It has been a week of shame for the BBC. In its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone the BBC gave a prime-time propaganda platform to the terrorists of Hamas.
As we now know, the young narrator of the film was the son of a Hamas leader, a second child had previously been used in Hamas propaganda videos, and one of the two cameramen working on the project has been accused of celebrating the October 7 massacre.
There are also questions the BBC must answer as to whether the documentary had been misleadingly edited and further concerns about statements released by the corporation about who had editorial control of the programme. The truth is that the BBC will have had many layers of oversight of this documentary – lawyers, commissioning editors, editorial policy advisers. Yet the system appears to have failed at every point.
The manifest bias and journalistic failings of this documentary have made front-page news and plunged the BBC into a major crisis of impartiality and journalistic standards.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The BBC is delivering a daily drip-drip of misreporting and bias in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. This is accompanied by an astonishing willingness to parrot the propaganda lines of terrorists without hesitation, caveats, and with no context. In doing so it has given ever more legitimacy to the statements of a racist death cult.
For the Jewish community this drip-drip does not go unnoticed. It is painful, bewildering and isolating.
It reflects a repeated, systemic bias at the BBC and a pervasive groupthink that impacts headlines, social media output, commentary and analysis.
Whilst the Gaza documentary made the headlines last week, the BBC’s coverage of the latest release of Israeli hostages exposed the same raft of problems. The detail of this reporting reveals the mindset of too many in the BBC Newsroom. Bias, mind-boggling gullibility and repeated false equivalence with a terrorist group is causing huge damage to our national broadcaster.
The corporation’s reporting of the tragic plight of Shiri Bibas and her two young children provides a particularly stark example. On the day it was confirmed that they had been killed, the BBC gave national coverage to a Hamas statement claiming that the terrorist group had “done everything in its power” to keep them alive. What? After it had kidnapped the mother and her two babies at gunpoint and held them hostage? When a terrorist group proclaims something this sickening, absurd and grotesque there is no obligation on the BBC to give it any kind of validity or national prominence. Yet the BBC Newsroom apparently decided it was a propaganda line we should all hear.
The shameful coverage of the Bibas family’s tragic plight did not end there. The BBC has developed a habit of bias through what it does not report as well as what it does. Its omissions tell their own story. In scenes that will be seared into the minds of many, Hamas took their hostage release “ceremonies” to a whole new level of depravity with coffins displayed on a stage, set against a backdrop that pictured a virulently anti-Semitic image of the Israeli prime minister. Yet this racist image had been cropped out of photographs the BBC provided of the event. One cannot help wondering why.
After parading the coffins on stage in this grotesque pantomime, Hamas handed Israel the body of an unknown Palestinian woman rather than that of Shiri Bibas. This was stomach-turning but the BBC quickly chose to give the terrorists the benefit of the doubt, describing it as a “mix-up”. This version of events was provided by a Hamas spokesman and it is unclear why BBC journalists chose to report it as fact. Hours later it emerged that the Bibas babies had been murdered with the bare hands of Hamas terrorists.
And then we have BBC correspondent Jon Donnison, who already has form on Israel after his dangerously misleading rush to judgment that blamed Israel for an explosion close to a Gaza hospital. It soon emerged that the blast was caused by a malfunctioning rocket launched by Islamic Jihad, but by then the accusation had travelled far and wide with damaging diplomatic consequences.
Now Mr Donnison has surpassed himself with a truly sickening social media post (since deleted). Over the weekend on X, using an account with a BBC nomenclature, Donnison had the following to say: “The propaganda efforts by both Hamas and Israel over the hostage releases are pretty nauseating.”
How can one compare the return of loved ones from terrorist captivity to that stage in Gaza last week with its bloodthirsty anti-Semitic imagery and coffins containing murdered babies? Yet this is the output of a BBC journalist whose wages we all pay through the licence fee.
The BBC’s problems of bias are not just systemic but have now reached the point of being sickening and shameful. It goes beyond gullibility and journalistic ineptitude. It is something more poisonous.
How else can you explain this week of shame?
Danny Cohen was the director of BBC Television from 2013 until 2015
It has been a week of shame for the BBC. In its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone the BBC gave a prime-time propaganda platform to the terrorists of Hamas.
As we now know, the young narrator of the film was the son of a Hamas leader, a second child had previously been used in Hamas propaganda videos, and one of the two cameramen working on the project has been accused of celebrating the October 7 massacre.
There are also questions the BBC must answer as to whether the documentary had been misleadingly edited and further concerns about statements released by the corporation about who had editorial control of the programme. The truth is that the BBC will have had many layers of oversight of this documentary – lawyers, commissioning editors, editorial policy advisers. Yet the system appears to have failed at every point.
The manifest bias and journalistic failings of this documentary have made front-page news and plunged the BBC into a major crisis of impartiality and journalistic standards.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The BBC is delivering a daily drip-drip of misreporting and bias in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. This is accompanied by an astonishing willingness to parrot the propaganda lines of terrorists without hesitation, caveats, and with no context. In doing so it has given ever more legitimacy to the statements of a racist death cult.
For the Jewish community this drip-drip does not go unnoticed. It is painful, bewildering and isolating.
It reflects a repeated, systemic bias at the BBC and a pervasive groupthink that impacts headlines, social media output, commentary and analysis.
Whilst the Gaza documentary made the headlines last week, the BBC’s coverage of the latest release of Israeli hostages exposed the same raft of problems. The detail of this reporting reveals the mindset of too many in the BBC Newsroom. Bias, mind-boggling gullibility and repeated false equivalence with a terrorist group is causing huge damage to our national broadcaster.
The corporation’s reporting of the tragic plight of Shiri Bibas and her two young children provides a particularly stark example. On the day it was confirmed that they had been killed, the BBC gave national coverage to a Hamas statement claiming that the terrorist group had “done everything in its power” to keep them alive. What? After it had kidnapped the mother and her two babies at gunpoint and held them hostage? When a terrorist group proclaims something this sickening, absurd and grotesque there is no obligation on the BBC to give it any kind of validity or national prominence. Yet the BBC Newsroom apparently decided it was a propaganda line we should all hear.
The shameful coverage of the Bibas family’s tragic plight did not end there. The BBC has developed a habit of bias through what it does not report as well as what it does. Its omissions tell their own story. In scenes that will be seared into the minds of many, Hamas took their hostage release “ceremonies” to a whole new level of depravity with coffins displayed on a stage, set against a backdrop that pictured a virulently anti-Semitic image of the Israeli prime minister. Yet this racist image had been cropped out of photographs the BBC provided of the event. One cannot help wondering why.
After parading the coffins on stage in this grotesque pantomime, Hamas handed Israel the body of an unknown Palestinian woman rather than that of Shiri Bibas. This was stomach-turning but the BBC quickly chose to give the terrorists the benefit of the doubt, describing it as a “mix-up”. This version of events was provided by a Hamas spokesman and it is unclear why BBC journalists chose to report it as fact. Hours later it emerged that the Bibas babies had been murdered with the bare hands of Hamas terrorists.
And then we have BBC correspondent Jon Donnison, who already has form on Israel after his dangerously misleading rush to judgment that blamed Israel for an explosion close to a Gaza hospital. It soon emerged that the blast was caused by a malfunctioning rocket launched by Islamic Jihad, but by then the accusation had travelled far and wide with damaging diplomatic consequences.
Now Mr Donnison has surpassed himself with a truly sickening social media post (since deleted). Over the weekend on X, using an account with a BBC nomenclature, Donnison had the following to say: “The propaganda efforts by both Hamas and Israel over the hostage releases are pretty nauseating.”
How can one compare the return of loved ones from terrorist captivity to that stage in Gaza last week with its bloodthirsty anti-Semitic imagery and coffins containing murdered babies? Yet this is the output of a BBC journalist whose wages we all pay through the licence fee.
The BBC’s problems of bias are not just systemic but have now reached the point of being sickening and shameful. It goes beyond gullibility and journalistic ineptitude. It is something more poisonous.
How else can you explain this week of shame?
Danny Cohen was the director of BBC Television from 2013 until 2015