The BBC has pulled six reporters off air and launched an investigation over their pro-Palestine social media posts.
The British network claims that the BBC News Arabic reporters violated their rules about impartiality with their posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
All of the reporters have since deleted the posts. One had allegedly said, “Israel’s prestige is crying in the corner,” according to a report from the Telegraph.
Another one of the reporters, Aya Hossam, allegedly “liked” a post saying, “Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, whether men or women, and they all had victims of explicit violations… This term ‘civilians’ applies to the animals and pets that live there and they are not seriously at fault.”
Hossam also allegedly shared a post that said, “the Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”.
BBC said in a statement that they are “urgently investigating” the matter.
“We are urgently investigating this matter. We take allegations of breaches of our editorial and social media guidelines with the utmost seriousness, and if and when we find breaches we will act, including taking disciplinary action,” the BBC said in a statement on Monday.
A member of the BBC News Arabic team was stopped and assaulted by Israeli police in Tel Aviv last week, while riding in a vehicle that was marked “Press.”
The BBC addressed the assault in a separate statement, saying, “Journalists must be able to report on the conflict in Israel-Gaza freely.”
Last week, MSNBC also pulled Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Ali Velshi, three prominent Muslim reporters off air — but claimed that the changes were “coincidental” and not related to their views on the war.
Press TV reports, “the apparent dismissals came after the editorial board of the New York Post published a scathing attack on MSNBC for its ‘shameful’ coverage of the Palestinian operation, accusing the news organization of having ‘run interference for Hamas.'”
In 2021, Velshi hosted a segment on MSNBC titled, “The Right To Exist Goes Both Ways,” which has gone viral again since the war began on October 7.
