The Trump administration has launched a blistering attack on the BBC over alleged bias in its reporting of the Gaza War.
Speaking at a White House briefing yesterday, the administration’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of “taking the word of Hamas with total truth".
Holding up a printed copy of a BBC News piece, she said: “We don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth, we like to look into it when they speak.
“Unlike the BBC, which had multiple headlines….and then they had to correct and take down their entire story saying ‘we reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything’.
"We’re going to look into reports before we confirm them...I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same.”
Leavitt was referring to an article published by BBC News on June 1, which was originally headlined “Gaza: At least 15 killed in Israeli fire near aid centre, say medics”.
The report attributed this figure to “a doctor at the Red Cross field hospital”, claiming that Israeli tanks had opened fire on crowds gathering to receive aid.
It also cited a Civil Defence spokesman saying that more than 100 people had been injured, without informing readers that the Civil Defence agency is run by Hamas.
Around an hour later, the piece was updated as “Gaza: 26 killed in Israeli tank fire near aid centre, medics say”, still failing to mention that some of the figures came from a Hamas-run agency.
Four hours after that, the headline read “Gaza: 31 killed in Israeli tank fire near aid centre, health ministry says” and reported the death toll put forward by the Gaza Ministry of Health – again without mentioning that it is run by Hamas.
This version of the article was also the first to include a denial of the reports by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the American company that operates the distribution site in question. Despite the GHF’s insistence that the report was “false”, the headline still presented the death toll from the Hamas-run ministry.
It wasn’t until 3.21pm that the headline was updated to reflect that the figure came from the “Hamas-run health authorities” and saying that the alleged fatalities were due to “Israeli gunfire”, though the reference to tank fire remained in the body of the article.
A further two hours later, the reference to tank fire was removed, and the headline changed to “31 killed after Israeli forces attack near Gaza aid centre, Hamas-run health authorities say”, despite this version of the article including a denial of this claim from the IDF.
Just after 8pm, the headline was changed again, this time to “Red Cross says at least 21 killed and dozens shot in Gaza aid incident”, revising the death toll down but still citing casualty figures from the health ministry.
However, the BBC refuted Leavitt’s characterisation of its reporting, including the suggesting that it had withdrawn the piece.
A spokesperson said: “The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong. We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism.
"Our news stories and headlines about Sunday's aid distribution centre incident were updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources.
"These were always clearly attributed, from the first figure of 15 from medics, through the 31 killed from the Hamas-run health ministry to the final Red Cross statement of ‘at least 21’ at their field hospital. This is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story.
"Completely separately, a BBC Verify online report on Monday reported a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show. This video did not run on BBC news channels and had not informed our reporting. Conflating these two stories is simply misleading.
"It is vital to bring people the truth about what is happening in Gaza. International journalists are not currently allowed into Gaza and we would welcome the support of the White House in our call for immediate access."
