In April 2023 the BBC News website published a report by Raffi Berg about the arrest of a Jordanian MP by Israel:
BBC NEWS SKIPS THE BACKGROUND TO JORDAN GUN SMUGGLING STORY
As was noted at the time:
“As we have repeatedly observed in recent months, the BBC’s reporting on the surge of Palestinian terrorism – including a backgrounder written by Raffi Berg – has consistently failed to inform audiences how weapons smuggling from Jordan and Lebanon has contributed to the increased violence.
While this latest story has clearly attracted the BBC’s attention because of the involvement of a Jordanian MP, the corporation continues to avoid informing its audiences about the basic issue of wider regional facilitation of the Palestinian terrorism – and related counter-terrorism operations – on which it regularly reports.”
The following month Imad al-Adwan was returned to Jordan. According to reports in that country’s media, his parliamentary immunity was removed and he was set to stand trial in Jordan. As we observed at the time:
“Remarkably, the BBC News website has not published any follow-up reporting, meaning that what remains online as ‘permanent public record’ is a story about Israel having “harm[ed] the dignity of Jordanians” by arresting a man whom BBC audiences have not been informed was a serial gun smuggler.”
NO BBC FOLLOW-UP ON JORDAN MP GUN SMUGGLING STORY
Eighteen months later, the trial of that former Jordanian MP came to a close.
“A Jordanian court sentenced one of the kingdom’s lawmakers to 10 years of hard labor after convicting him of smuggling weapons into the West Bank.
Imad al-Adwan was arrested at the Israel-administered Allenby Border Crossing (also called the King Hussein Crossing) between Jordan and the West Bank on April 22, 2023, when Israeli security forces found 12 rifles and 194 pistols in his car, Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said at the time.
Israel transferred him to Jordanian authorities in May last year, and he was eventually convicted of exporting weapons with the intention of illegal use after being stripped of his parliamentary immunity.
Three others were also convicted in the case and sentenced to lengthy prison time by the Jordanian State Security Court.”
Once again, the BBC did not report those developments, meaning that its sole online documentation of the story focuses on al-Adwan’s arrest by Israel for an “alleged” crime. That omission is all the more relevant in light of the fact that weapons continue to be smuggled across that border, with one recent incident having taken place just days ago.
At the time of writing, the BBC News website’s ‘Jordan’ page shows that just five reports relating to that country have been published in the past six months.
Similarly, the website’s ‘Kuwait’ page and ‘Oman’ page each show only two reports published in the same time period and the ‘Bahrain’ page displays just four reports from the past year, most of which tell BBC audiences little about events in that country defined as “not free” by Freedom House.
A decade ago we documented the BBC News website’s coverage of the Middle East against the background of civil liberties in the region.
AN OVERVIEW OF BBC COVERAGE OF THE MIDDLE EAST IN 2014
One of the outcomes of the BBC’s massively disproportionate focus on Israel related stories since October 7th 2023 is that coverage of other countries in the region has taken even more of a back seat, meaning that even a story about an MP’s cross-border smuggling of weapons is not adequately reported.
