Biased BBC, blinkered Bowen
JVL Introduction
Two years on from October 7th 2023 and more than 77 years on from the Nakba, even our seasoned and knowledgeable reporters continue to frame what is happening in a way that keeps people ignorant. Never, for example, is there an explanation of what Hamas is and what it is not, what it says and does and what it does not, or that time and again Hamas has shown willingness to negotiate and met with silence or rejection by Israel. In welcoming this oh so fragile ceasefire, why are we not reminded every time not only that there was a ceasefire agreement in January 2025 that Israel broke two months later without even starting the negotiations for the 2nd or 3rd phases of the agreement. Why are we not reminded (or ever told) that Hamas said they would release all civilian captives the day after their attack for Israel promising not to invade? Or that this deal was more or less on the table in July 2024 and that Hamas and the Qataris were ready to go and Netanyahu was explicitly not interested in stopping the war. (see eg, Gershon Baskin: Channel 4 news)
As another example of the biased framing, we must add the invariable reference to exchanges of “hostages” with “prisoners” that further implies innocence on one side and guilt on the other. We are rarely reminded that thousands more than the 2000 who are due to be released have been taken hostage by Israel without charge or any due process. That they will not release doctors and yet again they will not relase Marwan Barghouti.
LL
This article was originally published by Media Lens on Fri 10 Oct 2025. Read the original here.
Blinkered Bowen
The BBC’s International Editor On The ‘Gaza War’
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A friend of a friend was the AP correspondent in Cyprus on 7/10/2023. Her boss called to say: “BBCs Bowen has published a story about the beheading of 45 babies, why aren’t we?”
Her response was that she couldn’t stand the story up, there was no way as a responsible journalist that it could be corroborated.
Turns out she was right and Bowen was wrong.
All letters I’ve sent to the BBC, pointing out matters of authenticated fact which have been misrepresented by their News department, have eventually received a form reply, completely ignoring the specifics, and basically saying’The BBC coverage is accurate because we are unbiased’.
I know that the BBC (following massive cuts by the Tories who, of course, see the BBC as ‘too liberal/leftie’) passed the Comments department to a private company who were just junking mail… The nature of the replies implies that they are now using a Large Language Model (often miss-named an ‘AI’) to compose replies.
It’s not inspiring confidence and we know that BBC Journalists have opposed the Top-Down editorial bias that has come from people like Robbie Gibb (late of GB News and Jewish Chronicle) and Richard Sharp (Conservative mega-donor, Thatrcherite Think-Tank and City Banker).
The deliberate misinformation on Palestine is just a tiny part of the Rightwing program to destroy public confidence in our Publicly owned Public Service Broadcaster so that our only information will be from Media owned by the Super-rich who create these genocides. What do do when Google and the rest decide there is no place for the websites and YouTube videos we now regard as a vital ‘Alternative Media’?
Best wishes and thanks to JVFL for their splendid work.
Hamas killed 34 Palestinians
Just because they oppose its decisions
Public savage executions
No body wants to highlight !!!!!