The Board of Deputies takes action against the BBC

The 261-year old Board of Deputies of British Jews has taken the remarkable step of writing to Tim Davie, Richard Sharp and Fran Unsworth at BBC, copying in Nadine Dorries, to complain in the strongest terms about the BBC's reporting of the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street. 

The letter comes directly from Marie van der Zyl, president of the organisation. 

The BBC appears to have gone to ground over this, so this will smoke them out if nothing else. 

Ms van der Zyl outlines five main charges against the BBC:

1. Your report of the incident refers to the obvious antisemitic acts as mere “allegations” while reporting an unsubstantiated allegation of “racial slurs about Muslims” as fact.

2. Your report treats racisms differently.

3. Your video news segment goes as far as to suggest the Jewish victims may have been responsible for instigating the attacks.

4. The allegations made against the Jewish victims are wholly without substance or merit.

5. The BBC’s refusal to retract and apologise to the victims has caused further distress and compounded the harm.

She says that the BBC...

...needs to take immediate action to repair the damage done, discipline those responsible and work with us to undergo training to improve the BBC’s ability to cover our community with due care for accuracy, understanding and respect. Most importantly, it is imperative that you correct your report to mitigate any further damage, and issue an apology to the victims for all the distress that has been caused.

Now the ball is in the BBC's court.

Further reading - 

[1] Nicole Lampert, CAPX: From Wiley to the Oxford St attacks, some people always think Jews deserve it.

[2] Melanie Phillips, Substack: The BBC has questions to answer.

Update - I hadn't picked up on this, but in another twist the BBC's Harry Farley told GnasherJew that it was his editors who 'picked up' on the 'racial slur about Muslims'. It was ''not me'', he said. And, in a very interesting turn of phrase, he then added ''...and they wanted to reflect that briefly in the piece''. And it appears as if it was these editors themselves who added it after his piece was filed.