The Corporation is “urgently investigating” several of its taxpayer-funded journalists in the Middle East who have openly declared their support for Hamas on social media. The Telegraph has more.
Reporters at BBC News Arabic endorsed comments likening Hamas, which is a designated terrorist group, to freedom fighters, as well as describing the October 7th atrocity as a “morning of hope”.
One senior correspondent appeared to make fun of the Israeli relatives of a grandmother who was abducted by Hamas.
Another tweeted that “Israel’s prestige is crying in the corner”.
Separately, the output on BBC Arabic, which is funded by the licence fee, has provoked a flurry of complaints alleging bias and inaccuracy, such as for referring to towns inside Israel’s internationally recognised territory, rather than contested areas of the West Bank, as “settlements” and their residents as “settlers”.
Campaigners said this “whitewashed” the targeting of Jewish civilians.
The BBC is obliged to achieve “due impartiality” in all its output. According to its guidelines, while its news journalists also have a “particular responsibility” to uphold the principle in their actions on social media.
Responding to the allegations, the chair of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Dame Caroline Dinenage said on Saturday: “Language matters and it’s vital that media coverage of the heartbreaking events in Israel and Gaza are covered with the utmost sensitivity and impartiality by all journalists, especially our public service broadcasters.”
It comes amid growing calls for the BBC to call Hamas terrorists, rather than a “militant group”.
An investigation by the Arabic department of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis has found social media activity by six BBC journalists and one affiliated freelancer which it alleges displays anti-Israel bias.
Several in the last week questioned the designation of Israeli non-combatants as civilians, despite evidence emerging of indiscriminate slaughter of women, children and the elderly by Hamas.
Mahmoud Sheleib, a BBC News senior broadcast journalist, tweeted suggesting that young Israelis were effectively combatants.
“[I see] In front of me on Al Jazeera, their so-called civilians are standing armed alongside the police and shooting because they basically don’t have any civilians among the youth. This is what the ignorant often don’t know. I am in favour of fighting them with love, yes, this is the solution.” Followed by a laughing emoji.
The Cairo-based journalist also took part in a Twitter conversation in which he joked about a woman whose grandmother was abducted by Hamas receiving an “inheritance”.
Aya Hossam,who describes herself as a broadcast journalist at BBC Arabic, liked a tweet saying: “Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, whether men or women, and they all had victims of explicit violations… This term ‘civilians’ applies to the animals and pets that live there and they are not seriously at fault.”
She later retweeted a message which included the phrase “the Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”.
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