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The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza

Drop Site News is publishing a landmark investigation about the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s unrelenting assault on Gaza by British journalist Owen Jones. His report is based on interviews with 13 journalists and other BBC staffers who offer remarkable insights into how senior figures within the BBC’s news operation skewed stories in favor of Israel’s narratives and repeatedly dismissed objections registered by scores of staffers who, throughout the past 14 months, demanded that the network uphold its commitment to impartiality and fairness. 
 
by Owen Jones
 
Part 5 - Muhammed Bhar’s “Lonely Death”
 
In July, the BBC published a story on its website about Muhammed Bhar, a 24-year-old Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome and autism. He lived in Gaza with his family, who provided him with around-the-clock care. Since Israel began its assault on Gaza, he had been terrified of the shells exploding around him, caused by violence he was unable to understand. On July 3, the Israeli military raided Bhar’s home. The family begged for mercy for their disabled son, but the unit’s dog savaged him. He begged the dog to stop, using the only language he could access in that moment: “Khalas ya habibi” (“that’s enough, my dear”). The soldiers then put the injured man in a separate room, locked the door, and forced the family to leave at gunpoint. A week later, the family returned home to find Bhar’s decomposing body.

Bhar’s story was originally documented by Middle East Eye on July 12, with the headline: “Gaza: Palestinian with Down syndrome ‘left to die’ by Israeli soldiers after combat dog attack.” British newspaper The Independent covered it with the headline: “Gaza man with Down’s syndrome mauled by Israeli attack dog and left to die, family says.” Four days later after the first reports, the BBC published its own version of the story. Its headline: “The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome.”

The headline did not reflect the hideous circumstances of Bhar’s death and omitted the specifics of who did what to whom—a recurring theme in complaints made by BBC reporters and presenters to management regarding the Corporation’s online coverage. In the original version of the story, it took 500 words to learn that an Israeli army dog had attacked Bhar, and a further 339 to discover how he had died.

Berg was the one to hit publish on the story, according to the edit history obtained by Drop Site. Optimo, the BBC’s content management system, shows that Berg made a series of pre-publication edits, before publishing the story, meaning that Berg himself must have signed off on its framing and deemed that the headline erasing Israeli responsibility satisfied the BBC’s editorial standards.

The article about Bhar sparked an outpouring of fury both internally at the BBC and on social media. In a post liked by 14,000 users, Husam Zomlot, Palestine’s ambassador to the UK, tweeted: “I don’t think there could be a worst murder in human history, still @BBCWorld headlines this as ‘death of a Gaza man’ to abdicate Israel of responsibility. Abhorrent!” Palestinian-American writer Tariq Kenney-Shawa mocked the absurdity of the framing. “A ‘lonely death,’ as if he died after a long battle with cancer or was perhaps swept away by the sea or lost under the rubble of an earthquake,” he tweeted.

Eventually, the BBC decided to rewrite the story. It changed the headline to “Gaza man with Down’s syndrome attacked by IDF dog and left to die, mother tells BBC.” It also inserted two new paragraphs at the top of the piece informing readers that the Israeli military had admitted “that a Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome who was attacked by an army dog in Gaza was left on his own by soldiers, after his family had been ordered to leave,” and that he was “found dead by his family a week later.” Even with the new phrasing, the story implied that the dog had attacked Bhar of its own volition, not that it was under the control of IDF personnel.

In its updated post, the BBC did not acknowledge that its previous version of the story omitted or downplayed key facts or explain to readers why it changed the headline. It did add a note at the bottom of the story: “This story was updated on 19 July with an IDF response.” The BBC also tweeted the article under its new headline, writing: “This post replaces an earlier version in order to update a headline that more accurately represents the article.”

The Bhar story symbolizes what the BBC staffers who spoke to Drop Site News say they want: Stronger assurances that BBC’s Israel and Gaza coverage upholds the organization’s policies around impartiality. As one BBC journalist told me: “There has to be a moral line drawn in the sand. And if this story isn’t it, then what?”

The objections over Berg’s role extend to his own writing. One BBC staffer highlighted Berg’s December 2022 article “Israel says likely killed Palestinian girl in error,” about Jana Zakarneh, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli snipers. The first two paragraphs read:

    Israel says its forces appear to have unintentionally killed a 16-year-old Palestinian girl amid a gun battle with militants in the occupied West Bank.

    The body of Jana Zakarneh was found on the roof of her house in Jenin after the firefight on Sunday night.

The story foregrounds the Israeli narrative—that Zakameh had been near gunmen who’d opened fire at Israeli troops, and that the Israeli military had been conducting near nightly raids in the West Bank as part of an operation against militants whose attacks on Israel had left the country “in shock.” Only in the third paragraph does the story quote the Palestinian prime minister’s accusation that Israel had killed the teenager “in cold blood.”

Wafa, the Palestine News Agency, released an image of Zakarneh, which CNN published with its story on her killing. By contrast, the BBC, in its story on the killing, used a photo depicting three members of Zakarneh’s family on the roof of their home.

In stories reporting attacks against young Israelis, the BBC often adopts a different approach to photos. A story about Emily Hand, an Israeli child who had been presumed killed on October 7 but was later released, features her image. A story about a 14-year-old Israeli boy who was killed in the West Bank earlier this year also included a picture of him. Late last year, a story about a 19-year-old British-Israeli IDF soldier—not a civilian—who was killed in combat was accompanied by his photo.

In other cases, facts unfavorable to Israel have been stripped out of Berg’s reports. In a May 2022 story about an annual march of far-right Israeli extremists through Palestinian areas celebrating the capture and occupation of East Jerusalem, Berg’s original copy described the marchers as singing “patriotic songs,” which traditionally included inflammatory, racist anti-Arab lyrics that went unmentioned by Berg. Indeed, when the march took place, the BBC initially reported chants of “death to Arabs!” and “may your village burn.” A BBC crew came under attack during the march; Israeli forces stopped the attack but took no further action. But these details did not appear in a later version of the story. The headline refers euphemistically to “Israeli nationalists stream through Muslim Quarter.” All of this caused a huge outcry on social media and among some BBC staff. These details were later reinstated, with an update noting they had been restored “to give a fuller picture of events.”

On one occasion, the BBC was forced to change Berg’s copy following external and internal backlash, BBC journalists said. In May 2022, an Israeli sniper killed Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Israel has diligently tried to cover up her murder.

Berg’s original text about her funeral read:

    Violence broke out at the funeral in East Jerusalem of reporter Shireen Abu Aqla, killed during an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.

    Her coffin was jostled as Israeli police and Palestinians clashed as it left a hospital in East Jerusalem.

The editorial decision not to ascribe responsibility triggered widespread outrage, including from Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab British Understanding and a prominent commentator who has repeatedly appeared on the BBC news channel. He tweeted: “how…Raffi Berg @bbcnews thinks ‘violence broke out’, ‘jostled’ and ‘clashes’ were appropriate terms I cannot fathom.” After widespread anger, the BBC updated the text to correctly open with “Israeli police have hit mourners at the funeral of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqla,” adding “Her coffin almost fell as police, some using batons, waded into a crowd of Palestinians gathered around it.” Nonetheless, the headline still lacked a sense of causality: “Shireen Abu Aqla: Violence at Al Jazeera reporter’s funeral in Jerusalem.”

Despite significant evidence of bias and internal protest, BBC journalists allege that the network has refused to investigate Berg’s crucial role in what they see as conduct that imperils the integrity of the BBC. “We have provided a pretty watertight account about what he’s said and done,” one journalist told me. The response from management has been limited to “Tim Davie saying: ‘It’s good you’ve raised this. We’ll look into it.’”

Full report:


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