palestinian bias in BBC reporting.

London solicitor Steven Sugar, who is Jewish, has been fighting ever since to have its findings made public.

The report is believed to run to 20,000 words and to be critical of the corporation’s coverage in the region.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that their reporting of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed towards the Palestinian cause.

One particularly controversial incident came when Middle East correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried as Yasser Arafat was close to death in 2004.

But politicians say the corporation’s decision to pursue the case – appealing against a ruling by the Freedom of Information adjudicator – is “absolutely indefensible” on an issue of clear public interest.

They say it also flies in the face of the stated BBC policy of openness and transparency.

The corporation has hired one of the country’s top public law barristers to fight the case, which has the potential to run all the way to the European Court in Strasbourg.

It claims it is defending a principle, that public broadcasters should not have to disclose material that is held for the purposes of “journalism, art or literature” and that it should be allowed to protect the integrity of its journalists.

But its determination to fight has only served to intensify suspicions that Balen was damning in his assessment.

Conservative MP David Davies said: “An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using taxpayers’ money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is indefensible.

“I think the BBC is guilty of shameful hypocrisy. What could possibly be in this report that could be worth £200,000 to bury? What is it they feel is so awful in this report?”

The corporation was accused of anti-Israeli bias last year when it wrongly reported that a Lebanese town had been wiped out. It received a string of complaints but stood by the despatch, arguing that anyone who had seen the pictures would have found it hard to contest the scale of destruction.

In 2004 the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing its then Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin of anti-semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups” in a report on a would-be suicide bomber.

She was moved from her role as Middle East correspondent at the end of 2005.

The Israeli government also imposed a boycott on the corporation in 2003 following a documentary about the country’s weapons of mass destruction.

While the BBC did not publish the Balen Report, it did last year make public the findings of an independent panel report into the issue of impartiality on the Middle East.

That report said that the BBC’s approach had at times been “inconsistent”, but that many viewers felt that if there was any bias at all, it was pro-Israel.

Critics, however, claimed that the independent panel report only took a snapshot of the BBC’s activities and should have looked more deeply at the reporting of the worst moments of the conflict.

Mr Sugar said he was prepared to take the case all the way to Europe.

“This is an important document which will give us an insight into what the BBC itself thinks of its own performance,” he said. “I would like to see the BBC facing up to its professed interest in transparency and openness.

 

DAILY MAIL READERS’ COMMENTS ON THE ABOVE ARTICLE

The BBC’s charter requires accurate, unbiased and independent news reporting. Clearly the BBC doesn’t meet these requirements. BBC license payers should be refunded, with interest, for the failure of the BBC to comply with its charter. The BBC should then be privatised and the license fee scrapped.
- James, St Albans, England

The BBC just falls in line with the one-rule-for-us-another-for-them stance of any dishonest and morally corrupt elitist institution. This excuse for a news organization should be done away with. There is no place for a taxpayer funded government mouthpiece in any true democracy.
- Garry Williams, New York, USA

The BBC has always been anti-Israel. Its reports never call anyone terrorists. They only show one side, the Arab side, in their reports. If and when the Palestinian terrorist murder their recently kidnapped reporter I wonder how they will report such an incident.
- Sam, Essex, UK

The BBC has shown spectacular bias against Israel and have abused their obligations as a publicly funded service. If the report were to come out, it would blow their cover as political organisation rather than a news service.
- Patrick Henry, Bristol, UK

Thats 200,000 less to ransom the BBC man held captive in Gaza.
- Dov Koret

 

AL-HURRA “IS BECOMING A PLATFORM FOR TERRORISTS”

Television Takeover
U.S.-financed Al-Hurra is becoming a platform for terrorists.
By Joel Mowbray
The Wall Street Journal
March 18, 2007

opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009801

Fighting to create a secular democracy in Iraq, parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi had come to rely on at least one TV network to help further freedom: U.S. taxpayer-financed Al-Hurra.

Now, however, he’s concerned. The broadcaster he had seen as a stalwart ally has done an about-face. “Until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore.”

Stories that he believes cry out for further investigation, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting the terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And Arab voices for freedom, which used to have a home on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent. “They’re driving out the liberals,” he complains.

Mr. Alusi is not the only one concerned about the recent changes at Al-Hurra. Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors – the congressionally-created panel charged with overseeing Al-Hurra, among other government-funded broadcasters – is currently demanding answers about the network’s decision last December to broadcast most of a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.

Sitting up straight and raising his index finger, he states emphatically, “It’s the single worst decision I’ve witnessed in all my years in international broadcasting.”

The airing of the Nasrallah speech is a sign of the network’s new direction since it was taken over by a longtime CNN producer, Larry Register, last November. Launched in February 2004, Al-Hurra broadcasts three separate feeds: to Europe, Arab nations and one for Iraq. The network is supposed to be a key component of our public diplomacy to the Arab world. Its mission statement calls for it to showcase the American political process, and just as important, report on things that get little attention on other Arabic networks, such as human-rights abuses and government corruption.

Within weeks of becoming news director, Mr. Register put his own stamp on the network. Producers and on-air talent quickly understood that change was underway. Investigations into Arab government wrongdoing or oppression were no longer in vogue, and the ban on turning the airwaves over to terrorists was lifted. For those who had chafed under Mr. Register’s predecessor – who curbed the desire of many on staff to make Al-Hurra more like al-Jazeera – the new era was welcomed warmly.

“Everybody feels emboldened. Register changed the atmosphere around here,” notes one staffer. “Register is trying to pander to Arab sympathies,” says another.

The cultural shift inside the newsroom is evident in the on-air product. In the past several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches from Mr. Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, and it broadcast an interview with an alleged al Qaeda operative who expressed joy that 9/11 rubbed “America’s nose in the dust.”

While a handful of unfortunate decisions could be isolated, these actions appear to be part of Mr. Register’s news vision. Former news director Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese-born American citizen, was not shy about his disdain for terrorists and had a firm policy against giving them a platform. But Mr. Register didn’t wait long to allow Hamas officials on the air to discuss Palestinian politics.

At a staff meeting announcing the reversal of the ban on terrorists as guests, Mr. Register “bragged” about his personal relationship with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a top Hamas official, according to someone who was present. Contacted on his cell phone for comment, Mr. Register declined, indicating that he couldn’t spare even two minutes anytime in the coming days.

Perhaps it is because Mr. Register is so casual in his attitude to terrorists that interviewers now toss softball questions to fiery anti-Western guests, while also taking digs at one of America’s closest Middle Eastern allies, Israel.

The new Al-Hurra was on full display Feb. 9, when riots broke out following Israel’s implementation of security measures that limited access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

In roughly two hours of breathless live “breaking news” coverage – which outdistanced al-Jazeera by 30 minutes – Al-Hurra’s Muslim guests vilified Israel, and one spun conspiracy theories about the Jewish state’s “plans” to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque. No doubt the Islamic talking heads were egged on by the Al-Hurra anchors asking questions such as, “Do you think that the timing of these actions is as innocent as Israel pretends?” (Translations were provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government official.)

This powder keg of a panel included Ikrima Sabri, imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque, who is best known for his tenure as Yasser Arafat’s hand-picked mufti of Jerusalem. During the broadcast, Mr. Sabri accused Israel of firing guns and throwing bombs into the mosque, then refusing to allow medical care for the wounded.

Mr. Sabri’s propaganda should not have come as a surprise. Just weeks before 9/11, Mr. Sabri delivered a passionate Friday sermon, broadcast nationally on official Palestinian Authority radio. He prayed for the destruction of Israel, Britain and the United States.

If anyone should be savvy about people like Mr. Sabri, it ought to be Mr. Register. With two decades of experience at CNN, including three years running the Jerusalem bureau, he should know that live TV is the wrong venue for firebrands or guests prone to outrageous commentary.

Complicating matters is that once someone is on Al-Hurra live, Mr. Register lacks the basic requirement to stay on top of unfolding coverage; he doesn’t speak Arabic. Had Mr. Register been able to understand Mr. Nasrallah’s Dec. 7 speech, perhaps he would have rushed to cut away early on. Before the five-minute mark, Mr. Nasrallah told the audience to stop their celebratory gun-firing, explaining, “the only place where bullets should be is the chest of the enemies of Lebanon: the Israeli enemy.”

Former Broadcasting Board of Governors member Norman Pattiz understands the perils of turning over the airwaves to the likes of Mr. Nasrallah. Though he wouldn’t comment on anything relating to recent months – he left the board last year, before Mr. Register’s arrival – Mr. Pattiz said bluntly, “Simply handing a microphone over to a terrorist and letting them spew is not what I would call good journalism.”

Though Mr. Pattiz is a well-known Democrat who feuded constantly with Mr. Tomlinson, a Republican, the two men had one area of agreement: Mr. Harb, Al-Hurra’s original news director. Sounding remarkably similar to Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Pattiz said, “The direction Al-Hurra launched in is the direction in which it should continue to go, because it was very successful.”

Mr. Alusi, the Iraqi parliamentarian, agrees. “Al-Hurra should have the role of transporting democracy, and to help Iraqis understand freedom,” he says. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”

 

SAUDIS BAR ISRAELI JOURNALIST TRAVELING WITH BAN KI-MOON

Saudi Arabia bars Israeli journalist traveling with U.N. chief
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times
March 24, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-saudi.html?ei=5090&en=beef715018d9d446&ex=1332388800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Saudi Arabia has barred entry to a Washington-based Israeli journalist traveling with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on his current Middle East tour, the United Nations said today.

Mr. Ban is going to Riyadh on Tuesday for two days of the summit meeting of the League of Arab States.

Orly Azoulay, the Washington bureau chief of Yediot Aharonot, was unable to obtain a visa to Saudi Arabia despite assurances the Saudi mission in New York gave the United Nations last week, said Michéle Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman.

Ms. Montas said that both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia initially refused to grant Ms. Azoulay a visa, but that Lebanon had dropped its objections last week and given her the needed stamp.

Ms. Azoulay, 53, an Israeli-born dual citizen of France and Israel, sought the visa on her French passport. She said she had traveled during the past two years to Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan and had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2000 with correspondents covering then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

When the Saudi consulate in New York returned the passports of the 11 news reporters and broadcasters to United Nations headquarters on Friday afternoon, only Ms. Azoulay’s bore no Saudi visa. Ms. Montas said this occurred despite repeated appeals to the Saudis during the week from Vijay Nambiar, Mr. Ban’s chief of staff.

Mr. Azoulay joined the trip in London on Thursday, and Ms. Montas said that the United Nations had been told that the visa might come through while the United Nations group proceeded to Cairo and Jordan.

In recent days, though, she said, the Saudi mission did not return calls from United Nations officials, and they have now concluded that Ms. Azoulay will be not be allowed to accompany the United Nations group to Riyadh.

“The Saudis have a lot of countries coming which have no relations to Israel, and it appears they had more concern about that than they did about the United Nations,” said an organization official who asked not to be identified so as to speak frankly.

Mr. Ban will be in Israel on Sunday and then go to Riyadh with only a six-hour stopover in Jordan for a working lunch with King Abdullah II.

Israel granted visas to all 11 news people, including at least 3 who are Arab- or Iranian-born and traveling on European passports.

“When the secretary general decides that he will take under his auspices a group of journalists, then there is some kind of responsibility that he takes upon himself and we respect this and this is the reason Israel granted the visas without hesitation,” said Daniel Carmon, Israel’s deputy United Nations ambassador.

Asked the United Nations’ reaction, Ms. Montas said, “What she was trying to do was to report objectively, which would improve the political climate in the region and would have been an asset to the secretary general’s mission.”


All notes and summaries copyright © Tom Gross. All rights reserved.