Doha, Qatar – Al Jazeera English announced that it intends to support The Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC) call to broadcast announcements for humanitarian aid for the victims of the Gaza War. Al Jazeera English has pledged to run public service announcements in UK prime time at no cost in support of the Committee’s appeal. UK public broadcaster BBC however, has faced criticism for refusing to air DEC aid appeal announcements on the grounds of maintaining impartiality in an ongoing conflict. Director general Mark Thompson is quoted on the BBC website as saying: “Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations. The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story.”