Complaint
The programme included an interview with Sara Rammal, a Lebanese civilian living in a suburb of Beirut, who was asked to describe her experience of that day’s Israeli strike on the city. A listener complained that the conduct of the interview lacked editorial rigour and allowed inaccurate and contentious statements to pass without challenge. In particular, Ms Rammmal said “we all know on October 7th the genocide against the Palestinians and Gaza started”, which (in the complainant’s view) perpetuated “the myth that ‘October 7th’ did not happen”; she referred to being brought up “on the border with Occupied Palestine”, whereas Aadaysit, her home town, is close to the border with Israel but not the territories of the Palestinian Authority; and she made comments which amounted to propaganda against Israel. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality.
Outcome
In view of the extensive coverage of the events of October 7 2023 by the BBC and other UK media, the ECU did not consider it likely that Ms Rammal’s words would have led listeners to conclude that the victims on that day were Palestinians rather than Israelis, or served to perpetuate a myth about that day’s events. Nor did it consider that her description of her original home, whether accurate or not, would have materially affected listeners’ understanding of the points she was making. Consequently the ECU did not find there had been a breach of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy in letting these statement pass unchallenged. It accepted, however, that they aligned Ms Rammal with those who regard Israel as the aggressor and Hamas and Hezbollah as legitimate resistance movements. In the ECU’s judgement, due impartiality required that they should have been noted as contentious and treated as such, as should her statement that Benjamin Netanyahu “wants to take the land. That's all he cares about” and her reference to Israel as “a terrorist state”.
Partly upheld