Israel
BBC Arabic rarely disclosed Hamas ties of Gaza official named in 93 articles, watchdog says
By Jewish Life Staff, . Jewish Life.
BBC Arabic named Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza's Civil Defence Unit, in 93 articles published after October 7, 2023, but identified his links to Hamas in only two of those pieces, according to research by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), a US-based media watchdog.
The finding stands in sharp contrast to the BBC's main English-language service, which, CAMERA said, disclosed the affiliation in 36 of 48 articles featuring Basal, roughly three-quarters of the total.
Who is Mahmoud Basal?
Basal holds the rank of major, according to the Hamas-run interior ministry's Facebook page, and images show him in uniform. Gaza's Civil Defence Unit, which carries out rescue and emergency-response work including at sites struck by Israeli forces, operates under that ministry. Basal has frequently been a source for casualty figures cited in international coverage of the war.
The Jewish Chronicle, which reported CAMERA's findings, noted that Basal's social media history includes a post marking Hamas's 34th anniversary in which he called his son a "future commander" and described the group as "the men of might and honour." In a 2021 post responding to rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians, he wrote: "The resistance excels, watch and enjoy." In another post that year he described the conflict as a struggle against a "criminal murderous enemy against whom we have a [pending case of] vengeance since Prophet Muhammad's era."
The Israel Defense Forces accused Basal last year of issuing "hundreds of false statements to the international media," the Jewish Chronicle reported.
What the BBC said
The BBC said its Executive Complaints Unit looked last year at a CAMERA complaint covering how a few articles described the Civil Defence Force, and found no breach of standards in those pieces. A BBC spokesperson told the Jewish Chronicle that the unit "would 'expect audiences to be aware that Hamas has been in power in Gaza for many years and runs government functions, including for instance health, emergency response and firefighting.'" The BBC added that it believes its Arabic-speaking audience "would generally understand Hamas's control of Gaza's governmental functions, making it unnecessary or inappropriate to repeat the affiliation in every report."
The corporation's complaints unit also dismissed the significance of the gap between its Arabic and English coverage, saying BBC Arabic should be judged on what it actually airs and publishes rather than measured against its English-language coverage.
What CAMERA argued
CAMERA disputed that reasoning. A spokesperson for the organization said the case "once again demonstrates that BBC Arabic often puts a strict condition on Gazan sources: their affiliations must be scrubbed before they make it to air." The spokesperson said the complaints unit had shown itself "either unable or unwilling to hold BBC Arabic to the same editorial standards as the rest of the Corporation."
The most recent BBC Arabic article quoting Basal, published September 16 according to the Jewish Chronicle, did not mention the Civil Defence service's connection to Hamas. The most recent English-language article featuring him, from August 4, stated that Gaza's Civil Defence "operates under the Hamas-run interior ministry."