radiofree.asia

Category: BBC

  • Make no mistake: the BBC is complicit in the abuse of Abdullah al-Yazuri

    Abdullah al-Yazuri, the 15 year old Palestinian child who narrated the now-pulled BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, has spoken on it. In an exclusive interview, he told Middle East Eye:

    My message to the BBC: anything happens to me, the BBC is responsible for it.

    The decision to pull the documentary about the lives of four Palestinian children has been met with sharp criticism. The International Centre for of Justice for Palestinians has lodged a complaint with the BBC. As the Canary reported:

    The complaint outlines how the suppression of the testimony of Palestinians may constitute a failure by the BBC to uphold impartiality in ensuring that a range of perspectives are given weight and prominence.

    Discounting the legitimate testimony of the 13-year-old child narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, based upon retroactively applied standards of familial or associational scrutiny, may breach the BBC and Ofcom requirements that contributors be treated fairly, while the lack of transparency regarding the ongoing review raises concerns.

    Now, Abdullah’s comments are a damning indictment on what should be an embarrassing incident for the BBC.

    BBC: erasing Palestinian experiences

    While details remain murky, the original reason given for pulling the documentary was that Abdullah’s father worked as Hamas’ minister of agriculture. The BBC referred to it’s oft-mentioned values of impartiality, and scrabbled to apologise. Now, however, Abdullah has explained:

    I played two roles in the documentary. I was a character at first. Then I was the narrator of the documentary talking about the stories of other characters in the documentary. The director of the movie had guided me to the lines that I had spoken, and no, my parents weren’t involved in any of the lines that I had spoke as a narrator.

    And, Middle East Eye noted that:

    Yazuri has been widely labelled a “Hamas chief”, “Hamas official” and “terror chief” by commentators and news organisations in Britain.

    But MEE revealed on 20 February that Yazuri was in fact a technocrat with a scientific rather than political background and had previously worked for the UAE’s education ministry and studied at British universities.

    Importantly:

    Ministers, bureaucrats and civil servants in Gaza are appointed by Hamas, while in the West Bank they are appointed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

    Whether the BBC likes it or not, Hamas is a local government responsible for administration and governance. Even by their warped standards, Abdullah’s father is a fry cry from being some kind of “terror chief.” What was he supposed to do? Ignore his expertise, and refuse to help his community? And, Abdullah? Is his narration of what life is like for children in Gaza inadmissible for public viewing because of who his father is?

    Double standards

    And, for that matter, can the BBC say that they haven’t breached impartiality standards with the Israeli military? In April 2024, they joined a group of “international journalists” for a tour led by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). That’s the same IDF who face serious accusations of war crimes, including what Amnesty International described as a “shocking disregard” for civilian lives. The same IDF who have widespread allegations of torture against Palestinians, including depraved sexual violence. The same IDF who are accused by the UN of “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

    Imagine the outcry if the BBC was part of a group of journalists taking a tour led by Hamas. The fact that the BBC are wringing their hands over impartiality whilst continually platforming and working alongside the Israeli military as a legitimate source of information is disgusting.

    So much so, Abdullah revealed that after spending almost a year working on the documentary, the BBC didn’t even bother to let him know they were cancelling it:

    I personally think it’s pretty disappointing, to be honest. I worked for over nine months on this documentary, only for it to be wiped and deleted. I found out about the decision to remove the documentary from the news that were revolving around the movie.

    No, I did not receive any apology from the BBC.

    Abdullah also detailed the mental anguish he and his family have been subjected to:

    Hopefully it doesn’t really affect my future, but it was pretty disappointing and sad to see this backlash against me and my family, as well as the harassment we faced.

    Deep-rooted BBC bias

    British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim spoke to Middle East Eye about the cancellation of the documentary and said:

    The BBC has good reporters on Israel-Palestine but its bosses are hopelessly compromised by their pronounced and persistent bias in favour of Israel.

    The reason for this bias is not lack of knowledge but cowardice, the fear of antagonising Israel and Israel’s friends in high places in Britain.

    Abdullah wasn’t paid for his nine-months long work, aside for expenses deposited into his sister’s account. Even so, BBC bosses are so committed to anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli propaganda that they’d rather risk erasing a young boy’s retelling of his own experiences as a child trying to survive a genocide than confront Israel’s actions. As Shlaim argues, the BBC know full well what they’re doing – and it’s the cowardice that shines through.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Now the Zionist lobby is going after Channel 4. It’s all so predictable.

    The BBC isn’t the only media outlet in the limelight at the moment over its coverage of Israel‘s genocide in Gaza. Because Channel 4 has also come under attack from campaigners who want to censor reporting that holds the journalist-murdering apartheid state to account for its war crimes.

    Channel 4: attacked by the Zionist lobby

    The BBC has faced a landslide of criticism for pulling a documentary under pressure from pro-Israel agitators, primarily as a result of its narration by 13-year-old Abdullah al-Yazuri, whose father is “a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government”.

    But now, just as Channel 4 has broadcast a powerful account of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Palestine through the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, it too has faced the same charge. The UK establishment media has piled onto Channel 4, which also featured al-Yazuri in some of its coverage. Channel 4 News has insisted that it has reviewed and deleted some of this, but that its “award-winning coverage, including the International Emmy, RTS, Bafta, British Journalism Awards, or Broadcast Awards” does not feature the teenager.

    Israeli occupiers spent many years turning Gaza into “the world’s largest open-air prison”. It is a place with a highly concentrated population which Israel has isolated from the outside world via a brutal blockade. In the context, it’s reasonable to assume that there are many people whose family members work in some way in or with the occupied territory’s government. Highlighting this is as relevant as highlighting that most Israelis serve in the Israeli occupation forces (IDF).

    Why scrutiny of people with connections to one military organisation but not another?

    UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese has emphasised the subjective nature of using the term ‘terrorism’, as opposed to recognised legal framework regarding genocide and war crimes. She said:

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Former BBC journalist goes rogue, calling out the broadcaster’s pro-Israel bias

    Former BBC journalist Karishma Patel has called the broadcaster out for refusing to reach “reasonable, evidence-based conclusions” over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As a result, she suggested, it has become “a vehicle in informational warfare”. And that’s why she resigned in 2024.

    A conscious decision to hide children’s suffering in Gaza

    The BBC‘s highly controversial decision to pull the recent documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, Patel said, was “a distraction from a much bigger problem my old employer has with impartiality”.

    Her opposition to this call saw her join over a thousand UK-based media professionals in condemning the public broadcaster’s “politically motivated censorship”, which they described as “racist” and “dehumanising”.

    They added that, by caving to nefarious pressure on behalf of the war-criminal Israeli government, the BBC was “erasing Palestinian suffering” and “suppressing narratives that humanise Palestinians”.

    As Middle East Eye (MEE) described:

    four days after the documentary aired on 17 February, the BBC pulled it from its streaming platform, iPlayer, after an intense campaign by pro-Israel groups and rival British media outlets.

    While “there has been no evidence of Hamas influence on the film’s content”, the agitators jumped on the lack of transparency over 13-year-old narrator Abdullah al-Yazuri‘s father’s role as “a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government”.

    The BBC reportedly hasn’t apologised to al-Yazuri, who has since become the target of online abuse and harassment. And if “anything happens” to him, at a time when Israeli war criminals have killed journalists with impunity, he has stressed that “the BBC is responsible for it”.

    As Patel highlighted, the BBC disgracefully chose censorship despite having:

    the option of keeping the version with a line of context on this, ultimately standing by the truth at the heart of the film: that Israel is harming Palestinian children.

    And this fit in neatly with what she had discovered during her years at the BBC. Because while she had covered numerous topics, she stressed that:

    it was in covering Gaza that I saw a shocking level of editorial inconsistency.

    BBC professionals “choosing not to follow evidence – out of fear”

    Journalists, Patel insisted, should reach “reasonable, evidence-based conclusions” via deep research “rather than setting up constant debates”. However, at the BBC, people:

    were actively choosing not to follow evidence – out of fear. For months, I watched the BBC repeat one of its gravest editorial errors around climate change: debating a phenomenon long after the evidence showed it’s real.

    She added:

    Impartiality has failed if its key method is to constantly balance “both sides” of a story as equally true. A news outlet that refuses to come to conclusions becomes a vehicle in informational warfare

    She also asserted that:

    We have passed the point at which Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity are debatable. There’s more than enough evidence – from Palestinians on the ground, aid organisations; legal bodies – to come to coverage-shaping conclusions around what Israel has done.

    And comparing the situation to the BBC‘s 2018 decision to finally issue editorial guidance that “Climate change IS happening”, she asked:

    When will the BBC conclude that Israel IS violating international law, and shape its coverage around that truth?

    There’s no ‘balance’ between genocidal war criminals and their victims

    By hiding or omitting key context and toeing the line linguistically, the BBC has consistently failed to inform the public properly about Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the British government’s support for them. And as British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim told MEE, the censorship of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is:

    only the latest example of the public broadcaster’s regular capitulation to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby

    Despite “good reporters” existing at the BBC, he said:

    its bosses are hopelessly compromised by their pronounced and persistent bias in favour of Israel.

    They fear Israel and its high-profile supporters, he stressed.

    This, and the lack of political power and influence of Palestinians who have suffered decades of settler-colonial oppression, means there is a clear difference between how much scrutiny Israeli sources face in comparison to Palestinian sources.

    https://x.com/mrsDugskullery/status/1896982517934383539

    Journalist Sangita Myska has insisted that the “over-scrutiny of some Palestinian sources vs under-scrutiny of some Israeli ones” has severely damaged “public trust” in the corporation. And Richard Sanders, director of the powerful and comprehensive Al Jazeera documentary Investigating war crimes in Gaza, has asserted that:

    a media environment where the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are subjected constantly to the most intense scrutiny, while their tormentors and those who support them are all too often allowed a free pass is a distorted and frankly racist one.

    Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, he argued, is “by far the best thing the BBC has produced on Gaza”.

    If you agree that the BBC should reinstate the documentary, you can support this petition, which currently has over 22,000 signatories. Also, you can see and share the documentary online thanks to people who managed to upload it.

    https://twitter.com/GozukaraFurkan/status/1896327710277800159

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • BBC receives formal complaint over removal of Gaza documentary

    The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has lodged a formal complaint against the BBC’s conduct in removing the Hoyo Films documentary programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from its BBC iPlayer platform.

    BBC under fire over Gaza

    In the complaint, ICJP’s Director Tayab Ali, who is also Head of International Law at Bindmans LLP, states that the decision to remove the documentary “raises serious concerns about potential breaches of the BBC’s legal, regulatory, and ethical obligations under its Royal Charter, Editorial Guidelines, and Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code”, likely to impact upon public trust and media integrity.

    The complaint outlines how the suppression of the testimony of Palestinians may constitute a failure by the BBC to uphold impartiality in ensuring that a range of perspectives are given weight and prominence.

    Discounting the legitimate testimony of the 13-year-old child narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, based upon retroactively applied standards of familial or associational scrutiny, may breach the BBC and Ofcom requirements that contributors be treated fairly, while the lack of transparency regarding the ongoing review raises concerns.

    The complaint requests that, within 14 days, the BBC:

    • Outlines the specific timeline of its review process and criteria.
    • Issues a formal explanation of the editorial, legal, or regulatory grounds for its decision for removal.
    • Discloses any external lobbying efforts and complaints which influenced its decisions.
    • Commits to applying equal standards as regards programmes relying upon Israeli narratives or including governmental or military contributors.
    • Reinstates the documentary unless there is a demonstrable breach of BBC guidelines.

    The storm continues to brew

    The programme was first aired on BBC Two on 17 February, providing a first-hand account of the lived experiences of Palestinian children in Gaza during Israel’s military actions since October 2023. Following its release, some figures expressed criticism of the BBC and Hoyo Films for having featured as a narrator the 13-year-old Palestinian child Abdullah Al-Yazouri, whose father is Dr. Ayman Al-Yazouri, Deputy Minister of Agriculture in Gaza – a role concerned with food production relating to crops, fishing, and livestock.

    The BBC’s subsequent decision to remove the documentary has been met with a wave of condemnation, with critics stating that it amounts to the unjustified suppression of Palestinian testimony.

    These critics include 500 media figures whose open letter describes the film as an “essential piece of journalism”, and over 600 British Jews who called on the BBC to reinstate the programme and reject “cynical” complaints. The BBC has not provided any public evidence that the documentary contains factual inaccuracies or breaches BBC Editorial Guidelines.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Media Workers Condemn BBC For ‘Dehumanizing’ Censorship Of Gaza Documentary

    Over 500 film, TV, and media workers have condemned BBC executives for “racism” and “censorship” after the British broadcaster pulled a documentary highlighting the horrific impact the US–Israeli genocide in Gaza has had on Palestinian children.

    “As industry professionals who craft stories for the British public, including for the BBC, we condemn the weaponization of a child’s identity and the racist insinuation that Palestinian narratives must be scrutinized through a lens of suspicion,” the letter reads.

    The letter also condemned a “racist” and “dehumanizing” campaign targeting the film ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,’ which the BBC removed from its iPlayer streaming service after pressure from pro-Israel activists.

    The post Media Workers Condemn BBC For ‘Dehumanizing’ Censorship Of Gaza Documentary appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why the f*ck were BBC & Guardian editors meeting an Israeli general during a genocide?

    Declassified UK has revealed that several mainstream media editors in Britain met with Aviv Kohavi, who had recently stepped down as the top military officer in Israel, a month into the genocide in Gaza. Guardian editor Katherine Viner, BBC director of news content Richard Burgess, and Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf all met with Kohavi despite the atrocities Israeli occupation forces were committing at the time.

    BBC and Guardian: meeting with war criminals?

    As Declassified noted:

    During his tenure, he justified attacks on journalists, saying the soldiers who shot reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank “showed courage” and that he had not one “gram of regret” for flattening the Associated Press (AP) office in Gaza.

    Lawyer Elad Man got hold of details about Kohavi’s visit through a Freedom of Information request in Israel. The Israeli government and occupation army had assisted in planning the general’s tour in the UK. Its aim, apparently, was to help ‘cultivate support for Israel’ as it decimated Gaza.

    Media professor Des Freedman reacted to Declassified’s revelations by insisting that:

    meeting secretly with a senior IDF representative in the middle of a genocidal campaign as part of an organised propaganda offensive raises serious questions about integrity and transparency.

    He added over the BBC, Guardian, et al:

    editors at the Guardian, BBC and FT appear willing to open their doors to Israeli spokespeople – no matter how controversial and offensive – in a way which is denied to Palestinian representatives.

    Journalists themselves are calling out the mainstream media bias

    The BBC is facing a backlash currently for controversially taking down a documentary about the devastation in Gaza. And that is on top of already ample proof of its overall pro-Israel bias.

    A former BBC journalist told Declassified that the meeting with Kohavi was “outrageous” due to Israel’s war crimes, insisting it was:

    difficult to believe that the organisation would hold an equivalent meeting with the Hamas government

    They said the meeting:

    perhaps explains why there has been so much bias and distortion in the corporation’s coverage of Gaza.

    And they added that:

    It further undermines the independence and impartiality that the BBC claims to uphold, and I think it has done irreparable damage to any trust audiences had in the corporation

    A BBC spokesperson, however, insisted that “We hold similar briefings with figures from both sides of the conflict and all stories”.

    The Guardian also has a long record of helping to cover for Israel, in part by assisting a cynical smear campaign against its high-profile critics. And Declassified recently reported on an “exhaustive spreadsheet” that Guardian staff have put together of the paper’s coverage during the Gaza genocide, which has been:

    amplifying unchallenged Israeli propaganda… or treating clearly false statements by Israeli spokespeople as credible

    One Guardian journalist told Declassified:

    It’s no secret that the coverage of the international and foreign desk of the Guardian follows the line of the British establishment

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Starmer defends slashing aid budget to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP – as it happened

    This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

    The rightwing historian Niall Ferguson is in the audience for Badenoch’s speech, according to James Heale from the Spectator.

    Niall Ferguson spotted at Kemi Badenoch’s big speech on foreign affairs… hearing we might get some policy too

    Tractors’ horns interrupt Badenoch’s speech shortly after she begins speaking. Attendant spinner heard swearing furiously

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The BBC just shamed itself by doing Labour’s war-mongering propaganda for it

    The last few years have seen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Both invading forces stand accused of war crimes, and the costs in terms of human lives and spending have been enormous. While neither conflict is settling in a fashion which is equitable for the invaded parties, it does seem like both conflicts are coming to a close. Strange, then, that the British political and media class – specifically the BBC – have chosen this moment to tell us that now is the time to increase our ‘defence’ spending:

    In other words, defence contractors have gotten used to the extra income they made from arming Ukraine and Israel, and they don’t want the gravy train to end.

    The BBC bubble

    On Sunday 23 February, Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Labour Party education secretary Bridget Phillipson. The fact that Kuenssberg questioned Phillipson on defence spending and the armed forces rather than education tells you a lot about the ideology of the psychopaths at our national broadcaster. It’s important to understand, though, that while some described this exchange as a ‘grilling’, what’s far more disturbing is how closely aligned the BBC and Labour are:

    In a clip the BBC felt worthy of sharing, Kuenssberg said:

    And many of, people who work in this world, many of your political rivals, other people even like the boss of NATO, would say it’s also urgent that countries like Britain right now commit to spend more money, potentially a lot more money on defence.

    Wow – shocking that the head of NATO – an organisation which exists solely to encircle Russia with an ever-growing web of expensive military bases – would want more money. Here’s what NATO boss Mark Rutte had to say in December 2024:

    Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us. We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years… It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defence production and defence spending.

    As of 2024, Russia had about 1.3 million active soldiers, about 2 millions reserve forces, and 250,000 paramilitary units. Statista shows how this compared to Ukraine:

    Recent statistics reported by the BBC estimate that:

    the true number of Russian military deaths could range from 146,194 to 211,169. If one adds estimated losses from DPR and LPR forces, the total number of Russian-aligned fatalities may range from 167,194 to 234,669.

    This means Russia has probably lost something like 10% of its ‘Russian-aligned’ fighting forces. And that’s not to mention the financial cost, with Reuters reporting US claims in February 2024 that:

    Russia has probably spent up to $211 billion in equipping, deploying and maintaining its troops for operations in Ukraine and Moscow has lost more than $10 billion in canceled or postponed arms sales

    It’s worth noting that despite the above, recent reports show that Russia’s economy has been more resilient than some analysts initially predicted. It’s also worth noting that these human and financial costs are the result of Russia engaging a singular enemy. Now let’s have a look at NATO.

    The NATO forces

    The following comparison from Statista compares NATO’s military capabilities with Russia’s as of 2024:

    Spread across its 32 member countries, NATO has around twice as many military personnel as Russia. Importantly, it also has more than five times as many aircraft.

    Now let’s look back at what NATO boss Mark Rutte had to say:

    We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years

    We aren’t?

    Because it looks like we’re more than ready. Unless you know something we don’t, like perhaps every Russian soldier will gain the ability to split into two like amoeba.

    But forgetting all that, there’s also the glowing-green megaton elephant in the room that nobody seems to be talking about.

    Nuclear NATO

    Is everyone forgetting what the word ‘deterrent’ means in ‘nuclear deterrent’? Because our understanding is that we have a nuclear deterrent to deter other nuclear powers from going to war with us. And we know we’re not imagining that, because this is what the UK government has to say:

    The purpose of nuclear deterrence is to preserve peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression. Potential aggressors know that the costs of attacking the UK, or our NATO allies, could far outweigh any benefit they could hope to achieve. This deters states from using their nuclear weapons against us or carrying out the most extreme threats to our national security.

    That’s weird, because over the past few years there have been many instances of British military bigwigs telling us that war with Russia is possible, such as general Roly Walker in 2024:

    BBC

    So what’s going on here?

    Is the British military going rogue, and announcing to Russia and the rest of the world that we will forego using our nuclear deterrent for no apparent gain?

    Or are military bigwigs like Mark Rutte and Roly Walker simply exaggerating the threats we face to secure more funding?

    We’d lean towards the latter, because exaggerating the threats we face to secure more funding is literally the job of every military boss – at least it is under the Western neoliberal order, anyway.

    This isn’t a new phenomenon; it’s simply one which persists, because there is zero pushback from journalists or politicians. It’s a topic Lewis Page covered in his 2006 book Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs, with an Independent review noting at the time:

    The high offices of the police, the medical profession and the universities have fallen under ever more scrutiny and suspicion in recent years, but the media has largely ignored the Ministry of Defence. If the former naval officer Lewis Page has his way, all this is set to change.

    The formal naval officer did not have his way unfortunately, and military bigwigs are still able to spew nonsense unchecked in the establishment safe space that is the British media.

    Labour responds to the BBC

    In the Kuenssberg interview, this is how Phillipson responded:

    the defence secretary has also been clear that alongside increased spending, there has to be better spending. There is far too much waste, poor procurement, and bad decisions that are being made. So alongside extra investment, there has to be that programme of reform that John Healy, the defence secretary, has set out.

    So Labour’s plan is to increase military spending while cutting down on military waste. It’s hard to see how they’ll achieve this given that most military spending is waste by design, whether it be preparing for a land war with Russia we’ll never have or this long, long list of failed projects published by Declassified.

    Another important thing to remember is that we don’t simply exaggerate the threats we face; we also create new ones, and then we waste more money ‘countering’ them.

    The axis of defence spending opportunities

    In 2022, NPR published a piece giving some context to the shifting relationship between NATO and Russia. It reported in the piece:

    The question: Should NATO, the mutual defense pact formed in the wake of World War II that has long served to represent Western interests and counter Russia’s influence in Europe, expand eastward?

    NATO’s founding articles declare that any European country that is able to meet the alliance’s criteria for membership can join. This includes Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies in Europe have repeatedly said they are committed to that “open-door” policy.

    But in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO’s eastward march represents decades of broken promises from the West to Moscow.

    “You promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly,” Putin said at a news conference in December.

    The article carried a map showing the members who joined before 1992 and those who joined after:

    What’s the relevance of 1992?

    1992 was a year after the Soviet Union ended, and the beginning of the new relationship between the US and the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s then-leader, was described at the time as a Western “stooge who followed IMF and World Bank advice”. How easy it would have been for the West to treat Russia as just another victim of neoliberal extraction policies; instead, NATO continued to expand eastward as if the Cold War never ended, and this made the rise of a figure like Vladimir Putin more and more likely.

    This isn’t to say Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was justified; it is to say that it wasn’t unexpected. Hostility, it turns out, breeds further hostility. There are many such cases, with examples from recent history including ISIS rising from the ashes of the Iraq war, and Iranian politicians taking a more hardline stance after the US branded them part of the Axis of Evil. Few in the West know that Iranian politicians and citizens responded sympathetically to American losses following 9/11, and of course they wouldn’t, because that narrative wouldn’t support further defence spending.

    The military industrial complex, Labour, and the BBC

    In his 1961 farewell address, US president Dwight Eisenhower warned of the “military-industrial complex”. As he described it, this was a system in which the arms industry and political sphere became so entwined that they pursued war solely for their mutual enrichment. Sadly, this is the world we all now inhabit. It’s why president Joe Biden and his NATO allies turned down peace talks with Russia; it’s also why this same group refused to use their influence to stop Israel committing a genocide.

    The total acceptance of military-industrial complex dogma is beyond apparent in the interview between Kuenssberg and Phillipson. Ignore the fact that our military ambitions only seem to make the world more dangerous – war is profit, and profit is the only thing that matters in the neoliberal world order:

    Featured image via the BBC

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Zionists force BBC to pull documentary because of a Palestinian child’s testimony

    The BBC has been forced to take down the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, after a coordinated effort by Zionists and pro-Israel lobby groups. It is because the child narrator of the documentary is the son of someone who works in Gaza’s government. However, one group has hit back at the situation – and called it out for what it is: attempts by the Israel lobby to silence Palestinian voices.

    Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone

    Following the release of the BBC’s recent documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) is alarmed by the growing efforts to suppress Palestinian voices.

    The documentary, produced by Britain’s public broadcaster, follows the lives of four young people enduring 15 months of war crimes, during which Israel has been accused of genocide. Its release has been met with a wave of criticism, reportedly due to the film’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, being the son of a civil servant in Gaza’s Agriculture Ministry.

    However, there has been a virulent campaign by Zionists, the right wing in the UK, and pro-Israel lobby groups to get the BBC documentary removed. This includes the Zionist sympathisers in the Labour Party government like Lisa Nandy. Now, the campaign has succeeded.

    As Deadline reported:

    The BBC has removed from iPlayer a documentary about the Gaza crisis that was narrated by the child of a Hamas minister.

    The British broadcaster has taken the unusual step of deleting Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone from its streaming service amid growing concerns that other contributors had links to Hamas, which is proscribed as a terror group by the UK government.

    In a statement on Friday 21 January the BBC said:

    There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.

    Right-wing lobby group Labour Against Antisemitism has been vocal in its attempts to shut the documentary down. As the Telegraph reported:

    Labour Against Antisemitism has lodged a formal complaint to the BBC about the broadcast, claiming that the team failed to properly vet the documentary’s subjects.

    Alex Hearn, from Labour Against Antisemitism, said: “This documentary appears to have been a failure of due diligence by the BBC, with Hamas propaganda promoted as reliable fact at the taxpayers’ expense.

    “There needs to be an urgent investigation into how this happened once again”.

    By Hamas propaganda the Zionist shills at Labour Against Antisemitism mean the lived testimony of a child during Israel’s genocide in Gaza which has so far killed at least 48,000 people – mostly women and children:

    The ICJP has said that the BBC must stand firm against these attempts to prevent first-hand accounts of life in Gaza from reaching audiences.

    Zionists trying to silence Palestinian children? At least they’re not killing them.

    For some, almost any Palestinian perspective appears to be deemed unacceptable. In this case, objections have been raised because Abdullah’s father holds a government role in Gaza’s Hamas-run administration. However, this does not negate the child’s lived experience or invalidate his testimony.

    The ICJP said:

    It is important to distinguish between individuals carrying out administrative functions and those involved in the political or military leadership of a governing authority. In Gaza, public services such as healthcare, agriculture, and infrastructure rely on civil servants and technocrats who perform essential duties.

    The employment of an individual in such a role does not in itself indicate political affiliation or support for any organisation’s activities. The BBC documentary does not endorse or support Hamas, other proscribed organisation, or the attacks on 7 October; it is a journalistic account of civilian experiences in conflict.

    ICJP has noted “with concern” that medical and humanitarian professionals who have provided life-saving assistance in Gaza have faced scrutiny and investigation simply for working in the territory administered by Hamas – during a time when the medical infrastructure has been purposefully targeted and destroyed.

    Efforts to silence Palestinian voices, especially those documenting civilian suffering, must be resisted.

    However, it seems that the BBC, as always, has sided with the pro-Israel lobby. Clearly, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was a mistake on the broadcasters part. That it, it went against its usual MO of spouting propaganda for the genocidal Israeli state.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The BBC just got what it deserved over Israel – thanks to Palestine Action

    On Monday 17 February, the BBC got what it deserved over its coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – as Palestine Action doused its HQ in blood-red paint for a second time.

    BBC hit by Palestine Action again

    In a bold act of direct action, Palestine Action activists targeted BBC’s headquarters in Portland Place, London:

    BBC Palestine Action
    Activists from pro-Palestinian Palestine Action target the BBC in Portland Place, London. They argue that the news organisation is biased in their reporting of the war in Gaza, the language they use to report news stories in weighted in Israel’s favour, they refuse to accept the situation in Gaza is a Genocide and they barely report about the Palestinian’s plight in the region at all.

    They covered the building in blood-red paint and broke windows in protest against the BBC’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of Palestinians through its entrenched pro-Israel bias:

    BBC Palestine Action

    The offices of the BBC have been covered in blood-red paint to symbolise the corporation’s responsibility for the blood spilled in Gaza and the BBC’s role in whitewashing Israeli atrocities through its partial and biased coverage.

    For years, the BBC has consistently minimised Israel’s violence against Palestinians while amplifying the narratives of the oppressors, perpetuating a deadly cycle of misinformation and false equivalency.

    The BBC stands accused of ‘manufacturing consent’ for Israel’s genocide, including by BBC staff themselves:

    BBC Palestine Action

    Today’s actions mark the second time Palestine Action has targeted the BBC since the onset of Israel’s genocidal response to the Al Aqsa Flood operation, a return necessary due to the BBC’s deeply-entrenched complicity in enabling Israeli apartheid and genocide is a deeply entrenched issue:

    The BBC’s repeated failure to provide a platform for Palestinian voices, or to accurately represent the scale of Israel’s violence has played a critical part in shaping public perception, allowing the continued suffering and displacement of Palestinians to go largely unchallenged in the media.

    “The BBC’s biased reporting isn’t a simple case of poor journalism – it’s a matter of life and death. By downplaying Israeli war crimes, the BBC is complicit in the genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said a spokesperson for Palestine Action:

    This isn’t just about the news – it’s about the role of the media in shaping global complicity. The BBC has blood on its hands, and today’s action is part of a wider campaign to hold them accountable. We will not stand by as the BBC sanitizes genocide.

    Years of complicity

    This protest is driven by years of outrage over the BBC’s refusal to cover the Palestinian struggle with the same urgency and accuracy it affords Israeli military actions.

    The corporation’s editorial choices, whether intentional or the result of institutional bias, have aligned it with the Israeli state’s narrative of justification for its violent policies. Today, the BBC’s premises have been marked with a visual reminder of that which is well-known in Palestine: that their blood marks the BBC’s reporting.

    Palestine Action will continue to hold British institutions responsible for the roles they play in genocide, and demands the BBC start reporting the truth about Palestine.

    Featured image and additional images via Martin Pope

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Is the BBC really running defence for another f*cking ‘nonce’?

    The BBC has an unfortunate history of employing men who rape and sexually assault children. What’s even worse is that many have accused the BBC of failing to stop such individuals, with the organisation itself reporting:

    The BBC missed opportunities to stop “monstrous” abuse by DJ Jimmy Savile and broadcaster Stuart Hall because of a “culture of fear”, a report says.

    Given this, you’d think the BBC would do everything it could to avoid looking it’s siding with sexual abusers – alleged or otherwise.

    Well, it turns out you’d have thought wrong:

    BBC: the nonce in question

    In the interview, Kuenssberg said to Angela Rayner:

    Now I’m gonna ask you this question, and you might want to bat it away the same way you did the last one. Did you refer to a member of the royal family as something I’m not sure we’re allowed to say on a Sunday morning? But in case we can bleep it out, did you. … deny that you called a member of the Royal Family a nonce?

    ‘Do you deny that you called a member of the Royal Family a nonce’ – that’s one hell of a way to introduce this topic. For those out of the loop, the member of the Royal Family in question is prince Andrew – the one who’s famous for allegedly abusing a child – the one who many in the country think of as ‘the nonce’.

    The reason the topic is coming up now is that a new book reports Labour Party deputy PM Rayner saying the following, as the Independent reported on 3 February:

    Angela Rayner described Prince Andrew as “that n****” and tried to prevent him from being eligible to deputise for King Charles over his links to Jeffrey Epstein, a new book has claimed.

    The deputy prime minister reportedly contacted Buckingham Palace and senior civil servants in a bid to remove the disgraced Duke of York from a list of royals who could step in for the King if he is abroad or incapacitated.

    If you didn’t know already, prince Andrew was indeed linked to the notorious international paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. You might not know that, of course, as Kuenssberg didn’t establish that; she didn’t even name prince Andrew; she simply asked ‘did you call a member of the Royal Family a nonce’, as if it was another gotcha – as if the Royal Family should be spared of such insults even when very clear accusations exist.

    And speaking of the accusations, let’s do what Kuenssberg didn’t and actually discuss them.

    Prince Andrew pictured with his accuser and the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell

    ‘What is Prince Andrew accused of?’

    The BBC are fully aware of what Andrew was accused of, because the following quote is from a BBC article:

    In court documents, Virginia Giuffre says she was the victim of sex trafficking and abuse by Jeffrey Epstein from the age of 16.

    Part of her abuse involved being lent out to other powerful men – including Prince Andrew, she alleges.

    Ms Giuffre says the duke sexually assaulted her on three occasions when she was under the age of 18.

    The first time was in 2001 in London. In a 2019 interview with the BBC, she said she was introduced to Prince Andrew by Epstein and his then-girlfriend, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who took them to a nightclub.

    Ms Giuffre recounts being told by Ms Maxwell as a 17-year-old that she had to “do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”.

    Later that evening she says she had sex with the duke upstairs at Ms Maxwell’s house in Belgravia.

    On the second occasion, it is alleged that Prince Andrew abused Ms Giuffre in Epstein’s mansion in New York.

    And she says the duke abused her a third time on Epstein’s private island, Little St James, in the US Virgin Islands.

    Ms Giuffre says in the court documents that she was forced into sex by explicit or implicit threats and because she feared the powerful connections, wealth and authority of Epstein, Ms Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

    She says the duke knew her age and that she was a sex-trafficking victim.

    Oh, and let’s not forget that prince Andrew also took part in a disastrous BBC interview in which he attempted to discredit the claims against him. Here’s how the BBC discussed that interview in September 2024:

    Emily Maitlis says the Duke of York “lost the respect of the nation” after her infamous Newsnight interview with him, but warned that Jeffrey Epstein’s victims didn’t get closure.

    “I think there is unfinished business,” the journalist told BBC News. “It isn’t some nice, neat ending.”

    The 2019 interview, widely viewed as a “car-crash”, saw Prince Andrew talk candidly to Maitlis about his friendship with convicted sex offender Epstein.

    It is now the subject of a new three-part drama, A Very Royal Scandal, starring Ruth Wilson as Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Andrew.

    The BBC interview did huge damage to Andrew’s reputation and is seen by many as greatly contributing to his downfall.

    Days after it, the duke announced he was stepping back from royal duties, saying the Epstein scandal had become a “major disruption” to the Royal Family.

    As reported by – you guessed it – the BBC, prince Andrew settled the accusations against him out of court:

    The out-of-court settlement accepted no liability and Prince Andrew has always strongly rejected claims of wrongdoing.

    But the prince agreed to pay an unspecified amount to Ms Giuffre and to her charity for victims’ rights.

    He also said he “never intended to malign Ms Giuffre’s character” and he recognised she had “suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks”.

    The duke also pledged to “demonstrate his regret for his association” with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    In the wake of the claims, Prince Andrew lost military titles and royal patronages as well as the use of the title His Royal Highness.

    So Andrew admitted she was a victim of abuse; he just paid through the nose to avoid a court case which might have got to the bottom of who abused her.

    The establishment defending itself

    Many criticised Kuenssberg’s line of questioning:

     

    Some pointed out that Peter Mandelson – a Labour lord and diplomat – also had connections to Jeffrey Epstein:

    The BBC doesn’t learn

    Given what happened with Jimmy Saville (and Stewart Hall, and Rolf Harris, and Huw Edwards, and Russell Brand), you’d think that the BBC would tread carefully when it comes to alleged sexual abusers. You can’t do what Kuenssberg did without giving the impression that calling Andrew a “nonce” is worse than him allegedly being a nonce.

    In the end, Rayner refused to say if she called him a nonce, but we know she must have done because everyone else in the country has.

    Featured image via the BBC

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • How the West Hides its Gaza Genocide Guilt behind Holocaust Day Remembrance

    The ghosts of thousands of Palestinian children crushed by Israeli bombs loomed over this year’s Auschwitz commemorations

    An entirely mendacious message lay at the heart of this week’s coverage by the BBC of the 80th Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations.

    The British state broadcaster asserted throughout the day that the voices of the few remaining survivors of the Nazi extermination programme were still being heard “loud and clear” in western capitals. Those survivors – now in their 80s and 90s – warned that the genocide of a people must “never again” be allowed to take place.

    As if to bolster its claim, the BBC showed western leaders – from Britain’s King Charles III, to Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron of France – prominently in attendance at the main ceremony at Auschwitz, the most notorious of the death camps, where more than a million Jews, Roma and other stigmatised groups were burned in ovens.

    As a counterpoint, the BBC highlighted the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been excluded from the ceremony for ordering the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

    Steve Rosenberg, the corporation’s Moscow correspondent, underscored the irony that Russia, so visibly absent, was responsible for liberating Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 – the date that eventually came to be marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    But hanging over the proceedings – and the coverage – was a heavy cloud of unreality. Had those western leaders really heard the message of “never again”? Had media outlets like the BBC?

    There was an unwanted ghost at the commemorations. In fact, tens of thousands of ghosts.

    Those ghosts included the children shredded by US-supplied bombs; the children who slowly suffocated under the rubble of their destroyed homes; the children whose bodies were left to rot, picked apart by feral dogs, because snipers shot at anyone who tried to retrieve them; the children who starved to death because they were seen as “human animals”, denied all food and water; the homeless babies who froze to death in plunging winter temperatures; and the premature babies left to die in their incubators after soldiers invaded hospitals and cut off the power.

    Those ghosts were every bit as present at the ceremony as the mountains of shoes and suitcases – separated forever from their owners – lining the corridors of the Auschwitz museum.

    Western leaders were determined to look back at the crimes of the past, but not to look at the crimes of the present – crimes they have been so deeply complicit in perpetrating.

    Wasteland of rubble

    The BBC’s News at Ten, its main evening news programme, dedicated around 20 minutes of its half-hour schedule to the Auschwitz commemorations, and then immediately followed the segment – apparently with no sense of irony – with images from Gaza, now a wasteland of rubble.

    Video footage, shot by a drone from high above, showed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – the survivors, if Israel does not restart the slaughter – picking their way along the coast northwards. They were heading towards the ruins that had once been their homes, schools, universities, libraries, mosques, churches and bakeries.

    Seen from so far away, they were reduced to a mass of “human ants”, just as Israel’s leaders wish them to be seen.

    After all, who needs to protect a people so dehumanised, so demonised? A people whose resistance to decades of brutal oppression and dispossession is categorised simply as “terrorism”?

    It was entirely of a piece that US President Donald Trump, who at least stayed away from the orgy of western hypocrisy at Auschwitz, called at the weekend for a programme to “clean out” the destitute, the maimed, the scarred from Gaza – as if this was just a matter of good hygiene, of eradicating an ants’ nest.

    Media like the BBC reported his comments with faint distaste. But it was precisely the media’s disengaged treatment of the horrors unfolding in Gaza for the past 15 months – as if Israel was simply carrying out a routine counter-terrorism operation, “mowing the lawn” again – that made the horrors possible.

    It was the media’s refusal to identify those horrors for what they clearly were – an incipient genocide, recognised by every major human rights organisation and suspected by the International Court of Justice in a ruling a year ago – that made the slaughter possible.

    It was the media’s embrace of the preposterous narrative that former US President Joe Biden had “worked tirelessly” to restrain Israel, at the same time as he shipped to its military the most powerful bombs in Washington’s armoury, that made the genocide possible.

    At least Trump, in his vulgar transparency, exploded the pretence of decency, making it impossible to take as good-faith the professions of “never again” paraded by western leaders.

    Ideological zeal

    But the Auschwitz commemoration also highlighted a much older lie than the West’s current, self-serving, mendacious claim to have internalised the central lesson of the Holocaust while assisting a present-day genocide.

    This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day starkly exposed the chief beneficiary of that lie: Israel.

    For decades, Israel has traded on its self-declared status as guardian of the Holocaust’s memory, and as the Jewish people’s supposed solitary sanctuary from global antisemitism.

    But Israel was never a real sanctuary for Jews. It was always another ghetto, this one a self-created fortress state antagonising and oppressing its neighbours in the oil-rich Middle East.

    Israel was never a bulwark against genocide either. It was the bastard child of genocide – bitter, traumatised and driven by an ideological zeal to do unto others what had been done to it.

    And Israel was never an antidote to antisemitism. It was always antisemitism’s junkie, needing another hit to give it the illusion of purpose and meaning, to rationalise its crimes to itself and others.

    Israel did not learn the lesson of “never again”. It learned to view the world as a giant extermination-camp-in-waiting, where no one and nothing could be trusted; where life was seen as a zero-sum battle for survival; where wielding the biggest stick eased its fears a little; and peace was unattainable, so the state of war had to be permanent.

    Touting itself as the realisation of a dream for the Jewish people, Israel offered only a nightmarish hellscape for the Palestinians it has ruled for nearly eight decades.

    The nadir of that long process was the 15 months of genocide in Gaza.

    Litany of tyrants

    The remedy to all of this is not a mirage-like “two-state solution”, which could never be accommodated by Israel’s dog-eat-dog worldview. Rather, Israel must be weaned off its addiction to victimhood, its zero-sum logic.

    But western politicians were never in a position to help. Instead, they endlessly armed Israel and encouraged its most dysfunctional behaviours.

    In truth, even in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War, the West never learned the lesson it so keenly and loudly proclaimed this week at Auschwitz.

    Just ask the Kikuyu people of Kenya, who were castrated, beaten, raped and murdered through the 1950s by British soldiers defending a dying empire from the Mau Mau uprising. Or the Algerians, colonised and brutalised until the early 1960s by French imperialists clinging on to one of their last significant colonial outposts.

    Ask the Vietnamese, who were massacred in the service of a Cold War strategy by the US to bolster its expanding economic empire against the spread of a rival communism. Or the Iraqis and Libyans, who saw their countries bombed, and their peoples killed or ethnically cleansed as Washington and its Nato allies pursued the US military doctrine of “global full spectrum dominance”.

    And those are only a handful of the post-Holocaust crimes committed directly by western states.

    Even as the West pretended to bring independence to its former colonies, from the 1950s onwards, it propped up a litany of brutal tyrants and dictators: Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, Indonesia’s General Suharto, the leaders of apartheid South Africa, the kings and crown princes of Saudi Arabia – the list goes on and on.

    The brutalities of western colonialism were veiled by outsourcing the crimes to local dictators and strongmen.

    Glaring hypocrisy

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made an address on Holocaust Remembrance Day that encapsulated how its message has been not only lost, but entirely twisted by western politicians.

    Pointing to his country’s plans for a National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, Starmer vowed to achieve more than just remembrance. “We must also act,” he said. And with a hypocrisy so glaring it nearly snuffed out the many dozens of candles arrayed behind him, he listed the recent genocides the West failed to stop.

    He solemnly intoned: “We say ‘never again’, but where was ‘never again’ in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, or in the acts of genocide against the Yazidi people? And where is ‘never again’ as antisemitism still kills Jewish people?”

    Notice no mention of Gaza, where the destruction and slaughter has already happened on a far greater scale than in Bosnia. Starmer, like other western leaders, not only failed to act to stop the genocide in Gaza, but he had already forgotten it even while its survivors were on our screens, destitute and maimed, returning to the wreckage of their homes.

    Starmer wants Holocaust education to become “a national endeavour”. But British children don’t need to hear about events 80 years or more ago to learn about genocide. They watched it unfold day after day, week after week, month after month on their phones.

    And they watched Starmer and his counterparts across Europe not only do nothing to stop it, but actively assist Israel in committing those crimes. Children will not learn more about the dangerous world they live in from Auschwitz than they have already learned from Gaza.

    Cover for criminality

    But there is another lesson that young people – those not brainwashed by a lifetime of exposure to BBC news – might have understood from the commemorations at Auschwitz: that the message from Holocaust survivors of “never again” has been hijacked by western leaders to a quite different, cynical end.

    The Holocaust has been turned into a shield that, rather than protecting others from becoming victims of genocide, is used to protect those in the West who wish to perpetrate it.

    Over the years, the Holocaust has become the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for Israel – and for western leaders who can invoke it as cover for their support for Israeli criminality.

    It was no surprise that, in rationalising its genocide in Gaza, Israel first spread wholly false stories that Hamas had baked babies alive in ovens, evoking the crematoria of Auschwitz. Or that Israeli soldiers, high on their conviction that they belong to an eternally victimised master race, repeatedly used vehicles to carve giant Stars of David onto Palestinian lands in Gaza.

    It is no surprise that Israeli popular culture has so dehumanised Palestinians that report after report finds those imprisoned by Israel face systematic torture, sexual abuse and rape. Or that Israeli soldiers regard Palestinians as so vermin-like that, as western doctors who have volunteered in Gaza keep warning, Israeli snipers and drones appear to be shooting Gaza’s children for sport.

    The truth is that the primary lesson of the Holocaust, like the reality of antisemitism, has been weaponised. It has been hollowed out of its true message – the message from the survivors – so that it can be cynically repurposed to justify the very crimes it should serve as a warning against.

    We cannot unsee what has taken place in Gaza over the past 15 months. Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t succeed in shifting our attention back 80 years, as western leaders hoped it would. Rather, it brought the present into much sharper focus.

    The post How the West Hides its Gaza Genocide Guilt behind Holocaust Day Remembrance first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jeremy Corbyn talks more sense on housing in one BBC interview than parliament ever does

    In an interview for BBC London, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ended the nonsense on housing through demanding the government brings back rent controls.

    Jeremy Corbyn: landlords “exploiting” the need for housing

    He said:

    There were rent controls in this country until Margaret Thatcher came along. There are still rent controls in New York, in San Francisco and in many countries across Europe… It seems to me a reasonable way of preventing excessive profits being made out of the private rented sector and exploiting people who are in desperate housing need

    For more than 70 years, between WWI and the late 1980s, the UK had a system of rent control. Short of stopping treating housing like an asset altogether, it’s a policy that could drive down poverty and put more pounds in peoples’ pockets – as Labour has repeatedly pledged to do.

    Resolution Foundation analysis has revealed that over one million children would actually not be in poverty were it not for eye-watering housing costs and particularly private sector rents.

    In many European countries there is some control over rents. In Sweden, tenant unions and landlords negotiate rents based on average earnings, inflation, and costs. In the UK, we do not have such a procedure and under 45s alone wasted £56.2bn in passive income for landlords in 2024.

    A “modern civilised society” should look different

    The independent MP for Islington North (after Keir Starmer purged him from Labour) continued:

    Don’t people have a  right to a roof over their head? Is it good, is it right that so many people sleep rough every night. Is it right that in a modern, civilised society – can’t we say there’s a guarantee of a roof over your head?

    Since 2010, the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled. There are 3,900 people sleeping rough on any given night. Also, in England, 85% of people rough sleeping are men. We should house both genders. There are over 1.5 million vacant homes in the UK.

    Further, the number of homeless people – at around 354,000, a 14% rise on last year, could be sorted through these vacant properties. Once they have housing security, they can pay affordable sums towards ownership.

    In the Commons in September, Corbyn spoke of increasing social housing through such means:

    The priority of all our community [should be] a sufficient supply of good quality, well designed council housing… We have the potential to build some wonderful places. We also have the potential to take over many empty properties and convert them into council or social housing…

    In the BBC London interview, the former Labour Party leader argued for the government to go further on its Renters’ Rights Bill. This is another piece of legislation where Starmer is only making progress because the bar is so low.

    At present, the UK has some of the weakest renter rights in all of Europe. The bill would address some issues through ending ‘no fault’ evictions – a concession to landlords so shocking one would be right in assuming Margaret Thatcher introduced it (she did, in 1988).

    Featured image via screengrab

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Holocaust child survivor slams BBC for its hypocritical 2025 commemoration

    Agnes Kory is a Jewish Holocaust child survivor and “a life-long voluntary Holocaust researcher”. And the BBC‘s commemoration of the Holocaust this year left her feeling “frustrated and puzzled“. She wrote in particular about the Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 Ceremony on Monday 27 January at London’s Guildhall. High-level politicians and royalty were there, and so was Kory in her capacity as a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The BBC’s ‘both sides’ bullsh*t needs to stop. It’s toxic and reckless.

    The examples of the BBC treating Israel’s settler-colonial genocide in Gaza like an unfortunate battle between two equal sides are countless. But the BBC also has a long record of treating the left as an equal danger to fascism. Just look at its loyal participation in the horrific five-year campaign to smear Jeremy Corbyn. It wasn’t the left that carried out the Holocaust, though. Nor is it the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Alex De Koning, Fiona Atkinson & Justin Rowlatt | BBC Radio Scotland | 10 Jan 2025 | Just Stop Oil


    This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Youth Demand Made It To The BBC At Saturday’s Palestine March

    Three Youth Demand supporters defied Met Police restrictions on the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) demonstration on Saturday 18 January by standing outside the BBC with signs. Youth Demand are calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

    Youth Demand: not letting the BBC get away with it

    At around 4:00pm, the three were arrested under Section 14 of the Public Order Act after marching to the BBC and standing on the pavement with signs, defying the conditions imposed on the protest by the Met. One Youth Demand supporter was holding a sign saying “Can I protest here?”, another held a completely blank sign.

    The post Youth Demand Made It To The BBC At Saturday’s Palestine March appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • There’ no ‘ceasefire’ in the corporate media’s pro-Israel bias. Just look at the BBC.

    The producer of a shocking new film – Censoring Palestine – about the coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the corporate media claims state censorship of the coverage is intensifying despite the ceasefire.

    Norman Thomas, producer of Censoring Palestine said:

    Since October 2023, mainstream media outlets like the BBC have concentrated on trying to play down what most people consider an Israeli genocide going in Palestine. But now, since the ceasefire, they have what’s even a bigger problem — which is playing down the part Britain has played in the genocide.

    Censoring Palestine: the truth about corporate media and the state’s pro-Israel bias

    Censoring Palestine will be premiered in London on Wednesday 22 January. It’s the latest production from Platform Films who in 2023 made the controversial Oh Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie telling the rise and fall of the former Labour Party leader.

    Thomas said:

    Our previous film showed how the media helped bring down Jeremy Corbyn with smears and lies. Our new film shows the media committing an even worse crime — trying to hide a genocide.

    He argues that the need to censor coverage has been made much more urgent since it’s emerged that Britain made a much bigger contribution to the Israeli war effort than simply supplying military equipment, but was involved in spying, reconnaissance, and other operations.

    Thomas said:

    It’s clear now the British government hasn’t just been complicit in genocide, it has taken part in it. And the British prime minister and other ministers may well find themselves charged with war crimes. This is sensational news but our mainstream media is giving it no coverage whatsoever.

    Moreover, he argues that the BBC, as the state broadcaster, is playing a lead role in the censorship.

    It’s NO accident that the police, on the pretext of protecting a synagogue, are trying to stop pro-Palestine protesters demonstrating near the BBC offices in London. This is a case of the state trying to shore up censorship in the most blatant and disgraceful way.

    Silencing dissent

    The film also shows the way that counter-terrorism laws are being used to silence voices of protest and dissent.

    Thomas said:

    Dawn raids on journalists, an academic being arrested for making a speech, protesters being jailed without bail for long periods of time – and all using what appear to be totally false and ridiculous accusations of terrorism. Our film paints a picture of a British establishment desperate to conceal the part it’s played in the horrific crimes against humanity in Palestine.

    The film features interviews with Alexei Sayle, Roger Waters, and veteran film director Ken Loach – who speaks revealingly of his own experience with censorship in the past.

    In the film he totally condemns the role of the BBC in coverage of Gaza. “The BBC is acting as an arm of the state,” he says.

    Especially powerful in the film, Thomas said, are the contributions of the mothers of two young activists imprisoned for taking action to stop the manufacture of drones in Britain for use in Palestine.

    He said:

    Protest is being equated with dissent in an outrageous and unjust way

    Censoring Palestine: not to be missed

    Platform Films has made films for the BBC and Channel Four. Its film Oh Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie hit the UK headlines when it was axed from Glastonbury Festival in 2023 following an online campaign led by pro-Israel bodies.

    Censoring Palestine will get its first London screening in the Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road E14UJ, at 6.40pm Wednesday 22 January, before going on general release.

    The screening will be followed by an open discussion with Alexei Sayle, journalist Sarah Wilkinson, the mothers of three imprisoned pro-Palestine activists, Stop The War Convenor Lindsey German, and the filmmakers.

    For tickets contact Genesis Cinema here. 

    Watch the trailer:

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Youth Demand made it to the BBC at Saturday’s Palestine March – and were promptly nicked

    Three Youth Demand supporters defied Met Police restrictions on the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) demonstration on Saturday 18 January by standing outside the BBC with signs. Youth Demand are calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

    Youth Demand: not letting the BBC get away with it

    At around 4:00pm, the three were arrested under Section 14 of the Public Order Act after marching to the BBC and standing on the pavement with signs, defying the conditions imposed on the protest by the Met. One Youth Demand supporter was holding a sign saying “Can I protest here?”, another held a completely blank sign:

    A Youth Demand spokesperson said:

    The BBC heralds itself as an institution built on truth, but it has treated genocide like a matter of opinion. We see the BBCs previous and ongoing complicity in the destruction of Palestine, and we recognise that when our institutions fail us it is down to the people to tell the truth

    We will not comply with the repressive conditions imposed by the Met police in order to silence dissent and protect the interests of a genocidal state. Our government is complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people and we refuse to stand by and watch it happen. On February 1st, we will announce our plan to take resistance to a whole new level.

    Our spineless politicians have armed Israel for 15 months and now want us to go home and forget about Gaza, but we will not forget their crimes. It’s time for all of us to escalate our resistance and to fight for nothing less than full liberation.

    On Wednesday 15 January the genocidal Israeli regime finally submitted to international pressure and agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.

    On the same day, the PSC called for “defiance” of the Met Police ban on their demo at the BBC and said they would not go back on their commitment to hold march in support of the Palestinian people, and against Israel’s genocide.

    After negotiations with the police, the PSC finally agreed to the demand of a static assembly at Whitehall, not the BBC.

    Meanwhile, since agreeing to a ceasefire Israeli Defense Forces have continued to drop bombs, killing over 100 Palestinians.

    Youth Demand summed up by saying:

    A ceasefire agreement is nowhere near Palestinian liberation. This ludicrous display of repression proves that the government believes we are a threat. So in 2025, we go big.

    On Saturday 1 February, the group is holding a launch event for 2025’s actions. All the details are here.

    You can join Youth Demand here.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Cumbrian Just Stop Oil Supporters found Not Guilty | BBC News North | 14 January 2025


    This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • BBC propaganda on behalf of Israel laid bare in new report from Declassified UK

    Since Israel started committing genocide in Gaza in October 2023, Declassified UK has provided essential information about Britain’s involvement in the atrocities. And now, it has revealed in a new report the extent of the BBC‘s failure to supply the public with the information they need to truly understand what’s going on with Israel.

    Declassified‘s Mark Curtis writes that the analysis looked at the BBC’s “online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby” from October 2023 to January 2025. And he concluded that:

    The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza

    The release of this investigation comes as the BBC faces increasing criticism for the clear pro-Israel bias in its reporting, particularly online. The police have even felt it necessary to try and prevent protests outside the BBC‘s headquarters in London, but have faced a significant backlash for doing so.

    Declassified‘s research is also important because there are now international arrest warrants out for top-level Israeli politicians in relation to their war crimes in Gaza, but despite this Britain’s participation in the genocide continues, it has welcomed Israel’s army chief to the country, and just this week its foreign secretary went to schmooze with controversial political figures in Jerusalem.

    BBC: propaganda by omission on behalf of Israel

    The Declassified report insists that it found no online coverage from the BBC of:

    • Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi’s visit to the UK in November 2024.
    • British intelligence presence in Israel, and the possibility of GCHQ and SAS support for Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
    • Britain providing Israel with military equipment “after announcing limited sanctions last September”; the use of British airspace for supplying weapons to Israel; Britain sending components for F-35s to the US, which the latter could then pass to Israel; and groups bringing legal action against the British government in relation to arms exports.
    • Important context, like the 2023 ‘Roadmap’ agreement regarding UK-Israeli military collaboration, a secret 2020 military agreement, and ongoing free-trade negotiations.
    • The arrest and intimidation of pro-Palestinian journalists in the UK.
    • The influence of the pro-Israel lobby in parliament, in particular via the Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel.

    Minimal coverage of key issues

    Coverage of UK arms exports to Israel, meanwhile, gained a lot of coverage. But headlines were almost never critical, and were often “conciliatory towards the UK and Israel”. There was also some minimal coverage of “RAF spy flights over Gaza in aid of Israeli intelligence”, but only once since December 2023.

    Both the current Labour government and the previous Conservative government have used RAF Akrotiri (the unique colonial relic on occupied Cypriot land which is part of the “largest Royal Air Force base outside the United Kingdom”) to lend a helping hand to Israeli war criminals.

    So far, RAF Akrotiri has supported covert US flights to occupied Palestine, sent dozens of British warplanes to both Israel and Lebanon, and facilitated British spy flights and the passing of intelligence from officers on the ground to Israel. And as Declassified co-founder Matt Kennard has insisted, these are the actions of “a country which is participating” in Israel’s genocide – “a direct participant”

    Britain’s use of RAF Akrotiri to participate in Israel’s genocide has increasingly come under the spotlight in recent weeks and months.

    “Utterly failing to inform the public”

    The BBC told Declassified it has reported on Israel’s genocide “impartially”, but both in what it has reported and hasn’t reported, it has shown clear bias in favour of Israel.

    Declassified quotes Goldsmiths, University of London professor Des Freedman saying:

    The BBC is clearly utterly failing to inform the public about how the UK military and government is complicit in the horrors of Gaza. This is a national scandal, showing how far away the corporation is from being a public service broadcaster.

    He adds that:

    Mainstream media like the BBC will never meaningfully challenge those governments who are aiding the destruction of Gaza because they are overwhelmingly tied to existing foreign policy interests that see Israel as a crucial watchdog for Western power in the region.

    And the BBC‘s record since October 2023 has indeed shown where it stands. It is not a public service broadcaster. It is very much a mouthpiece of the interests of the British state.

    You can see the full Declassified report on the BBC’s “Gaza cover-up” here.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Met Police under pressure as outcry increases over Palestine BBC protest ban

    Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Coalition partners are today issuing a statement that reaffirms their determination to lead a protest at BBC headquarters in central London despite the efforts of the Met Police to prevent a March for Palestine which it previously agreed to in November 2024.

    March for Palestine: the Met under fire

    Over the weekend a flurry of public figures have criticised the decision by the Met to use conditions under the Public Order Act to prevent the protest at the BBC on Portland Place, on the grounds that this would cause disruption to a synagogue which is not on the route of the march and despite the fact that there has not been a single documented case of threat or incident at a synagogue in relation to the national Palestine marches that have taken place over the last 15 months of the Gaza genocide.

    Hundreds of political, social and cultural figures have voiced their support for the right to demonstrate in support of Palestine after substantial evidence emerged that the BBC is failing to uphold its own editorial guidelines in the reporting of Israel’s actions – including MPs, trade union leaders, civil society leaders, actors, musicians and artists.

    A letter organised by the Jewish bloc which attends in support of every Palestine March has attracted more than 800 signatures by members of the Jewish community calling on the Met to reverse its ban. A group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants have also written a public letter in support of the march.

    PSC are calling on all those who support an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as everyone who believes in the democratic right to protest, to join them in London at 12 noon on Saturday 18 January for the March for Palestine.

    It’s still on

    The March for Palestine will assemble in Whitehall, which will allow people to form up in massive numbers in an orderly fashion, and then they will march towards the BBC. Organisers have written today to the Met Police seeking a meeting and asking them to work with them to ensure the march can proceed peacefully and finish with a protest outside the BBC.

    The groups call upon the Met to drop any restrictions which would prevent this.

    Ben Jamal, PSC Director, said:

    Hundreds of thousands of people wish to continue to protest at our Government’s ongoing complicity with Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, which reports this week suggested may have killed tens of thousands more than the suggested figure of 46,000. They also wish to protest at the complicity of the BBC which has failed to report the facts of this genocide, as revealed in recent investigations.

    There are no legitimate grounds for the Police to impede our proposal to march from Whitehall to the BBC, finishing with a rally outside its HQ. We call upon the Met Police to make clear they will drop any conditions which will deny the right to protest as planned.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • 150 MPs and public figures slam the Met over pro-Palestine BBC march restriction

    Cross-party MPs and peers, trade union general secretaries, cultural figures and celebrities, writers, journalists, health workers and civil society organisations and activists have condemned police attempts to stop an agreed Protest for Palestine taking place at the BBC on Saturday 18 January.

    Met Police slammed over pro-Palestine march restrictions

    In a statement issued today (10 January) by the six organisations behind the national Palestine marches, and supported by at least 150 high profile individuals and organisations, including Liberty, Amnesty International UK, and Greenpeace, the Metropolitan Police are accused of misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.

    Among those to have signed the statement are musician Brian Eno, singer-songwriter Charlotte Church, actors Mark Rylance, Khalid Abdalla, Nadia Sawalha and Juliet Stevenson, author Susan Abulhawa, economist Yanis Varoufakis, Akiko Hart, the director of Liberty and Asad Rehman, executive director, War on Want, along with several leading health workers, including London Hospital A&E doctor Dr Andrew Myerson.

    Labour, Independent, Green, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein and SNP MPs have signed, while trade union leaders include PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch, the NEU’s Daniel Kebede and FBU leader Matt Wrack.

    The route of the march was agreed by the Met in November. They have now reneged on that agreement, citing possible disruption to a synagogue, which is not on the route of the march.

    Making the point about the preciousness of the rights to freedom of speech and protest the statement concludes:

    It is not acceptable in a democratic society that, in the face of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, people should be barred from protesting at the BBC. We call on the police to drop their objections and allow the protest to go ahead as planned.

    Statement on police barring 18 January march from the BBC

    We strongly condemn police attempts to stop an agreed march for Palestine from protesting at the BBC on 18 January.

    The route for the march was confirmed with the Police nearly two months ago and, as agreed with them, was publicly announced on 30 November. This route, beginning at the BBC, has only been used twice in the last 15 months of demonstrations and not since February 2024. With just over a week to go, the Metropolitan Police is reneging on the agreement and has stated its intention to prevent the protest from going ahead as planned.

    The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public. The police should not be misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.

    The excuse offered by the police is that the march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue which is not even on the march route. As the Met Police have acknowledged, there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the marches. Any suggestion that pro-Palestine marches are somehow hostile to Jewish people ignores the fact that Jewish people have been joining the marches in their thousands.

    The rights to protest and free speech are precious. It is not acceptable in a democratic society that, in the face of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, people should be barred from protesting at the BBC. We call on the police to drop their objections and allow the protest to go ahead as planned.

    Palestine Solidarity Campaign
    Palestinian Forum in Britain
    Friends of Al-Aqsa
    Stop the War Coalition
    Muslim Association of Britain
    Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gill Tavner | BBC Radio 4 | 10 January 2024 | Just Stop Oil


    This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Met Police just BLOCKED a pro-Palestine protest from marching outside the BBC

    The following article is a statement from the ‘Palestine Coalition’ of organisations

    Today (Wednesday 8 January) the Palestine Coalition have been informed by the Met Police that they intend to go back on a previous agreement and impose conditions to prevent us marching from BBC HQ at Portland Place on Saturday 18 January.

    Palestine march cannot march from the BBC, says Met Police

    We have already announced our intention to assemble outside the BBC to protest against the pro-Israel bias of its coverage – something recently highlighted in a detailed report by journalist Owen Jones to which the Corporation has so far not responded. We utterly condemn this attempt to use repressive powers to prevent our planned protest at the BBC.

    The route for the march was confirmed with the police nearly two months ago and, as agreed with them, was publicly announced on 30 November. This route, beginning at the BBC, has only been used twice in the last 15 months of demonstrations and not since February 2024. With just over a week to go, the Metropolitan Police has now reneged on our agreement and stated its intention to prevent our protest from going ahead as planned.

    The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public. It is unacceptable for the police to misuse public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.

    Excuses, excuses

    The excuse offered by the police is that our march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue. It follows representations from pro-Israel groups and activists who have been publicly calling for action to be taken to curtail our right to protest against Israel’s ongoing genocide. This includes the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis who has openly celebrated the horrific and criminal actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, describing them as the “most outstanding possible thing that a decent responsible country can do”.

    In fact, the closest synagogue to the BBC is not even on the route of the march. Moreover, as the Met Police have acknowledged, there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the marches. Any suggestion that our marches are somehow hostile to Jewish people ignores the fact that every march has been joined by thousands of Jewish people – many in an organised Jewish bloc – and addressed by Jewish speakers on the demonstration platforms. Representatives of the Jewish bloc have written to the police seeking a meeting to express their concerns that the police are choosing to listen solely to pro-Israel Jewish voices, but they have not had any response.

    Rejecting suppression

    We firmly reject any attempt to suppress our right to campaign for an end to Israel’s genocidal violence and decades long violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. In the past few weeks, Israel has intensified its indiscriminate attacks including against hospitals and civilians sheltering in so-called ‘humanitarian safe zones.’ It is this and the ongoing complicity of the British government in these crimes that continues to bring people onto the streets in huge numbers. Our marches represent a diverse cross section of the public including the Palestinian community, many of whom are relatives of those killed by Israel.

    We remain in dialogue with the Metropolitan Police but call on them to immediately abandon their intention to prevent our protest at the BBC.  We call on all those who are rightly outraged by Israel’s ongoing genocide and those who uphold the democratic right to protest to join us when we march in London on Saturday 18 January.

    The National March for Palestine coalition is:

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Raffi Berg just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ when it comes to BBC pro-Israel bias

    Raffi Berg, the online editor for BBC News coverage on the Middle East, has been at the centre of a massive controversy in recent weeks. But a new petition from former Channel 4 editor Tamara Abood insists that “Raffi is the tip of the iceberg”. And she calls for the sacking of people even higher up than Berg over the BBC‘s shameful (and longstanding) pro-Israel bias, specifically during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    Raffi Berg: his job is to water down

    Public attention focused in on Berg after journalist Owen Jones published an investigation in December about pro-Israel bias at the BBC.

    Having interviewed journalists and other staff at the public service broadcaster, Jones revealed that “senior figures” had been skewing coverage to be more favourable to Israel while dismissing regular objections from employees who demanded the corporation uphold its supposed commitment to providing fair and impartial reporting. And in particular, Jones highlighted the malign role that Berg played. According to one former BBC journalist:

    This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.

    Others said he “micromanages” coverage, with one insisting that he “has the power to reframe every story”.

    Even worse are his connections to the CIA, Mossad, and war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Abood: The BBC is “packed to the rafters with Zionists”

    As Jewish Voice for Peace explains:

    Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism, and is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of Israel.

    It adds that:

    While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others.

    The pro-Israel (or Zionist) lobby in Britain has a massive influence. In the last parliament, it donated money to a quarter of British MPs, and reportedly had significant sway in the government. Half of the initial cabinet of the current Labour government, meanwhile, had received such funds.

    Abood argues that the same is true in the British media sector. As she said in the petition text:

    I have first hand experience of the extraordinary and malign influence that Zionist lobby groups exert over programme makers and broadcasters.

    I have spent the last 15 months watching in disgust as mainstream broadcasters in the UK have framed what is happening in Gaza through the lens of Israeli propagandists.

    But Berg is just a part of this, she stressed:

    Raffi is the tip of the iceberg. Scratch the surface of the BBC and you will find it packed to the rafters with Zionists who will quash ideas for programmes that are critical of Israel and who will frame the reporting on Gaza to centre Israeli interests.

    Lawyers analysing journalists ‘complicity in genocide’

    Abood also insisted:

    It is my belief as a former lawyer and tv producer that, in time, our mainstream media will be judged to have been complicit in a genocide by providing cover for Israel’s crimes. In fact, as I write, lawyers who specialise in international law and human rights have many of these so-called “journalists” in their sights.

    And she argued that:

    BBC license payers are being deliberately mislead about the nature and extent of Israel’s depravity in Gaza. The BBC is breaching its own requirements, and that of Ofcom, for due impartiality. As a license payer, you should be able to trust the BBC as a credible news source. The BBC is no longer credible. It has shown itself to be an outpost of the Israeli Ministry of Misinformation.

    Overall, her comments were damning. She said “the BBC subverts the truth in order to influence the public’s response in favour of Israel”, and that there has been “a deliberate strategy of lies and omissions by broadcasters like the BBC“.

    Rather than focusing on Raffi Berg, though, she looks to BBC News CEO Deborah Turness. As she emphasised:

    Your license fee pays her £400K + salary.

    Deborah Turness must go

    For her, licence-fee payers deserve so much better. And we completely agree. That’s why we should all support the petition and demand change.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • “Dead Calm”: BBC Film on Greek Coast Guard Abandoning Asylum Seekers at Sea Amid European Crackdown


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Dead Calm”: BBC Film on Greek Coast Guard Abandoning Asylum Seekers at Sea Amid European Crackdown

    S2 deadcalm alt

    As we move into 2025, we look at how the world is cracking down on migrants and asylum seekers, and the dangers they face when trying to flee their countries due to persecution, economic conditions, the climate crisis and more. As Greek prosecutors open a murder investigation of “unknown perpetrators” following a damning exposé of the deadly crackdown on asylum seekers by the Greek coast guard, we revisit the BBC film, Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? The investigation revealed evidence the coast guard routinely abducted and abandoned asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea. The film found the Greek coast guard caused the deaths of dozens of migrants over a period of three years, including of nine asylum seekers who had reached Greek soil but were taken back out to sea and thrown overboard. “We really have no real clue about the true numbers of the people that are crossing [the Mediterranean Sea]. Many people don’t make it,” producer Lucile Smith told Democracy Now! in an interview last year, when the film was released. “And when people do arrive, they tend to disappear, because … if you are caught by the authorities in Greece, you will be most likely subjected to some very serious violence.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • BBC Staffers Reveal Editor’s ‘Entire Job’ To Whitewash Israeli War Crimes

    BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.

    “This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.

    Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.

    The post BBC Staffers Reveal Editor’s ‘Entire Job’ To Whitewash Israeli War Crimes appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Back in Syria After Exile, BBC Reporter Lina Sinjab on “Joy” & Calls for Prosecution, Reconciliation


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.