Mick Hartley

More on that BBC Gaza documentary from Rosamund Urwin in today's Sunday Times:

Danny Cohen, the former controller of BBC1, said the corporation has allowed itself to be “manipulated by terrorists”. He called on the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, who met the BBC chair Samir Shah on Friday for what government sources say was a “robust” exchange, to ensure that the corporation holds an independent inquiry into both the failings of the documentary and “wider systemic issues of anti-Israel bias” at the corporation, rather than allowing it “to mark its own homework”….

“Given the scale of the BBC’s failings, it feels absolutely appropriate for the culture secretary to ensure this happens,” Cohen said. “The ultimate failing here is by the BBC’s leadership. They should not be allowed to just investigate themselves … the journalistic failings of this programme are part of a wider system failure at the BBC.” Labour sources say Nandy is open to the idea of an independent inquiry, and believes there were “unacceptable” failings.

Cohen argued the problem is broader than just one documentary. “The BBC must ask itself how and why it has allowed Hamas to become a trustworthy source of information for news-gathering and reporting,” he said. “It is a terrorist group committed to genocidal destruction. At no point should the BBC have relied on it as a source. In this context the BBC has allowed itself to be manipulated by terrorists.”

He added that there has been a collapse in confidence in the BBC among the Jewish community in Britain. “Many in the Jewish community believe that the BBC has been gaslighting them for over a year. Clear evidence of anti-Israel bias has been ignored by the BBC’s leadership, who have been more concerned with reputation management than the standards of impartiality and accuracy that are at the core of the BBC’s mission.”…

Reporting on Gaza is notoriously challenging, but a journalist who did so from Gaza for the BBC in the past said: “This is embarrassing. The BBC knows how scrutinised reporting on Gaza is, and knows you are operating in a one-party state in Gaza, and yet it hasn’t done basic checks. The father’s job was on LinkedIn, the translation was misleading — this is journalism 101! It just shows you can’t subcontract BBC journalism. This is a total systems failure by the BBC.”

A current BBC correspondent added: “The serious problem is that we have editors who haven’t got good editorial judgment. Since all the cuts [to the news budget], the problem has become more stark because they’ve lost many of the good editors who knew how to ask questions, be robust and triple-check facts and sourcing. Now we’ve just got mountain climbers — people who want the title not the responsibility, the credit but never the criticism.”…

Inside the BBC, there is a feeling that heads should roll. “The problem is the BBC never sacks managers, however big the disaster,” said the former BBC journalist who reported from Gaza. “Recent days have shown once again that no one can mishandle a crisis quite like the BBC.”

One aspect of this business that never seems to get mentioned is the Islamic practice of taqqiya – the doctrine that allows dissimulation and secrecy to protect one's religious beliefs. In contemporary usage this appears, unsurprisingly, to have mutated into the idea that Muslims have a religious duty to deceive non-Muslims if it "furthers the cause" of Islam. And it works – not least because the Beeb, along with virtually all western media, are determined to downplay or ignore entirely the all-important Islamic element in the conflict.

Witness the case of BBC reporter Lucy Williamson's interview back in December 2023 with a teenager released from an Israeli jail, who claimed that he'd been regularly beaten and abused by Israeli guards, with the bones in his hands all smashed up. As I noted at the time, the Israeli prison service made public a film of the lad on his release, with hands – and everything else – absolutely fine. But our nice reporter sat with the family, boy with bandaged hands, and was clearly moved by the deep sincerity of these lovely down-trodden people. The claim was that the cruel Israeli guards not only beat the poor prisoners, but set dogs on them, threatened to rape the women, and tear-gassed inmates inside cells. All breathlessly reported, with only the minor caveat that the Israelis denied all this….and that film.

It happens all the time.