Earlier this month we documented the BBC News website’s longstanding failure to provide its readers with the full range of information concerning the extremist group Palestine Action, noting that:
“Most of that inconsistently tagged coverage is found on regional pages on the BBC News website and written by local journalists.”
WHY DOES BBC NEWS CONTINUE TO UNDER INFORM ON ‘PALESTINE ACTION’?
An additional example of that editorial policy appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Bristol’ page on or around February 12th.
Titled “UN expert’s concern over activist charges” and tagged “freedom of expression”, that report by Bea Swallow provides no information whatsoever concerning the agenda of the extremist group Palestine Action, confining descriptions of its members to “protesters” and “activists”.
Swallow’s report – illustrated with a photograph provided by Palestine Action itself – begins by telling readers that:
“A human rights expert has written to the government expressing concern over a group of protesters the Home Office says are being detained under anti-terrorism laws.
Members of Palestine Action are alleged to have used a vehicle to break through the doors of Elbit Systems UK near Bristol under claims the firm supplies arms to Israel.
In his letter Professor Ben Saul, an independent expert appointed by the UN to monitor human rights, says the group have been classified as high-security prisoners with “restricted status”, and denied access to legal support, family visits and healthcare.”
The link provided in that third paragraph leads to a letter apparently sent to a British ambassador which is dated 21 November 2024. Readers are not told why the BBC has decided to publish a report based on that letter nearly three months after it was sent or how it was sourced.
Neither are readers informed that Professor Ben Saul – who began his role as ‘UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism’ in November 2023 despite years of anti-Israel activism, including support for boycotts – has a long history of anti-Israel activity.
While Swallow presents that letter as having been sent by Saul alone, the names of three other ‘special rapporteurs’ also appear, one of whom at least – Gabriella Citroni – has, along with Ben Saul, been campaigning for a ban on arms exports to Israel and whose professional credentials did not preclude her from signing up to a February 2024 statement which inaccurately claims that “[t]he ICJ found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide”.
Another of the signatories to that letter is Irene Khan – a former head of the anti-Israel political NGO Amnesty International – who in that capacity touted claims of “serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights by Israeli forces in Jenin” the month after the 2002 ‘Jenin massacre’ libel had been refuted. Khan has alleged that journalists in the Gaza Strip are ‘deliberately targeted’ while dismissing evidence of terrorist activities and she employs the Livingstone Formulation, claiming that “international legal standards are being distorted and misinterpreted to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism”.
BBC audiences would of course have been better placed to put the subsequently expanded claims in the letter that is the topic of Swallow’s report into more appropriate context had they been provided with some background information concerning the records and stances of its writers but Swallow failed to provide that context. Her report continues with promotion of a link to a November 2024 BBC London puff-piece on Palestine Action:
“The Home Office said: “The CPS has decided that there is sufficient evidence to submit to the court that these offences have a terrorism connection.””
In addition, Swallow provides a list of Palestine Action “activists” who “have been charged with criminal damage, violent disorder, and aggravated burglary using a sledgehammer in relation to the incident, which happened in the early hours of 6 August” which includes the following:
“William Plastow, 33, of High Croft Avenue, Manchester”
As was the case in BBC London’s November 2024 report, readers are not informed that William Plastow – also known as Will Nyerere Plastow – is (as some have noted was already reported by the Standard last September) a BBC script editor who had participated in previous Palestine Action agitprop in Leicester in April.
Later in her report, Swallow tells readers that:
“In response to the letter from Professor Saul, the Home Office said: “Those who are the subject of the letter have been charged with several substantive offences: criminal damage, violent disorder, aggravated burglary, grievous bodily harm with intent, and actual bodily harm.”
It added there was “sufficient evidence” of a terrorism connection.”
No link to that response is provided and readers are not told when it was sent. Swallow goes on to promote further claims appearing in the letter sent by Ben Saul et al.
Beyond providing amplification for that November 2024 letter from four UN special rapporteurs, the purpose of Swallow’s report is unclear. However, what is obvious is that she chose to omit a significant amount of relevant information concerning the agendas and records of those who wrote it, those it concerns and – like so many of her colleagues before her – the agenda of the extremist group (which has also repeatedly vandalised BBC property) on behalf of which they operated.
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