BBC News Deputy Executive Director Jonathan Munro admitted that the media created a false impression by covering the consequences of the hospital bombing in Gaza.
This was reported by The Independent.
“Correspondent John Donnison was wrong in speculating on the reasons for the hospital’s explosion… At no point did he say that Israelis were the cause of the explosion… but, nonetheless, when it appears that we were speculating, it’s important to correct what we did,” Munro emphasized during his speech at the “Coverage of the Israel-Hamas Conflict” event organized by the Media Society.
The Executive Director of BBC News also added that the situation is an example of how “everything is being done wrong” and that it “shouldn’t have happened.”
It is worth noting that this statement came after Israeli President Isaac Herzog told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that “how BBC characterizes Hamas is a distortion of facts”
At the same time, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaking in Parliament, emphasized that broadcasters, including the BBC, must be “extremely cautious in covering this issue due to its sensitivity and consequences not only in the region but also here in the UK.”
Recall that on October 18, there was an explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Gaza blamed the Israeli Defense Forces for the explosion, claiming that “hundreds of people” were killed at the scene.
In turn, Israel, citing its own intelligence, claims that this is the work of the second-largest Gaza group, the “Islamic Jihad,” whose rocket was faulty and hit the hospital.
Later, in one of the first online broadcasts directly from the scene, a BBC correspondent suggested that the strike was carried out by the Israeli military – “it’s hard to imagine what else it could be, considering the size of the explosion, apart from an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes,” Donnison noted at the time.
On October 19, during his visit to Israel, the President of the United States, stated that the rocket strike on the Gaza hospital was the result of a “mistaken missile launched by a terrorist group.”
The IDF also stated that there was “no direct hit on the hospital,” and an Israeli army strike would have caused much more significant consequences, including craters from rocket explosions, which are absent at the scene.
Source: The Gaze
