Why press bias matters

One of the friends to whom I gave Melanie Phillips' article about press bias (and, specifically, about BBC bias) towards Israel (see my post, below), asked "Who cares?" As this poll from The Telegraph shows, the BBC's wildly biased reporting has resulted in the British public ranking Israel below Sudan, below China, below each African and Arab despotic state, as a country deserving no respect:

[Poll results show that Israel] is also the country thought least deserving of international respect. Despite being the only fully democratic state in the Middle East, it is also thought to be among the world's 'least democratic countries'. Of the 12 criteria set out in YouGov's check-list, Israel comes out bottom in four cases and among the bottom five in a total of eight. Only Russia has a worse overall score.

As far as I'm concerned, this poll's outcome demonstrates why all of us should care about press bias.