The veteran BBC broadcaster John Simpson has been busy recently defending the BBC’s decision not to label Hamas a terrorist organisation, despite the horrific pogrom it unleashed on 7 October and despite calls for the BBC to change its stance made by politicians, journalists and the public.
According to Simpson, ‘terrorism’ is a loaded word which communicates moral disapproval of a political organisation. We are told that it is not the BBC’s duty to tell people whom to support and whom to denounce. Rather, the BBC presents the facts and leaves it up to its audiences to decide. Simpson notes that this neutrality has a long history. The BBC never referred to the Nazis as evil or wicked, and refused to label the IRA as terrorists. Of this track record, Simpson is proud.
Yet, since when has the BBC been a neutral organisation? Daily, the BBC gushes its sententious propaganda in articles and programmes panegyrising liberal feminism, multiculturalism and transgenderism without mention that there are cogent criticisms of these credenda.
Arguably, one of the most obvious cases of the BBC’s political bias is how it portrayed Donald Trump. Regardless of one’s view of him, if the BBC is as neutral as Simpon claims, Trump ought not to have received the distaste the BBC levelled at him.
Take, for example, Emily Maitlis’ statement during Newsnight’s discussion of Trump’s state visit in 2019. According to Maitlis, Trump was “not liked at all” in the UK. How does she know? Rather than remain neutral, Maitlis presumed to speak for all British people and ended up making some Americans feel very unwelcome in the UK.
It is also not true that the BBC has never labelled political organisations as terrorists. In an open letter to the BBC’s Office of Communications on 11 October, four barristers confronted the BBC with three examples of its use of the words terror and terrorist. According to Jeremy Brier, David Wolfson, David Pannick and Anthony Grabiner, the BBC referred to the Manchester Arena bombing as terrorism, and describes Al Qaeda and the Irish Republican Army as terrorist groups in its “Bitesize” guide for GCSE students. If the BBC is refusing to use the words terror and terrorist only within the context of Israel, it is evidence, according to the learned silks, of partiality against Israel.
The problem with the BBC’s attempt at holding a neutral position (and ITV and Sky appear also to avoid labelling terrorism as terrorism), is that it belies the moral instincts of its viewers. Beheading babies is terrorism. Any organisation that so buoyantly does this is an instrument of terror, and should be described as such.
It has also escaped Simpson’s notice that it is possible to castigate Hamas without taking sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The BBC could take the view that it will neither favour the Israeli nor the Palestinian cause, but that the depravity to which Hamas stooped has no place anywhere on earth.
By failing to denounce Hamas, the BBC is implying that a case can be made for Hamas’ objectives. Yet what case could be made for the objectives that are, à la Hitler, shamelessly trumpeted in The Covenant of the Hamas. For those who have never had the delectation of reading this document, here are some highlights. In the Preamble, Hamas declares it will destroy Israel. Article 22 accuses Jews of seeking to take over the world. Article 7 calls for the genocide of Jews. Enough said?
The BBC’s policy is a dangerous one. Rather than reinforcing civilised values that make an institution like the BBC possible in the first place, it is opening up a moral vacuum that places British Jews in greater danger of the anti-Semites in our midst, and undermines the authority of the police when dealing with these à la mode racists.
In fact, the BBC undermines us all for when a state broadcaster cannot draw a moral line in the proverbial sand, it weakens existing moral boundaries that are essential to good society. In the face of certain actions, such as the ripping of a baby from a mother’s womb, neutrality is impossible. Simpson and his compadres ought to step down from their self-righteous soapboxes and concede this moral fact.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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Brilliant and correct.
Simpson and the BBC suffering from an acute Post Modernism, in which “truth” can be partial
It depends what you mean by morality. You may need to define it.