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Can you imagine the BBC and other major broadcasters apologizing to a rogue regime that practises racism and ethnic cleansing, which has "effectively legalized the use of torture", according to Amnesty International, which holds international law in contempt, having defied hundreds of U.N. resolutions and built an apartheid wall in defiance of the International Court of Justice; which has demolished thousands of people's homes and given its soldiers the right to assassinate; and whose leader was judged "personally responsible" for the massacre of more than 2,000 people?

Can you imagine the BBC saying sorry to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or other official demons, for broadcasting an uncensored interview with a courageous dissident of that country, a man who spent 19 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement? Of course not.

Yet, last month, the BBC apologized "confidentially" to a regime with such a record, so that its correspondent would be allowed back, having promised to abide by a system of censorship that continues to gag the dissident.

The regime is Ariel Sharon's in Israel, whose war crimes, appalling human rights record and enduring lawlessness continue to be granted a certificate of exemption not only by the U.S.-dominated West, but by respectable journalism.

The Blair government's collusion with the Sharon gang is reflected in the BBC's "balanced" coverage of a repression described by Nelson Mandela as "the greatest moral issue of the age." Simon Wilson, the correspondent made to apologize for a proper, important and long-overdue interview with Mordechai Vanunu, will know better in future.

That is hardly new. Pressure applied to the BBC and other broadcasters by the Israel "lobby" has been so successful that, as a Glasgow University study revealed, many viewers of television news in Britain believe the Jewish "settlers," whose illegal and often violent squatting on Palestinian land has undermined hopes of real peace, are actually Palestinians. What is new is the extent to which insidious state propaganda has penetrated sections of the media whose independence has been, until recently, accepted by much of the public.

The Law of Silence is applied to crimes committed not by official demons--Saddam, Milosevic et al.--but by Western governments. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent, Eric Campbell, in recently promoting a book of his adventures, described the broadcast "coverage" of the war in Iraq.

"Live satellite is a travesty," he said. "Basically, if (the reporters) are on satellite, they haven't seen anything. The correspondent is read the stories from the wire and told that is what they have to say on air--that's in the majority of cases."

That may help to explain why the horror of the American attack on Fallujah has yet to be reported by the other major broadcasters. By contrast, independent journalists such as Dahr Jamail have reported doctors describing the slaughter of civilians who were carrying white flags, by U.S. marines. This was videotaped, including the killing of most of a family of 12.

One witness described how his mother was shot in the head and his father through the heart, and how a six-year-old boy standing over his dead parents, crying, was shot dead.

None of this has appeared on British television. When asked, a BBC spokesperson said, "The conduct of coalition forces has been examined at length by BBC programmes." That is demonstrably untrue.

Bush's and Blair's "democracy is on the march in the Middle East" propaganda is reported uncritically. The Law of Silence applies to the Bush regime's campaign to subvert and overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, arguably the most democratically elected leader in Latin America, if not the world (nine elections) whose own "preference for the poor" has diverted the proceeds of the world's fourth biggest oil supplies to the majority of Venezuelans.

Last year, I did a long interview with Jeremy Bowen, a BBC reporter I admire, for a programme about war correspondents. I set about describing how journalists often produced veiled propaganda for Western powers, by accepting "our" version or by omitting the unpalatable, such as the atrocities of Western state terrorism: a major taboo. I emphasized that this censorship was not conspiratorial, but often unconscious, even subliminal: such was our training and grooming. My contribution did not appear.

John Pilger is a British political analyst.

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