The former director of BBC television accuses the network of “egregious” anti-Israel bias, particularly in BBC Arabic.
Noting the network has been forced to issue some 80 corrections to its reporting since October 7, Danny Cohen, who led the TV department in 2013-2015, writes in The Telegraph, “Something is going badly wrong. Mistakes don’t happen 80 times.”
Among other things, he says numerous BBC Arabic reporters have repeatedly shown affinity for Hamas and support for its October 7 massacre in Israel and have reported on terrorism while omitting key facts, and that a program broadcast on the channel doubted that some of the October killings happened at all.
Reporters have repeatedly employed “the language you would hear from a Hamas spokesman,” he says. “Our licence fees are paying the wages of people who celebrated the rape and slaughter of men, women and children.”
But the British broadcaster “seems to be impervious to its problems, unwilling to recognise and address the management failures that are poisoning one of Britain’s great institutions,” he laments.
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