There are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and the BBC having to issue a correction after publishing a bit of Hamas propaganda.
The latest example was on Wednesday after it produced a documentary called Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone narrated by 13-year old Abdullah, but keen viewers noticed a problem with Abdullah and sent a letter to the BBC, leading to the following correction:
Since the transmission of our documentary on Gaza, the BBC has become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah.
We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its retransmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film. The new text reads:
‘The narrator of this film is 13 year old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.’
We followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film, but we had not been informed of this information by the independent producers when we complied and then broadcast the finished film.
The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency.
Yup, the BBC let the son of a literal Hamas minister narrate their film and didn’t bother to do basic journalism about it. It is not the first time the BBC has had issue such a correction since October 7. Back in October 2023, it had to correct reporter Jon Donnison for claiming that a hospital must have logically been hit by an Israeli airstrike, “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.” In 2012, Donnison claimed a picture of an injured Syrian child was from Gaza.
A month later, BBC anchor Monica Miller had to issue another apology for claiming the IDF was targeting Arabic speakers, including medics, in another hospital. In January 2024, after a BBC radio report, it was forced to admit they did not sufficiently vet a Hamas claim that Israel was summarily executing people in Gaza.
Before October 7, in July 2023, anchor Anjana Gadgil temporarily deleted her Twitter account after asking former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett why the IDF was “happy to kill children.” The BBC later admitted, “This line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”
Concurrently, there has been lots of talk in the U.S. about USAID and what it spends money on. It is one thing for USAID to give money to foreign media outlets that are voices of pro-Americanism in a swampy sea of anti-Americanism. It is quite another when the media outlet in question has a reputation of running interference for Hamas and demonizing Israel, which is what the BBC is, just because it is famous.
