In the early hours of August 11th (Israel time) the BBC News website began to publish coverage of an earlier strike on a Hamas operative who – as had been known since October 2024 – also worked as a journalist for Al Jazeera.
The first report to appear – “Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza” – was updated numerous times following its initial publication and is credited to Amy Walker and Tiffany Wertheimer.
Hours later, a BBC News website live page, which had opened the day before, began reporting the story. Now titled “Funerals held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed by targeted Israeli strike in Gaza”, that live page published twenty-six entries concerning that particular story in just over nine hours, with some being of particular note.
Two and a quarter hours into that live page coverage of the story, Jeremy Bowen decided that the evidence of al-Sharif’s links to Hamas was “not convincing”. Notably, he chose not to show BBC audiences the documents concerned but his claim was nevertheless reamplified in other BBC reports on the topic.
The BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell later dismissed that evidence because “The BBC cannot independently verify these documents”.
Later in the afternoon, the BBC’s Jon Donnison repeated the “little evidence” claim while stating that al-Sharif had previously “worked for a Hamas media team” – but without disclosing how the BBC knows that. Donnison also claimed that “In some of his social media posts before his death, the journalist can be heard criticising Hamas” but failed to back that up by showing readers the posts concerned. Donnison’s unevidenced claim was also recycled in other BBC reports.
Despite the publication of items promoting comment from bodies including Al Jazeera, the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders, the UN, the Foreign Press Association (which later revealed itself as ‘not caring’ about journalists’ Hamas links) and the UK’s NUJ, the BBC refrained from informing its audiences about previous cases in which the links of Al Jazeera journalists to terrorist organisations had been exposed.
On the afternoon of August 11th, the BBC News website published a report by Ruth Comerford headlined “UN condemns targeted Israeli attack that killed five Al Jazeera journalists”.
That report repeats the claims made by Donnison and Knell on the live page. It also promotes statements from a variety of bodies including the CPJ as well as that organisation’s claims concerning the number of journalists killed during the current war.
Later that afternoon, the BBC News website published an article by Alys Davies which was originally titled “Who was Anas al-Sharif, prominent Gaza journalist killed by Israel?” but had the headline changed to read “Who were the Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza?” the following day.
Interestingly, hours before the initial appearance of that report, an organisation called ‘The Centre for Media Monitoring’ had issued instructions to journalists on how to report the Anas al-Sharif story. That organisation is linked to the Muslim Council of Britain and two of its representatives had just weeks earlier met with senior BBC executives, including Richard Burgess who had attended an event the CfMM held in Parliament in June.
Coincidentally or not, Davies’ report complies with most of those instructions. An entire section ‘humanising the victims’ (which was expanded in later versions to include additional names) appears under the sub-heading “The ‘only voice’ left in Gaza City” with readers told that:
“Married with a four-year-old daughter, Sham, and a one-year-old son, Salah, he was separated from them for long stretches during the war while he continued to report from the north of the territory after refusing to follow Israeli evacuation orders.
A joint Instagram post on his official account along with his wife’s in January this year showed a picture of Sharif smiling with his two children. The caption said it was the first time he was meeting Salah, after 15 months of war. […]
He reported on the targeting of his colleagues, including prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in 2024 in an air strike in Gaza City.”
Davies did not of course bother to tell her readers that Ismail al-Ghoul was a Hamas operative or that Sharif’s son was named after a terrorist.
Her compliance with the CfMM instructions on “timing” reads as follows: [emphasis added]
“Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera’s managing editor, described him as the “only voice left in Gaza City” – which Israel now plans to militarily occupy.”
By way of provision of “independent analysis”, Davies unquestioningly quotes the CPJ’s debatable interpretations of “international law”:
“Committee for the Protection of Journalists CEO Jodie Ginsberg told the BBC there was no justification for Sharif’s killing.
“International law is very clear on this point that the only individuals who are legitimate targets during a war are active combatants. Having worked as a media advisor for Hamas, or indeed for Hamas currently, does not make you an active combatant”, she said.
“And nothing that the Israeli forces has produced so far in terms of evidence gives us any kind of assurance that he was even an active member of Hamas.””
Another sub-section in Davies’ report – headed “Israel alleges Sharif led ‘terrorist cell’, with little evidence” – covers what the CfMM describes as provision of “the Israeli perspective”.
“The Israeli military accused Sharif of posing as a journalist, saying he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas” and was responsible for launching rocket attacks at Israelis – but it has produced little evidence to support these claims. […]
Israel had previously accused Sharif of being a member of Hamas’s military wing – something he and his employer strongly denied.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a media freedom group, said the allegations against him were “baseless” and called on the international community to intervene.”
The CfMM’s instructions on “targeting journalists” are reflected as follows in Davies’ report:
“Nearly 200 journalists have been killed in the war Israel launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 assault, according to RSF.
Fakih from Al Jazeera accused the Israeli military of fabricating stories about journalists before killing them, to “hide what [it] is committing in Gaza”. Israel has previously denied targeting journalists.”
Davies even recycles Al Jazeera’s unproven claims concerning the death of Shireen Abu Akleh but has nothing to tell her readers about that outlet’s associations with Hamas.
“”Here is a crucial fact: had Israel been held accountable for Shireen’s assassination, it would not have dared to kill 200 journalists in Gaza,” said Fakih.”
At the beginning of her report, Davies tells readers that:
“Five Al Jazeera journalists were killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Sunday – among them 28-year-old correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had reported prominently on the war since its outset.
The other four Al Jazeera journalists killed were correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, Al Jazeera said.”
By paragraph 26 in the original version, that surname had changed:
“Mohammed Qreieh, 33, was a father of two from Gaza City, the Associated Press news agency reported. Like Sharif, he was separated from his family for months during the war as he reported from the front lines in northern Gaza, AP added.
Qreieh‘s last live broadcast was on Sunday evening, minutes before he was targeted, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.”
The current version of that part of the report reads as follows:
“Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, was a father of two from Gaza City. Like Sharif, he was separated from his family for months during the war as he reported from the front lines in northern Gaza.
Qreiqeh’s last live broadcast was on Sunday evening, minutes before he was targeted, Al Jazeera reported.
The broadcaster said his mother was killed in March 2024 when Israeli forces raided al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. He found his mother after searching for her body for two weeks, it said.
His brother was also killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City in March, Al Jazeera said.”
Davies has nothing at all to tell BBC audiences about that journalist’s links to Hamas and his role as a ‘researcher’ at the Hamas-affiliated NGO Euro-Med Monitor.
As we see, the BBC continues to blindly promote (including on additional platforms) the narratives concerning journalists in the Gaza Strip that it chose to adopt at the outset of the war over 22 months ago – and which have not changed despite the numerous cases in which evidence of the links of journalists to Hamas and other terrorist organisations has emerged.
Sadly for the future of journalism as a whole, once again it is clear that BBC journalists – including senior staff – have no interest in denouncing the exploitation of their profession by terrorists or in drawing a line between legitimate media organisations and those that knowingly employ terror operatives and promote the agendas of terrorist groups, along with those of terror funding regimes.
Related Articles:
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BBC NEWS IGNORES AL JAZEERA JOURNALISTS STORIES
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