Visitors to the BBC News website’s home page or ‘Middle East’ page on the evening of November 12th found promotion of a video that first appeared in May 2025:
Apparently as part of its current damage control efforts following the Telegraph’s publication of the memo by Michael Prescott, the BBC News website has added a note to the synopsis of that video first published almost six months ago:
“Update 12 November 2025: Following publication of this video on 20 May, the BBC reported later that day that we had sought further clarification from UN on Tom Fletcher’s comments. In a statement, Jens Laerke, their human rights commission spokesman, said: “We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC partnership [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] has warned about. We need to get the supplies in as soon as possible, ideally within the next 48 hours.””
The link in that update leads to a report by Tom Bennett that appeared on the BBC News website later in the day on May 20th. The relevant part of that report reads as follows:
“Earlier, the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC thousands of babies could die in Gaza if Israel does not immediately let aid in.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Mr Fletcher said: “There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”
When pressed on how he had arrived at that figure, he said there were “strong teams on the ground” operating in medical centres and schools – but did not provide further details.
The BBC later asked for clarification on the figure from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), which said: “We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC partnership has warned about. We need to get the supplies in as soon as possible, ideally within the next 48 hours.”
It highlighted a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which stated 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition are expected to occur among children aged six to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026.
The IPC report says this could take place over the course of about a year – not 48 hours.” [emphasis added]
Interestingly, the highlighted part of Bennett’s report does not appear in the text of the update added on November 12th.
As CAMERA UK noted back in May when a link to that IPC report was promoted on a BBC News website live page:
“That latter link takes those bothering to click on it to a ‘special snapshot’ IPC report from May 12th titled “Gaza Strip: Acute Malnutrition Situation for April 2025 – March 2026” which states that: [emphasis added]
“Nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months (April 2025-March 2026). Of these, 14,100 cases are expected to be severe. “
In other words, Fletcher replaced “malnourished” with “die”, swapped “expected to be” with “will”, turned “children under the age of five” into “babies” and substituted “the next 11 months” with “the next 48 hours”.”
As we see, not only does the text of the BBC’s November 12th update come nowhere near to providing BBC audiences with the information needed to understand just how egregious Fletcher’s widely promoted claims were, it even repeats the “14,000 babies” canard and re-promotes Fletcher’s disinformation.
For more on that story, see:
CROSS-PLATFORM PROMOTION OF UN DISINFORMATION BY THE BBC
HOW IS THE BBC HANDLING ITS OWN PROMOTION OF ‘14,000 BABIES’ DISINFORMATION?
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