BBC – Time to End Misrepresentation

JVL introduction

We publish below an Open Letter addressed to the BBC’s Director-General Tim Davie.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has a mandate to inform the public in an impartial manner about matters of interest to the citizens of the country. It is a vitally important institution – a public service broadcaster funded by licence fees from those who depend upon it for entertainment and education. As such it is under threat from commercial interests who would rather see it paid for by advertising and run unashamedly for profit. This we must resist. But the BBC is increasingly open to challenge for editorial policies which have the effect of silencing dissent at a time in our history when open debate is crucial to the preservation of hard-won rights and freedoms. This silencing has been particularly evident in the way the BBC has handled allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.

The authors of the  Open Letter – members of a non-party-political group called CAMPAIN – make a well-founded case that the BBC has failed to fulfill its mandate in its coverage of the Labour Party’s vicissitudes.

The group, whose slogan is Time to End Misrepresentation, say the open letter reflects widespread anger at the BBC’s portrayal of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and disquiet about the Party’s purge of Corbyn supporters since the election, well documented in the Al Jazeera “Labour Files” documentaries but little reported in the mainstream media. They also note concern about coverage of Brexit, during and since the 2016 referendum, indicating that “misrepresentation of the Labour left is part of wider problems at the BBC” which “requires radical reform if it is to uphold its Charter in terms of impartiality and accuracy.”

The full text of the Open Letter appears below.

To add your support, click here.

Open Letter to the BBC, from license-fee payers

Dear Mr Davie

​We, the undersigned, greatly value the BBC in terms of its declared mission and public purposes. We all pay the license fee or have done so most of our working lives.

Precisely because of this, we are deeply disturbed by the way the BBC has been reporting allegations about the scale of antisemitism in the Labour Party since the middle of the last decade.​

We do not write on behalf of any party-political grouping. The group coordinating this effort is called CAMPAIN [i], a resolutely non-partisan body that includes people of all political parties and none. Its aim is simply to improve truthfulness and raise standards in public life. Our complaint is rooted in the belief that the BBC should uphold its Charter in terms of accuracy and impartiality.

Here are just a few examples of the BBC’s shortcomings in its coverage of this topic:

• The BBC has repeatedly reported the narrative about Labour antisemitism as a fact, without checking the veracity of the underlying allegations [ii]. This was evident, for example, in Laura Kuenssberg’s reporting during the 2016 local election campaign and her statement on News at Ten immediately following the Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? of July 2019 [iii]. See also Kirsty Wark’s repeated interruptions on Newsnight of Jewish interviewees who, based on their own experience, denied the existence of widespread antisemitism within the Labour Party and complained that the concept had been weaponised to undermine Jeremy Corbyn [iv].

• The Panorama documentary fell far short of the BBC’s own standards, as shown in the Media Reform Coalition’s catalogue of reporting failures regarding impartiality and accuracy [v].  Notably, the documentary withheld from viewers the facts that: (a) the Jews interviewed were all officers of the anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), and; (b) both of the two expert witnesses were employed by organisations that promote Israel’s interests in the UK [vi]. Furthermore, Panorama relied on Ben Westerman’s testimony that a recording has shown to be untruthful, and a statement from Izzy Lenga that stretched credibility beyond reasonable bounds [vii]. The documentary also showcased interviewees’ erroneous claims that the Corbyn leadership had interfered in disciplinary cases involving allegations of antisemitism [viii].

• The BBC failed to respond publicly to the very serious allegations in Al Jazeera’s Labour Files documentary series about the shortcomings of the Panorama documentary.

• The BBC has consistently failed to shine an investigatory light on the interest groups and lobbyists behind the stream of accusations about antisemitism, and the relentless push for the adoption of the highly contested IHRA working definition of antisemitism. For this coverage, the public has had to rely on foreign broadcasters like Al Jazeera and principled independent journalists like Peter Oborne. Hence, our national broadcaster has defaulted on its responsibility.

• By these actions and lack of action, the BBC has missed a historic opportunity to play a positive role in the functioning of British democracy in accordance with its Charter.  Had it properly investigated these matters, it could have enlightened public discourse in the run-up to a general election while calming unjustified fears among many Jewish voters [ix] and others. Instead, it became complicit in a campaign of misinformation. We fear that if this lesson is not learned, history will repeat itself.

We ask the BBC to respond to each of these points, taking account of the evidence in the endnotes and links below.  We look forward to receiving a thorough and well-evidenced reply.

Kind regards

The undersigned (see below endnotes)

Endnotes

[i] Campaign against Misrepresentation in Public Life, Information and the News, www.campain.org

[ii] The questionable nature of these allegations has long been evident from information in the public domain – see summary articles here and here. Available statistics in no way supported the thesis that the Labour left was a hotbed of rampant antisemitism, and showed that prejudice towards most if not all minorities, including Jews, was higher on the right of the political spectrum.

[iii] See BBC News at Ten, 10th July 2019. Political editor Laura Kuenssberg intoned gravely: Many party members have left, and if Labour can’t get a grip of racism in its own ranks, what might they lose next?

[iv] This is demonstrated in the Not the Andrew Marr Show here.

[v] MRC’s statement can be seen here.

[vi] The Community Security Trust (CST) and the British-Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).

[vii] Here are clips about Ben Westerman AMEND THIS and Izzy Lenga from the Al Jazeera Labour Files documentary. Richard Sanders provides further information about Izzy Lenga in this article, saying that her statements ought surely to have set alarm bells ringing at the BBC for anyone with even the remotest familiarity with the internal culture of the Labour Party.

[viii] For information on this and other matters cited under this bullet, see Al Jazeera, The Labour Files, The Crisis, from 41:50 mins to 48.40 mins. Far from what was stated in the Panorama documentary, the Labour leader’s office did not intervene to protect members under investigation.

[ix] This article contains abundant evidence about Corbyn’s anti-racist credentials and shows that anti-Jewish feelings are low in Britain relative both to other countries in Europe and to feelings against other minority groups. Its quotes Antony Lerman, former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research saying that there is probably no place more secure for Jews anywhere else in the world.

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