The Today program is BBC Radio’s flagship news and current affairs program, boasting a listenership of approximately 5.61 million people. It’s a three-hour-long show that aims to give its listeners a deeper understanding of the issues of the day, featuring interviews and in-depth analysis. On March 9, following the announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, the program dedicated the majority of its airtime to discussion of continuing hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Despite clear statements from both the US and Israel that the ceasefire agreement did not include Lebanon, the framing and language chosen throughout the program created an image of blame on an out-of-control Israel for risking the fragile peace, while never clearly informing listeners that Hezbollah is a proxy Iranian military occupying Lebanon which has, once again, started a war with Israel on behalf of the Islamic regime.
By positioning, quote choice, fact selection, and language use, the Today program constructed a narrative which placed all responsibility on Israel, and ignored any context which might bring that conclusion into question.
The prime slot of the program was taken up with an interview with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh, quotes from which were repeated as the top headline from the very first moments:
Emma Barnett: “Good Morning it’s six o’clock on Thursday the 9th of April, this is Today with Nick Robinson and Emma Barnett.”
Nick Robinson: “Good Morning, the headlines this morning: the ceasefire in the middle east is under severe strain as Iran’s deputy foreign minister tells us the strikes on Lebanon break the agreement heralded by the United States President.”
Saeed Khatibzadeh: “It was a grave violation, intentional grave violation of the ceasefire, you cannot have a cake and eat it at the same time you cannot ask for a ceasefire and then your ally just start a massacre”
Robinson: “That exclusive interview in full after 7.30. Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel from Southern Lebanon after the deadliest day of strikes since the war began.”
This claim, that Israeli strikes in Lebanon had violated the ceasefire and provoked a response from Hezbollah, was repeated 25 times in the three hours of the program by various BBC Journalists, including International Editor Jeremy Bowen and International Correspondent Lyse Doucet as well as Newsreader Jane Steel.
The full quote from Mr. Khatibzadeh that formed the basis of this headline arrived in his full interview one hour and 30 minutes into the program:
Khatibzadeh: “It was a grave violation, intentional, grave violation of this ceasefire. We cannot have a cake and eat it at the same time. That was the message that Iran sent quite clearly, crystal clearly to Washington and to the Oval Office last night, and our Foreign Minister also said that you cannot ask for a ceasefire and then accept terms and conditions, accept in all the areas that ceasefire is applied to and name Lebanon, exactly Lebanon in that, and then your ally just start a massacre. Actually, it was a sort of genocide by the regime of Israel in Lebanon just immediately after the ceasefire was accepted. It is. It is a type of, you know, practice, that Israeli regime has always done, accepting ceasefire, then surprise attack, massacring.”
This argument from Mr. Khatibzadeh is very clearly constructed propaganda. The use of the genocide libel being moved to Lebanon with no basis, the accusation that Israel massacres people it makes peace with (despite enduring peace with countries like Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the UAE), was an obvious antisemitic soundbite designed to spread misinformation. For the BBC to not only air it without pushback but also repeat it 25 times in one three-hour program would be a shocking failure of standards, unless we remember that the BBC allowed an Iranian regime mouthpiece to repeat the antisemitic claim that Israel is: “the Epstein class…they rape little American girls and they kill little Iranian girls” 13 times in one day of programming at the beginning of the war, just weeks after that same talking head had claimed on the BBC that no protesters had been killed by the regime in Iran in the January protests.
Uncritical reproduction of regime propaganda may no longer be surprising, but it does still break BBC guidelines on impartiality.
The failures on this program however were not limited to the repetition of this allegation. The program also contained multiple misrepresentations of the situation in Lebanon itself. The large Israeli strikes were reported as having occurred in a vacuum, with no reminders that there had been a ceasefire in place until Hezbollah chose to attack Israel on behalf of Iran after the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. The war is often characterized on the BBC as “Israel’s war,” a formulation of ownership which strips the agency from Hezbollah in its choice to continually attack Israel, dragging the Lebanese people into yet another war the country is ill-equipped to withstand:
Jane Steel at 34 minutes: “Hezbollah says it has fired rockets into northern Israel overnight, which it says is in response to the strikes by Israel. The group says it will continue such attacks until what it calls Israeli American aggression against Lebanon stops. Lebanese officials say more than 200 fifty-four people were killed yesterday.”
Jeremy Bowen at 39 minutes: “Prime Minister Netanyahu made a very bellicose speech last night saying that they will continue trying to reshape the Middle East in Israel’s interest, and I personally find it having looked at the Middle East for many years, Lebanon and Israel. I find it very hard to believe that that strike yesterday hitting so much in 10 minutes, 100 target I think they said in 10 minutes that the Israelis did causing you know, massive damage inside and loss of life inside Lebanon. I find it hard to believe that it is not connected with the fact that the Israelis want to continue the war against Iran.”
Daniel de Simone at 43 minutes: “The Israeli Government is insisting that it’s going to carry on with this operation in Lebanon. It’s saying it’s going to do that until the threat from Hezbollah has been removed. It characterizes that threat as basically being about the rocket fire into northern Israel, but in reality the threat of rockets from Hezbollah has never been removed. It’s always been there, and Hezbollah came into existence in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that year, and at the moment Israel is occupying a part of southern Lebanon.”
And David Willis at one hour 2 minutes: “Donald Trump hailed the ceasefire agreement as a big day for world peace, Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon doesn’t bear that out, and it’s only one area of confusion. Israel’s insistence that the truce doesn’t apply to it’s war on Hezbollah is disputed by Iran”
At one hour 16 minutes, chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet claimed that Lebanon was the Islamic regime’s most important ally in its axis of resistance, and that it was just trying to prevent Israeli violations of peace agreements :
Doucet: “This is a very difficult decision for Iran. It can’t be seen to be abandoning an ally it drew into this war Lebanon is not just its closest of partners in the region, it’s the most important one in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, and it can’t be seen to be not supporting them in this hour and also standing firm on this point, It’s a key plank in a strategic approach to this war that it wants to end this war on all fronts. It doesn’t want to see what we’re seeing in Lebanon, what we still see in Gaza that a ceasefire is agreed and then Israel violates it and then Hezbollah and Hamas also violate it.”
This, of course, quite apart from being factually wrong in that Lebanon is not Hezbollah, is a contradiction in terms. The axis of resistance exists to resist the existence of Israel. One cannot argue seriously that a regime and its proxies that openly call for the destruction of Israel are seeking peace, which is being willfully disrupted by Israel. The only way Israel can be argued to be disrupting the possibility of peace with the axis of resistance is by its stubborn insistence on continuing to exist.
Throughout three hours of analysis, at no point was any information offered to listeners that might contradict the idea that Israel is unilaterally, and for absolutely no reason, putting at risk the peace of the region. Hezbollah only acts in response to Israel, Iran only wants peace, and Israel is intent only on destruction.
Correspondent Lina Sinjab claimed:
Sinjab: “Lebanon seems to be facing a deadly war that no one is able to stop,”
which neatly sums up the problem with BBC reporting on Lebanon. Hezbollah can stop the war. Iran can stop the war. Lebanon does not exist in a natural state of occupation by terrorists. But applying agency to Arabs or Muslims, and subsequently allowing them to so much as share responsibility with Israel, just does not seem to be something the BBC is willing to do.
The result was three hours of failure to uphold the BBC standards of accuracy and impartiality, while further entrenching stereotypes about Jewish violence and power.
This post originally appeared at CAMERA UK.