Bowen was the BBC's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000[2] and the BBC Middle East editor from 2005 to 2022, before being appointed the International Editor of BBC News in August 2022.[3]
Bowen joined the BBC in 1984 and has been a war correspondent for much of his career, starting with El Salvador in 1989.[5] He has reported from more than 70 countries,[6] predominantly in the Middle East and the Balkans.
During the Gulf War he was an eyewitness to the bodies being removed from the Al Amiriyan air raid shelter in Baghdad, where hundreds of civilians had been killed.[7] Bowen reported that the casualties were women, children and older men. There were no military uniforms.[8]The Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence affirmed that it was a command centre. During the disinformation campaign, the Daily Star compared Bowen to Lord Haw Haw who had broadcast from Berlin during the Second World War. Bowen received a substantial sum for libel as a result.[9]
He reported from Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian War there, and from Kosovo during the 1999 conflict, during which he was robbed at gunpoint by bandits.[10]
Bowen has been under fire on assignment a number of times. In what he was later to describe as the pivotal moment of his life, a colleague and friend was killed on 23 May 2000 in Lebanon.[4] This took place while Bowen was covering the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) pullout from Lebanon: Bowen's car came under tank fire from the IDF and his "fixer" and driver was killed.[11]
He became the BBC's first Middle East Editor when the position was created in June 2005 after the 2004 Balen Report on the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict[15] to provide a broader perspective on wider Middle East issues[16] and to add context to the reporting of events on the ground.[17]
In 2005, he published the book Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East.[18]
On 11 May 2008, Bowen and his camera operator again came under fire in Mount Lebanon. Nobody was injured and the incident was caught on camera.[19]
In April 2009, the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust published a report on three complaints, including one by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, brought against two news items involving Bowen.[20] The complaints included 24 allegations of breaching BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality, of which three were fully or partially upheld.[21] The BBC Trust's censure was based on articles about Har Homa in the 1960s, how the Six-Day War affected the Middle East and an article on the aftermath of that war.[22] Although there was no finding of anti-Israel bias against Bowen, the BBC Trust said that he should have used clearer language and been more precise in some aspects of the piece.[23]
The BBC Trust accepted that for a claim that was found to be lacking in accuracy that Bowen had been provided with the information by an authoritative source.[23] A website article[24] was amended and Bowen did not face any disciplinary measures.[6] Bowen voiced opposition to the censure, calling it a result of a "campaign group" whom he called "the enemies of impartiality".[22]
In February 2011, Bowen became the first British journalist to interview Muammar Gaddafi since the start of the 2011 Libyan civil war against him and the government.[25] As the conflict progressed at least two of Bowen's notebooks were either lost or stolen. One of these notebooks was subsequently found in the remains of a military convoy, which the rebel force that attacked it said contained Gaddafi's son, Khamis. The notebook contained both Bowen's words and a number of notes in Arabic detailing military manoeuvres and a list of persons to be detained.[26][27]
On 5 July 2013, Bowen was reporting for the BBC on the protests in Egypt regarding the former President Morsi when he was shot in the head with shotgun pellets. He escaped without major injury, and was taken away by his colleagues and bandaged up.[28]
He was one of the few journalists inside Syria reporting on the civil war. In February 2015, he spoke with President Bashar al-Assad about the continuing Syrian conflict, during an exclusive BBC interview.[29]
In October 2023, the BBC reported on the Israel-Hamas War, including a report on an incident at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. Bowen was the editor responsible for overseeing this coverage, and has been criticised for the BBC's inaccurate reporting on the incident for repeatedly implying that Israel bombed the hospital, destroyed the facility, and killed 500 people.[31][32] In the days following the incident, Western intelligence agencies stated that the fire was most likely the result of a misfired rocket by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a rocket attack on Israeli civilians.[33] While the PIJ rocket did result in deaths and injuries, it did not "flatten" the facility as claimed by the BBC, and it resulted in substantially fewer deaths than claimed in BBC reports.[34][35] The BBC retracted the majority of claims made by Bowen's reporters.[36][37]
Personal life
Bowen lives in Camberwell, South London, with his partner Julia Williams, also a BBC journalist. They have a son and a daughter.[38]
Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been said, by both sides and independent observers, to be biased. This coverage includes news, academic discussion, film, and social media. These perceptions of bias, possibly exacerbated by the hostile media effect, have generated more complaints of partisan reporting than any other news topic and have led to a proliferation of media watchdog groups.
Anita McNaught is a British journalist, television correspondent and former presenter, based in Istanbul in Turkey. Previously, she worked for Al Jazeera English for 5½ years, as a roving Middle East correspondent.
Nic Robertson is the international diplomatic editor of CNN.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) took its present form on 1 January 1927 when John Reith became its first Director-General. Reith stated that impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism in its broadcasting. Allegations that the corporation lacks impartial and objective journalism are regularly made by observers on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Another key area of criticism is the mandatory licence fee, as commercial competitors argue that means of financing to be unfair and to result in limiting their ability to compete with the BBC. Additionally, accusations of waste or over-staffing occasionally prompt comments from politicians and the other media.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
Tariq Saleh is a Brazilian journalist, international correspondent and TV producer, best known for his coverage on international news and current affairs as a Beirut-based journalist for over 15 years. His coverage of the Middle East and North Africa for the BBC World Service and later TV3 (Catalonia) was focused mainly in documenting on politics, wars, human rights and refugees. He is currently a contributor to Radio France International.
Cal Perry is a former broadcast journalist who most recently worked for MSNBC. He previously worked at Voice of America in a senior role and briefly at Al Jazeera English. Before joining Al Jazeera, he worked for many years with CNN, mostly in the Middle East. During this time, he served as: Bureau Chief in Baghdad, Iraq (2005–2007), Bureau Chief in Beirut, Lebanon. From these bases, he also covered the wars in Lebanon (2006), Georgia (2008) and Pakistan (2008), plus the aftermath of the devastating cyclone in Bangladesh, in 2007. In 2022, he joined the Baltimore Orioles as senior vice president and chief content officer.
Benjamin C. Wedeman is an American journalist and war correspondent. He is a CNN senior international correspondent based in Rome. He has been with the network since 1994, and has earned multiple Emmy Awards and Edward R. Murrow Awards for team reporting.
The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when 200,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, settling in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel has been involved in about 15 wars involving organizations in the Gaza Strip. The number of Gazans reportedly killed in the ongoing 2023–2024 war (37,000) is higher than the death toll of all other wars of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Ayman Mohyeldin is an Egyptian-born political commentator based in New York for NBC News and MSNBC. Previously the anchor of an MSNBC weekday afternoon show, Ayman Mohyeldin Reports, he currently hosts Ayman on weekend evenings on MSNBC, and Fridays on Peacock. He previously worked for Al Jazeera and CNN. He was one of the first Western journalists allowed to enter and report on the handing over and trial of the deposed President of Iraq Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity. Mohyeldin has also covered the 2008–09 Gaza War as well as the Arab Spring.
Media played an important part of the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. Foreign press access to Gaza has been limited since November 2008 via either Egypt or Israel. On 29 December 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that journalists be allowed into Gaza whenever the crossings were opened, but the IDF refused to comply. There have been arrests of journalists due to violations of wartime censorship in Israel, and these have been denounced by international press organizations. Media infrastructure, including Al-Aqsa TV transmission equipment and foreign and local press offices, were hit during the conflict. Media relations also played an important role, with the use of new media on the part of Israel, as well as a clear public relations campaign.
Sherine Tadros is a British broadcaster who is the Head of New York (UN) Office at Amnesty International. She was previously a broadcast journalist, working for Sky News and for Al Jazeera English as the channel's correspondent in Gaza and an anchor based in Doha, Qatar.
Marie Catherine Colvin was an American journalist who worked as a foreign affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Sunday Times from 1985 until her death. She was one of the most prominent war correspondents of her generation, widely recognized for her extensive coverage on the frontlines of various conflicts across the globe. On February 22, 2012, while she was covering the siege of Homs alongside the French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik, the pair were killed in a targeted attack made by Syrian government forces.
Al-Monitor is a news website launched in 2012 by the Arab-American entrepreneur Jamal Daniel. Based in Washington, D.C., Al-Monitor provides reporting and analysis from and about the Middle East. Al-Monitor is the recipient of the International Press Institute's 2014 Free Media Pioneer Award.
Al Mayadeen is a Lebanese pan-Arabist satellite news television channel based in the city of Beirut. Launched on 11 June 2012, it has news reporters in most of the Arab countries. In the pan-Arabist television news market, it competes against Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, and also against Sky News Arabia and BBC News Arabic. At the time it was founded, most of the channel's senior staff were former correspondents and editors of Al Jazeera.
Dominic David Waghorn, is a British journalist who is the Diplomatic Editor of Sky News and presenter of the channel's weekly international affairs analysis programme World View. He was before that US Correspondent of Sky News, the 24-hour television news service operated by Sky Television, part of British Sky Broadcasting. He is based at Sky News' Washington Bureau. He was formerly Sky News' Asia Correspondent, based in Beijing and Middle East Correspondent, based in Jerusalem. He became Sky News' US Correspondent in 2011.
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since 2007. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas reportedly did not retaliate but resumed rocket attacks on Israel more than two weeks later, following the killing of one of its militants by an Israeli airstrike on 29 June. This escalation triggered a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides, one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The combination of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
Media coverage of the 2014 Gaza War were varied depending on the media source. In the English-speaking world, U.S. news sources were often more sympathetic to Israel, while British news sources were more critical of Israel. Commentators on both sides have claimed that the media is biased either for or against Israel. According to The Times of Israel, British sources were more often critical of Israel. As the conflict progressed and Palestinian deaths increased, media became somewhat more critical of Israel.
Nada Bashir is a British journalist and International Correspondent for CNN based in London. Her reporting focuses primarily on the Middle East.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
