The BBC's Executive Complaints Unit have rejected my complaint over the BBC's headline claims that Hamas forces alone were responsible for the deaths of Israelis on 7 October 2023.
The original complaint and preceding set of exchanges can be read here, here and here.
The ECU's letter, followed by my observations:
British Broadcasting Corporation Level 1,
Executive Complaints Unit
99 Great Portland Street,
London W1W 7NY
Telephone: 020 8743 8000
Email: ecu@bbc.co.uk
BBC News
Our ref: CAS-7679120
13 December 2023
Dear Mr Hilley
Thank you for your email to the Executive Complaints Unit.
You complained about the BBC’s coverage of the 7 October attacks, which you said failed to cover claims that some of those who died in Israel had died because of IDF actions, and it was therefore misleading to report the numbers of dead (initially 1,400, revised to 1,200) as having been killed by Hamas.
As your complaint does not cite any one specific programme/online material, it isn’t possible to assess in detail here whether any particular output met the corporation’s editorial standards.
We therefore considered yours as a “general” complaint, in line with the process set out in the BBC’s complaints framework.
The BBC’s guidelines describe a requirement to meet “due” accuracy – that which is “adequate and appropriate” in the context. Audiences should not be “materially misled”.
As I say, you have not pointed to any single piece of content where this may have happened.
Specifically, you have not shown how the idea that some (you do not say how many) of those who died in the Hamas attacks may have been victims of IDF actions would give audiences a misleading impression of what happened.
Without specific content to investigate we can only consider your complaint in general terms, or look at the context of what was aired.
It may, for instance, be that the figures which you dispute were assigned to the Israeli military, rather than presented as statements of uncontested fact.
It is a matter of fact the attacks occurred, as reported here and here and that many civilians died from Hamas actions. It is not clear to me how you feel audiences would be materially misled about those actions because some of the many hundreds who died may have been casualties of “friendly fire”, or how what you call the “public perception” of subsequent events in Gaza would be impacted on, given you do not appear to dispute that Hamas fighters attacked, killed, and kidnapped civilians including children and the elderly.
In support of your complaint you cite an article on The Electronic Intifada, a partisan campaigning website. By contrast I am not aware of any respected news organisation or impartial body which has cast significant doubt on the official figures – the UN referred to over 1,200 people having died.
Haaretz quoted a police source as suggesting a helicopter may have hit some festival attendees, but this falls some way short of disproving the number to which you object.
Again, it is not clear to me how the idea that some (presumably, from the reporting you cite, a relatively low number) of the many hundreds who died and the thousands who were wounded might have been unintentional victims of IDF responses to the attack serves to materially mislead audiences.
A distinction can be made between innocent people killed by terrorists in an attack and innocent people accidentally killed by forces seeking to repel a terror attack.
I do not however believe this has the significance you assign to it, since in both cases the fatalities arise as a result of the attack and given it is in any case inarguable that many hundreds of people were brutally killed by Hamas fighters.
That is the salient fact of the attack and you have not cast doubt on it.
This represents the final word of the BBC on this issue and general complaints of the kind you have raised would not usually fall within Ofcom’s remit.
But you can, if you wish, ask for their opinion. Details of how they assess complaints about the BBC can be found here.
Yours sincerely
Richard Hutt
Complaints Director
…………………………..
Unsurprisingly, the ECU has not upheld my complaint. To do so would have been to expose the BBC’s lamentable journalism, its failure to report open source evidence, and its service to establishment power. In peddling this set of excuses for the BBC, the ECU shows that it is no less a part of the same establishment.
Richard Hutt's convoluted reasons for rejecting my complaint starts with the falsehood that it included no specific example of BBC output.
In fact, my original letter of complaint - which is what the ECU were tasked with considering - references two clear examples:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-67281166
and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-67305304
I offered another linked reference in my second letter to the BBC.
And my final letter to the ECU itself referenced a further updated piece drawing together all the main sources and evidence to date, most importantly evidence drawn from Israeli media sources.
So much for diligent observation and adjudication.
The ECU letter states:
“In support of your complaint you cite an article on The Electronic Intifada, a partisan campaigning website. By contrast I am not aware of any respected news organisation or impartial body which has cast significant doubt on the official figures – the UN referred to over 1,200 people having died.”
The ECU may dismiss Electronic Intifada as “partisan”, but won’t address the actual evidence cited by it, or point to any faults in its journalism. Likewise with the Grayzone and other notable journalists covering this story.
Many reading this will also note the dark irony of the BBC itself being elevated, in supposed contrast, as a “respected news organisation”.
Yes, Electronic Intifada is “partisan” in its defence of Palestine. In lodging this complaint, I too am “partisan”. But the BBC has also shown itself to be no less partisan in its selective reporting of this issue. And Richard Hutt for the ECU is equally partisan in his tortured reasons for defending it.
The ECU letter goes on:
“Haaretz quoted a police source as suggesting a helicopter may have hit some festival attendees, but this falls some way short of disproving the number to which you object.”
So, at least a token acknowledgment of a report from the Israeli press, as cited by Electronic Intifada, but quickly dismissed as failing to “[disprove] the number to which you object.”
Yet the point of my complaint wasn’t to ‘prove’ any actual number. It was to ask that the BBC investigate the claims behind the stated number, and report with due journalistic integrity any part of that number that may have included killings by Israel.
Incredibly, the ECU letter proceeds to dismiss the actual significance of whether Israel killed other Israelis in the course of its military response on 7 October, and what relevance any such evidence would have for BBC audiences:
“Again, it is not clear to me how the idea that some (presumably, from the reporting you cite, a relatively low number) of the many hundreds who died and the thousands who were wounded might have been unintentional victims of IDF responses to the attack serves to materially mislead audiences.”
So it’s enough, apparently, for the BBC and ECU to take Israel’s word that it didn’t kill other Israelis. And even if it did kill its own civilians, the ECU concludes, this too must be laid at the door of Hamas.
The issue here isn’t about Israel’s supposed “friendly fire”. It’s about deployment of Israel's “Hannibal Directive”, wherein Israeli forces took conscious decisions to sacrifice Israeli civilians in the course of their attacks
The BBC’s part in denying that this happened most certainly “serves to materially mislead audiences.”
Facing growing criticism from within Israel, its military now concedes that, indeed, it did kill Israelis “in immense and complex quantity”. Relatives of those killed in Israel are now calling for a formal investigation into the circumstances of 7 October.
In another rigorous piece, Asa Winstanley for Electronic Intifada reveals more damning admissions that Israel killed many of its own people in Hannibal-type attacks.
And a further key article from prize-winning journalist Jonathan Cook reaffirms the evidence of Israel’s Hannibal-minded killings, asking why major news outlets like the BBC have failed to investigate or highlight such evidence.
As Cook notes, in refusing to question Israel’s unchecked atrocity stories, the BBC and many other journalists have allowed the regime a significant degree of ‘legitimacy’ for its horror attacks, and are thus complicit in the slaughter of Gaza.
With strong and growing evidence that Israel deliberately killed many of its own people on 7 October, the ECU’s upholding of the BBC's false headline claims stands as yet another blatant deception, giving a further green light to the continued mass killing of Palestinians.
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