One of the five public purposes set out in the BBC’s charter includes the obligation to “help contribute to the social cohesion and wellbeing of the United Kingdom”.
Given the fourteen months of unrest perpetrated by anti-Israel activists, the vandalism of businesses and culture and the well-founded concerns of members of Britain’s Jewish community, one might have expected that the UK’s national broadcaster would be doing the utmost to ensure that the content it produces with funding from the licence fee paying public does not contribute to the plethora of lies, disinformation and false narratives currently eroding social cohesion in the country it serves.
One of the more incendiary of those false narratives promotes the baseless claim of ‘genocide’ in the Gaza Strip. As we have documented here, since January the BBC has repeatedly promoted inaccurate interpretations of a January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and on multiple occasions has had to issue corrections to that content.
A BBC INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS MULTIPLE BBC MISREPRESENTATIONS OF ICJ RULING
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
BBC NEWS CORRECTS YET MORE ICJ RULING DISINFORMATION
An efficient and effective BBC complaints procedure would include mechanisms to ensure that inaccuracies which have already been acknowledged and corrected do not reappear in BBC content.
BBC editorial guidelines on accuracy include a section titled “Accuracy in Live Content”: [emphasis added]
“3.3.7 Achieving due accuracy in live content can be challenging, as there may be little opportunity to verify factual claims. Where practicable, and particularly if an issue is controversial, content makers should take steps to ensure due accuracy.
Where possible, risks should be identified in advance and measures taken to mitigate them. This may include ensuring the appropriate preparation is undertaken so that the content contains sufficient challenge or context; or ensuring other contributors are able to provide additional challenge. Significant inaccuracies that may arise should be corrected quickly.”
In other words, if a BBC presenter is going to conduct an interview about the war between Israel and Hamas, he or she should be alerted “in advance” to the possibility of attempts to promote disinformation such as the repeatedly corrected claim that the ICJ ruled that there is “plausible evidence” of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
One of the more recent corrections issued by the BBC on that topic concerned an edition of the BBC Two programme ‘Newsnight’ which was aired in September.
As we documented shortly after that programme was aired:
“Presenter Jo Coburn failed to clarify to viewers that “starvation” is not being used “as a weapon of war” in the Gaza Strip and that in fact Israel has facilitated the entry of over a million tons of aid since the war began. Like far too many of her colleagues, she also failed to relieve audiences of the misconception promoted by Levy regarding the ICJ, which – as the BBC well knows – has not said that “a plausible genocide” is happening in the Gaza Strip.”
Less than a month after that correction was issued, on November 27th, Jo Coburn presented an edition (available in the UK here) of another BBC Two programme called ‘Politics Live’ which is also available on BBC Sounds.
One of the items in that programme (from around 13:40) concerned the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon/Hizballah which came into effect that morning, with the conversation quickly moving to the topic of the Gaza Strip and the ICC’s recent issue of arrest warrants, with guest Ellie Chowns MP opining as follows (from 25:49 in the audio version):
Chowns: “The ICC judgement is about issuing arrest warrants for different people on the basis of different charges. There’ve been plausible evidence of Netanyahu and Gallant committing certain war crimes and the charges against Mohammad Deif are different. Now, we also have the International Court of Justice – we also have the International Court of Justice – which has said there is plausible evidence of genocide in Gaza.” [emphasis added]
As Jo Coburn should know, given the BBC’s recent correction of a similar claim made in a programme she previously presented, the ICJ said nothing of the sort. Coburn however did not intervene to refute that disinformation: that task was left to another guest, Melanie Phillips, after which Coburn interjected:
Coburn: “It does talk about…it does talk about starvation, which I’ll come onto.”
Chowns later claimed that:
Chowns: “We only have to look at out TV screens to see what’s happening in Gaza. There is virtually no humanitarian aid getting through.”
Once again Coburn failed to inform BBC audiences that as of the day before this programme was aired, 1,149,932 tons of aid had been transferred into the Gaza Strip.
159 trucks in one day alone is clearly not “virtually no humanitarian aid” and Coburn went on to state that (from 28:03):
Coburn: “But let me come back to the humanitarian aid. Now, there is evidence that lorries have been held up at the border – not always by the Israelis, as it so happens – and recently there has been a story of a number of trucks being hijacked by gangsters within Gaza. Are you sure…well, are you sure that the Israeli government is guilty of war crimes when it comes to starvation?”
The “story” to which Coburn refers was reported (including by the BBC) on November 19th. However the looting of humanitarian aid – including by Hamas – is a topic which the BBC has serially avoided since late last year, meaning that BBC audiences are unlikely to be aware that the recent incident involving 98 trucks stolen after they entered the Gaza Strip – rather than “at the border” – is by no means an isolated case.
Coburn also failed to inform her viewers and listeners that claims concerning imminent “starvation” or famine in the Gaza Strip have been shown to be baseless before allowing Chowns to respond.
Chowns: “Clearly the ICC thinks there are grounds to investigate that and that has to be done and it could have been done, frankly, by Israel itself but it chose not to.”
Apparently Ms Chowns has never heard of the COGAT website providing daily updates on humanitarian aid transfers or the Israeli MFA’s rebuttals of claims made in IPC reports used by the ICC.
What Ellie Chowns sees on her TV screen is what the producers of that content choose to show her. In March of this year the BBC News website published at least thirteen reports promoting claims of imminent famine in the Gaza Strip and in the months that followed, the corporation continued to mainstream that narrative, despite the lack of evidence.
Similarly, for months the BBC has allowed disinformation concerning the ICJ’s ruling on ‘genocide’ to be promoted on its television, radio and online platforms, only issuing corrections – often months later – when pressed to do so.
It is entirely unacceptable that although the BBC has known since April that the ICJ did not rule that there is “plausible evidence of genocide in Gaza”, its audiences – including, obviously, some MPs – continue to be exposed to that disinformation, without adequate and timely rebuttal by its own journalists.
And no – relying on another guest to refute such disinformation does not mean that the BBC is meeting its obligation and responsibility to “contribute to social cohesion” at a particularly divisive time in the UK.
