Foreign Secretary James Cleverly became the latest politician to slam the BBC for their absurd reporting of the war against Israel by Hamas, though went one step further by calling them out during a live interview on the channel.
The BBC has continually refused to call Hamas fighters “terrorists”, and Hamas’ actions “terrorism” since the war broke out this weekend.
The corporation claims these words have “significant political overtones” which would undermine their commitment to impartiality, however are happy to use the label in reference to attacks by other groups.
The corporation has been accused of “double standards” by a director at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
This morning Mr Cleverly demanded the BBC reflect the acts of terrorism in its reporting.
He said: “Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation – I just want to make sure that you recognise that in your reporting, they are not militants, they are terrorists.
“The murders they perpetrated in Israel, the kidnaps that they have perpetrated and the threats of summary executions which will be televised and broadcast, these are all terrorist attacks and I would urge you to reflect that in your reporting.”
Mr Cleverly joins a rank of politicians on both the left and the right to have criticised the BBC’s limp-wristed reporting of the acts of terror.
Speaking at a moving vigil for British Jews on Whitehall last night, senior minister Robert Jenrick – whose wife Michal is the daughter of Holocaust survivors – got a massive cheer from the crowd when attacking the BBC’s reporting.
He said: “These weren’t, as the BBC wrongly continues to say, militants or fighters – these were terrorists!
“This was not a political resistance. The events of the last 48 hours are not a story with two sides to tell. It was pure terror, fuelled by anti-Jewish hate and inflicted upon one of Judaism’s holiest days.”
Former Labour MP Luciana Berger said: “There’s a responsibility on all the media”.
“These people are terrorists. Hamas is a terrorist organisation… Language matters. When you treat countries differently you exacerbate the problem.
“If you don’t call it out for what it is, you have to ask yourself why is it that you treat what happens in Israel differently from any other country? This would not have been acceptable in the other atrocities that we’ve seen.
“Why in this conflict is it treated differently?”
Writing in the Telegraph, former BBC executive Danny Cohen said the BBC appears to have a diktat forbidding use of the T-word.
He said: “On the BBC, my former employer, there appears to be a diktat not to use the word ‘terrorism’ even when the acts being reported are terrorism of the most egregious and barbaric kind.
“Across its platforms, the BBC describes the actions of ‘militants’, as if shooting children in cold blood is some part of conventional military warfare. It is nothing of the sort. It is murder, pure and simple. It is terrorism.”
