Given that misinformation and disinformation have been rife since the very beginning of the current war between Israel and Hamas and seeing as the BBC (despite the existence of its fact-checking and anti-disinformation departments) has already had to issue multiple apologies for claims such as “summary executions”, “targeting Arabic speakers” and “happy to kill children”, one might have expected that over the past eight months BBC journalists would have developed an appreciation of the importance of checking claims and allegations made by third parties rather than just uncritically repeating them.
On the afternoon of June 14th the BBC News website published a report by Robert Greenall headlined “Aid convoy denied entry to northern Gaza, UN says”.
That report promotes claims made by UNICEF spokesman (and former journalist) James Elder earlier in the day during a long but unchallenging interview with Mishal Husain on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme (from 1:31:28 here) which was later recycled on the afternoon edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour’ (from 00:35 here). In addition, the BBC News website separately promoted a clip from that interview in the ‘Watch/Listen’ section of its Middle East page.
The original version of Greenall’s report told BBC audiences that:
“The UN children’s agency Unicef has told the BBC a convoy carrying aid was denied entry to northern Gaza, despite having all the necessary documents, adding that this is a common occurrence. […]
He said the areas of Gaza being denied aid were suffering from levels of severe malnutrition unprecedented in Gaza. […]
He said that despite having all the necessary paperwork it took them 13 hours to travel about 40km (30 miles).
After spending eight hours at checkpoints they were finally denied entry, he said, “so 10,000 children who were going to benefit from nutritional supplies, medical supplies, did not”.
Mr Elder said he did not know why the convoy was denied entry, but said such denials were “consistent and relentless” and that there were hundreds of examples.” [emphasis added]
BBC audiences are not informed that UNICEF provides just 7% of the UN aid entering the Gaza Strip. The report also included the following:
“The Israel Defense Forces responded that they and Cogat, the body that coordinates Israeli government policy towards civilians in Gaza, facilitated the entry of aid.”
That statement was taken from the ‘Today’ interview, at the end of which Mishal Husain told listeners:
Husain: “Well, after recording that interview, we contacted the Israeli military for a response. They have said ‘the IDF facilitates the entry of aid along with COGAT’. COGAT is the body that coordinates Israeli government policy towards civilians in Gaza and the occupied Bank…eh…West Bank. The IDF also said the BBC didn’t give us enough time to respond. If we receive a fuller response, we will share it.”
Greenall’s report was amended several hours after its initial publication and in addition to the above claims made by Elder, now includes the following:
“In their response, the Israel Defense Forces said documentation for the Unicef vehicle in the convoy was not filled out correctly and accused Mr Elder of presenting a “partial picture”. […]
The IDF said in a statement that a problem arose because Unicef had used a lorry with a rear closed cabin which required prior coordination with the authorities, adding that Hamas frequently exploited closed cabins to smuggle weapons and terrorists into northern Gaza.
It said Unicef had initially claimed the lorry did not include a closed cabin but this claim turned out to be false.
“Once the situation was clarified, [Unicef] was offered to continue its movement northward without the mentioned truck or to submit appropriate coordination for the following day,” the IDF added.
“As long as the coordination process is properly conducted, passage will be allowed,” the statement continued.”
Referencing an Instagram post put out by Elder (who told the same story to at least one additional media outlet), COGAT posted the following – including a picture of the truck concerned – on the evening of June 14th:
The ‘Today’ programme’s idea of ‘sharing’ the IDF’s “fuller response” was to put out a Tweet linking to Greenall’s amended article:
In other words, the ‘Today’ programme chose to run a pre-recorded interview with the UNICEF spokesman despite not having obtained a full response to his claims and allegations from Israeli officials and that interview remains available online in two versions, without the later comment from the IDF having been added.
The BBC News website published a written report which initially also failed to include any relevant right of reply but was later amended. Of course those who read that report in the hours after its initial publication would be highly unlikely to later revisit it in order to check whether or not any additions had been made.
Earlier in that same edition of the ‘Today’ programme (from 39:19), in an introduction to an item with the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell, Mishal Husain told listeners that: [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Husain: “…we’ve been speaking to UNICEF in Gaza and we’ll have that interview later on in the programme. They are telling us of…the way…they think…that they describe the situation in Gaza for children at the moment is a war on children.”
At the end of that later interview, James Elder told listeners that:
Elder: “…this has been – as UNICEF has said for many months – a war on children and we don’t say that because of the power of language; we say that because unlike other conflicts, this one numerically has had a disproportionate impact in terms of children killed and children injured.”
Failing to ask her interviewee to provide any evidence to support those claims, Husain terminated the conversation at that point.
UNICEF – and primarily Elder himself – has indeed been promoting that ‘war on children’ theme for “many months”: on December 1st 2023 UNICEF put out a press release titled “The war on children resumes”.
The BBC should know that war between Israel and Hamas is not a ‘war on children’ but a war between a sovereign country and the terrorist organisation which brutally invaded it on October 7th to perpetrate the worst massacre in its history. Nevertheless, as we see, BBC journalists are quite happy to amplify that incendiary yet baseless smear and to provide multiple platforms for its creator’s apocryphal account of his own mismanagement.
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