The BBC newsroom is “out of control”, its former director of television has said, as the corporation faces fresh accusations of bias over its reporting of the Middle East conflict.
Danny Cohen said the BBC’s reporting had anti-Israeli overtones which were contributing to a sense of unsafety felt by many Jewish people in the UK.
In a report into the broadcaster’s recent coverage of the conflict, Mr Cohen points out that an Iranian propagandist was given airtime despite the corporation upholding complaints about a previous appearance he made.
Mohammed Marandi, who has served in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has appeared on the BBC twice since the broadcaster admitted a “lapse in editorial standards” over another interview with him a month ago in which he accused Israel of genocide and of “ethnosupremacism”.
The BBC also devoted 40 minutes to a live broadcast of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei giving a speech, and gave a platform to a woman who has repeatedly glorified the murder of Jewish people.
Mr Cohen said the BBC had done little to address its reporting despite previous criticism.
“Very serious problems of bias continue in the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” he said.
“The scale and consistency of the issues suggests that the BBC newsroom is out of control. It is very hard to otherwise understand why the corporation continues to make so many errors.
“The BBC should understand that the bias in their reporting is contributing to an atmosphere in this country in which many Jewish people feel unsafe.”
At the end of September, Mr Cohen produced a report on the BBC’s reporting of the conflict that was endorsed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust. The three Jewish organisations demanded an independent inquiry into what Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, described as a failure to ensure impartial coverage of the war.
‘Lapse in editorial standards’
Now Mr Cohen has written an update to his report, in which he says the BBC has continued to portray Israel as the aggressor, to parrot Hamas lines about casualty figures without qualification and to give airtime to guests with extreme antisemitic views.
Mr Marandi, whose father is the Supreme Leader of Iran’s personal doctor, appeared on the BBC twice on Oct 1 – the day after Mr Cohen’s original report came out – when he described Israel as a “genocidal regime” which was responsible for a “Holocaust” in Gaza.
The BBC responded to complaints at the time by admitting he had not been challenged enough on his views, which amounted to “a lapse in our usual editorial standards”.
However, he was interviewed by Jeremy Bowen on Radio 4 on Oct 26, and the next day he appeared on the BBC News Channel where he made fresh accusations of genocide.
Mr Cohen said: “It is hard to believe this would be happening if the interviewee had made racist remarks about any other minority community within the UK. The only explanation can be a lack of management grip or a willingness by BBC journalists to give platforms to anti-Semites.”
The BBC said in response that Mr Marandi: “Was in Tehran during the Israeli attack on the city and is someone with an insight into the thinking of the Iranian leadership. The programme described him accurately and used a short clip of him to give listeners an understanding of the view from Iran.”
40 minutes of airtime
Mr Cohen’s report also questioned why the BBC News Channel devoted 40 minutes to a live speech by the Ayatollah Khamenei in which he praised the “logical and legal” Oct 7 terrorist attack.
The BBC has said it was “important and editorially relevant” to hear from key players including the Ayatollah, but Mr Cohen said it was difficult to imagine the BBC giving 40 minutes of airtime to a speech by Vladimir Putin to give context to the war in Ukraine.
The BBC responded by saying that reporting what someone has said “isn’t the same as endorsing their views and we’re sure our audiences appreciate this”.
The Cohen report also questions why the BBC failed to tell BBC News Channel viewers on Oct 1 this year that Andreas Kreig, who said Hezbollah had “played it fairly rationally”, previously worked for the armed forces of Qatar, a country that supports Hamas.
The corporation called Dr Kreig “an academic who was analysing the military strategies of those involved in the conflict and we would encourage people to watch the interview in its entirety”.
‘A range of accounts’
In a documentary titled Life and Death in Gaza, broadcast on Oct 15, one of the most prominent voices was Aya Ashour, who has celebrated the murder of Jews in social media posts, including in March 2022 when she responded to the murder of five Israeli civilians in a terrorist attack by saying: “Glory to the weapon. Glory to the rebels.”
A BBC spokesman said: “The conflict arouses great passions and the way contributors have chosen to post their views on social media in the past does not of itself disqualify them from giving eye-witness testimony within the editorial control of our programme makers.
“The BBC is not allowed access into Gaza, but we use a range of accounts from eyewitnesses and cross reference these against official statements and footage, including from the Israeli Defence Forces.”
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