The BBC must apologise for its calumny

In 2008 Fisher Price reprogrammed their Little Mummy Cuddle’n Coo doll with new audio, because some parents complained it had told their children that “Islam is the light”. That same year Valentina Hasan, a contestant on Bulgarian Idol, learnt that the lyrics to Mariah Carey’s Without You weren’t “Ken Lee, tulibu dibu douchou”.

It can be brilliantly funny when we hear something incorrectly, or can’t quite work out which words correspond to a specific sound. Sometimes it’s hard to un-hear something even when you know you got it wrong; just try listening to Eric Carmen’s All by Myself normally once
you’ve hear him singing “Obama’s Elf, don’t wana be Obama’s Elf any more.”

But this week, the BBC demonstrated just how damaging this phenomenon can be. They accused a bus full of religious Jewish children fleeing a racist attack, of being racist themselves. A video taken from inside the bus circulated widely, showing the thugs chasing away the Chabad-organised group for having had the temerity to dance on the street at Chanukah.

The BBC asserted in their report, however, that “racial slurs” against Muslims could be heard inside the bus. This shifted the focus of attention from the real horror of Jewish teenagers being attacked, to scrutinising a muffled and noisy recording for clues. When challenged, the BBC conceded there was only one such “slur” – somebody, they claimed, said “dirty
Muslims” two seconds into the recording.

I’ve listened to the audio over and over. I can tell exactly which part they’re referring to, and it isn’t someone asking the driver to close the doors in Hebrew. It’s the bit before that. I have no idea what is being said in those four muffled syllables, but what I can say for certain is that nobody at the BBC does either.

Whatever it is, it sounds like it’s being said in English, and later in the recording a similar tone of voice (male) can be heard saying “we’ll come back when we’re ready.” Once someone suggests to you that it might be “dirty Muslims” you might well hear that in the sound. But just like those who hear “Obama’s Elf” instead of “all by myself”, you’d be wrong

It comes down to a phenomenon first described by the English psychologist Peter Wason called confirmation bias: a tendency to favour information that confirms one’s assumptions, preconceptions or hypotheses whether these are actually and independently true or not. Wason demonstrated this human tendency in an experiment where he asked people to
figure out the rule behind a sequence of numbers: 2-4-6. They were allowed to ask questions to test their ideas.

Most thought it was a series of three even numbers, and suggested other sequences to test their hypothesis, such as 4-8-10 or 20-22-24. Sure enough, their sequences were deemed to follow the rule as well, and they settled on their explanation as the truth. But the reality was they hadn’t tried any sequences which would disprove their theory, and had therefore missed
the correct, simpler rule: any three increasing numbers would have worked, even
or not.

In the same way, once somebody in the BBC newsroom heard the words “dirty Muslims” they no doubt tested their theory by asking colleagues if they too could hear those nasty words. And just as with the Fisher Price doll, once the suggestion was implanted in their minds, those being asked may well have heard it too. However, when asked what they hear without any
suggestions, nobody I have come across offers “Islam is the light” or “dirty Muslims” as their interpretations in these two cases.

Interestingly, an episode of the BBC programme Horizon once demonstrated another way in which the human brain can interpret sounds differently depending on other, non-auditory factors. The McGurk Effect demonstrates how the exact same audio recording can be heard as two different things depending on the visuals it accompanies. The Horizon episode concluded that “the McGuirk effect shows us that what we hear may not always be the
truth.”

A few days after the attack, I went to the spot where it happened to interview some of those who had been on the bus. I wanted to know if any of them had heard racial slurs. I realise it wouldn’t be conclusive, but if they said they had heard the offending words or something similar, I could conclude they had probably been uttered. As it happened, none of them said they’d heard anything anti-Muslim being said at all. Their testimony doesn’t conclusively prove anything, but it also doesn’t provide any solid evidence for the slur having been said
when the audio in question is indecipherable.

Without any clear and conclusive evidence of something having happened a journalist should not report it. Yet the BBC categorically and definitively reported that “a slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.” When it came to the antisemitic attack itself, which is clearly shown in the video, they qualified their words, writing about “allegations” of
anti-Semitic abuse" and that a man “seems” to make a Nazi salute; this despite clear and verifiable evidence. 

The BBC chose to bleep-out the alleged slur – censorship which ensured nobody could make up their own mind from watching the embedded video on their website. They also bleeped out a second section around 12 seconds into the video, but later conceded that they were alleging only one slur, not two. Thus they’ve even demonstrated their acknowledgement that they misheard something the first time round.

Its time the BBC apologised and retracted their claim against the victims of this antisemitic attack. If not, they should provided clear and solid evidence that could stand up in court of what they think happened. Our national broadcaster ought not engage in such calumny.