For a conflict in which partisans of one side reach often for the language of “racism” and “apartheid”, strikingly little has been said about the BBC’s double standard in reporting on Israeli and Palestinian children.
As revealed by the JC, the broadcaster finally admitted, after a complaints process lasting 260 working days, that it had inaccurately described adult Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as children.
It stems from a report on BBC Arabic – because of course it does – about the early release in January 2025 of 90 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The BBC told viewers of its Arabic-language service that the freed Palestinian inmates included “69 women and 21 children”.
But just nine of these “children” were under the age of 18 – eight of them boys aged between 15 and 17 and one girl of 17. Media watchdog group Camera filed an accuracy complaint, but far from conceding and correcting its error, the corporation doubled down.
It said rival news organisations had referred to “21 teenagers” and claimed that “the word ‘child’ can apply to any teenager”, insisting this was in line with the “UNICEF definition”. While it pains me to defend the United Nations, UNICEF in fact defines a child as an under-18.
The BBC has now – at last – appended a correction admitting the error and, in an attempt to bring down the tent on this particular clown show, cited the correct UN definition of “child” as someone yet to reach their 18th birthday.
If it ended there, this would be just another of those stories of anti-Israel bias and institutional incompetence. Nothing new there.
But Camera notes disparity in the BBC’s definition of a child: it applies differently depending on whether the person in question is an Israeli or a Palestinian.
In a December 2023 report on, you guessed it, BBC Arabic, the presenter told viewers there was “no confirmation of acts of rape or burning children” on October 7.
Camera complained about this because obviously the rape of women and burning of children has been documented. The BBC’s response was telling. It claimed “the deliberate burning of babies had not been proven” at the point of the story’s broadcast.
But its presenter didn’t say “babies”, he said “children”, and there was evidence of Israeli children being burned by Palestinian invaders. Four children, ranging in age from four to 12, were burned in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
The upshot of this is grim but that is all the more reason why it must be stated clearly: the BBC was, at least for a time, content for BBC Arabic to define Palestinian adults as children when doing so might reflect poorly on Israel and to deny atrocities against Israeli children because admitting them would have told the full, monstrous truth about Palestinian terrorists’ savagery on October 7.
That is, Palestinians who were no longer children could still be framed with the innocence and vulnerability that children typically are in news reporting, but Israeli children need not be simply because they were four, or six, or 12, rather than newborns.
The corporation has since claimed a mistranslation was behind the “babies” error, but even if the BBC deserved the benefit of the doubt when it comes to anything involving Israel – and it most certainly does not – consider the implications had these errors been in the opposite direction.
Imagine for a moment that the BBC had described adult Israeli hostages as children and denied the deaths of some Gazan children because there weren’t babies? Do you think the JC would be almost alone in reporting on it?
No, of course not. There would newspaper splashes and segments on Newsnight and call-ins on Five Live and questions in Parliament. Academics and anti-Israel activists – but I repeat myself – would be intoning about Western media dehumanising Palestinians. It would be declared racist, no questions asked.
To be honest, these “what ifs” get tiresome. We shouldn’t have to flip events on their head to prick the empathy of people and institutions which do not need to be hand-held into appreciating the humanity of Palestinians. Bad things are just as bad when they happen to Israelis.
But the BBC and its journalists are not just any people and not just any institution. For better or worse, the corporation is perhaps the most influential news brand in the world. It helps shape the perspectives of tens if not hundreds of millions of people. When it conducts itself in this manner, it does untold harm not only to Israelis but to popular attitudes and crucial debates in the global public square.
This isn’t just about semantics. This matters.
It matters if an arm of the BBC, one broadcasting to the world’s vast population of Arabic speakers no less, has an institutional hostility towards Israel. While the BBC would no doubt reject this characterisation, it should consider why its Arabic service makes so very many errors about a single country so small in territory and population that it is dwarfed many times over by any one of the many Arab countries that surround it.
It should consider whether denying the problem has worked so far and whether it is likely to do so any time soon. News organisations trade on their reputation, which in journalism is their brand.
The BBC’s brand is indivisible. Whatever executives in London tell themselves, among licence fee payers there is no meaningful distinction between the BBC News they watch and the BBC Arabic they only hear about every time its partial, error-flecked, and plainly agenda-driven broadcasting is challenged.
Sooner or later, BBC Arabic is going to do something that cuts through sufficiently to tarnish the BBC’s reputation with its domestic audience. When that day comes – and it will – those executives will look back at stories about Palestinian child-adults and burned Israeli children defined out of existence and bitterly regret not strengthening editorial standards when that was still an option.
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