The BBC changed its headline about Israel after a flurry of online criticism.
Israeli soldiers raided the home of a Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome in the Gaza Strip and used fighting dogs to attack him. After the dog attacked 24-year-old Mohammed, the soldier told his mother that he would be “treated.”
Israeli soldiers then expelled his mother and the rest of his family at gunpoint. When soldiers allowed Mohammed’s relatives back into the country a week later, his brother found him. “He was lying face down, his body was rotting, and worms had started eating away at his face,” his brother said.
However, the BBC originally reported:
Israeli soldiers turned attack dogs on the disabled man and watched as he bled to death.
But you’d never guess this from this BBC headline. pic.twitter.com/dvEapeK4O4
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) July 16, 2024
And in the BBC article itself, readers have to scroll down several paragraphs before it even mentions the dog that attacked Muhammad.
After widespread public condemnation of the framing, the BBC retracted the headline.
Because of your outrage, the BBC changed the headline.
As Palestinians are being slaughtered with the complicity of Western countries, we must never stop fighting against their dehumanization.
Doing so is literally a matter of life and death. https://t.co/gFXOxBjsa9 pic.twitter.com/9bMaYitTea
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 16, 2024
BBC’s pro-Israel reporting patterns
The article is the latest example of the BBC promoting Israel. In another article, the BBC described Israel’s plans to colonise Gaza as “who doesn’t want a beach house?”
This is the BBC’s consistent framing of Israeli colonial expansion. In yet another article, the BBC headline reads, “Israel approves plans for 3,400 new homes in West Bank settlements.” In other words, Israel’s further theft of Palestinian land is not an illegal act, but an act that requires simple planning approval from the colonizer.
The BBC also often does not present Israel as a perpetrator: one headline reads, “Deadly airstrikes show arrangements to protect aid workers in crisis, agency says.” Of course, according to this headline, the airstrikes simply fell from the sky, not were carried out by Israel.
Moreover, the attack in question was a triple attack on a convoy of World Central Kitchen aid workers, killing three British nationals, as well as a Polish, Australian and Palestinian. The BBC article tries to hide that Israel deliberately targeted aid workers. In fact, Human Rights Watch has documented seven cases where Israel killed or injured aid workers despite them telling Israel their location.
“The BBC appears to be aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy,” says BBC correspondent
BBC staff themselves are concerned by the reporting: Beirut-based BBC correspondent Rami Ruhayem wrote an email to the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie on 1 May, the full text of which has just been published.
In an email which was also forwarded to BBC News staff, Ruhayem said:
I have seen evidence of bias in favor of Israel and a breakdown in the application of basic journalistic standards and norms in line with Israel’s propaganda strategy. Such evidence has been pouring in at a dizzying pace for months.
In his email, Ruhayem also said staff’s concerns had not been properly addressed by BBC leaders and management.
Amid a flood of evidence-based criticism of the report, silence was the prevalent response.
Other BBC journalists have also criticised the outlet’s coverage. In a letter to Al Jazeera in November, eight UK-based BBC journalists wrote:
By uncritically covering and omitting Israeli claims, the BBC has failed to tell this story accurately and, as a result, failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights violations taking place in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7th. When will the numbers be enough to change our editorial policy?
The BBC’s coverage of Israel and Palestine has long been stigmatized, but since the further escalation of violence it has only gotten worse.
Featured Image via The Telegraph – YouTube