‘BBC’ orders training on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias
The BBC’s outgoing director, Tim Davie, has lifted his longstanding objection to training staff on how to avoid antisemitism, and has ordered that they undergo a course on it and anti-Muslim prejudice within six months.
“The BBC Academy has spent the last few months developing new anti-discrimination training. We’re starting with e-learning modules on antisemitism and Islamophobia, which we expect staff across the BBC to complete,” he wrote to staff on Wednesday.
The move followed a long string of incidents featuring antisemitism involving BBC personnel, and a scandal tied to the BBC’s coverage of Israel. That scandal, which led to the pulling offline of a documentary, was over the use of a Hamas-affiliated family to depict the suffering of Gazans presented as innocent civilians.
Davie announced last month he would be stepping down along with Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, over the broadcaster’s misleading editing of a 2020 speech by U.S. President Donald Trump. An internal report, which was ignored, warned the footage created the false impression that Trump had called for rioting on Jan. 6 of that year.
Phil Rosenberg, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said in a statement on Thursday: “The BBC finds itself in a moment of challenge and opportunity. It can continue in the same vein, with the same problems, or it can make changes that restore trust and pride” in it. “We hope that today’s announcement on antisemitism training to all staff is the start of a more positive journey,” Rosenberg said.
Especially since the outbreak of war in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the BBC has come under scrutiny over coverage that critics say is biased and hostile to Israel.
However, the BBC’s antisemitism-related woes have predated the conflict.
In December 2021, the BBC reported that a group of men who were seen harassing a busload of Jewish teenagers on Oxford Street in London, celebrating Chanukah, had been provoked by an anti-Muslim slur. Independent reviews of the footage found no evidence that any such comment was made.
After Ofcom, the British government’s regulator for media, determined that “significant editorial failings” occurred in the report, the BBC said in a statement, “While Ofcom has found that our reporting was not in breach of the Broadcasting Code, the BBC‘s Executive Complaints Unit ruled in January this year that more could have been done sooner to acknowledge the differing views” about what happened.
A report published in September 2024 by lawyer Trevor Asserson and his team indicated that during the first four months of the war in Gaza, the BBC breached its editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times.
BBC Arabic has had its own string of antisemitism scandals.
It platformed a Palestinian pundit who the broadcaster knew had celebrated Adolf Hitler and the killing of Jews, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) revealed in September. The journalist, Samer Elzaenen, was quoted as an eyewitness from Gaza.
Another freelance contributor, Ahmed Qannan, who has also appeared on BBC Arabic, praised Palestinian terrorists and expressed hope that wounded Israeli civilians would die.
Ahmed Alagha, who has reported for the British public broadcaster since early 2023, described the Israeli army as “the embodiment of filth” and referred to Jews as “the devils of the hypocrites,” The Telegraph reported in April.
