The BBC is caught fibbing

   

So the BBC was flat-out lying it appears.

Here's the editor of the Jewish Chronicle Jake Wallis Simons:

1/ It is with a heavy heart — I love the BBC and it has always been a privilege to work there — that the JC reports on the corporation again this week…

2/ We reveal that the BBC fully recorded an incendiary radio debate about whether anti-Zionism should be a “protected characteristic” despite claiming just hours later that no such item was planned for broadcast.

3/ The discussion for Radio 4 (for which I’ve worked quite a bit), in which Rabbi Jonathan Romain opposed Jewish anti-Israel blogger Robert Cohen, took place last Friday and was set to go out on Sunday.

4/ Later that day, responding to widespread criticism, the BBC told the JC: “We are always exploring a range of possible topics but there’s no planned item about anti-Zionism on the Sunday programme.”

5/ However, Rabbi Romain told the JC that after the segment was recorded, producers told him it would be broadcast on Sunday. It was later pulled.

6/ Read full story, written by Rosa Doherty, here: 

BBC did record the ‘anti-Zionism’ debate which it said it wasn’t planning

The BBC digs its heels in

As Charlie observes on the open thread, something very odd is going on...

The Jewish Chronicle has a main headline today, Outrage as BBC demands victims of Oxford Street bus attack reveal identities.

The BBC is refusing to respond to legal complaints about their coverage of the antisemitism bus incident on Oxford Street until the teenage victims on the bus are named. 

“We will be unable to substantively further progress your legal complaint until you identify your clients,” they say, adding it's an “uncontroversial principle of English law that a defendant is entitled to know the identity of the party or parties that are making a claim against them.”

Crossbench peer Lord Carlile - a barrister who was called to the bar 52 years ago - is not impressed. He strongly disagrees, saying: 

It is wholly unacceptable for the BBC to try to force frightened teenagers to reveal their names, particularly as there is film of the incident anyway. It is not part of a civil action. All they are doing at this stage is seeking answers from the BBC and an apology. The BBC is just wrong and it goes against public interest to insist that people who have been subjected to an attack should identify themselves at this stage.

The BBC has a very bad habit of digging its heels in when it's in the wrong about something. 

"No longer 'suitable'"

Talking about out with the old, in with the new...

The Jewish Chronicle has a new editor, with Jake Wallis Simons taking over from Stephen Pollard. 

It sounds as if both have had similar experiences of the BBC:

Jake Wallis Simons, present editor of the JC: Personally, since I joined the JC, I’ve been on TV probably twice a week on various channels, particularly Sky News. The BBC hasn’t asked me to come on once. And I have broadcast a lot for BBC in the past! Stephen Pollard had the same experience.

Stephen Pollard, previous editor of the JC: FWIW, I used to do BBC Any Questions every so often. Haven't been on once since I joined the JC 13 years ago. I was told by a senior BBC apparatchik it meant I was no longer "suitable". I should say the person who told me this profoundly disagreed with the idea - they were explaining it to me.

Update: One reply to this came from Labour Against Antisemitism's Emma Picken: 

I would say I'm shocked.... but I'm not. How often did the BBC wheel out JVL? I lost count.

Jewish Voice for Labour is a controversial Corbynite group.

 By coincidence, there's news today from Harry's Place: 

The BBC are planning on digging their antisemitism hole even deeper on Sunday morning on BBC Radio 4 where there will be a discussion about whether Anti Zionism is a protected characteristic featuring an interview with JVL's Diana Neslen.

So BBC, are people from the fringe, far-left JVL more "suitable" for you than people from the mainstream Jewish Chronicle? And if so, why?

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.

A detailed dossier

The Jewish Chronicle has a leader column this week which surely ought to make the BBC sit up and take notice: 

BBC Arabic’s anti-Israel bias is a problem for the region  

What is the purpose of the BBC’s Arabic service? The answer might seem obvious — to bring the BBC’s editorial standards to coverage of Arab countries in their own languages. But its output reveals what seems to be a very different purpose: to promote a view of the Middle East with which we are all wearily familiar, in which Israel is the wicked enemy and those who fight it are heroes. That includes news coverage in which Jerusalem is called “the occupied city”, the Israeli army the “Israeli Occupation Forces” and the PLO “the Palestinian Resistance”. The anti-Israel bias of BBC news in general has long been an issue, but the specific failings relating to its Arabic service are of a different order of magnitude. As our investigation reveals, the BBC has itself admitted to 25 mistakes in its Arabic coverage in just over two years. But that figure barely scratches the surface of the problem.  

In this week’s JC Essay, David Patrikarakos shows how polling in parts of the Arab world show a move towards a more favourable view of Israel; a slow move, but a move nonetheless. One of the blocks to progress is the BBC’s Arabic service. Instead of being given the facts, impartially and without bias, viewers are often given barely more than anti-Israel propaganda. This matters because it means the BBC is itself part of the problem in the Middle East. Last year, the BBC published new impartiality guidelines, supposedly to be enforced by a senior executive. Ken MacQuarrie, the man appointed to the role, is paid £325,000 a year. We would suggest that he might now start earning it by turning his attention to BBC Arabic.

There's a lot of damning detail in Jonathan Sacerdoti and Gary O'Shea's JC accompanying investigation into BBC Arabic's "anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies" and it's quite something to learn that the BBC has been compelled to admit 25 "mistakes" in its Arabic coverage of Israel in just over two years, "issuing on average nearly one correction every month". It suggests at best that standards at the BBC's Arabic Service aren't what they ought to be.

The BBC has been given "a detailed dossier of apparent breaches" this week. 

As well as listing the inaccuracies and the forced apologies, the dossier accuses the BBC of "systematically downplaying terror attacks on Israelis; repeatedly using Hamas-inspired language; showcasing extreme views without challenge; and publishing a map in which Israel was erased". 

According to the piece, the BBC has apologised in recent years, among other things concerning BBC Arabic, for:

• A "fawning" portrait of a Hamas terrorist.
• Describing Jerusalem as “the occupied city”.
• Calling the Israeli army the “Israeli Occupation Forces”.
• Describing the PLO as “the Palestinian Resistance”.
• Referring to nine victims of a terrorist attack as “nine Jewish settlers”, though four weren't Jewish and none was a settler.

Also detailed is the fact that BBC Arabic repeatedly calls the West Bank, Gaza and even Israel “Palestine”, despite its own style guide outlawing the term.

Strikingly, the JC notes the service's employment (one as a correspondent, another as an editor) of two journalists who previously worked at the Hezbollah-owned TV station Al-Manar (a channel designated a “Terrorist Entity” by the US).

BBC Arabic are also accused of "regularly giving a platform" to blog favourite, Abdel Bari Atwan - though the BBC News Channel has been indulging his extreme views on Dateline London for well over a decade now. At least on Dateline, he was sometimes challenged. Apparently, BBC Arabic hasn't provided “appropriate challenge and / or other context”. 

One I'd not heard of came last May: BBC Arabic "showcased social media comments which celebrated a sci-fi drama that envisioned the destruction of the Jewish state". 

The article also says:

The corporation has also appeared to depart from editorial standards in its Arabic output with respect to reporting terror attacks. According to the BBC style guide, journalists must “report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly”. But while the BBC reported in English on 34 fatal terror attacks on Israeli civilians between 2015 and 2020, its Arabic service covered just 25 of these, analysts said, seriously downplaying the extent of Palestinian brutality.  

A BBC spokesperson has responded already: “BBC Arabic shares exactly the same principles of accuracy and impartiality as BBC News in English, and we strongly reject the suggestion that its impartiality is compromised.”

Instead of the usual kneejerk dismissal, however, the BBC would do better to thank the people behind the study for their efforts, and then go away and think about all that they've been presented with here. 

They've a really big problem if they don't see that there could be a big problem with the BBC Arabic service here that needs careful consideration and maybe serious action. 

The new leaf is just like the old one

Luckily for Sir Keir Starmer, Boris’s activities misfortunes and a happy event have overshadowed the tribulations of the Labour Party. At the moment, the main criticisms of Sir Keir are directed at his wooden, charisma-free personality. However, it’s Sir Keir’s deeds (or lack of) rather than his words that people are beginning to notice.

Starmer under pressure from Jewish Groups! The BBC reports his failure to act after Diane Abbott and another weirdly-named Labour woman, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, were caught hosting a Zoom meeting in which two activists who had been expelled for antisemitism were allowed to participate. 

As if to distance itself from accidentally making a ‘value-judgement’ the BBC was careful to point out that ‘Jewish Groups’ are the ones who happen to be concerned.  The bold is actually the BBC’s 'allegedly.'

“The Jewish Chronicle reported that Tony Greenstein, who was thrown out of Labour in 2018 for offensive comments, and Jackie Walker, who was expelled over allegedly anti-Semitic comments, had attended the meeting.”

Gideon Falter, the Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: 

“The participation of Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy in an online conference with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, is a brazen challenge to Sir Keir Starmer. During his leadership campaign, Sir Keir pledged that any MP who provides a platform for Labour members expelled in connection with antisemitism will themselves be suspended from Labour. Instead of keeping his promise and immediately suspending both Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy from the Party, Labour has merely ‘reminded them of their responsibilities’. 

“After half a decade of the Labour antisemitism crisis, no MP should need ‘reminding’ not to engage with those expelled from the Party over antisemitism. Instead of ‘tearing antisemitism out by its roots’, Sir Keir has welched. Through his inaction he is telling Britain’s Jews loud and clear that his apologies are meaningless, his promises will be broken, and MPs who consort with even the most notorious expelled activists still have a place on the Labour benches.” 

On 27th November 2019 while Corbyn was still Labour leader Allister Heath wrote in the Telegraph:

“If one studies the litany of disgusting anti-Semitic incidents involving Labour members and far-Left activists these past few years, they span almost every possible strand of Jew-hate, virtually every demented conspiracy theory. It would take an immense effort for any party to cure itself of an infection of such virulence, even were it truly committed to doing so (and Labour isn’t): no wonder the Chief Rabbi felt compelled to speak out, warning of Corbyn’s unfitness for high office and that the “very soul of our country is at stake”[…]

"All of which takes us to Israel, a country with which Britain’s Jews are more culturally and personally connected than ever before. Many Corbynites see it as a “white” colonial state, an oppressor nation: in their deranged loathing, they don’t criticise or seek to boycott any other country. They refuse to accept that most Israeli Jews are descended from refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and the rest escaped the Holocaust.

The only baddies are Israel and the US, the two nations with the biggest Jewish populations. Israel is the only country they want to abolish; the Jews the only people they don’t believe deserve a national homeland." 

Also in the Telegraph, but just the other day, Tom Harwood wrote about the recent Panorama Programme that was stuffed with aggrieved persons who turned out to be Labour party activists in the guise of NHS workers. No label. No mention of any affiliation. Even worse -

‘Nor were BBC viewers informed about the political background of the ‘A&E Nurse’ who turned out to be a Unite activist who “fights the Tories hard”, or Professor John Ashton (also featured in the Panorama disaster), who proudly described himself as a Labour Party member “for 53 years” 

- and Guido has unearthed more on John Ashton, a regular BBC ‘go-to’ expert who happens to be a pretty rabid antisemite. We used to say these people were ‘on the BBC's speed dial’.

The Jewish Chronicle says:

“But aside from offering his advice over health issues, Professor Ashton, who has been a long-time member of the Labour Party, regularly posts on social media on issues involving Israel and Zionism. In one tweet he suggested it was, "Time to isolate Zionists and all religious fundamentalists whatever colour of black." 

An analysis of social media posts made by the former President of the Faculty of Public Health from 2012 until 2018 shows that he has frequently equated Zionism with Nazism.
Writing in November 2012 in response to Israeli military actions in Gaza, he stated: "Sickening to see Zionists behave like Nazis.”

Melanie Phillips highlights the spat between Robert Halfon MP, whom I rather like, and the Jewish community’s left-wing officials and spokespersons who don’t appear able to see past some of Sir Keir’s new appointments, at least not enough to realise that they belie his vow to turn over a new leaf and eradicate antisemitism in the Labour Party.

There’s Naz Shah. When outed for antisemitism Shah made a suitably grovelling apology and promised to learn from the incontinent and ‘inadvertently’ racist Tweets and remarks she’d accidentally made; then promptly forgot the apology and made a few more.  

More troubling is Sir Keir's choice for Labour’s foreign-affairs spokesman, Lisa Nandy. Why on earth did he give Nandy ‘foreign affairs', when the one foreign affair she’s been deeply involved in is Labour Friends of Palestine? While 'chair' (is she still or not?) she actually pledged to campaign for the Palestinians' Right of Return.

“This places her among the opponents of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. For the “Palestinians” have no such legal, moral or historical right; the so-called “right of return,” which would flood Israel with Arab immigrants, is merely a device to destroy the State of Israel.”

How she reconciles that with her support of ‘Zionism’ is a mystery, but perhaps the good residents of “my constituency" Wigan, are as obsessed with Palestine as she is. For some reason.

The Board of Deputies are a shocking lot. Like Andrew Doyle said (of lefty Remainers) "they’re not just like turkeys who voted for Christmas, they’re like turkeys who’ve plucked themselves and climbed into the oven as well."  Not to mention the stuffing.