Over seven months ago we documented the BBC’s promotion of the claim that prior to October 2023 “around 650 lorries a day brought aid into Gaza” in a filmed explainer on the topic of “starvation” presented by Paul Adams.
As we noted at the time, the BBC had previously corrected a similar claim in two languages but nevertheless, the synopsis to Adams’ report told BBC audiences that:
“Before Hamas’s 7 October attack, around 650 lorries a day brought aid into Gaza.
But now, more than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have warned of mass starvation in Gaza.”
BBC NEWS REVIVES PRE-WAR AID AMOUNTS MISINFORMATION
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC in early August 2025, noting that:
“In fact, an average of only 70 of the 500 trucks a day which entered the Gaza Strip before October 7th, 2023 were carrying food (see ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-2022 for the UN’s latest breakdown of goods entering the Strip before the war and the COGAT publications on instagram.com/p/C4h-I0HNxqk/ and gaza-aid-data.gov.il/media/0cbcdf3r/humanitarian-situation-in-gaza-cogat-assessment-mar-15.pdf). Using the “500 lorries” figure – or in this case, “650 lorries” – when discussing food exclusively (rather than other kinds of goods such as building supplies) is therefore misleading.
Adams’ report – which purports to be an ‘explainer’ on the issue of “mass starvation” – should therefore be amended to clarify that only some 70 of those “650 lorries” carried food.”
On August 12th we were told that it would take more time to address our complaint and on September 2nd we were informed that the time-frame for doing so had expired.
On March 11th 2026 – over seven months after the complaint had been submitted – we received a reply which includes the following:
“You wrote to us about the introduction to the above report which said that 650 lorries a day carrying aid entered Gaza before October 2023. You pointed out that the lorries did not just bring in aid but also commercial goods.
We take your point and have therefore changed the sentence in question to say:
Before Hamas’s 7 October attack, around 650 lorries a day were bringing aid and commercial goods into Gaza.
We have also added this note to the end of the introduction, pointing out the change:
Update 10 March 2026: We have amended this text to make clear that the lorries entering Gaza before October 2023 were bringing in both aid and commercial goods.
Thank you for drawing this to our attention. We always welcome the opportunity to review our content and make changes to improve it.”
The lack of a dedicated corrections page on the BBC News website of course means that chances that members of the BBC’s worldwide audience who watched that report over seven months ago will see those amendments are negligible.
The BBC’s claim that it responds to complaints within “2 weeks” is once again shown to be unrealistic.
