As we noted last week, on May 20th the BBC News website posted a filmed report titled “Gazan babies will die without aid – UN humanitarian chief” shortly after the interview from which that clip is taken had been aired on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme.
“A UN humanitarian chief has said 14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours if lorries of aid do not reach communities in the Strip.”
CROSS-PLATFORM PROMOTION OF UN DISINFORMATION BY THE BBC
As also noted, nearly twelve hours after that interview had been aired and promoted on multiple BBC platforms, the BBC News website published a report which includes an explanation as to why Fletcher’s claim that “there are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them” was in fact disinformation based on the distortion of projections appearing in an IPC report.
Nevertheless – as documented in our post – that filmed report remained on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page with no footnote added to clarify to audiences that Fletcher’s claims were inaccurate and misleading.
Moreover, BBC News website editors chose to leave that disinformation in place for seven consecutive days.
Another example of the BBC’s handling of the fact that it broadcast and published the disinformation promoted by UN OCHA’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher came in the May 23rd edition of the BBC programme that aired it in the first place – BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’.
From 2:11:11, presenter Nick Robinson introduced a long item concerning what he described as a “war of words” and spent thirteen minutes of airtime telling listeners what had happened in the Gaza Strip between 06:00 on May 22nd and 06:00 on May 23rd, including eyewitness accounts of IDF strikes on what Robinson chose to portray as “those they call terrorists”.
By focusing audience attentions exclusively on accounts of events in the Gaza Strip during his chosen time-frame, Robinson was able to ignore, for example, the fact that within the same 24 hours, millions of Israeli civilians twice came under attack by ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis in Yemen.
At 2:26:58 Robinson brought in the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen and part of the ensuing conversation related to a May 22nd statement put out by Israel’s prime minister following a joint statement from the leaders of the UK, France and Canada and the murders of two members of Israeli embassy staff in Washington. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Robinson: “Let’s turn now to the war of words. Benjamin Netanyahu had a little time to think how to respond to the very overt criticism of Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney, and he chose to present them as friends of Hamas; friends – in effect – of antisemitism.”
Bowen: “Yeah he did and in that statement, which we’ve been reporting widely this morning, essentially saying that they want Hamas to win, he also associated…ah…the criticisms with – not directly – but actually Tom Fletcher’s comments on the Today programme – the UN humanitarian chief – about the numbers of babies who might die – he directly associated with those terrible murders in Washington of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim…ahm…and he said that – this is a quote from Netanyahu – ‘the press believes it, the mob believed it and a young couple is brutally gunned down in Washington’. The Israeli…ah…foreign affairs ministry also said on social media ‘in Washington words became bullets’. So there is this idea he’s pushing – they’re pushing – very hard that criticism of Israel is essentially antisemitism and it incites people to do terrible things to Jews. Ah…and…ah…I mean the other way of looking at it is that – well, there are many other ways of looking at it – is that Israeli politics right now are extremely divided. They are highly toxic. Netanyahu’s performance as prime minister is at the heart of that and his critics – Netanyahu’s critics in Israel – frequently refer to what they call his ‘poison machine’ and I think that Keir Starmer and the others are getting a taste of that right now.”
Clearly Jeremy Bowen does not understand to what the phrase ‘poison machine’ actually refers. Robinson continued:
Robinson: “He was able to do it […] because when Tom Fletcher spoke on this programme on Tuesday, Anna raised some doubts about that figure of 14,000 babies at risk over 48 hours and he was forced to clarify that.”
Robinson’s claim that Anna Foster “raised some doubts” is over-generous to say the least and she certainly made no effort to have Fletcher provide evidence for his repeated claim. As documented here earlier, the conversation actually went as follows:
“Early on in that interview (from 2:13:36), listeners heard the following from Fletcher:
Fletcher: “Let me describe what is on those trucks. This is baby food. Baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them. This is not food that Hamas are gonna steal.”
Foster failed to ask her interviewee for the source of that number, which he repeated some five minutes later. [emphasis in italics in the original]
Fletcher: “I want to save as many of these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours.”
Foster: “14,000 babies in 48 hours is an extraordinary figure.”
Fletcher: “It’s chilling. It’s utterly chilling. But this is what we do. We keep going.”
Robinson’s claim that “he” – Fletcher – “was forced to clarify that” is also inaccurate. As the BBC itself reported, the clarification came from other UNOCHA staff, with Fletcher himself having made no apology to date for misleading millions around the world with a blatant untruth.
The BBC’s international editor, however, not only supported Robinson’s inaccurate claim but went on to frame Fletcher’s disinformation in terms of “legitimate criticism of Israel”.
Bowen: “Yeah he was and they’ve seized on that to make their points and to say that there’s a direct connection, is what Netanyahu is saying. But there is this…ehm…continuing debate about what is legitimate criticism of Israel and the accusation is that those who criticise or condemn Israel’s actions are essentially using them or enabling others to cloak Jew hatred…ah…under the guise of criticising Israel, leading to things like attacks on Jews abroad. And that is something which is I think an incredibly heated debate, not just more widely but also for example within the Jewish community.”
Robinson closed the item at that point, going on to say:
Robinson: “The Tom Fletcher interview was on Tuesday and he suggested that 14,000 babies were at risk of dying of hunger over 48 hours. It was later clarified that the figure of 14,000 referred to the risk of malnutrition over the next year.”
Once again, Robinson’s portrayal is inaccurate. Fletcher did not ‘suggest’ that 14,000 babies were “at risk”: he stated unequivocally that “there are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them”.
The controversy surrounding Fletcher’s statement is comprised of three elements, the first of which is Fletcher himself who used the platform provided by the BBC to promote disinformation. The second is the BBC, which chose to reamplify that disinformation on multiple platforms reaching millions of people (and as seen above, continued to do so without adding any explanation) but only clarified Fletcher’s statement some twelve hours later from paragraph thirteen onwards in a written report.
The third part of the story is the responses to that disinformation, including from official Israeli sources. As we see, Jeremy Bowen chose to frame challenges to Fletcher’s blatant fake news (of exactly the type that the BBC has been claiming to fight for years) as objection to “criticism of Israel” and then to claim that Israel brands such “criticism” as antisemitism.
Contrary to Jeremy Bowen’s framing, disinformation and fake news of the type promoted by Fletcher are not legitimate criticism of Israel. Nevertheless, as we see, what interests the BBC’s international editor is not that a senior UN official promoted an outright lie or the fact that his own organisation failed to adequately challenge it and then amplified that disinformation on its website for a whole week.
Rather, Jeremy Bowen’s priority is to frame an incendiary false claim as “criticism” and then to imply that those pushing back against such provocative disinformation are ‘crying wolf’ on the issue of antisemitism.
