Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Britain and the world’s views of the rights and wrongs of the Gaza war are so often shaped by what the BBC reports. That’s mattered more than ever in recent weeks, amid the feverishly heated coverage of Israel’s new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme to deliver aid to the Palestinian people and bypass allegedly Hamas-controlled NGOs.

Hamas-linked sources claim Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot and killed Palestinian civilians waiting for GHF food with their families. Stories bearing the bylines of BBC ‘journalists’ in Gaza largely tell this version of events, albeit including the denials of the IDF.

News organisations using Gazan reporters say they have no choice, given the IDF’s refusal to allow in outside journalists.

But that’s no reason not to exercise care and employ the same editorial standards as they would on any other story.

For critics of the BBC, the results have been a disaster for the Corporation and its standards.

They point to the stories that have not been told, or have been largely overlooked, by these reporters almost throughout the war: of Hamas’s tyranny over the people of Gaza, its torture and murder of opponents, and of the courageous Palestinians who defy its rule.

And why is there such scant coverage of Hamas using the civilian population as a human shield by placing tunnels under civilian buildings and military bases in hospital?

Where are the stories of Israeli hostages being moved across Gaza?

Why is there no footage of Hamas firing rockets or their gunmen on the move?

There is an obvious answer: it appears that these reporters are either pro-Hamas, or too afraid of reprisals from terrorist gunmen to tell the truth.

It is a charge that BBC Global News Director Jonathan Munro entirely rejects.

Almost spluttering in disbelief recently at the suggestion that ‘some of the people you’re using in Gaza might be under pressure, might be restricted in what Hamas allows them to see’, resulting in a ‘partial view’, he insisted: ‘There’s no restriction on what they can see, what they can show and what they can film when they’re on location.

‘There’s no suggestion at all that any of those very brave people are under any political influence.’

Munro’s denial shows an astonishing disregard for the well-documented reality of life in Gaza.

Take a recent report from the well regarded NGO the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). It tears apart the notion that press freedom exists in Gaza.

According to the CPJ, journalists there have been subject to ‘detentions, assaults, obstruction and raids’ going back to the start of Hamas rule almost twenty years ago.

While detailing numerous violent assaults on members of the press in Gaza, the analysis warns that violations by Hamas are ‘underreported’.

Some journalists who have been assaulted are believed to be too afraid to say anything at all; others have gone to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) but say they do not want to go public for fear of retaliation.

Note that both the CPJ and PJS are the staunchest critics of Israel. There can be no doubting the credibility and accuracy of their accounts on this matter. The picture they paint is light years removed from Munro’s suggestion of unencumbered press freedom in Gaza.

Some of the journalists in Gaza used by the BBC have been exposed as having deeply hateful views of Israel and Jews, making them entirely unsuitable as journalists.

Yet there is a problem that goes far beyond any individual, if Munro and other executives cannot understand the reality of reporting from Gaza.

TV producer Leo Pearlman has proposed the solution: ‘The BBC make a huge deal of adding to every news script from Gaza by saying that Israel doesn’t allow independent access for journalists.

‘What it never says – and maybe should start doing – is that no journalist can operate freely in Gaza under Hamas control.’

Until they start doing so, Munro and his fellow BBC executives are not only deceiving audiences but also themselves.