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Conflict in the Middle East

Trump attacks BBC over Gaza misreporting

121 replies

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 07:48

The White House has attacked the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza conflict, accusing the broadcaster of taking Hamas’s word as “total truth”.

Ms Leavitt said US officials were trying to confirm what happened after reports that Israeli security forces shot dead Palestinians queuing for food. She then pivoted to attack the BBC.

“Unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas as total truth,” Ms Leavitt told a White House briefing on Tuesday. “We like to look into it when they speak … unlike the BBC.”

She brandished a printout of stories published on the BBC website a day earlier, and described how the headlines changed from claiming an Israeli tank had killed 26 people, to 21 people, to gunfire killing 31.

“And then, oh, wait, they had to correct and take down their entire story, saying we reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything,” she said.

“So we’re going to look into reports before we confirm them from this podium or before we take action. And I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same to reduce the amount of misinformation that’s going around the globe.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/06/03/donald-trump-scolds-bbc-over-gaza-misreporting/

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Whatsinanamehey · 05/06/2025 15:46

So were the fourteen other countries including the UK all wrong to vote for it? The US is the only sore thumb in this.

Twiglets1 · 05/06/2025 15:40

Iran have strongly condemned the US veto, as have Hamas.

Which makes me think maybe the US had a point. We all want a ceasefire but don't most of us want Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza too?

As reported in the BBC: The US Ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, said the resolution would "undermine diplomatic efforts" to reach a ceasefire, adding that the UN has not labelled Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is described as such by the US, UK and the EU.
"We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza," she said.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g60p1xgdlo

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Stirabout · 05/06/2025 00:31

The UK didn’t abstain again.
About time
The US stands alone with Israel in support of continuing the war. ( from reports thus far )

Trump attacks BBC over Gaza misreporting
Trump attacks BBC over Gaza misreporting
Stirabout · 05/06/2025 00:04

Saddened

Trump attacks BBC over Gaza misreporting
Stirabout · 05/06/2025 00:01

Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 21:30

Trump really doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising others for the way they represent the news. Looking at his recent post today, I would have thought he was almost criticising Ukraine for their recent secret attack on Russia and making poor old Putin feel sad. It's sometimes difficult to tell which side the US are on from the things he writes.

Because he’s an idiot and a narcissist
He doesn’t know what he’s doing from one moment to the next as long as everyone bows down to his greatness he’ll keep on going ruining the lives of millions

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 23:59

Martymcfly24 · 04/06/2025 21:40

https://www.thejournal.ie/aid-distribution-centres-in-gaza-closed-today-after-27-people-killed-by-israeli-troops-yesterday-6723019-Jun2025/

Trump and America can go to hell with any virtue signalling about the BBC and "false" reporting when they veto this resolution that can save thousands of lives.

Edited

Again
Another veto from the US this evening !

What a war mongerer and what an absolute idiot Trump is.

He will go down in history with blood on his hands.

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 23:40

Thanks for those @Itscoldinside clearly the bbc we’re not using inflammatory language on and around October 7th.
Israel is Israel and Hamas is Hamas

( I clearly read it being used by another media source.)

Its good to be unbiased and good the bbc have been consistent and impartial.

Martymcfly24 · 04/06/2025 21:40

https://www.thejournal.ie/aid-distribution-centres-in-gaza-closed-today-after-27-people-killed-by-israeli-troops-yesterday-6723019-Jun2025/

Trump and America can go to hell with any virtue signalling about the BBC and "false" reporting when they veto this resolution that can save thousands of lives.

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 21:36

Itscoldinside · 04/06/2025 21:28

@Twiglets1 @stirabout

BBC news article run 9th October 2023, 2 days after the attack by Hamas...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67056981

Thank you ... reading that is sobering.

It was terrible and unleashed something terrible too.

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Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 21:30

Trump really doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising others for the way they represent the news. Looking at his recent post today, I would have thought he was almost criticising Ukraine for their recent secret attack on Russia and making poor old Putin feel sad. It's sometimes difficult to tell which side the US are on from the things he writes.

Itscoldinside · 04/06/2025 21:23

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 09:43

I remember there was a lot of discussion amongst the media in the early days of this war over what to call terrorists.
When October 7th happened the media definitely called Hamas terrorists. However, since the IDFs incursion and actions against the people of Gaza and the start of the war that is no longer the case
Perhaps the BBC chose to look at the definition of the word Terrorist in terms of Hamas actions within Gaza

I can’t find news pieces on the early discussions on terms

Day on the attack.news report from.bbc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67041679

Palestinians burn car tires and block roads as they clash with Israeli forces in Beit El district of Ramallah, West Bank on October 07, 2023

Hamas blindsides Israel with most serious attack in a generation - Jeremy Bowen

Risk of flare-up between Palestinian militants and Israel has been deepening for months, writes Jeremy Bowen.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67041679

WhatMothersDo22 · 04/06/2025 21:21

Gotta love these posts which choose to hone in on the one time in the whole of the past 2 years that the BBC has misreported something that maybe does an injustice to Israel, while glaringly ignoring the 50,000 murdered Palestinians and counting... Not to mention they’ve now corrected it.

Gosh look at us, it sure is nice to have the luxury to discuss such things while babies starve, people are shot at and bombed into oblivion.

Also I wouldn’t be looking to Trump for my ‘truth’ even if he happened to jump on the correct bandwagon on this occasion, he’s out for what he can get and doesn’t care what the truth is, provided it fits his narrative.

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 21:15

Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 21:05

Oh give over, everyone knows the health ministry is Hamas as the government in Gaza is Hamas! That's just clutching at straws now.

No they don't.

People debating on this board may all be aware the health ministry is Hamas but not everyone is as clued up about stuff like that as we are.

And the BBC is supposed to be aimed at a wide audience not just those who already know quite a bit about a war being reported on.

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Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 21:05

Oh give over, everyone knows the health ministry is Hamas as the government in Gaza is Hamas! That's just clutching at straws now.

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 20:57

Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 20:53

@twiglets1 did you not read the BBC's response? They already explained their reasons and as someone who reads the BBC Live updates regularly, changing the headline through out the day as new information comes out is normal practice. Each time they attributed who they were quoting the figures from too. It's just going round in circles now.

Yes I read it, did you read the article in full from The Jewish Chronice?

It explains in more depth what the issue is. Not so much that the details changed as more information came to light, but the fact that the BBC several times failed to mention that some of the figures came from a Hamas-run agency.

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Whatsinanamehey · 04/06/2025 20:53

@twiglets1 did you not read the BBC's response? They already explained their reasons and as someone who reads the BBC Live updates regularly, changing the headline through out the day as new information comes out is normal practice. Each time they attributed who they were quoting the figures from too. It's just going round in circles now.

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 20:51

PerkingFaintly · 04/06/2025 20:41

Apologies, are you still having trouble with those links in my posts?

I've just checked them all and they're loading OK for me. Sorry – I know that's not much help if they aren't for you!

No no

I was the pp who mentioned the John Simpson article that you posted in full.
My comment was a Thankyou for linking it, as I can’t link here on mums et.

👍 it’s all good

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 20:49

Also reported in Jewish Chronicle with more details: White House attacks BBC over Gaza coverage after story ‘taken down’

Speaking at a White House briefing yesterday, the administration’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of “taking the word of Hamas with total truth".

Leavitt was referring to an article published by BBC News on June 1, which was originally headlined “Gaza: At least 15 killed in Israeli fire near aid centre, say medics”.
The report attributed this figure to “a doctor at the Red Cross field hospital”, claiming that Israeli tanks had opened fire on crowds gathering to receive aid.

It also cited a Civil Defence spokesman saying that more than 100 people had been injured, without informing readers that the Civil Defence agency is run by Hamas.

Around an hour later, the piece was updated as “Gaza: 26 killed in Israeli tank fire near aid centre, medics say”, still failing to mention that some of the figures came from a Hamas-run agency.

Four hours after that, the headline read “Gaza: 31 killed in Israeli tank fire near aid centre, health ministry says” and reported the death toll put forward by the Gaza Ministry of Health – again without mentioning that it is run by Hamas.

This version of the article was also the first to include a denial of the reports by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the American company that operates the distribution site in question. Despite the GHF’s insistence that the report was “false”, the headline still presented the death toll from the Hamas-run ministry.

It wasn’t until 3.21pm that the headline was updated to reflect that the figure came from the “Hamas-run health authorities” and saying that the alleged fatalities were due to “Israeli gunfire”, though the reference to tank fire remained in the body of the article.

A further two hours later, the reference to tank fire was removed, and the headline changed to “31 killed after Israeli forces attack near Gaza aid centre, Hamas-run health authorities say”, despite this version of the article including a denial of this claim from the IDF.

Just after 8pm, the headline was changed again, this time to “Red Cross says at least 21 killed and dozens shot in Gaza aid incident”, revising the death toll down but still citing casualty figures from the health ministry.

https://www.thejc.com/news/usa/white-house-attacks-bbc-gaza-coverage-story-taken-down-if6avsks

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PerkingFaintly · 04/06/2025 20:41

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 20:24

Thanks for that Perking I can’t seem to load these links

Edited

Apologies, are you still having trouble with those links in my posts?

I've just checked them all and they're loading OK for me. Sorry – I know that's not much help if they aren't for you!

SharonEllis · 04/06/2025 20:39

MrsTerryPratchett · 04/06/2025 20:33

Do you think the ANC were? Sandinistas? French resistance? IRA/UDF? Either or both of the last two.

I’m not posting either in favour or against BTW. I just think how you define people who take up arms is very subjective. I didn’t give money to the ANC after much soul searching, even though I believed in their cause. Because of the violence.

My old prof used to say, “terrorists are people fighting for a cause you don’t believe in, in a place you know. Freedom fighters are people fighting for a cause you believe in, in a place you know. Guerrillas are people fighting for a cause you don’t understand in a place you can’t find”.

What defines terrorist for you? The level of violence? The cause? Targeting civilians? Civilians as ‘collateral damage’? Almost all definitions find you putting people/organisations in the ‘wrong’ place.

There is no room for doubt or interpretation tbat Hamas are absolutely evil terrorists. The ANC never did anything close to the atrocity 7 October. The comparison is morally obscene.

PerkingFaintly · 04/06/2025 20:38

Oh I'm sorry, I accidentally included a quote from the wrong post by @Twiglets1 above. Never mind, I don't think it alters anything.

MrsTerryPratchett · 04/06/2025 20:33

Twiglets1 · 04/06/2025 09:55

So you don’t think Hamas are terrorists? Interesting.

Do you think the ANC were? Sandinistas? French resistance? IRA/UDF? Either or both of the last two.

I’m not posting either in favour or against BTW. I just think how you define people who take up arms is very subjective. I didn’t give money to the ANC after much soul searching, even though I believed in their cause. Because of the violence.

My old prof used to say, “terrorists are people fighting for a cause you don’t believe in, in a place you know. Freedom fighters are people fighting for a cause you believe in, in a place you know. Guerrillas are people fighting for a cause you don’t understand in a place you can’t find”.

What defines terrorist for you? The level of violence? The cause? Targeting civilians? Civilians as ‘collateral damage’? Almost all definitions find you putting people/organisations in the ‘wrong’ place.

Stirabout · 04/06/2025 20:24

PerkingFaintly · 04/06/2025 19:40

Here's the link and text for a screenshot a PP provided:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67083432
Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists'
By John Simpson
World Affairs editor
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they're all asking why the BBC doesn't say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.

The answer goes right back to the BBC's founding principles.

Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that's their business. We also run interviews with guests and quote contributors who describe Hamas as terrorists.

The key point is that we don't say it in our voice. Our business is to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds.

As it happens, of course, many of the people who've attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it's not as though we're hiding the truth in any way - far from it.

Any reasonable person would be appalled by the kind of thing we've seen. It's perfectly reasonable to call the incidents that have occurred "atrocities", because that's exactly what they are.

No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.

During the 50 years I've been reporting on events in the Middle East, I've seen for myself the aftermath of attacks like this one in Israel, and I've also seen the aftermath of Israeli bomb and artillery attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza. The horror of things like that stay in your mind forever.

But this doesn't mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective.

And it's always been like this in the BBC. During World War Two, BBC broadcasters were expressly told not to call the Nazis evil or wicked, even though we could and did call them "the enemy".

"Above all," said a BBC document about all this, "there must be no room for ranting". Our tone had to be calm and collected.

It was hard to keep that principle going when the IRA was bombing Britain and killing innocent civilians, but we did. There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.

But we held the line. And we still do, to this day.

We don't take sides. We don't use loaded words like "evil" or "cowardly". We don't talk about "terrorists". And we're not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world's most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy.

But the BBC gets particular attention, partly because we've got strong critics in politics and in the press, and partly because we're rightly held to an especially high standard. But part of keeping to that high standard is to be as objective as it's possible to be.

That's why people in Britain and right round the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say, every single day.

Thanks for that Perking I can’t seem to load these links

Radiatorvalves · 04/06/2025 20:03

@Twiglets1 i strongly suggest you listen to this short explainer by Ros Atkins which debunks your statements.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c9wgq9vv51do