How bad must bias at the BBC (and elsewhere) get before someone wakes up
Last Sunday evening, on a British news channel, Abbas Araghchi, the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran declared that self-defense was a “recognized principle in international relations.” Mr Araghchi then stated it was “the legitimate right of every country to defend itself.”
He was stating that unequivocally it was Iran’s “legitimate” right to defend itself following Israel’s strikes on his nation’s military infrastructure and nuclear facilities. Iran’s “defense,” of course, has been to fire hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel’s civilian population, including firing missiles at Jerusalem and earlier today hitting a hospital in Beersheba.
It was not deemed “legitimate” however by Iran – or by its proxies, allies or the Left – for Israel to defend itself after the October 7 massacre in which 6,000 terrorists from Iran’s proxy, Hamas, invaded Israel’s sovereign territory to slaughter, burn-alive, behead and sexually mutilate 1,200 Israeli non-combatants (including babies and children) and abduct 200 more (again including babies and children) who were held as hostages to be exchanged for convicted terrorists. Or in the case of the Bibas family, simply murdered.
Indeed Iran – and its allies, proxies, mouthpieces and lackies – called down the wrath of the world (or the gullible, indoctrinated bits of it) to condemn Israel for defending itself against such savage barbarous atrocities which, by the way, the perpetrators had publicly vowed to repeat on a larger scale.
But I do not mention this merely to highlight the breathtaking, self-serving hypocrisy of the minister and the ugly, repressive regime he serves, but to express outrage that this brazen hypocrisy went completely unchallenged by journalists at a UK news organization. Neither the studio anchor, nor the reporter “anchoring” in Israel said one word or asked a single question pertaining to the outrageous hypocrisy that would be obvious to a moderately intelligent toddler.
But really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was just the latest blisteringly frightening example of a news organization staffed by individuals who are seemingly either invested in the Palestinian narrative and think they are helping Palestinians or have simply capitulated to the geniuses of deception and disinformation operating out of Ramallah, Gaza, some Arab capital or maybe London, who have become adept at running rings round a mainstream media that has a voracious appetite for news.
The propagandists and spin-doctors have learned they can feed the news-hungry media false information, fabricated stories and fake statistics (especially relating to “women and children dying”) knowing that regardless of veracity and without verification, the stories will be reported. And any apology or retraction won’t un-ring a bell that millions have heard chime. And like magicians producing rabbits out of hats, the propagandists produce “spokespeople” from just-created “humanitarian” organizations knowing they will be welcomed and treated as valid pundits even when spouting Hamas-scripted propaganda that they know will also go unchallenged.
There is also the breathtaking hypocrisy of our national broadcasters – in particular, the BBC – over the vocabulary it uses in its Middle East coverage. As one friend on social media reminded me, when our national broadcaster refers to the Iranian leader, it says simply “Grand Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.” As my friend says, Khamenei is a “brutal, racist, misogynist, homophobic, genocidal dictator” who is “partial to public floggings, executions, amputations and the beating of women.” He is widely known to arm, train and finance violent terrorist groups and proxies to destabilize democratic governments, and he collaborates with drug-lords around the globe. Yet in its Middle East coverage, the BBC simply calls him “Iran’s supreme leader” without any of their favorite epithets such as “hard-line,” “extremist,” “warmongering,” or even “controversial.” Those epithets are, it seems, reserved only for Israeli politicians.
If one was looking for further evidence of media bias – or even just a tendency for media to accentuate the negative on Israel – one might also find it in the contrast between the multiplicity of stories about Israel’s perceived “crimes” (that are often, as discussed, fabricated or fake), compared with media silence on stories about peril to Muslims in other parts of the world – often acute peril to Muslim babies and children.
For example, in Sudan where 11 million – including hundreds of thousands of women and children – have been displaced while 26 million (yes, you read that right, 26 million) face acute food shortages. Or in Yemen, where more than 900,000 children (presumably mainly Muslim children) have died from malnutrition. Yemen happens also to be the home base of another Iranian proxy, the Houthis, who have been firing missiles at Israel for some 18 months “in support of Gaza,” though that – like those Hamas rockets for almost a decade before Oct 7 – has gone mostly unreported allowing, as always, Israel’s response to terror or severe threat to be framed as “gratuitous aggression.” Not only has the famine been largely unreported, but no editor has thought to invite an expert from a genuine humanitarian agency to quiz them about the eye-watering hypocrisy of firing thousands of ballistic missiles at Israel while 900,000 children starve.
It seems that if the activity cannot amplify a perception of wrong-doing by Israel, the media is curiously disinterested. It is hard to know whether this behavior is caused because news organizations are merely helpless in the face of such skilled machination, mendacity and manipulation, or because they are actively biased due to indoctrination, infiltration, or their ownership. (Or perhaps some mix of all those).
But whatever the cause, they are complicit in the active demonization of Israel and the delegitimizing of the Jewish state that serves the objectives of bad actors. And whatever the cause, they are culpable in increasing antisemitism.
