Britain’s media regulator Ofcom has published a distasteful assessment of the BBC’s coverage of an anti-Semitic attack in London, saying the broadcaster had made “significant editorial failures”.
Ofcom’s findings are the result of a nearly year-long investigation into the BBC’s television news and web coverage of a protracted anti-Semitic attack in the heart of central London last December.
The attack occurred on November 29, 2021, during the Hanukkah Jewish festival, when a group of British and Israeli Jewish students held a celebration in a private bus, which followed a route through central London.
According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, the passengers, mostly teenagers, disembarked on Oxford Street where they played Hanukkah music and danced in the street. As they were dancing, the group was reportedly surrounded by young men who “looked like they were making fun of them”, some of whom reportedly shouted “Free Palestine”. Concerned for their safety, the teens boarded the bus again, but while they waited in traffic to get away, some of the men started shouting antisemitic words, according to a video taken from inside the bus. The men began hitting the bus with their boots and their fists, appearing to greet the Nazis with their arms, spitting on windows and raising their middle fingers on the teenagers inside.
In the BBC’s coverage of the attack, on its website and in a television broadcast, one of the teenagers on the bus allegedly said in English “anti-Muslim slander” about the attackers while they were under attack. The article also described the attack as an “alleged incident” of anti-Semitism.
However, the BBC’s claim of racial slander has been disputed by multiple sources, including two digital investigation agencies that analyzed video taken from inside the bus and concluded that no such slander existed. Several experts, including a linguistics professor, said BBC reporters misunderstood one teenager, who was uttering a Hebrew phrase asking for help.
Despite being alerted to the evidence that refutes their allegations, the BBC has refused to amend, update or clarify their coverage.
In the wake of the complaints, the BBC’s internal executive complaints unit investigated the reports and found, in January of this year, that they “lacked[ed] Due impartiality in not expressing alternative views “and due to doubts about the report” is no longer met[s] BBC Standards for Due Accuracy”.
In response, the BBC said the false allegation about racial slurs uttered was “listed in good faith” but apologized for “not doing more to highlight that these details were contested”.
Despite this, the media regulator Ofcom I started an investigationIts results were published this week. In its report on the investigation, Ofcom said the BBC’s refusal to update the article for at least two months to say the allegation about anti-Muslim slander was disputed constituted a “significant failure to observe editorial guidelines for reporting news with appropriate accuracy and due impartiality”.
Ofcom also found that while the broadcast of the report did not violate the rules due to a number of contextual factors, the BBC “made a serious editorial mistake” by failing to update viewers later that the claim about the slander was disputed following new evidence.
Ofcom said it plans to “review how the BBC has handled complaints and the transparency issues raised in this case.”
BBC did not respond to diverseQuery about the Ofcom report at the time of publication.
Although video footage of the attackers was widely circulated, no one has been arrested in connection with the case.
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