Introducing the BBC's Harry Farley - an update

Harry Farley, 'senior journalist at BBC News' and the BBC chap in the eye of the storm over the BBC's Oxford Street antisemitism coverage, has 'protected his tweets'. 

Whether that's because of 'feedback' over his reporting or because we reviewed his tweets a few days ago - such as the one where he heard a Nigel Farage programme on LBC and found it ''absolutely extraordinary. No pretence. He’s given hours of airtime to openly whip up hatred'' [I bet he's not a GB News fan] - and found them somewhat wanting on the impartiality front I simply cannot say.

Probably the former, but you never know. 

If it's the latter: Hi Harry. Please 'correct' your article again and ask the BBC to issue a prominent apology across all relevant platforms and also recommend that your bosses commission an outside-the-BBC person to review everything that went wrong here. Thanks.

Antisemitism on Oxford Street - Another Update

So it wasn't just Harry Farley on the BBC News website. I've found via TVEyes Thursday's BBC London report on the incident on Oxford Street [18:40, BBC One]. BBC reporter Guy Lynn said:

The Metropolitan Police are treating this as an alleged hate crime and I should say though that we at BBC London did watch this footage and you can hear some racial slurs about Muslim people which does come from the bus. It is not clear at the moment from the person that said that what role that may have played in this incident.

So from that, it's evidently far from being just a couple of BBC reporters who got this so badly wrong, It's ''we at BBC London'' who watched the footage, misheard and misinterpreted the footage, and then used it in the BBC's television and online coverage. 

You can imagine the scene: They watch the footage in a BBC London studio. Someone thinks they heard a particular phrase that casts a bad light on the Jewish people on the bus and others are persuaded that they can hear it too. They don't double-check and triple-check with experts before broadcasting it and others just take their word for it, and it spreads from BBC tv to the BBC News website. Then, for some reason, BBC reporters use the plural ''slurs'' both online and on tv - something they later have to row back on, at least online, given that it was palpably untrue. 

So what now? A lot of people are absolutely furious at the BBC, and I'm sure they won't let the BBC off the hook over this.

P.S. Someone on Twitter made a point that struck me too, writing ''The inclusion of the Jewish witness is worse as the unqualified BBC's assertion next to her denial makes it seem like she is being dishonest.''

This was that passage:

Guy Lynn, BBC: We spoke to someone who was on the bus. 

Tamara Cohen: Pretty scared for myself. The way that it was escalating, I didn't want there to be any violence but obviously we weren't in that mindset which is why we got on the bus and we were starting to leave and then the people that were mocking us, they got close to the bus and started hitting the bus, they starting shouting out rude slurs. It was escalating pretty quickly. 

Guy Lynn, BBC: The Metropolitan Police are treating this as an alleged hate crime and I should say though that we at BBC London did watch this footage and you can hear some racial slurs about Muslim people which does come from the bus.

Yanny or Laurel?

There are, perhaps, shades of that 'blue/back or gold/white dress?' phenomenon from a few years back, or - even more relevantly - the 'Yanny or Laurel?' phenomenon that followed where people saw and heard different things and couldn't unsee or unhear them without a huge effort, even after the science behind each phenomenon was explained. 

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has, with the help of Gnasher Jew, analysed that ''racial slur about Muslims'' that the BBC claims came from Jewish people inside the Oxford Street bus and proved it was no such thing.

  

The @bbc needs to correct its report and apologise to the victims. @bbclondonnews @bbcnews pic.twitter.com/7Z0GIZZ84w

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) December 4, 2021

 

The BBC thinks the phrase ''dirty Muslims'' was used, and I on listening and listening to the video and audio versions of the incident began to hear that too - and I was, frankly, astonished that some people couldn't hear it at all, only a male voice speaking Hebrew.

Mea culpa.  

So GnasherJew has found, as so many people had said already, that the male voice alleged by the BBC to have making that ''racial slur about Muslims'' really was actually talking in Hebrew and saying ''Call someone, it's urgent'' - ''tathakshar lmishu, ze dahof''. 

So I've re-listened and re-listened and quickly began to clearly hear the quieter ''ze dahof'' bit. So I could now hear ''dirty Muslims, ze dafof'' - which, of course, didn't make sense. 

So I used the pause button to stop it and play it again in fractions of a second and, yes, gradually began hearing various syllables one at a time from ''tathakshar lmishu''. 

Now I've no doubt whatsoever that the male voice on the bus was indeed saying ''Call someone, it's urgent'' [''tathakshar lmishu, ze dahof''] and not ''dirty Muslims'', and that the BBC's allegation is false...

...but it took a lot of use of the pause and re-wind functions to prove it to myself. It's very hard to unhear something sometimes. Then again I never saw that blue/black dress as anything other than gold/white, or heard Laurel as anything other than Yanny, even after seeing/hearing them explained.

There's now a chorus of people calling on the BBC to correct this too, and apologise.

Antisemitism on Oxford Street - a further update [featuring BBC edits]

And there's more today on the story of the BBC's reporting of the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street - especially that claim from the BBC's Harry Farley that “some racial slurs about Muslims can be heard from inside the bus” ...

The indomitable GnasherJew has questioned the BBC's Harry Farley about this and posted this about what happened next: 

.@bbc made a very serious allegation that the Jewish children who were abused on Oxford St. made Islamophobic statements.

We asked the BBC journalist @harryfarls for proof & he tells us that it was 3 second in on the video of them being abused. BUT he & BBC appear to be lying. pic.twitter.com/WbgE44RjVM

— GnasherJew®גנאשר (@GnasherJew) December 3, 2021

GnasherJew, as you can see, attached the audio the BBC is using as proof. 

Please listen to it. What do you hear? 

I can't hear any such slurs either. Can you? 

Apparently, the BBC is claiming to hear the phrase ''dirty Muslims''.

This is something that the Jewish Chronicle is also reporting, and it's clear that the BBC appears to be rather 'unique' in hearing that.

Some people think they might hear the word ''dirty' though - a word which if said would surely be entirely understandable and appropriate given that the young Muslim 'gentlemen' attacking the bus were literally spitting at the bus and its young Jewish occupants.

So the question is: Is the BBC right that the phrase ''dirty Muslims'' was used?

The Jewish Chronicle is just as sceptical as GnasherJew about the BBC's version of events, so the JC contacted a sound and audio professional who told them he couldn't distinguish the alleged slur either, saying  “I think even a audio forensic specialist would struggle to get something useful [from the clip] ”.

Moreover, neither the Board of Deputies nor the Campaign Against Antisemitism can hear what the BBC claims to have heard either. The former says:

It appears that the BBC has a very serious case to answer here. Incorrectly accusing those experiencing antisemitism of being guilty of bigotry themselves is adding insult to injury.

The latter says:

The audio from the footage is completely indistinct. If someone was shouting abuse from inside the bus then of course it should be investigated, but we cannot discern any voice in the video saying what the BBC claim was said.

This is getting very serious. 

And, in a remarkable twist,  the BBC has already had to water down BBC Harry Farley's original BBC News website piece:

The original piece talked of ''some racial slurs''. As Newssniffer shows, this then got changed to ''a racial slur'' and then got changed again to ''a slur''. 

That says a lot already. The BBC is backtracking.

The BBC, however, is still claiming that ''a slur about Muslims'' happened though. 

A lot hangs on whether they're right or whether they're wrong. 

So why are they sticking so tenaciously with claiming to hear what others can't hear? 

And why are they fixating on asserting and insisting on this when the story ought to be what this story is actually about - the story of a grim antisemitic incident in the very heart of London?

Almost immediate Update, 18:50: Well, after posting this and then re-listening to the audio for a sixth time I do now think I hear a male voice using the phrase ''dirty Muslims''. And now, on re-listening several more times like an obsessive-compulsive, I can't stop hearing the phrase.

If I'm right, this complicates matters. 

So here's how things stand now, in my mind [so far]: 

The Jewish youngsters out celebrating a Jewish religious festival were being abused in the heart of London by aggressive Muslim men giving Nazi salutes and chucking shoes and abuse and - very vigorously - spitting at the bus's windows, while one male voice on the bus was caught by the BBC saying ''Dirty Muslims''. 

The BBC, after holding off reporting the story and then squirreling it away, then went with an online report that went with ''allegedly'' caveats about the antisemitic nature of the attack but then asserted, without caveats, claims of ''racial slurs about Muslims'' and was then forced to backtrack and drop first the plural element of the charge and then the racial element of the charge. 

Depressing and complicated as this story is, it's still a classic example of how BBC reporting's agenda-pushing works and how divisive it can be - and how hard it can be to capture it it all its slipperiness. 

Further Update, 4/12: The BBC has now added a correction to the bottom of the piece:

Correction 3rd December: During the editing process a line was added to this article reporting that racial slurs about Muslims could be heard inside the bus. This line has been amended to make clear that "a slur about Muslims" could be heard.

They added that at 21:56 last night.

Introducing the BBC's Harry Farley

The reporter behind the BBC's write-up about the Oxford Street antisemitic incident, Harry Farley, Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC News, is a familiar name to me because he's part of the team on Radio 4's Sunday. He was also the reporter behind the 'Islamophobia' story in connection to Rochdale grooming gangs put out the other day across the BBC, 'Is British media Islamophobic?'

Here's a small, mostly pre-BBC selection of his past tweets [as noting such things is all the rage these days]:

Harry Farley: So there's some good news and bad news. Good news is EUref will be over in 24 hours. Bad news is Donald Trump arrives in UK on Friday.

10:59 PM · Jun 22, 2016

Stewart Green: What is ‘Palestinian land’? What even is a Palestinian? Shame to see Christian media jumping on this bandwagon.

Harry Farley [replying to Stewart Green]: It's an independent state next to Israel and recognised as such as by around 70% of countries.

4:12 PM · Jan 23, 2017

Harry Farley: My Uber man is listening to Nigel Farage on LBC. First time I’ve heard it and absolutely extraordinary. No pretence. He’s given hours of airtime to openly whip up hatred.

7:47 PM · Dec 14, 2017

Harry Farley: A minor personal observation: I’ve heard quite a few comparisons to the “commercial sector” in the last few days of Brexit debate. “This would never happen in the commercial world” ... “if this was the business world x would happen” as if that shows us the way forward. Putting aside the vast differences between the two and the limits of useful comparisons, just a reminder that it was the “commercial sector” who gave us a global crisis that we are still reeling from a decade later. Maybe we can draw inspiration from somewhere else?

5:55 PM · Dec 10, 2018

Very 'BBC'.

UPDATE 5/12 - Here's a surprise...