The BBC has apologized after a news anchor on Jan. 31 referred to Israeli hostages held by Hamas as “prisoners” in a report about the next day’s upcoming hostage release.
BBC News anchor Nicky Schiller said three “Israeli prisoners” were due to be released by the terrorist group on Saturday.
“Confirmation in the last couple of hours, first from Hamas, that three Israeli prisoners, all men this time, will be released tomorrow and then we will see 90 Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails,” Schiller said.
On Friday afternoon, the BBC apologized on air for the remarks.
“Earlier today on BBC News we reported on the names of those three Israeli hostages who are due to be freed tomorrow,” the channel said. “At one point during the coverage we mistakenly called the hostages ‘prisoners’ and we would like to apologize.”
Yarden Bibas, 35, Ofer Kalderon, 54, and Keith Siegel, 65, were taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel. They were released on Saturday in exchange for 183 Arab terrorists, more than double the previously reported number of 81.
Yarden came home without his family, which was also kidnapped. Hamas claimed in November 2023 that his wife, Shiri, 33, and their two children—Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2—had been killed after they were abducted.
However, Shiri and the boys were included on the list of 33 captives to be released in the latest ceasefire-for-hostages deal, leaving their fate uncertain.
The BBC has a history of biased anti-Israel reporting.
In November, the BBC took a neutral stance when Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) called for its members to show up at work wearing items, such as keffiyehs, that express solidarity with the Palestinian national cause.
The TUC includes the National Union of Journalists, or NUJ, many of whose members are employed by the BBC.
“By saying nothing, the BBC is effectively abandoning its pretense of impartiality, allowing its Jewish employees to feel intimidated, and continuing its descent into becoming a battleground for political ideologies,” HonestReporting, a media watchdog, said of the BBC‘s silence.
In September, a report found that the BBC had violated its own editorial guidelines 1,553 times during the four-month period beginning Oct. 7, 2023, repeatedly downplaying Hamas terrorism and presenting Israel as an aggressor.
“The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth,” the report said.
British lawyer Trevor Asserson, who runs Israel’s largest international law firm, Asserson Law Offices, and who has long campaigned against BBC bias, led the research.
Asserson was joined by a team of about 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists. Artificial intelligence was also used to analyze nine million words of BBC output.
It found that BBC journalists repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as militaristic and aggressive.
Some journalists used by the BBC to cover the current Israel-Hamas war previously showed sympathy for Hamas and even celebrated its terrorism, the report said.
Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, excused Hamas’s terrorist acts, and Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, downplayed the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, it said.
The report censured especially the public broadcaster’s BBC Arabic channel, calling it one of the most biased of all international media in its coverage of the Gaza war.
It noted 11 cases in which BBC Arabic featured reporters who have previously made public statements in support of terrorism and specifically Hamas, without letting viewers know.
