In late October CAMERA UK documented “Another case of BBC misrepresentation of the ICJ ruling”.
That ‘briefing’ by the BBC’s International editor Jeremy Bowen – which was originally published in February – told BBC audiences that:
“Another potential audience might be the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which has ruled that Israel faces “plausible” allegations that it is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” [emphasis added]
We noted that a footnote had been added to the article in late September:
However, no link was in fact provided to the article by “our Legal Correspondent” Dominic Casciani published on May 17th 2024.
As we observed at the time:
“In other words, the BBC’s international editor promoted disinformation in February which was refuted by the former president of the ICJ in a BBC interview in April – as acknowledged by the BBC in May – but a footnote was only added to his report in late September and – over eight months after its original publication – that disinformation nevertheless still remains online.
CAMERA UK has submitted a complaint to the BBC on this issue.”
Our complaint read as follows:
“Since its initial publication in February 2024, this “briefing” has promoted disinformation concerning an ICJ ruling from the previous month:
“Another potential audience might be the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which has ruled that Israel faces “plausible” allegations that it is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
In May the BBC acknowledged that was not what the ICJ had ruled, following a BBC interview with its former president:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3g9g63jl17o
On September 28th a footnote dated September 26th was added to this report. Contrary to the claim in the footnote, no link is provided to Dominic Casciani’s article. Moreover, the now ten-month-old disinformation concerning the ICJ’s ruling has not been corrected.
The BBC cannot claim to provide ‘accurate and impartial’ news when disinformation which was acknowledged over five months ago is allowed to remain online as ‘permanent public record’.”
On November 5th the BBC informed us that it would take more time to address our complaint and on November 26th we were told that it had run out of time. However, also on November 26th (around two hours later), we received the following communication: [emphasis added]
“Thank you for contacting us on the BBC news website. We have been reviewing some previous correspondence and it appears that you have not received a reply about an issue you raised in October. We would like to apologise for the regrettable delay in writing back to you due to a large volume of complaints.
In fact a correction note had already been added to the article in question before you wrote to us, explaining what had happened since the article was first published, namely that the president of the ICJ gave an interview in April in which she said the court did not make a ruling on whether the claim of genocide was plausible, as was reported at the time, but the ICJ did emphasise that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide.
Our legal affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani had written a long piece about this in May explaining how the ICJ’s ruling had been misinterpreted and setting the record straight. We intended to link from the February article to his May article but unfortunately the link did not function. We have now reinstated that link. The correction note made clear what had happened but for the avoidance of doubt we also updated the text in the body of the February article and are grateful to you for drawing this to our attention.
We believe that article now accords with our Editorial Guidelines on accuracy and impartiality which underpin all BBC journalism.
Thank you for getting in touch and our apologies again for the long delay in replying.
We take all comments from readers, listeners and viewers very seriously as they help us to maintain our high editorial standards. These comments are also made available on a daily basis to senior editors and are a valuable way of keeping them abreast of readers’ and licence fee payers’ concerns.”
The link to Casciani’s article in the footnote does now work. The changes made to the text are as follows:
Before:
After:
As we see, a report which did not meet the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on accuracy and impartiality nevertheless remained available online for some nine months but no additional footnote has been added to advise BBC audiences of the amendment made to its text.
The continued absence of a dedicated corrections page on the BBC News website of course means that those who read Jeremy Bowen’s article during the nine months since its publication will most likely remain unaware of the fact that it promoted disinformation concerning the ICJ’s ruling in January.
Related Articles:
BBC UNABLE TO REPLY TO A COMPLAINT ABOUT ITEMS IT ALREADY AMENDED
BBC ISSUES BELATED CORRECTION ON INACCURATE ICJ CLAIM
CAMERA UK PROMPTS CORRECTION TO BBC ‘GENOCIDE’ DISINFORMATION
Bowen is not impartial in any of his reports – he has an inbuilt bias against both Israel and Netanyahu, who he constantly criticises in his reports = the man is a bigot and hypocrite and has no place in the BBC