A former director of the BBC has said the corporation’s “failures” over its reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict have had “dangerous, real-world consequences” for British Jews.
Danny Cohen said institutional “bias and deep-rooted prejudice” had been exposed, referring to its coverage of the hospital explosion in the Gazan area of al-Ahli as just one example. The BBC, however, has completely disagreed with the accusation.
Mr Cohen said the broadcaster “rushed to judgment” over the hospital explosion in Gaza last week, adding it announced “without qualification that Israel was responsible for the explosion and the tragic loss of life”.
He went on to say: “Other media organisations picked up their line. Across the world, people believed Israel was responsible for the bombing of a hospital. More anti-Semitic violence and anger followed.”
In its coverage, a BBC correspondent on the ground initially claimed that “it’s hard to see what else this could be” other than an Israeli airstrike – as he observed the size of the explosion.
Talking about the reporting, the corporation admitted the reporter was “wrong to speculate” but insisted “he at no point reported that it was an Israeli strike”.
Mr Cohen said the BBC’s “mistakes” were evidence of “institutional fault lines which reveal bias and deep-rooted prejudice”. The broadcaster has also been criticised for its policy of not calling Hamas “terrorists” – something they defended as not “a departure from impartiality”.
Cohen also mentioned a 2021 BBC news which was criticised by Ofcom for causing “significant distress to the Jewish community”.
The article was about an anti-Semitic incident on a bus, in which the BBC said the Jewish students in question had used anti-Muslim slurs. The phrase from an audio recording was reported by the BBC as “dirty Muslims” in English, but others translated the phrase as “Call someone, it’s urgent”, in Hebrew.
Mr Cohen, who was Director of BBC Television between 2013 and 2015, said: “When the BBC gets its reporting this badly wrong it fuels the dangerous poison of anti-Semitism … It provides excuses for the prejudiced to act out their racism online or, more frighteningly, in the real world.”
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “We wouldn’t agree with this characterisation of the BBC. Our starting point is always impartiality, and we take that incredibly seriously. That’s why we take so much effort to get our coverage of significant and complex world events right.
“In amongst thousands of hours of news broadcasting, there will always be some errors – and live reporting will always bring with it huge challenges, particularly when it is on the ground in the toughest of circumstances.
“Where we do get things wrong, we always hold up our hands – as we did this week when one of our correspondents was wrong to speculate – along with others – about the cause of the Al-Ahli hospital explosion, even if he at no point reported that it was an Israeli strike.
“Audiences are coming to the BBC in their millions – looking for information they can trust, expert analysis they can rely on and first-hand, on the ground reporting.
“We are 100 per cent committed to getting that right. The BBC always listens and will continue to have a dialogue with audiences on our reporting and meet with Jewish community representatives and staff.”
