THE BBC has dismissed a complaint after a host called an Israeli government spokesperson a “skilled propagandist” during an interview about the widespread starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
The corporation’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) probed the issue after a viewer claimed that the presenter had shown “discourtesy and hostility” during as interview on BBC Radio 4 on May 14.
The listener also complained that the Israeli government spokesperson had faced a tougher line of questioning in comparison to a similar interview with a representative of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The ECU said it had assessed whether the programme had met the BBC’s guidelines on impartiality and had ruled to dismiss the listener's complaint.
It said the presenters “skilled propagandist” remark followed an exchange in which the Israeli government spokesperson had suggested journalists in Gaza who had reported on cases of starvation were “acting on behalf of Hamas”.
In its judgment, the ECU said it “accepted” the presenter could have used a more “neutral form” of words.
However, it added that considered in context, listeners would have understood that the Radio 4 host was reminding the interviewee that his role was not that of a “disinterested observer but a government spokesman”.
The ECU noted for the second part of the complaint, referring to the UN representative, that although the interviewee had not given a direct answer to the presenter’s question, the answer she did give was still relevant to the main topic of the interview.
The judgment added the ECU did not consider the presenter’s decision to continue to focus on that topic rather than pressing the interviewee on a less relevant point was “evidence of bias”.
The dismissal of the BBC complaint comes after a UN committee chair has condemned the “deliberate starvation” of women and girls in Gaza as a “war crime”.
Nahla Haidar El Addal, chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) said that the “act of seeking food has become a death sentence”.
Following the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas in Israel, defence minister Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege” of Gaza, with Israel cutting off the supply of food, water, fuel and electricity to the region.
By December the same year, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger. Now, more than 20,000 children are reported to have been hospitalised for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July this year, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Last month, a mass starvation expert warned that the crisis in Gaza is the “most severe” and “minutely engineered” act of deliberate starvation since the Second World War.
Speaking with System Update, Alex de Waal noted that whilst the man-made famine in Gaza is not the largest by numbers, it is more “intense” than the starvation imposed on countries like Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen.
De Waal, who has been working on mass starvation for over 40 years, said there is no other case since the Second World War that he can think of where people are being subjected to such a severe degree of starvation.
He said: “What's really remarkable and unique about what we're seeing in Gaza today, it's not the largest in terms of the numbers – those in Ethiopia and Sudan and indeed in Yemen have been larger – but it's the most intense, the most severe and the most sort of minutely engineered.
“There is no other case since World War Two that I can think of where you have a people being subjected to this degree of starvation, and literally just a few miles away, there are aid givers with the resources, with the expertise, with the plans, with everything worked out, which, at the flick of a switch, could actually deliver a very comprehensive package of aid.”
