Readers may have noticed that statements made by the White House Press Secretary at a press briefing on June 3rd sparked severe irritation at the BBC.
Karoline Leavitt’s partly inaccurate remarks concerning BBC coverage of an alleged incident at an aid distribution point in Rafah two days earlier prompted a statement from the BBC News Press Team the next day, as well as the publication a written article on the BBC News website.
Later that day, BBC News’ analysis editor Ros Atkins put out a social media post promoting a video addressing Leavitt’s remarks, which he described as no less than “an attack on the BBC”.
Partway through that BBC Verify branded video – which was also published on the BBC News website – Atkins referred to the part of Leavitt’s statement in which she said “…unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth”. He then told viewers that: 
Atkins: “But BBC News didn’t do that.”
That claim may have come as something of a surprise to members of the BBC’s funding public who saw a June 1st BBC News website live page uncritically quote the Hamas-run health ministry and its director (he of the ‘bodies vaporising’ claim) in seven separate dedicated entries, as opposed to two quoting the IDF and one quoting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Three out of the nine different headlines to the BBC’s main report on the story also promoted claims made by the Gaza “health ministry” or “Hamas-run health authorities”.
Atkins went on to provide an ‘explanation’:
Atkins: “It [the BBC] did quote the Hamas-run health ministry, with clear attribution. The ministry, which is part of a Hamas-controlled government, is the main source of official information when it comes to casualties in Gaza.”
Apparently Ros Atkins and his BBC Verify colleagues would have audiences believe that quoting and promoting “with clear attribution” the “official information” provided by a ministry run by a murderous proscribed terrorist organisation is entirely different from taking “the word of Hamas”.
While some of the White House Press Secretary’s remarks were indeed inaccurate, it is nevertheless remarkable that the BBC chooses to defend its use of information supplied by a terrorist organisation and to claim that it does so because – as Atkins put it – “Israel doesn’t allow international news organisations into Gaza”.
Perhaps Ros Atkins and his colleagues assume that BBC audiences have forgotten that the corporation’s practice of uncritically quoting and promoting Hamas supplied casualty figures began over a decade ago when numerous BBC journalists were on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
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