Madrid, November 10 (European Press) –
The Israeli government demanded that those responsible for the British BBC network be held “full responsibility” for what it considered “editorial errors” in covering the military attack on the Gaza Strip, after the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, and its executive director of news, Deborah Torness.
The Israeli embassy in the United Kingdom said, in a statement published on its account on the social media network
The diplomatic mission stressed that the resignations occurred “following serious and long-standing concerns about the BBC’s biased and deeply flawed coverage of Israel, particularly during the war against (Islamic resistance movement) Hamas,” although the main impetus for these decisions was the controversy caused by the broadcast of a fragmented speech by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, in which he appeared to explicitly encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol during the January incursion. 2021 at the headquarters of the North American Legislature.
He added: “Over the years, we have repeatedly warned of the BBC’s continued failure to meet (…) the standards of accuracy, impartiality and integrity expected of a public broadcaster,” accusing the Arabic-language BBC of having “often distorted reality, omitted critical contexts, and provided a platform for anti-Semitic and extremist narratives.”
The Israeli authorities asserted that this coverage “contributed to public misinformation, hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people and the radicalization of audiences in the UK and throughout the Middle East”, which is why they expressed hope that the departure of Davie and Torness would be a “turning point”.
Along these lines, he urged those responsible for the British network to “restore public confidence by ensuring fair, objective and balanced coverage of Israel” and the region.
Davie, who took up his role in September 2020, left the network after 20 years’ service, after The Telegraph published details of a leaked internal BBC memo suggesting one of its programs had edited two parts of Trump’s speech with a doctored message. The document was signed by Michael Prescott, a former independent outside counsel to the station’s Editorial Standards Committee, who left his position in June.
Trump’s original line, “We will march to the Capitol and we will cheer on our brave senators and congressmen,” was transformed, after passing through the Panorama documentary newsroom, into “We will march to the Capitol and I will be there with you. And we will fight. We will fight like devils,” and this was broadcast last year. There was a time lag of more than 50 minutes between the two sections of the speech that were edited together.
The memo also noted that the BBC Arabic Service was showing a pro-Palestinian bias during its coverage of the Gaza war and was deliberately “censoring” reactionary conservative voices in the gender identity debate in order to “treat the transgender experience without balance or objectivity as a celebration of diversity while ignoring the complexity of the issue.”
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