Chutzpah from the BBC - and not in a good way

There's a new story on the BBC News website tonight with a headline that took my breath away:

Yes, it concerns the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street that the BBC has been avoiding responding to for weeks and which many people - from the Chief Rabbi to Nadine Dorries, and from the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to Lord Grade - have been chasing the BBC over, demanding and not yet getting a swift and full response from the corporation. 

And now a BBC headline says that!

I know BBC headlines can be shorthand, but that seems to me very like spiteful 'trolling' by the BBC website. 

The article itself is here. And it also strikes me as spiteful 'trolling'. 

In fact the more I read it the angrier I'm getting.

Its opening paragraph continues to call the antisemitic attack “an alleged anti-Semitic incident on a bus”. None of the Nazi-saluting antisemites who attacked the bus and abused the Jewish youngsters on it has yet been arrested, so there are surely no legal reasons for the use of “alleged” there. There's nothing “alleged” about it. It was an antisemitic incident, full stop.

This extremely shoddy article goes on to go out of its way to misinform the public. It: 

[a] Repeats the word “alleged”.

[b] Refers to the youngsters as “people” rather than 'children' or 'teenagers'.

[c] Does a 'the BBC says a slur about Muslims was used...but the Board of Deputies of British Jews has disputed' bit, with shades of the BBC's use of language over Israel and - thus - possibly deliberately provocative.

[d] Adds a slippery bit about how the police are treating it as a hate crime 'in its entirety' [hinting that the police are investigating that 'slur about Muslims' too, which isn't the case].

[e] Ends with three paragraphs of a BBC spokeswoman defending the BBC, making it entirely one-sided.

It's all positively misleading. No one new to the story would have much of a clue as to why so many people - not only Jewish people - are absolutely furious at the BBC's behaviour over this. 

Most strikingly, everything that supports the case against the BBC - and all those concerns which we've chronicled here at ITBB in recent weeks - has been omitted. “The fullest account” it certainly isn't. 

There's nothing unintended here, I'm sure of that.

This disgraceful report will surely make things even worse. Whoever wrote it for the BBC should be disciplined. And whichever editor authorised it should be disciplined too. And Nadine Dorries should raise this with Tim Davie too.

UPDATE, 23:20 - Others agree:

Lee Kern: Oh BBC. This isn’t journalism. This is a 100% partisan puff piece to wage a PR war against wrongly maligned Jews. You don’t even quote or report the Board of Deputies complaint. You deliberately omit & give us only your statement. I thought you love balance??

     BBC, compare how you’ve reported your side of things with how you’ve reported the Board of Deputies' side? It’s embarrassing. There’s not even a pretence by you to be objective journalists here. We don’t even know what “criticism of [the BBCs] reporting” even means as you’ve hidden it.

More developments

The Daily Telegraph has 'seen' a letter from Nadine Dorries to Tim Davie concerning the BBC's coverage of the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street. 

The Culture Secretary wants to know what actions the BBC has taken so far and how the corporation intends to resolve the issue “in a suitably timely manner”. 

Don't we all!

The BBC spokesman quoted in the report strikes a more emollient tone than earlier BBC spokesmen on the issue, some of which reminded me of Corbyn era Labour Party official responses to charges of antisemitism against their party and leader, even down to the 'we oppose all forms of racism' language. This time, however, the BBC spokesman said: 

Anti-Semitism is abhorrent. We strive to serve the Jewish community, and all communities across our country, fairly. As we have stated previously, our story was a factual report that overwhelmingly focused on the individuals the police want to identify; those who directed abuse at the bus.  

We know that there are some strong views about this report. We take complaints very seriously and they are being taken through our complaints process. Tim Davie has instructed that this process is accelerated to the Executive Complaints Unit which is editorially independent from news and will ensure complaints are fully responded to as swiftly as possible.

Dan Hodges: “I don't get what the BBC think they're doing here”

Here's another Twitter exchange:

Jake Wallis Simons: BBC has *serious* questions to answer. We reveal that the Board of Deputies commissioned independent, forensic report. Conclusion? Victims of Chanukah attack did NOT utter an anti-Islamic insult. And the Jewish kids themselves told us they didn't. You can read Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl's searing piece demanding an apology from the BBC here. She also demanded BBC staff undergo antisemitism awareness training, joining a host of MPs, peers and community groups to urge BBC to formally adopt IHRA definition of Jew-hate. Details coming soon...ENDS (for now).

Dan Hodges: I don't get what the BBC think they're doing here. Why are they dragging this out. It's simple. If they are standing by their report, they need to produce the evidence to substantiate their report. Or they need to retract and apologise.

Emily Kate: They see no reason to produce evidence because their model of journalism is about narratives, not facts, and an AS narrative is well-established in the BBC now. They also see no reason to explain because they don't see themselves as serving the public, but as instructing them.

Lord Grade criticises the BBC

The BBC is still keeping its mouth shut firmer than a member of the clam mafia but the pressure on the corporation over the Oxford Street antisemitic bus incident continues to grow. Now former BBC chairman Lord [Michael] Grade has joined the chorus of criticism, saying: 

Given the available evidence, or rather lack of it, it is worrying that the BBC has so far defended its report that there were ‘clearly’ anti-Muslim shouts from the bus, while the antisemitic gestures were only ‘alleged’. They need to provide the evidence to support their defence or rethink and issue an urgent correction and apology.

Someone senior at the BBC is surely going to have to say something sometime about this, you'd have thought?

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. 

''Questions to answer''

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Labour MP Lord [Ian] Austin tackles the BBC's behaviour over the antisemitic incident on Oxford Street and says it has ''questions to answer'':

Was it attempting to draw an equivalence between a group of men intimidating children and their victims? And why did it report the abuse from thugs on the street as “alleged” but present the disputed allegation of a slur inside the bus by children as a fact? I have always defended the BBC, but can’t imagine an incident involving any other group being reported in this way. It needs to listen to people from the Jewish community and look at this very carefully. We can’t have people thinking that incidents of racism are handled differently depending on who the perpetrators and victims might be.

Chronicling other recent antisemitic incidents, his piece concludes:

Israel became an obsession on the Left, held to standards never applied to other countries, and Jewish people in Britain were expected to account for a government of another country. The demonisation of Israel leads to racist attacks against Britain’s Jewish community. Our national broadcaster should be shining a spotlight on that, exposing the racists and standing up for the victims, not bending over backwards seemingly to find an equivalence where none exists. 

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.

Antisemitism on Oxford Street - continued

I see that the disturbing antisemitic attack in Oxford Street is being covered widely - by the Daily Telegraph, ITV News, LBC, i News, Metro, the London Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. I cannot find anything about it, however, on the BBC News website, not even on its London page, nor on any of its national or local TV news programmes. 

Meanwhile, actress Tracy-Ann Oberman has tweeted, ''I know I’m not only one affected by this. I know thousands of you are furious hurt & upset. Jews are NOT victims. But we need allies. We need citizens & media & the Met police and the Mayor of London and political commentators to call this out. DONT NORMALISE JEW HATE. All evil follows,'' which drew this response from former London MEP Lance Forman:

Decades of anti-Israel bias at the BBC has not helped. It has encouraged journalists from all MSM. Tracy - please help campaign for the BBC to release the Balen Report into its anti-Israel bias and has spent half a million to keep the report from public exposure.

Update: 3:17pm  After posting this at 5.15am before heading off to work, I see that Boris Johnson tweeted at 9:36am, ''This is disturbing footage. Racism of any kind will never be tolerated in our society and we will continue to do all we can to root it out.'' 

That made it almost impossible for the BBC not to report this, but  even so - as far as I can see - it still took till 2:45pm for the BBC News website to post a report about it, and as of now it's nowhere on their homepage or their UK page, though it presently leads their England page. 

Unless I'm missing something, the BBC News website appears very reluctant to give this story any prominence whatsoever.  

And the report itself by the BBC's Harry Farley is wholly evasive about what kind of ''men'' were attacking the bus in what it calls an ''alleged anti-Semitic incident'' but is perfectly clear in saying that ''some racial slurs about Muslims'' can be heard from inside the bus. 

There's a lot going on here. 

Antisemitism on Oxford Street

The growing problem of aggressive Muslim antisemitism on our streets appears to have manifested itself again in a shocking incident on Oxford Street:

Video has emerged of a group of men spitting at a bus full of Jewish teenagers in Oxford Street where the group were celebrating the first night of Chanukah. pic.twitter.com/orOrA9kJEu

— The Jewish Chronicle (@JewishChron) December 1, 2021

It was a good deal more than just spitting. It was abuse and abusive gestures [including Nazi salutes] and what appear to be attempts to smash the bus's window. 

It's only to be hoped that the media, especially the BBC, will report this disgusting outpouring of racial / religious hatred and lead to it being prioritised and firmly stamped on by the authorities. Shining a light on it will disinfect it better than hiding it away.

Update: In reaction, the unflagging David Collier has just tweeted:  

Meanwhile the Muslim Council of Britain are having panel events with the BBC, the Times and the Daily Mirror about how they all have to post less negative stuff about Islamist activity. There will be no place for Jews in the UK in the society that is developing here. 

If anyone can find footage of these panel events [and I'll be hunting for it too], I'd be grateful. I'd like to check the BBC attendees' responses.