NOURNEWS- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a long history of whitewashing Britain’s royal families’ scandals and this country’s crimes in other countries, such as the atrocities committed by the Britain forces during 20 years of occupation of Afghanistan.
But, in the aftermath of the Al Aqsa Storm operation which was conducted by the military wing of Hamas against the Zionist regime and this regime’s genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, BBC has reached to new heights in its biased reports and actions in support of the Zionist regime which are not in line with the duty of a media outlet.
Few reports were circulating on October 18 stating that the BBC has removed several Middle East reporters from the air amid allegations that they posted support for Hamas in its operation on Israel.
BBC News Arabic reporters, including those reporting out of Egypt and Lebanon, appeared to back Palestinians or criticize the Zionist regime in posts they either tweeted or liked, it is noteworthy to say that none of the fired reporters stated their support for the liberating movement of Hamas when they were on air.
One of the reporters liked a message that appeared to describe Hamas as “freedom fighters,” which is the truth about Hamas. The Palestinian resistance movement is a liberating movement which are fighting against an occupier regime in line with Palestinians rights of self-defense according to international laws.
At that time “We are urgently investigating this matter,” said a rep for the BBC and the rep continued and said:“We take allegations of breaches of our editorial and social media guidelines with the utmost seriousness, and if and when we find breaches we will act, including taking disciplinary action.”
It was reported that at least six BBC journalists had been taken off the air based on allegations such as liking of a tweeted video of Hamas operation in the occupied lands.
The names of the journalist were Mahmoud Sheleib, a senior broadcast journalist, freelancer Aya Hossam, correspondent Sally Nabil, Cairo-based Salma Khattab, Beirut-based religious affairs correspondent Sanaa Khouri, Beirut-based editor Nada Abdelsamad and Amr Fekry, a sports correspondent and pundit at BBC Arabic, according to the report.
But BBC’s biased actions have been intensified in recent weeks to the extent that it's deprived of impartiality and professionalism in covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has turned the British Broadcasting Corporation into a yellow media.
These observations have not been limited to the outside world, and the claimant of “the most unbiased and just” media in the world has been facing a rising internal pressure against BBC’s editorial stance also.
Accordingly, a group of BBC journalists has accused the UK broadcaster of bias and double standards in covering the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, arguing that more attention is paid to the Jewish state’s victims. In a letter released earlier this week, the journalists in particular made it clear that they would like to know when the number of casualties among Palestinians would be "high enough for our editorial stance to change."
"I do agree that the British Broadcasting Corporation is obviously biased," London-based foreign affairs analyst Adriel Kasonta has said in this regard: "I do agree that the British Broadcasting Corporation is obviously biased, BBC is actively dehumanizing the other side of the conflict. And I would even go further by saying that there is only one side of the conflict, which is the Palestinian minority, which is occupied by the Israelis. We know about the actions of Israeli settlers who are actively pushing the Palestinian people from their territories,"
He recalled that there were certain attempts from the very beginning of the conflict, when "mainstream media headlines were right, were going something along ‘Hamas- Israel war’ instead of ‘Palestine-Israel war’." "The devil is in the details and the detail is very apparent to the public, which can't any longer be deceived by the manipulations of the mainstream media. The accusations are right, are correct," the analyst said.
The reasons for this one-sided coverage of the conflict by the BBC, is that from the very beginning of the bloodbath waged by Israel against innocent people of Gaza, the collective West pledged to reassure Israel that they have a carte blanche when it comes to committing the genocide.
In regard to this matter, Lebanese reporter and journalist Hussein Izzedin, has said: "The media should be impartial and fair, in accordance with the principles of journalism, but today we see the BBC turning the victim into an executioner and a terrorist and a killer into a human being who is allegedly defending himself," furthermore he dubbed BBS’ actions as "a policy of blinding public opinion."
He insisted that what the BBC is doing now will mark “a new black spot on its longstanding history of intransigence and a complete lack of objectivity, as if the broadcaster was a party to this conflict.”
The letter in question:
In a 2,300-word letter written to Al Jazeera by eight UK-based journalists employed by the corporation, the BBC is said to be guilty of a “double standard in how civilians are seen”, given that it is “unflinching” in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Fearing reprisal due to the BBC’s harsh actions against unbiased journalist covering the Gaza war, the journalists requested anonymity, and the group does not plan to send the letter to BBC executives, believing such a move was unlikely to lead to meaningful discussions.
It is stated in this letter: “The BBC has failed to accurately tell this story – through omission and lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims – and it has therefore failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza,” the letter reads. “Thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7. When will the number be high enough for our editorial stance to change?”
The BBC journalists said that across British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) platforms, terms like “massacre” and “atrocity”, have been reserved “only for Hamas, framing the group as the only instigator and perpetrator of violence in the region. This is inaccurate, but aligns with the BBC’s overall coverage”.
The Hamas assault, “does not justify the indiscriminate killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, and the BBC cannot be seen to support – or fail to interrogate – the logic that it does,” their letter reads.
BBC’s biased coverage is not limited to mere editorial stance or certain wordings:
In its latest scandal covering the Gaza war and Israel’s blatant war crimes against the Palestinians, the British Broadcasting Corporation mistranslated an ex-Palestinian prisoner as praising Hamas released by Israel last week in the prisoner exchange deal and temporary truce with the Resistance group.
In the interview of the released prisoner, the BBC showed her as saying in Arabic with English subtitles that “no one helped us. Only Hamas cared. Those who felt our suffering, I thank them very much”. However, the account of Respond Crisis Translation on X revealed that she instead said, “Israelis imprisoned us for a month. As winter came, they cut off the electricity. We almost died from the cold weather.” She was also quoted by the BBC as saying “and we love them [Hamas] very much”, but that was corrected as “Israelis sprayed us with pepper spray and left us to die inside the prison.”
The group stated that “She never mentioned Hamas or a word like it”, condemning the BBC’s clip as an “egregious mistranslation” that is not only an error but “a racist fabrication that fans the flames of the war” in Gaza. “Mistranslations such as these – intentional or not – are exacerbating the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Following the criticism, as well as outcry by many other users and activists, the BBC was force to admit that the clip had inaccurate subtitles but claimed that it was “due to an error in the editing process”. But, how a media outlet as large as BBC, with strict editorial stance and guidelines in support of Israel, did not mistranslate the said clip intentionally?
How does the same media, which has laid off at least 6 journalists for allegations such as liking pro-Hamas’s twitter posts, did not check the clip and its translations? The only answer to these questions is that, the BBC indeed published the said clip with wrong translations knowingly just to whitewash and censor Israel’s horrible actions against Palestinians.
With these explanations one can certainly say that BBC has turned into a yellow press that has lost the spirit of real journalism due to its biased approach to events taking place in Palestine and beyond, but we can’t expect much more out of the media arm of Israel and Britain’s royal family, the same family who established the Zionist regime by establishing a 'Jewish national home' and facilitating Jewish immigration and colonization of Palestine through the British Balfour Declaration in 1917.
BY: Homayoun Barkhor
NOURNEWS