The BBC has been accused of double standards after its Arabic service described 21 majority-adult Palestinian prisoners as children but elsewhere suggested Jewish minors only qualify as such when they are babies.
After a complaints battle lasting 260 working days, the corporation admitted that only nine of the 21 prisoners that one BBC Arabic broadcast labelled “children” were actually under 18.
The correction was prompted by one of just two complaints out of 38 submitted by media watchdog Camera about the Arabic service’s coverage since October 7 that have been upheld by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU).
The controversy over the complaint follows the JC’s revelation that the corporation’s complaints authority defended a guest who referred to Israelis as the “occupation” and “human fragments”.
Shadow culture secretary Nigel Huddleston urged the BBC “to do better”, while Labour MP Luke Akehurst warned that it had “repeatedly broadcast antisemitic content”.
The complaint related to BBC Arabic’s coverage of a prisoner and hostage exchange in January 2025. Presenter Serena Ghokeh told viewers that 90 prisoners had been freed, “69 women and 21 children”.
In reality, only nine of those released were under 18: one 17-year-old girl and eight boys aged between 15 and 17.
The remaining 12 males described as “children” were over the age of 18.
Media watchdog Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) lodged a formal complaint, arguing the description was factually wrong.
In its initial response, the BBC defended the wording, claiming other outlets had referred to the group as “69 women and 21 teenagers” and arguing that “the word ‘child’ can apply to any teenager”.
It added: “Teenagers are children as per UNICEF definition.”
Yet the corporation linked to a UNICEF page stating clearly: “A child means every human being below the age of 18 years.”
Camera pointed out that the BBC’s own cited definition appeared to contradict its reporting.
Camera escalated the matter to the ECU, the corporation’s highest complaints body, after rejecting the initial response.
In its submission, the watchdog highlighted what it claimed was an inconsistency with a separate complaint about BBC Arabic’s December 2023 coverage of the October 7 attacks.
In that earlier broadcast, presenter Akram Shaban said there was “no confirmation of acts of rape or burning children” during the Hamas-led massacre.
At the time, the BBC responded to a Camera complaint stating that “the deliberate burning of babies had not been proven”.
However, the presenter had referred to “children”, not babies – and children were among those killed.
Six-year-old twins Shachar and Arbel and four-year-old Omer Kedem Siman Tov were killed alongside their parents in Kibbutz Nir Oz after Hamas set fire to their home. Twelve-year-old Noya Dan was identified from burnt remains at the same kibbutz.
The JC understands that the use of the term babies in this response – which had not yet reached the ECU – was down to a mistranslation.
Camera argued that the BBC had applied a double standard in its interpretation of the word “children” across the two cases.
“It would appear that BBC Arabic editors are under the impression that while Arabs stop being children only when they reach 20, Jews stop being children already when they are no longer considered babies,” Camera wrote.
The watchdog added that this was contrary to the UN sources the BBC had cited and urged the corporation to “agree upon a definition of the word children that does not depend upon the ethnicity of the child”.
After 260 working days, four times longer than the BBC’s own complaints target, the ECU upheld the complaint and amended the online report.
A correction now published on the BBC Arabic website states: “Correction: An earlier version of this video and accompanying text stated that Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners, including 69 women and 21 children. This was incorrect. While 90 prisoners were indeed released, only 9 of them were under the age of 18, the age group defined by the United Nations as a child. This correction was made by the editorial complaints unit.”
Responding to the JC story, a BBC spokesperson said: “The ECU operates independently from BBC News and assesses each complaint individually and on its own merits.
“The only definition of ‘children’ that the ECU has provided across these two separate cases is that of the UN – that ‘children’ are those under 18 – regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. As such, it upheld the Camera complaint that individuals of ages 18-20 were not ‘children’.”
The BBC claimed, “The ruling on the 2024 complaint, which was not upheld, did not rest on any distinction between ‘children’ and ‘babies’, but rather, on what was definitively known at the time about the horrific events of October 7.”
Camera said the ECU’s handling of the cases demonstrated inconsistency.
“The ECU is unable to secure even a basic, consistent definition of the term 'children' – one that does not vary according to ethnicity. This demonstrates how far it falls short of the regulatory body it asks the UK licence fee–paying public to trust it to be, tasked with upholding the BBC’s standards of accuracy and impartiality.”
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