Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the BBC’s latest antisemitic controversy and cover more media misses.
The BBC Is in Hot Water over Antisemitism — Again
The BBC on Monday said it regrets that it aired a live stream of punk-rap duo Bob Vylan’s set at the Glastonbury music festival after a member of the group led antisemitic chants against Israel.
During the performance on Saturday, the rap duo’s lead vocalist, Bobby Vylan, led chants of “Death, death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces, and “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah, it will be free.” The latter phrase is seen as a call for Israel’s destruction and a denial of its right to exist.
The BBC issued an on-screen warning for strong and discriminatory language while the set was streamed online but, on Monday, said it should have cut the stream altogether after receiving widespread backlash, including from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and media regulator Ofcom.
“The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves,” the BBC said in a statement.
“The team was dealing with a live situation, but with hindsight, we should have pulled the stream during the performance,” the BBC added. “We regret this did not happen.”
The Glastonbury Festival is a massive cultural event in the U.K. Performers on the main stage, where Vylan delivered his hateful tirade, play to crowds of 30,000 people. The event also drives considerable ratings for the BBC: In 2023, a record-breaking 23.1 million people watched it on television, in addition to the millions who streamed the festival online.
Now, local police say they are investigating Bob Vylan’s performance, alongside the performance of Irish rap band Kneecap over public order incidents.
A member of Kneecap urged fans to “start a riot” at his bandmate’s upcoming court appearance related to a terrorism charge. A member of the band also said “F*** Keir Starmer” onstage. Starmer had called for the band to be excluded from the festival.
The U.S. pulled visas issued to Bob Vylan on Monday for its 20-show tour that was set to kick off in late October.
“The State Department has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a post on X on Monday.
“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”
Vylan, for his part, defended his comments in a post on Instagram.
“I said what I said,” he wrote, and added that he had been “inundated with messages of both support and hatred.”
The BBC’s statement of regret comes after Ofcom said it was “very concerned” about the BBC’s live stream of the performance.
“We have been speaking to the BBC over the weekend and we are obtaining further information as a matter of urgency, including what procedures were in place to ensure compliance with its own editorial guidelines,” an Ofcom spokesperson told the Jerusalem Post.
The incident comes just weeks after BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker left the network after facing backlash for having shared antisemitic content online.
Lineker, formerly the BBC’s highest-paid on-air talent, had reposted a pro-Palestinian video that made misleading claims about Zionism and included a rat emoji. Jewish groups were quick to condemn the post, noting that rats have historically antisemitic connotations dating back to the Holocaust.
Lineker claimed he would “never knowingly share anything antisemitic” and said he had deleted the post “as soon as I became aware of the issue.”
“The BBC’s reputation is held by everyone, and when someone makes a mistake, it costs us,” BBC Director General Tim Davie told The Guardian at the time. “I think we absolutely need people to be exemplars of the BBC’s values and follow our social media policy. Simple as that.”
The latest social media controversy wasn’t Lineker’s first. In January 2024, he retweeted, and subsequently removed, a post on X calling for Israel to be banned from international soccer. The tweet was originally posted by a pro-Palestinian account that called for Israel to be banned over its alleged “grave violations of international law.” After receiving backlash from members of Parliament over the post, Lineker removed it and said he had misunderstood the message.
Meanwhile, the network has come under fire in recent years for allowing journalists to cover the conflict who had expressed anti-Israel — and, in some cases, outright antisemitic — opinions.
The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times in just the first four months of the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to research spearheaded by British lawyer Trevor Asserson. Researchers identified violations of BBC policies centered on impartiality, accuracy, editorial values, and public interest.
In February, the BBC removed a documentary on the war in Gaza from its online streaming service after an investigative journalist found that the film unwittingly profiled the son of a Hamas member. Investigative journalist David Collier connected the dots through Facebook searches, which the BBC no doubt had the ability — but apparently not the desire — to do.
Headline Fail of the Week
KTLA recently reported that “federal officials confirmed that a Southern California fourth grader who was detained by immigration officials will be deported.”
As Fox News’s Bill Melugin explains, “Headline of course leaves out that the boy and his dad are Hondurans who illegally crossed the border in 2021 & were ordered to return to Honduras by a judge in 2022. The father appealed, and his appeal was rejected. They failed to leave the US, & will now be deported together.”
Media Misses
— CNN host Erin Burnett recently reported on the “friendliness” of Iranians who chanted “Death to America” when she visited Tehran years ago. “I remember at one point being in Tehran years ago, and they’re chanting ‘Death to America’ all around me, even as I say, ‘Oh, I’m an American, reporting for CNN.’ And they were happy to speak to me. So those two sort of jarring realities of the chant and yet, the friendliness, have existed together,” Burnett said.
— MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend called the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order “insane.”
“I just don’t, I can’t believe that we are asking the question, ‘Is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution constitutional?’ That is what, it is crazy. And I am sorry, but people need to call, ‘This is crazy.’ They are asking us . . . they’re asking us not to believe our own eyes and our own ears. They’re asking us to go against everything that we know to be true. This is insane,” Sanders Townsend said after the Court ruled 6–3 to allow lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions only in limited instances.
“The applications do not raise — and thus we do not address — the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote on behalf of the majority. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”