On the night of March 7th/8th the BBC News website’s live page published the following entries [times stated are Israel time]:
A later entry informed BBC audiences that:
However, already by 03:45 local time, the Times of Israel and other journalists had reported the connection between the strike at the Ramada hotel and the IRGC Quds Force operatives:
“After reports of an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut hotel killing at least four, the IDF says it carried out a targeted strike on key commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
It says the targets were members of the Lebanon Corps of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s extraterritorial arm, who “acted to advance terror plans against the State of Israel and its citizens from Lebanese territory.””
On the morning of March 8th the BBC News website opened a new live page which continued to present the strike on the hotel and the strike on IRGC operatives as though they were separate stories.
Subsequent entries read:
An entry at 10:26 local time – titled “The war overnight: Photos show fire and missiles colouring night sky” – included the following photo caption:
In other words, over eight hours after the strike on IRGC Quds Force commanders operating from a civilian facility in Beirut, the BBC had still not provided its live page audiences with an accurate and impartial account of the story.
Later in the day, the names and roles of the five IRGC Quds Force officials were published. The BBC News website did not produce any stand-alone reporting on that story and an entry on the same live page continued to fail to provide readers with the full information.
