The facts were clear from the outset: a group of Jewish youths celebrating Hanukkah in central London in late November was subjected to a tirade of antisemitic abuse by several men performing Nazi salutes and spitting at them.
Footage of the incident quickly went viral, with articles published by numerous major news outlets including CNN, the Sun and the Daily Mail.
However, the BBC was alone in its inclusion of one allegation.
The report, by senior journalist at the corporation Harry Farley, claimed that “some racial slurs [could] be heard from inside the bus” the Jewish group was traveling on.
An investigation by GnasherJew soon disproved the allegation, which apparently centered around the audible Hebrew words that were uttered by one of the people on the bus, “tikra lemishehu, ze dachuf,” meaning, “call someone, it’s urgent.”
Yet, when the inaccuracy was pointed out, the BBC dug in its heels.
On being asked by HonestReporting and other groups to amend the story, a spokesman for the BBC attempted to justify the egregious error: “The article is about the police’s appeal for information. The main focus is the actions of the individuals the police want to identify. The audio appears to show that a slur can be heard coming from the bus. We have changed our story to clarify only one such slur can be heard clearly.”
The story was amended – still incorrectly – to read: “A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.”
However, Jewish groups in the UK, along with HonestReporting, refused to allow the BBC to absolve itself of its duty to report the news with accuracy and impartiality and, in December, a number of demonstrations were held outside the corporation’s headquarters where hundreds chanted, “BBC News, where’s the proof?” and “BBC News, tell the truth!”
Now, almost two months after the incident, the UK’s media regulator Ofcom has launched an investigation into the BBC after a probe by the broadcaster’s independent complaints unit, of which details were released on January 26, found the story did not lack “impartiality in the senses complained of, or that the charges of victim-blaming or false equivalence are warranted.”
In a statement released hours later, the media watchdog Ofcom said: “We have reviewed the BBC’s final response to complaints about this news program. We consider it raises issues under our due accuracy rules and have launched an investigation.”
The BBC’s independent Executive Complaints Unit, which only partially upheld the complaint against the national broadcaster, also claimed that the BBC had consulted extensively with the Community Security Trust, a charity dedicated to providing safety advice to British Jews, before arriving at the conclusion that the racist insult “Dirty Muslims” had been said during the incident:
Properly, however, the BBC did not rely on its own assessment alone. The claim was put by the reporter in the television item to the representative of the CST with whom he had been dealing, who replied (in a WhatsApp exchange which the ECU has seen) in terms which the BBC took as confirmation that the phrase in question had been spoken and, in the ECU’s judgement, it was entirely reasonable to take them in that sense. We should make clear, however, that we do not say the CST’s response determined the BBC’s decision to include the claim in its output – it was only one part of the decision-making process, but it does have some significance for the ECU’s view on the outcome of that process.”
However, in the latest twist in this sorry saga, the CST immediately took to Twitter to refute the BBC’s assertion it had consulted with one of its employees over whether an anti-Muslim slur had been said, describing it as a “completely misleading representation of the exchanges between the BBC and CST.”
CST completely rejects the claim in today’s BBC report that CST confirmed to the BBC on 2nd December that an anti-Muslim phrase had been spoken on the Chabad bus that was attacked on Oxford Street.
— CST (@CST_UK) January 26, 2022
While Ofcom’s investigation is ongoing, the BBC has now issued an “apology” that still attempts to mitigate its role in spreading harmful misinformation: “We apologize for not doing more to highlight that these details were contested – we should have reflected this and acted sooner.”
This episode and indeed the entire sequence of events thereafter is further evidence of a pattern of behavior by the BBC that calls into question its impartiality regarding Israel in particular and Jewish people in general over the past year – something HonestReporting has covered in depth.
In May 2021, for example, we exposed the antisemitic tweets of reporter Tala Halawa, following a lead by GnasherJew. After an HonestReporting tweet went viral, the issue received widespread media coverage, and the BBC eventually fired Halawa some weeks later.
And in November 2021, another HonestReporting investigation uncovered numerous antisemitic social posts by a BBC employee, Nasima Begum.
Just this month, we helped prompt more accurate coverage by the BBC of the Coleyville synagogue hostage attack after the corporation initially neglected to update its reportage to reflect the fact that the incident was motivated by antisemitism.
Our efforts to convey to the BBC the serious flaws in its reportage on these issues culminated in HonestReporting filing dual complaints to the corporation and to Ofcom, the latter of which is currently conducting a probe.
Without preempting the outcome of Ofcom’s investigation, it is clear that the BBC has shown repeated lapses in upholding journalistic standards and therefore must take imminent steps to address it.
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