Trump attacks BBC over Gaza misreporting

[Twiglets1]

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/

There should be more verified reports on the ground
Meanwhile
This from the ICRC at Rafah hospital.
Perhaps it would be more effective to see how many get to hospital after an event.
Nevertheless it’s clear the only way to stop all forms of potential propaganda or just mistakes is to have independent reporters on the ground

It’s completely standard practice for online news stories to be updated as new information is received, it would go against standard journalism practices not to update the details - happens all the the with a live story and no story has been removed.

BBC statement here;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce814ez7030o.amp

The corporation said its coverage was updated with new figures throughout the day, which is "totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story".
The numbers were "always clearly attributed, from the first figure of 15 from medics, through the 31 killed from the Hamas-run health ministry to the final Red Cross statement of 'at least 21' at their field hospital," the statement said.
There are conflicting reports on what happened

Obviously there’s conflicting reports - journalists aren’t currently allowed into Gaza at all.

Nobody can verify anything on the ground, journalists aren’t currently allowed allowed into Gaza from any news organisation whatsoever, that’s the main issue on being able to report on what’s happening (or not).

Well exactly
That’s exactly my point.
Natanyahu doesn’t want the world to know what’s really going on. Without independent reporters his followers and world leaders who do nothing can hang on to his propaganda and like Trump….deny

I guess one basic argument for classing Oct 7th as terrorism was that it was a militant organisation carrying out an attack on another land.
Are Hamas committing terrorism when they are in Gaza against an occupying foreign military? I don’t think that’s a given.

Let’s face it, I don’t think we can ever listen to a trump spokesperson and take it at face value. At best they have regularly misled people, at worst they have knowingly lied.

I don’t think updating a live news story is really the gotcha being made out on this thread. The vast majority of news reports are like this, the liverpool incident will have various reports which were updated as information became more clear and widespread.

Exactly!

Israel does not let people into Gaza. Therefore they need to rely on trusted sources. Add to that the confusion given the state of Gaza “the fog of war” and no wonder things are not clear and change.

Every news report I've heard from the BBC states this.

Trump - is constantly caught lying and not correcting his lies.

IDF has been caught lying many times by many different people.

UN and aid agencies warned Israel and US about setting up food aid like they have - and low 3 days they've been opened people are shot at - but Isreal and US and blaming everyone else or denying it's happened - almost like they don't want to admit they fucked up and UN and aid agencies ones with experince in such situations were right.

I do think in recent years BBC reporting hasn't been a impartial as I think they once were. However they are updating their news reports with new information and are critical of their own reporting and here at least acknowledge where it's been wrong.

In mine and many other eyes despite their flaws they have way more credblity than Trump and current Israel government. Plus I do try and consume news from different sources these days - one from other cournties as well - as all news coverage has biases and holes in coverage and that's generally considered good practise - though US news is so polarized one side or the other and so opinion base it's pretty hard to actually watch.

Some interesting obfuscation about hamas on this thread. In the UK, hamas are a proscribed terrorist group, UK reporters, in the UK, are obliged to consider legal implications within the UK.

That doesn't tally with what Twiglets said at all. She said the BBC have been proven wrong and are now changing the way they report. This doesn't seem to be the case according to the BBC and i cant find what Twiglets has said anywhere.

This was on the Times of Israel
But the BBC says the White House claims were not accurate and that it had not removed its story.
“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong. We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism,” it says in a statement.
It notes that headlines giving varying death tolls are “totally normal” journalistic practice due to the story being “updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources.”

You don't think they terrorise the Gazan population? Do you know what they do to people who don't toe their party line?

However
The BBCs reporting is not and cannot be controlled by the Government
we are a democracy not a dictatorship

But it is controlled by the law. All media organisations have to comply with the law and it is illegal to support a designated terrorist organisation. Journalistic ethics would dictate not taking a terrorist organisations propaganda at face value.

How is reporting what's happening supporting a terrorist organisation? The BBC are not taking terrorist propaganda at face value. This claim is getting tired now. Why does BBC verify exist? To analyse the information and footage that is coming out of Gaza and report as accurately as possible. I'm sure if they were breaking any law they'd have been charged by now.

They are not supporting
They are reporting in an unbiased way free from Government control

Just because some people don’t like the words they have chosen to use doesn’t mean they are doing anything wrong.
No one wants to read propaganda. ( well some might and do )
We want the truth free from inflammatory language.

You can be a terrorist and go one to be Israeli PM - fuuny old world.

On what basis are the bbc supporting a terrorist organisation?

We shouldn’t take what Hamas say at face value but neither should we take what Israel say when it’s been proven to be false information at times and the state is current carrying out war crimes.
While Israel bans journalists from going into Gaza it will remain incredibly difficult to report on but what would be very, very dangerous is for them to not report on it.

My point was a rrsponse to the post I was replying to

@Whatsinanamehey what I said was BBC Verify have proven the way the story was originally presented by BBC news to be wrong.
The BBC have had to change the way they are reporting this story in the light of this, so on this occasion Trump is correct.

At first the BBC were reporting the story the way the UN & Hamas were telling it which was that the shooting happened at an aid distribution centre. For example, an article dated the 28th May had the headline Dozens injured by Israeli gunfire as crowds overwhelmed Gaza aid site, UN says.

The article went on to report that* The UN Human Rights Office has said it believes 47 people were injured in Gaza on Tuesday when crowds overwhelmed an aid distribution centre run by a controversial new group backed by the US and Israel.*

This turned out not to be true and it later emerged that the shooting happened about a kilometre away from the aid distribution centre. So later on, the BBC changed the way they reported this story to acknowledge this.

The facts of the incident weren't known when BBC made their first report but headlines like the one above made it sound as if it was certain that, as the headline said, Dozens of people had been injured at a Gaza aid site.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyz4mzww1ro

This is the BBC response which is quite clear. It seems like it's just Trump once again throwing his toys out of his pram.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce814ez7030o.amp

@ComeAsYouAreAsAFriend is quite right

The constant refrain from media outlets that Israel does not let foreign journalists travel independently into Gaza really annoys me. Partly because it is pretty typical for reporters to travel around an active warzone only while embedded with the military and, therefore, the situation is not unusual. But mainly it's because they never also highlight that any journalist or citizen reporter in Gaza is either in Hamas, supportive of Hamas or terrified of Hamas. During the last conflict Hamas used the war to execute its enemies, including journalists. It threatens and murders journalists even during peacetime.

In every report from Gaza the BBC implies that Israel is being shady and secretive and in the next breath tells the audience that their unnamed colleagues in Gaza are trustworthy. The trustworthiness isn't the issue; it's the fact that they are obviously acting with a literal gun to their head. Why do we never see Hamas fighters? Why do we never see any Hamas casualties? Why is there never any footage of the actual fighting? Why no interviews with Hamas fighters? Why no investigative journalism into where the hostages are being held or who the UN aid really went to or whether or not there are Hamas fighters operating out of a hospital or mosque? These journalists may be trustworthy but they must be the least inquisitive journalists to have ever walked the planet.

Given we live in an age of instant footage, no army is going to be happy to let journalists compromise their security by filming all over an active battle zone. Given the nature of urban guerilla warfare, no army would want to risk the reputational damage of accidentally killing high-profile journalists. It's fine for the BBC and others to remind us that Israel isn't letting them roam free all over Gaza but there should be should be some kind of rule where every time they say that they should also be obliged to state that all the footage and information coming out of Gaza is Hamas propaganda.

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

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