Complaint
The Director-General referred complaints about coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict from Mishcon de Reya Solicitors on behalf of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and from Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) to the ECU for investigation. Both complained that an item in the 17 October edition of The Context had wrongly attributed that evening’s blast at the Al Ahli Hospital to Israeli military action. In addition, the Board of Deputies complained about news bulletins on 7 October as examples in support of its ongoing complaint about the tv’s editorial policy of not describing individuals or organisations as “tǰٲ” and using the term only when attributed to others, while CAA complained about a number of broadcast, online and social media items related to the events of 17 October. The ECU considered the complaints in the light of the tv’s editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality.
Outcome
The Context
The programme, which began at 8pm, included a report from Jon Donnison in Jerusalem. Shortly before 8.09pm, in answer to a question from the presenter in the studio, he said:
Now the Israeli Defence Force, the Israeli military, have been contacted for comment and they have said that they are investigating. But, you know, It's hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes, because, you know, when we’ve seen rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale. We might see half a dozen, maybe a few more people being killed in such rocket attacks, but we’ve never seen anything on the scale of the sort of explosion on the video I was watching earlier, which, as you say, is still to be verified.
The ECU judged that it would have been clear to viewers from this that Mr Donnison was speaking at a time when the Israeli Defence Force had offered no substantive comment, and while there was still uncertainty about the authenticity of the video material put forward as evidence of the blast. It would also have been clear that, though he suggested a strong probability of Israeli involvement, he was not offering a definitive judgement. It accepted, however, that it was not consistent with the tv’s standards of due accuracy to offer any view about responsibility for the incident at a point where so little reliable information was available.
The ECU noted that tv News had made a posting[1] on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk on 19 October which said it had been wrong for Mr Donnison to speculate on the causes of the blast. In the ECU’s view, this clear public acknowledgement of fault was sufficient for it to reach a finding that both complaints had been resolved in this respect.
Resolved (accuracy)
The resolved finding also applies to three complaints escalated to the ECU after this summary was published
News bulletins, 7 October 2023
The Board of Deputies argued that not applying the term “tǰ” to Hamas in the reports in question represented a “failure to use the correct terminology for a terrorist organisation”, the warrant for its correctness being its designation as a terrorist organisation by UK law, and that the tv had failed to meet the audience’s expectations in this respect, contrary to the requirement in the tv’s guidelines on impartiality that “the likely audience expectation” should be taken into account. The ECU considered that it did not follow from the legal position that the use of descriptors other than “tǰ” (or no descriptor at all) would necessarily result in inaccuracy, and found no grounds for concluding that it did so in the reports in question. The ECU also noted that the section of the impartiality guidelines which referred to audience expectations was directed to the different levels of impartiality which audiences might expect in different contexts, with particular reference to reflecting an appropriate range of views, and did not warrant its use as a test of whether the tv’s policy on the term “tǰ” was compatible with impartiality.
The ECU also considered the Board of Deputies’ argument that the use of such terms as “bdz”, “aٳٲ”, “gunman”, “kidnapper”, “iԲܰԳ” and “mٲԳ” fell short of the requirements of Section 11 of the Guidelines (on war, terror and emergencies) because they did not “convey the full horror of Hamas's actions on 7 October”, “tǰ” being the sole adequate term in the context. The ECU accepted that none of the terms cited by the Board of Deputies, considered on their own, conveyed the full horror of the actions concerned (while allowing room for doubt that even “tǰ” did so), but took the view that it was the reporting of Hamas’s actions themselves, rather than the terminology applied to their perpetrators, that was the test of whether justice has been done to the events.
Not upheld (accuracy, impartiality)
Other related items
In addition to The Context, CAA complained about:
- A posting on tv Breaking News X (Twitter) account, at 6.51pm on 17 October which read “Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian official says”.
- A push alert[2] sent by tv News sometime after 6.25pm on 17 October which read “Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli airstrike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say”.
- A posting which read “More than 500 people have died in Gaza after Israel launched massive retaliatory air strikes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry”, believed by CAA to have been posted on 17 October and subsequently deleted, but corresponding only to an item posted on 9 October and still available at .
- A report by Jeremy Bowen in the 17 October edition of the 10pm News on tv One, in which he said “The Israeli army's first response [to questions about the Al Ahli Hospital blast] said ‘hospitals were highly sensitive and not targets of its military’ and urged caution about what it called ‘the unverified claims of a terrorist organisation’. That statement will not be believed by Palestinians and by millions of others in the Middle East who see these images”
The complaint about items 1,2 and 3 was on the basis that they erroneously suggested Israeli responsibility for the blast, whereas it had been caused by “a failed rocket fired by a terrorist organisation in Gaza”. For the reasons set out in analyses by tv Verify at /news/world-middle-east-67144061 and /news/world-middle-east-67216929, the tv cannot yet establish as fact who was responsible for the blast. The ECU accordingly saw no grounds for concluding that items 1 and 2 were inaccurate in relation to that event. As to item 3, it was an accurate report of a claim, duly attributed, in relation to earlier events.
The complaint about item 4 was on the basis that Mr Bowen had been speaking over footage of “extremely distressing images of young, injured and crying children without explaining who those children were, but implying, by association with the output, that they were injured by the blast at the hospital”. While agreeing about the implied association, the ECU noted that the point at issue in the context of Mr Bowen’s report was not the authenticity or otherwise of the images but the impact they and the associated claims by Hamas were having on Palestinian and wider Arab opinion, and judged that the juxtaposition of words and images could not be taken as implying Israeli responsibility for the injuries because Mr Bowen had begun his contribution to the bulletin by making clear Israel denied responsibility and attributed it to Palestinians.
Not upheld (accuracy, impartiality)
[1] The current version of the posting can be found at /helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications.
[2] A push alert is a message sent to mobile phones via the tv News app directing users to a recently-published online article.