EXCLUSIVE: Demands for BBC to adopt IHRA as row rages over ‘biased’ reporting - The Jewish Chronicle

The BBC is being urged adopt the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism amid mounting uproar over its “biased” reporting on Jews and Israel, the JC can reveal.

The demand by senior British politicians and Jewish groups comes after global racism watchdog the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC) named and shamed the BBC on its annual “Global Antisemitism Top Ten” list.

The BBC was ranked third for repeatedly producing errors in its output which SWC claims have systematically “slandered” Jews. Stephen Crabb MP, Robert Halfon MP and Lord Eric Pickles joined SWC, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) to urge the BBC to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

This would signal the corporation’s seriousness in preventing future lapses, they said. The Board of Deputies added that the BBC should introduce antisemitism awareness training for staff. The Board’s President, Marie van der Zyl, said she would raise this with the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie at a meeting in the New Year.

In its report on global antisemitism, SWC included a timeline of controversial incidents involving the BBC that have caused hurt to Jews in 2021. Top of the list was the BBC’s reporting of the attack on Jews on a Chanukah bus trip on Oxford Street.

This “turned the victim into the victimiser” by “falsely reporting” that “anti-Muslim slurs could be heard within the bus”, it said. The report also pinpointed a number of incidents involving BBC Arabic, which the JC accused of systematic anti-Israel bias after an investigation in February.

SWC highlighted a tweet by a BBC Arabic journalist saying, “Hitler was right”, as well as BBC Arabic-language reports that referred to Israelis living within internationally recognised borders as “settlers”.

In addition, the SWC report cited the JC’s story about a recent BBC interview with an Islamic activist who had stood beside Palestinian flags and declared that he “loves death”. The activist was asked by the BBC for his views on combating antisemitism and developing “a sense of harmony between different communities”.

Other moments of deep concern to the Jewish community this year included the BBC presenting an entirely non- Jewish panel to debate whether or not Jews are an ethnicity; a BBC journalist branding Zionism a “racist ideology”; and the BBC describing Alfred Dreyfus as a “notorious Jewish spy” in a teaser for a new drama.

Former Communities Secretary Lord Pickles, Special Envoy for Post Holocaust Issues, said: “That a respected organisation like the Simon Wiesenthal Centre should single out the BBC is a wake up call for the mighty corporation.

"Once the trust of a community is lost it is difficult to regain it. “The UK expects the BBC to set an example in tackling antisemitism. It could do so by following other international and UK institutions adopting and implementing the IHRA modern definition on antisemitism.

"By doing so, it would strengthen and enhance the balance and impartiality of its reporting.”

Robert Halfon MP said: “The BBC director general, Tim Davie, needs to urgently sit down with Jewish community leaders and senior editors and producers to ensure that antisemitism or so called anti-Zionism is banished from every last BBC office and corridor.

"The BBC should be a public service for those of the Jewish faith, just as it is for everyone else. The questions Tim Davie should ask himself are: Do Jews count? Or will the BBC get mired into the ugly swamp of antisemitism?

“A welcome step would be for the BBC to adopt the international definition of antisemitism.”

And Stephen Crabb MP, Chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “This is now a question of leadership for the BBC. It should stop dragging its feet and move quickly to adopt the internationally-recognised definition of antisemitism and ensure that it is upheld in all its output .”

Julian Knight MP, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said the BBC had “questions to answer” over its bus attack coverage, and its reporting was “often too slanted against the Jewish state”.

Claudia Mendoza, co-chief executive of the JLC, said that the corporation had work to do to restore trust with the community.

She said: “I think the IHRA adoption is helpful in terms of allowing institutions to understand what modern antisemitism looks like, but it is not a panacea. The BBC should make sure it has an ongoing dialogue with the Jewish community.”

Former Board president Jonathan Arkush commented: “The Jewish community has lost all trust in the BBC.

Its reputation for fair reporting and impartiality is in tatters.” A CAA spokesman added: “Years of bias against Jews at the BBC have taken their toll. For years we have offered to provide antisemitism training to the BBC and urged the broadcaster to adopt IHRA, but have been rebuffed.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, director at SWC, said: “The threat the BBC poses is of a globally trusted brand which is putting out information about Jews and Israel that is often misleading or outright wrong.”

A spokesman for the BBC responded: “Antisemitism is abhorrent. The BBC strives to serve the Jewish community and all communities across our country fairly with accurate and impartial reporting.”