Mick Hartley

From the Times:

The BBC has been accused of being “institutionally hostile to Israel” by three prominent Jewish organisations, which have criticised its coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Danny Cohen, who was director of television at the BBC from 2013 to 2015, has compiled a report accusing the corporation of making “false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of this war” and producing “misleading broadcasts and social media output”.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Community Security Trust, a charity that combats extremism and antisemitism, have backed the report. They argued in a joint statement that coverage has “led many British Jews to conclude that the BBC has become institutionally hostile to Israel”.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, said: “Few institutions are as vital for our national cultural identity or for the health of our democracy as the BBC. That’s why the content of this report, which records the repeated and longstanding failure to ensure impartial and accurate news coverage of the existential war that Israel is fighting on multiple fronts, is so profoundly troubling.”

More detail here:

From Gary Lineker’s factless musings to the BBC worker who called Jews ‘Nazi apartheid parasites’. From BBC Arabic having to correct mistakes every 48 hours to headlining stories on OCTOBER 7 as ‘Israeli revenge attacks’: a new report lays out why many Jewish people believe not…

— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) September 30, 2024

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Full text:

From Gary Lineker’s factless musings to the BBC worker who called Jews ‘Nazi apartheid parasites’. From BBC Arabic having to correct mistakes every 48 hours to headlining stories on OCTOBER 7 as ‘Israeli revenge attacks’: a new report lays out why many Jewish people believe not only that the BBC is institutionally antisemitic but that it is creating antisemitism in this country and around the world.

This report details how:
• On the day of the 7 October massacre, while the rest of Britain’s media were detailing the brutality of Hamas’s attack on Israel, the BBC led its coverage with a headline about “Israeli revenge attacks”.
• The BBC broadcast interviews in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity with Hamas apologists who used their platform to make comments which the BBC was forced to admit were “offensive”.
• The BBC refused to call Hamas “terrorists” because it would be seen as “taking sides”, only to back down following days of criticism.
• The BBC reported that an ‘Israeli strike’ killed ‘hundreds’ at the Al-Ahli hospital: thereby repeating, legitimising and reinforcing entirely false claims that directly caused unrest in some European and Middle Eastern countries, including serious arson attacks upon synagogues.
• The BBC failed to remove articles suggesting the same hospital blast may have been caused by the Israeli military, even after the BBC admitted it got its reporting wrong.
• The BBC incorrectly reported that Israeli soldiers had been “targeting” medical teams and Arab speakers as they hunted Hamas terrorists in a hospital, when instead they actually had brought medical teams and Arab speakers with them to help the patients during the military operation.
• A senior BBC executive admitted inaccuracies had “real world consequences” for British Jews but were inevitable because of the “fog of war”.
• The BBC aired an edited interview with French President Macron which was highly critical of Israel only for French diplomats to insist it was not a fair representation of his views.
• The BBC published an article that wrongly claimed a UN report had warned “half of Gaza’s population is starving” and peddled a Hamas propaganda line that Gaza had become a “polio epidemic zone”.
• The BBC failed to investigate claims babies were beheaded by Hamas terrorists in a kibbutz massacre on 7 October – despite the issue dominating other news outlets’ coverage and British political debate for days.
• The BBC was forced to correct an article that described Iran’s bombardment of 300 rockets fired into Israel as “dozens” of “objects”.
• The BBC took no action against five BBC Arabic reporters placed under investigation for offensive social media posts in the wake of the 7 October massacre.
• At the height of the conflict, BBC Arabic was forced to correct articles on average every 48 hours, including copy that referred to Hamas as the “resistance”.
• BBC Arabic platformed one guest who had previously referred to the 7 October massacre as a “heroic military miracle” and another who described Hamas atrocities against innocent Israelis as “necessary”.
• BBC Arabic was forced to purge articles from its website including one that asked whether the Kfar Aza kibbutz atrocities really happened.
• BBC Arabic failed to moderate antisemitic and offensive comments on its YouTube channel and encouraged a discussion about whether the killing of a 79-year-old Israeli woman was “terrorism” or “resistance”.
• The BBC failed to remove graphs from its website that purported to show that 70 per cent of Gazan fatalities were women and children – after those figures were shown to be inaccurate.
• The BBC routinely quoted figures produced by the Hamas Health Ministry without highlighting it as a terrorist-run organisation, and routinely failed to stress in reporting that Hamas fatality figures are unverifiable and include thousands of Hamas terrorists.
• The BBC referred to Hezbollah not as terrorists but as a “heavily armed militant and political movement” in one story, while a BBC News Channel presenter suggested during an interview that Hezbollah terror attacks were in protest over Palestinian deaths.
• The BBC referred to one killed senior Hamas fighter as an “advisor” rather than a terrorist, and portrayed an assassinated Hamas leader as a “moderate” rather than a terrorist under sanction in the US.
• The BBC came under fire for calling Palestinian militants and activists killed in the conflict ‘journalists’. One BBC Arabic article described 69 “journalists” killed in the conflict, while evidence from their social media posts suggest 55 of them either supported Hamas or worked for the terror group.
• The BBC used freelance journalists and eyewitness reports without due diligence on their social media accounts which would have revealed clear anti-Israel bias.
• The BBC was forced to sack one employee who described Jews online as “Nazi apartheid parasites” and called the Holocaust a hoax.
• The BBC failed to sanction high-profile sports presenter Gary Lineker who shared a BDS post calling for Israel to be banned from international sporting events.
• The BBC failed to apologise for wrongly claiming the International Court of Justice had ruled that allegations Israel had committed genocide in Gaza were “plausible”.
• The BBC refused to launch an investigation called for by its own Jewish staff and contributors after extensive broadcasting mistakes and repeated failures of due diligence on sources and guests
• The BBC repeatedly reported Israeli strikes on Hamas command centres based inside school buildings as “strikes on schools” and repeatedly failed to explain the terror group’s use of innocent Palestinians as human shields.

The full report is here.