I believe I mentioned this faux pas by the BBC earlier today, but here are the hard, cold facts. On Christmas Eve, BBC radio repeated, six t
The story:
The BBC has apologised for reporting Hamas claims that the Israeli army was responsible for carrying out “summary executions” in the Gaza strip without seeking sufficient corroborating evidence. The story, which appears to have been based on a report from the news agency AFP [Agence France-Presse], centered on a statement from the Hamas terror group. It accused Israeli troops of illegally killing 137 Palestinian civilians since the war started on October 7 and burying them in a pit in northern Gaza. The BBC said that it had failed to “make sufficient effort to seek corroborating evidence to justify reporting the Hamas claim”. It added that its accusations were attributed and its story contained a response from the Israeli military saying that it was unaware of the incident and that Hamas was a terrorist organisation that did not value truth. Some staff considered that by posting the report on its corrections and clarifications web page, the BBC had not gone far enough to rectify its mistake. “Unless this apology is public and broadcast in the same arena as the original mistake, the damage is done,” said one Jewish employee. A second staffer added: “They have taken the Hamas line — a terror organisation — at face value, far too much since October 7. And nothing has changed. And again it’s an apology about a very serious accusation against Israel hidden on a corrections page.” The BBC has previously apologised for a television report that Israeli troops had targeted medical staff during a raid on a hospital in Gaza in November. The previous month it had admitted that it was wrong of one of its correspondents to speculate that that a rocket that fell outside al-Ahli hospital in Gaza had been fired by Israel.
So there you have it: a completely bogus report, originating from Hamas, that the BBC apologized for because it didn’t do “due diligence”.