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UK Media Regulator Investigates BBC After Evidence Debunks Claim About “Anti-Muslim Slurs” Made By Jewish Teens During Antisemitic London Attack  

UK Media Regulator Investigates BBC After Evidence Debunks Claim About “Anti-Muslim Slurs” Made By Jewish Teens During Antisemitic London Attack  

BBC issues half-hearted apology, says it has “amended” the news article posted on its website.

The UK media regulator Ofcom has launched an investigation into the BBC after evidence emerged that the broadcaster may have falsely reported that Jewish victims uttered “anti-Muslim slurs” when attacked by a group of men in an antisemitic incident in central London last November, British newspapers reported Thursday.

The news of the investigation comes the same day as the BBC issued a half-hearted apology, saying that it has “amended” the story posted on its website. The UK national broadcaster, however, maintains that its internal inquiry found “no evidence to support any claims of victim-blaming in our reporting.”

The claim smearing the Jewish victims as racists or ‘Islamophobes’ was made in the December 2 BBC news article and the television report.

The initial BBC article reported “slurs about Muslims” made by the Jewish teens seeking safety inside their bus. It was later changed to “a slur about Muslims could also be heard.” Now their whole narrative of victim-blaming appears to be falling apart.

British newspaper The Independent reported the opening of the investigation:

Media watchdog Ofcom has launched an investigation after the BBC upheld complaints made about the accuracy and impartiality of its coverage of an antisemitic attack on a Hanukkah party bus.

The broadcaster has apologised and said it has now amended a story on its news website from December, and issued a clarification of a television report aired on the same day.

The incident saw a group of about 40 young Jewish people on a bus in London’s Oxford Street on November 29 subjected to an antisemitic attack involving a group of men who swore, made obscene gestures and threw a shopping basket at them.

Following BBC coverage on December 2, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbi were among a significant number of groups and individuals who complained to the broadcaster about the accuracy and impartiality of the coverage.

The BBC said the complaints were “particularly in relation to the claim that an anti-Muslim slur had been heard from inside the bus”.

The BBC’s director-general then instructed the corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) to investigate the complaints “as a matter of urgency”.

In its findings published on Wednesday, the ECU said the original versions of both the online and television story “did not meet the BBC’s standards of due accuracy”.

It said: “The original online copy spoke of ‘some racial slurs about Muslims’ whilst the TV report explained ‘you can hear some racial slurs about Muslim people’.

In later versions the online copy was changed to ‘a slur about Muslims’ reflecting that the original iterations had mischaracterised the nature of the insult and there was insufficient evidence that it had happened on more than one occasion.”

The ECU also considered whether the BBC had been right to continue to defend the statements in its reports about an anti-Muslim slur as accurate and not requiring amendment.

The unit said it noted that while three of four translators who listened back to footage had agreed on what the slur might have been, one differed, and the ECU therefore concluded that “the sole exception indicates that it was not the only possible interpretation”.

The unit added: “In the ECU’s judgment this, taken together with the evidence put forward by the Board of Deputies, should have led the BBC to recognise at an earlier stage that there was genuine doubt about the accuracy of what it had reported.”

The ECU concluded: “It follows that the online article as it stands must now be regarded as no longer meeting the BBC’s standards of due accuracy and, to the extent that the anti-Muslim slur claim has itself become controversial, it also lacks due impartiality in failing to reflect alternative views.”

The incident took place on November 29, when a group of Jewish teenagers was spat at and threatened by several men on London’s Oxford Street. The teens were on their way to the Trafalgar Square to watch the lighting of London’s biggest menorah that marks the first night of Hanukkah.

They were “targeted by a gang of yobs who were seen screaming ‘Free Palestine’ before spitting at the privately hired bus carrying the youngsters as part of a city tour,” UK’s Daily Mail reported last month.

The video clip of the attack “shows a group of men throwing Nazi salutes, giving the middle finger, spitting on the passengers and then slamming their fists on the bus door and windows,” the Jerusalem Post noted.

The UK news reports of the incident did not mention the assailants’ identity, but the media coverage suggests that they were of Arab or Middle Eastern origin.

An independent investigation conducted by a group of leading experts in the field of forensics and linguists “appears to undermine the BBC’s claim that an anti-Muslim slur was uttered by a victim of the antisemitic … bus attack on Oxford Street,” British weekly The Jewish Chronicle reported in December.

Biased reporting towards Israel or the Jewish community is nothing new with the British national broadcaster. The media watchdog HonestReporting, which challenged the BBC’s coverage of the incident, noted on Thursday that, “This episode and indeed the entire sequence of events thereafter is further evidence of a pattern of behavior by the BBC that calls into question its impartiality regarding Israel in particular and Jewish people in general over the past year – something HonestReporting has covered in depth.”

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Comments

JackinSilverSpring | January 28, 2022 at 5:04 pm

Of course Muslims could never be Judeophobes.

If I were being attacked by a bunch of Muslims, I’d probably have a negative reaction, too.

George_Kaplan | January 28, 2022 at 6:15 pm

According to the BBC’s executive complaints unit “three of four translators who listened back to footage had agreed on what the slur might have been, one differed”. What exactly do they claim was said, and who were these translators?

A non-BBC translator listened to the report and stated that the ‘slur’ was in fact someone saying ‘hurry, call the police’ in Hebrew, or something to that affect – I forget the specific phrasing. Since when was speaking Hebrew or wanting the police anti-Muslim? And why is a Muslim attack on Jews not considered a(nother) hate crime?

BBC appear to be guilty as sin!

    If only I could believe that the investigation being launched will be legit instead of just well the usual cover up type investigation leftist orgs give themselves.

    But yes the BBC is guilty as hell in this case, they manifested their anti-Semitism very blatantly.

The real problem is that the original report does meet the BBC’s standards for accuracy. At least when dealing with Jews or Israel.

Gleefully and flippantly blaming Jewish victims of Muslim terrorists/supremacists and rationalizing/excusing/whitewashing Muslims’ violence and hatred, by falsely casting Muslims as alleged “victims” — what the vile and despicable Dhimmi-crats and their European, useful-idiot, dhimmi counterparts in Europe, do best.

    Danny in reply to guyjones. | January 29, 2022 at 2:08 am

    Gee when Kind Edward I (one of England’s best kings by the way) expelled every Jew from England was that Muslims? Oh and not to mention when the cabinet refused Winston Churchill’s attempts to save the Jews of Europe whenever possible or permit migration into Mandate Palestine Muslims? Oh and we can’t forget all of those non-existent Muslim BBC executives.

    BBC has an anti-Semitism problem that manifested itself with demonizing a Jewish victim of a hate crime by a Muslim how dare you try to bring the hate Muslims narrative into it.

    Some white Christians did this deed of giving a Jewish victim an extra dose of victimization.

    By the way you have no brain whatsoever if you think there is a Muslim influence on the left.

      Dathurtz in reply to Danny. | January 29, 2022 at 7:13 am

      I am curious, why is the left so pro-Islam if there is no influence? I must be a dum-dum because it kinda looks that way to me.

        Danny in reply to Dathurtz. | January 29, 2022 at 12:00 pm

        The total issues where Muslims align with Dems are

        1. Israel Palestine-You really need me to explain why Demcorats are taking sides AGAINST a first world western power with an economy is a million times what it size and resources implies are possible against a third world country they identify as part of a victim group? Do you know a thing about CRT???

        2. Demonizing Muslims by the Bush administration-Self explanatory why

        3. Invading places like Iraq-Would be a great idea for us to stop listening to Mark Milley to.

        The left is not pro-Islam, it pushes highly anti-Islamic agenda items like abortion, transgenderism, and LGBTQ ideology overall etc.

        Milhouse in reply to Dathurtz. | January 29, 2022 at 11:18 pm

        The left isn’t pro-Islam, it’s anti-anti-Islam. Edward Said and his ilk successfully portrayed the west’s encounter with Islam as “colonialist”, so the left’s instinct is always to side with the “colonized” and against the “colonizer”. So Critical Studies incorporated “islamophobia” into the list of cardinal sins.

        Then intersectionality came along and convinced leftists that all the sins on the list are really one big sin, and any violation against one violates them all; Thus “islamophobia” is not just like racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, looksism, transphobia, and the rest of that laundry list, it actually is all those things.

        And then came Sep-11-2001 and Bush’s decision that we were at war with the entire network of Islamist terrorists. And although he bent over backwards to portray this as not being a war on Islam, ridiculously insisting that Islam is a “religion of peace” and the terrorists were really not Moslem at all, and even went to great lengths to recruit Moslem allies in the war, nobody took him seriously because it was perfectly obvious to everyone that the terrorists do represent Islam and thus the war against them is against Islam. And if the USA is at war with something, the left must automatically support it, even if they don’t actually like it. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

Britain, France and the Allies paid a steep price to defeat the German National Socialists in World War II, only for sundry European nations to squander that victory by naively and foolishly rolling out the red carpet and inviting the National Socialists’ Jew-hating, spiritual successors — goose-stepping, supremacist, totalitarian, belligerent and hate-filled Muslims — into their lands. That’s the crux of the tragedy, here. Stupidity and feckless dhimmitude.

    Danny in reply to guyjones. | January 29, 2022 at 2:10 am

    Do you have a single non-bigoted/extremely racist thing to say? By the way do you work for the FBI? I think you do, and are making these racist comments to come up with a reason to put the professor under surveillance.

      henrybowman in reply to Danny. | January 29, 2022 at 2:31 am

      “Muslims” aren’t a race. They are many races, from many countries. They practice a belligerent totalitarian political movement shrouded in a religious disguise.
      Calling someone who objects to Islam a racist is like calling someone who objects to National Socialism a racist.

        When Muslims permitted Jews expelled from Jerusalem by order of Heraclius to return was that national socialism? How about when they provided the Jews of Spain a new home when King Ferdinand expelled them? Or how about when the Zionists made the decision that they would prefer to live in the Ottoman Empire and pay tribute and allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan in their homeland over the Tsarist Empire-and the Ottoman Sultan agreed to it and permitted a migration of Jews into what is now Israel (and did so ironically placing many fewer restrictions for Ottoman Syria than what the British would for mandate Palestine)?

        I don’t think Islam is the true religion because I’m not Muslim, the idea of it being a totalitarian nazi ideology however is wrong to the extreme and demonizing other faiths is wrong.

          Milhouse in reply to Danny. | January 29, 2022 at 11:43 pm

          Danny, the history of the Jewish experience in Dar-al-Islam has, over all, been about equivalent to that in Christendom. In both there were good times and bad, good rulers and bad, but overall it’s been six of one and half a dozen of the other.

          Yes, Jews had it pretty good in 16th-century Turkey, just when the refugees from Spain and Portugal needed somewhere to go. But they also had it great in Poland for more than half a millennium. Poland was a sanctuary for Jews; they called it po lin, “here we can spend the night”. The Poles didn’t turn into antisemites until about the turn of the 20th century. Meanwhile in various Islamic countries they suffered pogroms, expulsion, forced conversion, and all the rest of it, just like in various Christian countries. Starting, of course, with Mohammed himself, who massacred the Jews of Arabia and expelled the survivors. So don’t play the Jewish card on this.

          The fact is that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion, founded by a bloodthirsty criminal, and set on world conquest. Its interests are inherently opposed to those of the west, thus making it our natural enemy. And the fact is that al Qaeda and the “Islamic State” are genuine expressions of Islam, which Mohammed himself would approve of if he were here, and it’s the peaceful Moslems who are aberrations, lax in their faith or ignorant of it, and may at any time get religion and turn into terrorists.

      We don’t permit racist comments at LI, but I am at a loss to see any racism in Guy’s comment, Danny.

      (Honestly, it sounds like your tinfoil hat is a wee bit tight 😛 Guy’s commented here for years and years; if he’s FBI, he’s under deep deep cover. In which case, the prof is already under surveillance. Tone it down . . . unless you are auditioning for a segment on the Alex Jones network? 😛 )

        First sorry for the wall of text

        A Dhimmi is someone fully subordinated to and under the command of Muslims who pays special tribute to Muslims in return for being allowed to practice his religion; he calls Democrats Dhimmicrats no matter what the topic because he is trying to inspire hatred for Muslims by equating them with Democrat policies (you know things they really love like abortion, transgenderism etc).

        He called a religion that has been around since the 7th century that is practiced around the world by over a billion people nazism just now. I know I wouldn’t like my religion being called nazism, I don’t even like when assholes demonize us by adopting the Palestinian narrative.

        He has complained about how behind the genocide curve we are vis a vis China in another post complaining about how they are ahead on Islam persecution (as China literally exterminates the Uighurs)

        The situation in the article is exactly what happened to Nick Sandman but in Britain, instead of laying the blame at the BBC he wants to paint all Muslims with the brush of the attacked the BBC ran interference for.

        I know nobody here blamed all Native Americans for Nathan Philips attack on Nick Sandman, and I know nobody here considers all black people black hebrew Israelites and nobody blamed all black people for their part.

        There isn’t a single issue where Democrats or the BBC are influenced by Muslims. Whenever an SJW issue contradicts Islam Islam is thrown in the garbage by them. Blaming them for an action by the Democrats or BBC is therefore…

          Milhouse in reply to Danny. | January 29, 2022 at 11:46 pm

          Danny, how many tens of millions of Indians did the Moslems murder over the course of their rule there? How do you distinguish that from the nazis?

Makes you want to rethink “history” as propaganda, doesn’t it?
To wit: did the BBC ever really exercise a high standard of “due accuracy,” or was it all gaslighting and propaganda where “one crook congratulated another crook on his integrity” and no commoner ever looked deeper?

    henrybowman in reply to henrybowman. | January 29, 2022 at 2:27 am

    Edit… should have written, “did the BBC ever really exercise a high standard of ‘due accuracy’ that has somehow inexplicably decayed in the recent past…

Some kids traveling to a place of worship to celebrate a Jewish religious holiday got attacked by a bunch of middle eastern men in London. THAT is the story.

That the BBC chose to create a pure falsehood to excuse the criminal behavior of the attackers and instead blame the innocent was unfortunately true to their form in such matters.