Humiliating your boss is rarely a good career move. But John Humphrys won't mind. The BBC Today programme's star presenter left the corporation's director-general, Mark Thompson, floundering this morning as he questioned his ultimate boss on the BBC's decision not to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal video to help the victims of the Gaza conflict.

Thompson's hapless performance exposed the emptiness of the BBC's explanation: that showing the appeal would endanger the BBC's reputation for impartiality. He conceded Humphrys' point that viewers could distinguish between a humanitarian appeal and taking sides in a conflict. He accepted that DEC's appeal was not politically motivated. He kept repeating the words 'complex', 'impartiality' and 'sensitive' as if they themselves explained or justified his stance.

Thompson cited the corporation's decision not to air the Make Poverty History campaign video as a precedent. Yet the two cases are entirely different. Make Poverty History was a political campaign, however worthy its aims. It wanted to change government policy. DEC's Gaza appeal is about helping relieve human suffering. It isn't interested in the rights and wrongs of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Thompson would have been on more solid ground had he said the BBC would not air appeals about current conflicts, rather than natural disasters. But he did not. As Humphrys said, the BBC showed DEC's Darfur appeal, which was just as sensitive by Thompson's argument.

Impartiality is a noble cause, and one the BBC rightly defends, not just because its charter requires it. In a world dominated by propaganda and polemic, I cherish the BBC's approach, as I blogged in this post in 2007 when the Guardian's Emily Bell questioned the corporation's impartiality. But on Gaza, the BBC has made a bad mistake. It feared being attacked for broadcasting the appeal. But as Thompson conceded, viewers are capable of distinguishing between a humanitarian appeal and political propaganda. The BBC should have had the confidence to show the appeal and dismiss the inevitable criticisms from lobbyists who themselves are far from impartial. 

PS: Jonathan Calder in his Liberal England blog questioned whether the BBC was quite as impartial on Make Poverty History as Mark Thompson claimed on Today.