The BBC committed “significant editorial failings” in its coverage of an anti-Semitic attack on Jewish students in London, the UK’s media watchdog Ofcom has concluded.
On Nov. 29, 2021, while a group of Jewish students were travelling on a privately-hired Hanukkah party bus in London’s Oxford Street, they came under attack from a group of men who swore, made obscene gestures, and threw a shopping basket at them.
On Dec. 2, 2021, the BBC reported the incident in an online news article and a television news bulletin. On the basis of video footage of part of the attack taken from inside the bus, both reports alleged that “racial slurs about Muslims” could be heard coming from inside the bus.
‘Anti-Muslim Slur’
The watchdog said: “The BBC’s reports claimed that an audio recording made during the incident included anti-Muslim slurs—which it later changed to the singular ‘slur’—which came from inside the bus. Shortly afterwards, it received evidence which disputed this interpretation of the audio.”The BBC’s “anti-Muslim slur” claim was disputed by a significant number of groups and individuals who complained to the broadcaster about the accuracy and impartiality of the coverage.
According to Ofcom’s report on the incident, some critics argued that the phrase apparently identified by the BBC as the slur “dirty Muslims” was in fact part of the Hebrew phrase “Tikrah lemishu, ze dachuf,” which translates into English as “Call someone, it’s urgent.”
But the BBC “failed to promptly acknowledge that the audio was disputed and did not update its online news article to reflect this for almost eight weeks,” the media watchdog said.
It added: “During this time the BBC was aware that the article’s content was causing significant distress and anxiety to the victims of the attack and the wider Jewish community.
“This, in our opinion, was a significant failure to observe its editorial guidelines to report news with due accuracy and due impartiality.”
‘Abominable’
The Ofcom investigation followed one by the BBC’s own executive complaints unit (ECU), which concluded both the online and TV story “did not meet the BBC’s standards of due accuracy.”In the January following the coverage, the BBC issued an apology and confirmed it had amended the story on its website, also issuing a clarification of the TV report aired on the same day.
Commenting on Ofcom’s verdict, a spokesperson for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism said: “Almost a year after the BBC’s abominable coverage of an anti-Semitic incident on Oxford Street, Ofcom has seen what every viewer and reader of the BBC’s coverage could but which the BBC itself refused to accept: its reportage added insult to the injury already inflicted on the victims and the Jewish community, and abysmally failed to meet the most basic editorial standards.”
