During Israel’s October 7th commemorations the BBC had a dedicated page of live coverage on the website. There were many issues with this coverage, but perhaps the most heinous and offensive was one sentence:
“The Times of Israel has a tribute from former hostage Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two young sons died in captivity in Gaza.”
Died in captivity. Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were murdered by their captors, and their bodies mutilated. The boy’s tiny broken bodies were eventually returned, in a sadistic and grotesque display of cruelty to baying crowds, alone, without their mother. The BBC reduces this crime to “died”.
CAMERA complained immediately to the BBC as follows. The BBC complaints procedure has a 2000-character space limit meaning that brevity is required.
“In its coverage of the 7 October commemorations, the BBC reported that Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, “died in captivity in Gaza”.
This wording materially misrepresents the known circumstances of their deaths by omitting that they were murdered by their captors.
Following forensic examinations in February 2025, Israeli authorities confirmed that Ariel, aged four, and Kfir, aged ten months, had been deliberately murdered in captivity. The IDF stated that the children were killed with their captors’ bare hands and their bodies subsequently abused. Israeli authorities also concluded that Shiri was murdered, with forensic examinations finding no evidence supporting Hamas’s claim that she died in an Israeli airstrike.
The BBC itself reported these findings on 21 February 2025, under the headline “Israel says forensics show Bibas children killed by captors”.
Nevertheless, more than nineteen months later, the BBC chose the passive formulation “died in captivity”, omitting the established findings of deliberate killing and obscuring the responsibility of their captors.
This is particularly troubling in an article commemorating victims of the 7 October atrocities, where the circumstances of their deaths are central to understanding their families’ suffering.
BBC Editorial Guidelines require precise language and warn that omissions of significant details may produce misleading reporting.
Why did the BBC replace its own previously reported account of the children’s murders with language that conceals how they were killed? I request a correction identifying the murders.”
The BBC replied almost immediately, which is extremely unusual for the BBC. We have open complaints with them that have been unanswered for many months, and yet the answer to this issue came within 24 hours, suggesting a degree of preparedness that a cynic may interpret how they wish.
Jeremy Howell of the BBC complaints department replied [emphasis added]:
“Please note that the sentence in the post linked to this report from February 2025 (the same one that you cited in your complaint): Israel says forensics show Bibas children killed by captors
It says:
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said “forensic findings”, which have not been seen by the BBC, suggested the boys had been killed with “bare hands”.
He said evidence had been shared with Israel’s “partners around the world so they can verify it”.
Hamas has said the children and their mother were killed by Israeli bombing, without providing evidence.We used the word “died” rather than “killed” because we do not know for sure what the circumstances of Ariel and Kfir Bibas’s deaths were. We did not see the forensic reports, as the article pointed out. We only know what Israeli military authorities said was the cause of their deaths.
Consequently, we would say that this sentence is duly accurate and that your complaint raises no concerns about a breach of our Editorial Guidelines.”
The significance of this reply cannot be overstated. The BBC claims that the standard required for the reporting of an allegation of “killing” is independent BBC verification of the circumstances of the death.
They argue they cannot even report that an individual was killed with attribution of the statement, that is to say a formulation such as “the Israeli military reports that the family were killed” is still inappropriate due to lack of independent verification.
Really Mr Howell? Very well then. Let’s apply that standard.
Yesterday the BBC ran an article on the website titled ‘Every day there is killing’: Gazans face Israeli strikes despite ceasefire as peace deal stalls
Everyday there is a killing. Not a death, but a killing attributed to Israel. There must then, be extensive independent verification of each one of these deaths then according to the BBC’s own established standard:
“We used the word “died” rather than “killed” because we do not know for sure what the circumstances… were”
Unfortunately for the BBC that standard is not met.
The first individual reported in this piece is a 31 year old mother the BBC claims was shot in the head by Israeli forces while getting her children ready for school [emphasis added]:
“Fida died on 21 September from a gunshot wound to the head.
She is among more than 1,400 people in Gaza who have been killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the ceasefire on 10 October last year, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.”
No forensic report is produced, the IDF is quoted as having no record of the incident, the only evidence for this story comes from the family themselves and as we know from the FlyDubai reporting the BBC itself is exceptionally clear that civilian eyewitness statements “cannot be verified”. However it does not feel the need to inform audiences of that in this story.
The second individual whose death is reported in this story is a 14 year old boy:
“On the same day that Fida was killed, 14-year-old Ismail al-Bardawil was also shot dead. He was killed in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, in southern Gaza… He is one of more than 300 children killed since the start of the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s health ministry.”
Again killed, again killed by Israeli forces, along with more than 300 other children. Once again the BBC offers no verification, no caveats, no qualifying language. The BBC informs audiences that this mother and this child were killed by Israel, explicitly, based on nothing more than the word of their families. If that was the reporting standard they work to that would be bad enough, but the issue is that they claim themselves that the evidentiary bar is orders of magnitude higher than that, and in order to report a claim of killing they must be able to independently verify exactly what happened.
This demands the question, is this a failure of standards? Or a different standard applied to Israelis over Palestinians? Either answer is damning for a trusted national institution, however a simple failure may be fixed. An institutional double standard based on ethnicity is considerably more of an issue.