BBC again accused of biased reporting—with a personal introduction – Why Evolution Is True

I’ve been struggling to understand the new articles in Nature on the fly brain, and it’s not easy! I will write about the issue, but not until I have something clear and interesting to impart to readers.

When I look at my draft posts, I see that many of them are about Israel, which prompted me to call Malgorzata and whine, “Everything I’m writing is about Israel; people are going to think I’m obsessed.” Malgorzata responded that. as with her, I likely have two reasons. First, I’m a Jew and am naturally concerned with an existential crisis threatening the Jewish state. Second, she said, both she and I have been worried about the new rise in anti-Semitism that goes by the name of “anti-Zionism”.

Before WWII, anti-Semitism was called “Jew hatred,” but that was deemed too crass, so “anti-Semitism” arose as a softer, more scientific euphemism. Now with the rise of Jew and Israel hatred, and the reluctance of liberals to say they are “antisemitic”, we have yet another euphemism: “anti-Zionism”.  But at bottom they’re all the same thing, softened variants of “Jew hatred.”  And that hatred, expressed as approbation for eliminating the existence of Israel, threatens not only the Jewish state, but the West as a whole, for the sentiments are more than “Jew hatred”: they’re “West hatred.”

Or so Malgorzata said, and sent me a video, saying that I would get a better explanation by watching the section of this video between 9:15 to 22:30. I’ve pasted it in so it starts at 9:15. The speaker is Dr. Einat Wilf, “former Knesset member and expert on Israel’s foreign policy,” and she’s quite eloquent.  Wikipedia notes that “Wilf describes herself as a Zionist, a feminist and an atheist.”

At any rate, that’s her take, and I guess I have no choice about the topics I cover, since they just issue from the determined molecular movements going on inside my head. So here’s my post.

The BBC, accused repeatedly of biased reporting, has formed a division called “BBC Verify”, dedicated to fact checking and preventing misinformation.  The announcement of its inception says this:

They’ll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and – crucially – explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.

But investigative journalist David Collier, who has investigated “Verify,” cannot verify that it’s fulfilled its mission. In fact, on this post on his website (click to read), he calls for this BBC unit to be shut down.

One example: Verify purported to verify that the Iranian missiles raining down on Israel last week were aimed solely at military targets. (Regardless of what they were aimed at, of course, it was an attack unprovoked by any Israeli attack on Iran.)  But some elementary fact-checking showed that Verify dissimulated:

On Tuesday evening, 1 October 2024, Iran fired approximately 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. Many were intercepted, but several sites were hit. On Wednesday evening BBC Verify published a 1 minute 20 second video – titled ‘where Iran’s missiles struck in Israel’.

The BBC Verify team tells us they have been looking at ‘where Iran’s missiles have landed’ and the video is to counter ‘a lot of false imagery’ being circulated online. They say they managed to verify strikes in the vicinity of three key locations – all of them military sites:

Here’s the figure from “Verify”, showing the verified Iranian missile strikes:

More from Collier:

This creates an immediate problem. Why only these three? For example, a verified strike by Ramat Gan shopping mall has not been included. The BBC had reported on this – and so were well aware of it – but for some reason, BBC Verify left the shopping mall strike out of their analysis.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that BBC Verify were deliberately pushing a pro-Iranian propaganda line that the missiles were fired only at military targets.

But it gets a lot, lot worse.

Having told us that the three targets verified were ‘in the vicinity’ of military targets, we are then shown the evidence. The first we see are several apparent strikes on Nevatim airbase, but it is when the journalist turns her attention to the attack on the Tel Nof base that things become surreal.

We find the base was not hit at all. This is the script:

Location two is the Tel Nof airbase. In this video you can see a crater where a missile has landed. It is not the airbase itself, but a school a few miles away”:

And Collier makes a clever analogy:

What? So the Iranian’s didn’t hit Tel Nof airbase with this missile – they hit a school. So why isn’t the school listed in the original map. How on earth can BBC Verify know that the intended target of this missile was an airbase? They can’t.

The school that was hit is the Shalhavot Chabad school in Gadera. About 5 miles from the place BBC verify tells us was the target.

. . . . To put this into context. Below on the map are two marks, Gaza City Centre and Jabalia camp. The distance between them is approximately the same distance as between the school and the airbase. Can you imagine Israel hitting a school in Jabalia camp and BBC Verify virtually forgiving them by suggesting it was a close call on a Hamas military target 5 miles away.

There is no excuse for this – and it appears to be a deliberate attempt to whitewash an Iranian ballistic missile strike on a school. Why on earth didn’t the BBC put the school as one of the verified strikes on the map at the start? We all know why. For the same reason they didn’t mention the strike on the shopping mall. It doesn’t fit the propaganda story they are seeking to tell.

Yes, this is of course biased reporting, made worse that it was made by the “Verify” team.  This is just one more incident in the Beeb’s history of biased anti-Israel reporting. I’ve written before about the Asserson Report that accused the Beeb of violating its own journalistic guidelines 1500 times during the Gaza War, and you can see my collection of pieces on the BBC’s bias here. The Beeb is the British equivalent of the NYT, and it’s doing exactly what the NYT does—passing off biased reporting as if it were unbiased.

Collier discusses the author of this “verified” piece, Verify correspondent Nawal Al-Maghafi, showing that she has a history of reporting for anti-Israeli publications like Middle East Eye, Al-Jazeera, and even for PRESS TV, the state media outlet of Iran!  This is hardly the person for Verify to choose as author of a piece that tries to exonerate Iran of trying to kill civilians!  He concludes that BBC Verify should be shut down (indeed, the Beeb needs a top-to-bottom housecleaning). Check out the numbered links.

The BBC has spent decades demonising Israel – but since Oct 7, the situation has become blatant and inexcusable (a few examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Two damning reports have recently been published on BBC Bias (Asserson, Cohen)

The BBC has gone completely off the rails. It isn’t just that it is incapable of putting together proper impartial coverage of Israel’s conflict with its neighbours – it is that it doesn’t think it is doing anything wrong. The inability to even begin to identify the problem it has – means it cannot be salvaged in its current form. No public funds should ever be used to finance something so deeply and irredeemably flawed.

Well, so much for that. Nobody claimed that the liberal MSM media, whether in the US or UK, was objective when it came to the Gaza war.

After reading that, I immediately came upon Tom Gross’s newsletter, which said this:

No surprise here. Just a publicly-funded BBC journalist leaving today after 4.5 years to go and officially work as an anti-Zionist influencer.

Check out the Palestine Media Centre yourself; I’m not sure it’s a mouthpiece for anti-Zionism, but there are suggestions of that in its mission, for how many Palestinians dare speak against their rulers?

The Britain Palestine Media Centre connects media professionals with Palestinians – from academics and artists, to human rights activists and ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

An independent non-profit, the Centre is an invaluable resource for journalists, editors, and producers seeking expert opinion, information, and contacts in a timely and reliable manner.

How we can help:

• Looking for Palestinian experts to talk to for an article or report? We can connect you with the right person for your topic.

• We can provide quick turnaround Palestinian guests for TV, radio or online broadcasting, to respond to breaking news.

• Need information or data for a Palestine-related story? Let us know what you’re researching, and we’ll be happy to help.

********

Finally, something that I read today in the Times of Israel: a report on a woman who used to be “a vocal supporter of the Islamic Republic” but now heads a pro-Israel group that accuses the BBC of war coverage biased towards Hamas (this, of course, is not a new accusation).

When Catherine Perez-Shakdam took the helm of Britain’s biggest grassroots pro-Israel campaign group this summer, she inherited a bulging inbox .

Aside from the continuing domestic fallout from the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the UK’s new Labour government has made a string of decisions that have dismayed and infuriated large elements of the country’s Jewish community and supporters of Israel.

Since taking the helm in July, Labour has restored funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA; pulled out of a legal case opposing the International Criminal Court application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; and partially suspended arms exports to Israel.

The last paragraph surprised me, though I knew about the suspension of arms exports. But I thought Labour had purged itself of its anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism.  In this case, we have the reverse of the case of Karishma Patel (above), for Perez-Shakdam was once a talking head for Iran and is now excoriating the Beeb for its anti-Israel bias. The article continues:

Born to Jewish parents in Paris whose own parents had fled Nazi persecution, Perez-Shakdam lived as a Muslim while studying in the UK after marrying a Muslim man from Yemen. She later spent years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East and began appearing on Iranian state media. Increasingly trusted and valued by the regime, Perez-Shakdam was granted an audience with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei; interviewed the late Ebrahim Raisi during his initial, unsuccessful 2017 bid for the presidency (he would succeed in 2021 and serve as president until his death this year); and was invited to a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran attended by Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashaal.

That was then; this is now. Influenced by her “Zionist” daughter, Perez-Shakdam did a 180°:

Perez-Shakdam’s journey was capped by her appointment last month as director of We Believe In Israel. She replaces Luke Akehurst, who was elected as a Labour MP in the July general election. The campaign group seeks to counter the well-organized pro-Palestinian lobby by mobilizing grassroots support for the Jewish state.

For years, I was motivated by a kind of self-hate. But you realize that you can’t deny who you are

The group’s latest campaign has the BBC firmly in its crosshairs.

The new report into the BBC led by British-Israeli lawyer Trevor Asserson says the public service broadcaster’s coverage associated Israel with war crimes, genocide, and international law violations far more often than it did Hamas. It claims that the BBC downplayed Hamas terrorism, and finds that the BBC’s Arabic service was among the most biased global media outlets in covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.

. . . . Perez-Shakdam says her organization’s campaigning is not driven by hostility to the BBC, which is prevalent in the opposition Conservative party and its media allies, as well as on the far left. “It’s not a witch hunt. This is not an effort to bring down the BBC,” she says. “It’s just to elevate the level of journalism and to make sure that ethic [of impartiality] is at the forefront of it all.”

“The BBC has a lot of answering to do and I don’t think that it’s willing to do that; it [has] already doubled down,” she says. She believes the government may have to take action. “Taxpayers’ money is being used, through the vehicle of the TV license. The government needs to do something about it. This is not a case of free speech. It’s a case of holding the BBC accountable for a service that it is not providing in violation of its own [guidelines].”

You can read the Asserson Report here. But if you’ve followed the Beeb’s coverage of the war you hardly need to  Just think of all those British Jews who have to pay for a television license to listen to the distortions of the BBC.