WHEN Glastonbury kicked off last weekend, the focus was on Belfast rap group Kneecap and whether the BBC would broadcast their performance.
One member of the trio - rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara – was charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying the flag of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig last year, and the group had garnered much attention after old videos of their shows revealed one member saying: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
After much speculation ahead of the festival, the BBC opted to cut the live feed of their performance.
But elsewhere, it was punk rap duo Bob Vylan that came under the spotlight. Following a speech criticising UK complicity over Israel’s actions in Gaza, frontman Bobby Vylan led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” during a set on Saturday afternoon.
It was broadcast live by the BBC, despite the corporation having deemed the group “high risk” before the festival.
What happened next has since been described as a “media circus” by journalists speaking to the Sunday National, as the BBC scrambled to apologise for the group’s “deplorable behaviour”.
The corporation called the chant “antisemitic”, adding that the feed should have been cut, and it has since gone on to announce it will not broadcast acts deemed as “high risk” in future.
This was all happening in the same week a documentary on the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals by Israel was shown on Channel 4 after it was binned by the BBC.
The BBC received more complaints about Bob Vylan’s performance than any other issue in more than four years, but ex-BBC reporter Karishma Patel said its response was a sign of how “timid and cowardly” the corporation was becoming in its journalism.
“Live broadcasting is a risky business, but it doesn’t mean the BBC should be afraid to broadcast live,” she said.
“I think the BBC is moving toward being more timid, more editorially anxious, because people at the top are not following due process, they’re not carefully considering their editorial decisions, they are apologising and censoring very quickly.
“Complaints from one side seem to have a lot of influence over the BBC and seem to result in panicked, editorially unsound judgements, and I think we are seeing a BBC that is willing to sacrifice its core journalistic principles in order to keep certain groups happy.”
She added: "I’m very concerned about the BBC becoming cowardly in refusing to air quality journalism, but journalists within the BBC are also very concerned about that too."
“[It is] stupid, censorious and a minefield: who decides what is ‘high-risk’?,” she said.
“Decision-makers at the top of the BBC do not seem to care about damage to its reputation or credibility."
She added: “There’s a wider problem with the BBC in that they are shredding their reputation over Gaza.
“I’ve spoken with journalists who are working inside the BBC and they are tearing their hair out, not just because the coverage of this [Israel/Gaza] has been so shocking, that they just want to be able to do their job and report things accurately and they don’t seem to be able to, but these are people who work at the BBC because they believe in the institution and they can see its reputation being shredded over this and they’re worried about that.
“That should be a far greater concern for the BBC.”
Too quick to apologise?
An official report published by the broadcaster on Thursday showed that some 3396 people had complained about the IDF chant.
The last time the number of complaints topped 2000 was October 2022, when a BBC News special on Rishi Sunak, entitled “Our New Prime Minister”, was said to have been biased in favour of the Conservatives and their approach to public spending.
But Patel claimed the BBC was too quick to apologise for streaming Bob Vylan's show.
“I think the BBC was quick to apologise for this without considering the accuracy of the claim that the chant is antisemitic. We’ve seen Jewish voices saying we don’t agree with that [that it was antisemitic], and I feel those voices need to be represented too,” she said.
Shabi said politicians and the media conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is “dangerous”.
She said: “These attempts to portray people who are angry about the IDF for good reason as having been motivated by this antisemitism that lurks in their hearts is just so bad faith.
“I think it’s dangerous when things that are actually criticism of Israel get described as antisemitism. We’re already in an environment where people are low on information about racism, including antisemitism, and there isn’t a high degree of literacy around these subjects.
“The result of officials like politicians and media constantly focusing on antisemitism or what they see as it, more than anything else, and secondly redefining it in these terms, the effect of that is catastrophic for anyone who credibly wants to engage in tackling antisemitism.”
Zack Polanski (below), a Green London Assembly member who is running for leadership of the party, is Jewish himself and said he did not believe the chant was antisemitic.
“At the same time, I would never condone people shouting death to anyone or anything because I always want to push for diplomacy.”
A distraction from the real story
The real concern is that while the media coverage of the Bob Vylan fallout was going on, Israel had attacked a café in Gaza with an indiscriminate 500lb bomb.
Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.
It was the latest episode in the ongoing slaughter of Gazans, with starving Palestinians queuing for food being shot daily.
Shabi said it was shocking the mainstream media chose to “obsess” over a punk rapper’s chant rather than cover the death and destruction in Gaza.
“I found it shocking that the media would be so preoccupied with this [Bob Vylan] and give so much attention to it, and it was particularly galling because those few days were horrendous in Gaza,” she said.
Shabi went on: “What we’re missing here is, what is going on that that ends up being a chant at Glastonbury?
“I think people have been watching the most horrific images coming out of Gaza and what Palestinians are going through, which is just a living hell.
"Every morning we wake up to death in Gaza, staving people being indiscriminately shot as they wait for aid, just the most grotesque things you could imagine and we’ve been seeing that for 20 months while our media and our government has been in this defence of Israel as it does this and it’s making people lose their minds, because it’s such a profound wrong.
“People can see it and feel this helplessness and despair that we have a political climate that seems to be endorsing it."
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC is fully committed to reporting the Israel/Gaza conflict impartially, accurately and to the highest standards of journalism.
"We provide a range of perspectives on the conflict, hold representatives and officials to account and, where appropriate, challenge views on air.
"Our journalists reporting in both English and Arabic have decades of extensive knowledge and experience in covering the region.
“We strongly reject the notion – levelled from different sides of this conflict – that we are pro or anti any position. It is our duty to report what is happening, and we do that without an agenda.
“International journalists including the BBC are not allowed access into Gaza. While we are reporting extensively on what is happening in the strip, this is clearly detrimental to our ability to report and hold those in power to account. We therefore call for the Israeli government to permit our journalists immediate access."
