Visitors to the BBC News website on the afternoon of September 24th found a report by Alys Davies headlined “Twenty injured in Yemen drone attack on Israel, rescuers and military say”.
Notably, that report about a Houthi – rather than “Yemen” – UAV attack on the same day fails to note that it struck a shopping centre – i.e. a civilian location – on a national holiday and instead promotes generalised descriptions of the site of the incident. [emphasis added]
“Rescuers say at least 20 people have been injured in southern Israel after the Israeli military said a drone was launched from Yemen.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the drone struck the resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea coast, with attempts made to intercept it.” […]
“Israeli TV stations broadcast live footage of the drone strike and the area it hit, which showed billowing smoke rising from the site.
Footage posted on social media, verified by the BBC, shows a drone in the sky disappearing out of view as it flies down behind buildings. A few moments later, birds scatter as they fly up into the sky.”
Davies did however make sure to tell readers that:
“A spokesman for the [Houthi] group, Yahya Sarea, said two drones targeted two “Israeli enemy targets” in a “successful” operation.”
Had BBC audiences been informed that the supposed “Israeli enemy targets” was in fact a busy shopping centre, they would of course have been better placed to put that statement into its appropriate perspective.
The following day, September 25th, saw the appearance of a report by David Gritten titled “Israeli strike on Yemen’s Houthis reportedly kills eight” which likewise fails to inform BBC audiences that the Houthi UAV attack the previous day that prompted that “Israeli strike” had targeted a civilian location.
“The Israeli military says its air force has carried out its “most powerful strike” in Yemen in response to the Houthi movement’s repeated drone and missile attacks on Israel. […]
It comes a day after 22 people were injured, two of them seriously, in a Houthi drone attack in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. […]
A separate statement from the Israeli military said an inquiry into Wednesday’s Houthi attack on Eilat had suggested that the drone launched from Yemen was “detected relatively late, and that warning sirens were activated in accordance with protocol.”
Towards the end of his report, Gritten tells readers that:
“On 10 September, four days after a Houthi drone attack on Eilat’s Ramon airport wounded one person, the Israeli military carried out a series of strikes in Sanaa and al-Jawf province that killed 35 people, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said last week that 31 journalists and media support workers were among those killed in Sanaa and that the incident constituted the deadliest single attack on the press worldwide in 16 years.
Yemen’s September 26 newspaper said all but one of them had worked in its office or the headquarters of the government’s Moral Guidance Directorate, which were both bombed.
The IDF said at the time that it had targeted the “Houthi Public Relations Department”.”
As previously documented here, the first BBC News website readers heard of that “Houthi drone attack on Eilat’s Ramon airport” was four days after the incident in another report by David Gritten.
Given the BBC’s record of uncritical amplification of claims made by the CPJ, it does not come as much of a surprise to find Gritten promoting that statement put out by the organisation on September 19th. However, Gritten fails to tell his readers that – as noted by the IFJ – the ‘September 26’ newspaper is in fact a military media outlet controlled by the Houthis:
“The newspaper is the official outlet of the Yemeni Army, which is now under the control of the de facto Houthi government in Sanaa. It employs both military and civilian journalists. […]
The YJS acknowledged that 26 September Newspaper was Houthi-controlled…”
The CPJ’s statement also states that the offices of both newspapers – ‘September 26’ and ‘Yemen’ – were located “in the [Houthi] government’s Moral Guidance Directorate’s headquarters”. As noted by the Times of Israel, that propaganda department is headed by the same “spokesman” quoted in Davies’ report:
“The propaganda division, officially known as the Moral Guidance Department in the Yemeni Armed Forces, is under complete Houthi control and is headed by Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree.
Yemen’s September 26 newspaper, which describes itself as the official Houthi military outlet, named 31 journalists killed in the strikes, which it said hit its newsroom and another Houthi-controlled outlet, Yemen, both located in the Houthi military’s Moral Guidance Department headquarters in Sanaa.”
In other words, the “31 journalists” named by a Houthi-controlled media outlet, quoted by the CPJ and then highlighted by Gritten include military reporters working for a military newspaper located in a military building belonging to the Houthi terrorist organisation. The absence of that information clearly hinders audience understanding of the story.
Likewise, the failure of both these BBC reports to clarify that the September 24th Houthi UAV attack on Eilat targeted a civilian shopping centre on a national holiday compromises audience understanding of that story about yet another Houthi attack on civilian targets in Israel.
Once again we see that while BBC journalists are quick to promote any claim that supports the ‘Israel killing journalists’ narrative that the corporation has chosen to adopt, they display remarkably little interest in drawing a line between legitimate media organisations and those that serve the agendas and promote the propaganda of terrorist groups.
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BBC think that all terrorist organizations are composed of saints – hence Gritten and his other BBC associates have an aversion to reporting anything that could be conflicting with their “saints”