Why can’t the BBC tell the difference between hostages and prisoners?

Would you like to edit BBC News? Honestly, I’d quite fancy the gig. The BBC is one of the most important news organisations on the planet, and as a journalist it would surely be a hugely rewarding job.

There is only one problem, which is that I have a fundamental flaw that prevents me from doing it. I can, you see, tell the difference between a murderer and hostage.

From the moment the first hostages were released last month as part of the ceasefire deal which required Israel to release Palestinian prisoners in return, the BBC has repeatedly equated the two. Once might be an error – we all make mistakes. Twice, not quite a pattern, although… But by now, the BBC must have repeated this canard – this lie, to be clear – thousands of times, because it seems that this equivalence is made more often than not.

On Saturday, for example, the BBC News Channel’s coverage of the release of the hostages was captioned throughout: “Concerns over appearance of hostages on both sides”. How do I not love the BBC’s coverage? Let me count the ways.

“Hostages on both sides”. Every time – every single time – the BBC falls hook, line and sinker for Hamas’ propaganda. This equivalence between Palestinian terrorists imprisoned for murder, and other prisoners, with innocent hostages seized on October 7 might as well have a banner replacing the BBC logo with one reading Hamas Broadcasting Service, because the BBC is peddling exactly the propaganda narrative Hamas wants – as if all Israelis are legitimate targets for its terror, and its own actual terrorists are innocent freedom fighters.

That’s not all, of course. There are, says the Hamas Broadcasting Service, aka the BBC, concerns over the appearance of both the hostages and the prisoners. That may well be true in Broadcasting House. But you would have to be devoid of even the most basic journalistic ability not to be able to spot the difference between the emaciated, skeletal figures of the three hostages who were released from their captivity in Gaza on Saturday, having been starved, tortured, beaten, denied and humanitarian visits and the appearance of the released Palestinian prisoners who had regular visits, food and medicine and who looked as if they were ready to resume their previous role as terrorists. Indeed, within hours of their release some were pictured touting machine guns in just that vein.

This supposed equivalence of concern of their respective appearance is the very definition of fake news. Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and yet not a single one of them, other than one who is reported to have cancer, looks emaciated. If Israel treated them so badly – starving them as Hamas does its hostages – why are we not seeing them also paraded by Hamas? You know the answer: because it isn’t true.

None of this matters to the BBC, of course, which doesn’t care about the facts when it comes to Israel and which is determined to equate innocent hostages with convicted Palestinian prisoners. Yesterday, Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Within moments of asking about the hostages she was at it, attacking him over the “strong body of evidence about appalling conditions for Palestinian prisoners, violence, abuse and humiliation inside Israeli prisons. How can you justify that?”

How can you justify that, indeed – a question that needs to be answered by Ms Kuenssberg and the BBC.