Why I said the BBC is complicit in genocide live on air
Lawrence said: "Hi there, I'm just calling, thank you so much for putting me on. The BBC and the UK Government are complicit in the Palestinian genoc–"
She was promptly cut off before she could say the end of the word "genocide", as radio host Tina Daheely went on to say: "Oh, okay, not about wedding speeches at all. Cut that one off there because I've no idea what else they were going to say."
A BBC spokesperson said at the time: 'During a specific item on wedding speeches, a caller began to give personal views unrelated to the subject matter, so we swiftly moved on to the next listener's opinion.'
Speaking to The National, Lawrence (below) revealed that the disruption was part of a coordinated effort by campaign group Youth Demand, which is planning on taking more action against the BBC in the coming months.
Mary Nest Lawrence is a 23-year-old activist with Youth Demand (Image: Supplied) Lawrence said the group were targeting the BBC because of their coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza, pointing towards a recent report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), found that the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage per fatality, despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel.
The broadcaster was also found to have interrupted or dismissed claims of genocide more than 100 times – while only 3% of articles analysed by the CfMM used the terms "war crimes" in relation to Israeli violence against Palestinians.
READ MORE: BBC Scotland breached accuracy standards with Labour peer on Debate Night
Lawrence told The National that the BBC is where "everyone gets their information from", particularly if they are less politically active.
"Information is such a tool – how are people who aren't necessarily political supposed to know what's going on if the BBC is not telling anybody about it?", she said.
"We disagree with the UK Government for continuing trade with Israel, for allowing all of these people to die despite the fact that Netanyahu's been tried as a war criminal.
"And the BBC is not showing any of this. They're not doing their job, they're not providing everybody with all the facts."
Lawrence said that a group of seven campaigners had tried to get on the BBC's phone-in on Thursday.
"I was the only one who got on, but we're going to keep trying," she said.
Mary Nest Lawrence (Image: Supplied) Lawrence added that the presenter's response was "crazy", as she said that she did not realise that she had been cut off so promptly until she saw clips of the exchange circulate online.
"It's ironic I got halfway through the word 'genocide' and then they cut me off," she told The National.
A similar incident involving the BBC also took place on Thursday, when a student opening their A-Level results in England was cut off after saying "free Palestine, end the genocide and the BBC's complicity".
Lawrence said that it was "bonkers" to see a similar scenario unfold on the same day, but added that it was also "so positive".
READ MORE: Robin McAlpine: Why I won't be reading Nicola Sturgeon's book
She told The National: "Young people don't really have a platform in the media. If I was a young person and I heard that kind of stuff in the media I'd be like, 'oh great, so people are mad, people are angry and they disagree with what's going on'."
Youth Action has previously targeted the BBC through various sit-in protests, and has also disrupted several major events including this year's Eurovision Song Contest and London Pride, where activists blocked the float of US-based technology company Cisco over its alleged ties with Israel.
However, in the coming months, The National understands that the non-violent direct action group are planning on focusing their efforts more on the BBC – such as through more phone-in disruptions and sit-ins – in the hope that the BBC will change the way it reports on Gaza.
Mary Nest Lawrence (left) has previously taken part in action against the BBC (Image: Supplied) "They definitely need to be reporting statistics," Lawrence said.
"You go on the Al Jazeera website and the first thing you're confronted with is how many people we've lost overnight.
"We should be bombarded by what's happening, we shouldn't be allowed to look away, we shouldn't be listening to [segments on] awkward wedding speeches when people are being gunned down while they queue for aid.
"They're offering no accurate representation of the world and they claim to be a news channel. They're lying by omission."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
15 minutes ago
- The National
Owen Jones: Genocidal Israel has its sights set on West Bank
Normally, states – like individuals – which commit terrible crimes go to great lengths to suppress their real motives: after all, doing otherwise represents a confession. But having rationally decided that its Western benefactors have granted it immunity, Israel's leaders and officials simply said, in public, over and over again, what their criminal and indeed genocidal intentions are. Which brings us to two Israeli ministers. One is Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's financial minister and the de facto governor of the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank. In a speech, he has declared: 'We will bury the Palestinian state, Europe will have nothing left to recognise.' READ MORE: Scotland's post-war pain and pride brought to life in powerful Fringe play debut Here, he is openly taunting the empty posturing of European states, like Britain. Keir Starmer has declared that his government will recognise Palestinian nationhood next month unless certain conditions, like Israel accepting a ceasefire, are met – using an inalienable right as a bargaining chip. But in doing so, Starmer had opted for the most symbolic option, rather than, say, ending all arms sales, imposing sanctions and ending trade. Smotrich knows this, which is why he is openly mocking the likes of Starmer. He knows Western leaders are not actually interested in putting pressure on Israel, that all this rhetoric is meant purely for domestic consumption, to try to dupe Western citizens into doing something. The 'two-state solution' exists, in practice, as a crutch for Western leaders to get through interviews without having to answer questions about meaningful action. What Smotrich is planning here are construction plans which cut the West Bank's north off from its south in order to – in his words – create a 'reality that buries the idea of a Palestinian state – because there's nothing to recognise and no one to recognise it'. Housing units for thousands of illegal Israeli settlers will be built. For those who believe that Smotrich is a fringe figure, despite all his genocidal aspirations in Gaza having been granted: he boasted in this speech of how Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had 'supported and enabled me to carry out this revolution' in the West Bank. The West Bank has long been the site of Israel's murderous suffocation. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers there, living with the privileges afforded to them under a system of apartheid. The indigenous Palestinians, on the other hand, are deprived of basic rights and are systematically driven from their homes. Hundreds were slaughtered in the years running up to October 7, and hundreds more since. Since January, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank, the largest forced displacement since Israel's occupation began in 1967. This is a slow-motion Gaza. One of Smotrich's colleagues, Israel's national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, also underlined that Israel's genocidal intent is not simply confined to Gaza. A hideous video has been posted of him confronting Marwan Barghouti, who is frequently described as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Hailing from Ramallah in the West Bank, this unifying leader has been imprisoned for more than two decades, languishing in solitary confinement: looking shockingly frail, the video clearly intended to emphasise how much he'd suffered. 'You will not defeat us. Whoever harms the people of Israel, whoever kills children, whoever kills women … we will erase them,' says Ben-Gvir. This is nakedly genocidal. There is, as ever, no pretence. The Israeli state is telling the world that it intends to erase the Palestinian people, because it quite rationally understands there will be no consequences. Has it not wiped Gaza from the world map, exterminated tens of thousands of its people, deliberately starved its entire population, buried its hospitals in rubble, butchered medics and aid workers, presided over industrialised torture and rape – and only suffered Western handwringing as a result? READ MORE: I was cut off on air for saying BBC is complicit in genocide. Here's why I did it And that is why the Israeli state knows that it won't just eliminate Palestinian Gaza, but successfully annex the West Bank and remove its Palestinian population there, too. Indeed, the West Bank was always the jewel in its crown. But given the impunity, Israel has given notice about its real plans. This week, Netanyahu made his expansionist ambitions clear. He was asked by a TV interviewer if he felt connected to a vision of a 'Greater Israel', and replied: 'Very much.' This 'Greater Israel' includes parts of Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Imagine the leader of a state hostile to the West openly made clear their desire to annex the land of multiple neighbours, in order to expand an ethno state. It would lead news bulletins, be splashed on newspaper front pages, be denounced by Western leaders – all as damning evidence of naked, unhinged aggression. But not so here. Over and over again, Israel's leaders simply state their criminal intent, and yet the vast majority of Western media outlets act as though it's not really happening, or as though it's some parallel universe. But there's no subtlety, no secrecy. Here is a crime confessed to over and over again: no one can say they were not warned.
Leader Live
3 hours ago
- Leader Live
Israeli minister confronts long-imprisoned Palestinian leader face to face
Marwan Barghouti is serving five life sentences after being convicted of involvement in attacks at the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in the early 2000s. Polls consistently show he is the most popular Palestinian leader. He has rarely been seen since his arrest more than two decades ago. It was unclear when the video was taken, but it shows national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, known for staging provocative encounters with Palestinians, telling Barghouti that he will 'not win'. 'Anyone who messes with the people of Israel, anyone who murders our children, anyone who murders our women, we will wipe them out,' Mr Ben-Gvir said in the video. He repeated those words in a post on X in which he shared the footage. Mr Ben-Gvir's spokesman confirmed the visit and the video's authenticity, but denied that the minister was threatening Barghouti. Barghouti, now in his mid-60s, was a senior leader in President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah movement during the intifada. Many Palestinians see him as a natural successor to the ageing and unpopular leader of the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israel considers him a terrorist and has shown no sign it would release him. Hamas has demanded his release in exchange for hostages taken in the October 7 2023 attack that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. In a Facebook post, Barghouti's wife said she could not recognise her husband, who appeared frail in the video. Still, she said after watching the video, he remained connected to the Palestinian people. 'Perhaps a part of me does not want to acknowledge everything that your face and body shows, and what you and the prisoners have been through,' wrote Fadwa Al Barghouthi, who spells their last name differently in English. Israeli officials say they have reduced the conditions under which Palestinians are held to the bare minimum allowed under Israeli and international law. Many detainees released as part of a ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year appeared gaunt and ill, and some were taken for immediate medical treatment.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
No ceasefire, no deal. What summit means for Trump, Putin and Ukraine
US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have left Alaska without reaching an agreement for a ceasefire in an almost three-hour meeting, the leaders delivered a joint statement to the media before leaving without taking BBC correspondents who are in Anchorage for the summit assess what it means for the US and Russian leaders as well as what happens next in the war in Ukraine. Meeting dents Trump's reputation as a dealmaker By North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher"There's no deal until there's a deal," Donald Trump said early in his post-summit remarks here in was a roundabout way of conceding that after several hours of talks, there's no deal. No ceasefire. Nothing tangible to president said that he and Vladimir Putin made "some great progress", but with little details about what that might be, it's left to the world's imagination."We didn't get there," he later said, before exiting the room without taking any questions from the hundreds of gathered travelled a long way to only produce such vagaries, even if America's European allies and Ukrainian officials may be relieved he did not offer unilateral concessions or agreements that could have undermined future the man who likes to tout himself as a peacemaker and a dealmaker, it appears that Trump will leave Alaska with neither. There are also no indications that future a future summit that includes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is forthcoming, Putin's "next time in Moscow" quip about their next meeting Trump had less at stake during these negotiations than Ukraine or Russia, it still will put a dent in his domestic and international prestige after earlier promises that this meeting had only a 25% chance of more, the president had to suffer the apparent indignity of standing silent as Putin started off the press-conference-that-wasn't with extensive opening remarks. It was a marked difference than the normal routine in the Oval Office, when the US president typically holds court while his foreign counterpart looks on without Alaska is American territory, Putin seemed more at home in what his officials like to note was once "Russian America" before its 19th Century sale to the US. That may eat at the American president over the comings days, as will press coverage that will present this summit as a flop. The big question now - one reporters were unable to ask on Friday - is whether Trump will decide to impose his much-threatened new sanctions on Russia as punishment or if he will find a reason to once again push the deadlines farther down the road. Putin gets his moment in the global spotlight By Steve Rosenberg, Russia editorWhen is a "press conference" not a press conference?When there are no was palpable surprise in the hall when Presidents Putin and Trump left the podium as soon as they'd delivered their statements – without taking any of the Russian delegation, too, left the room swiftly without answering any of the questions journalists were shouting at signs that when it comes to the war in Ukraine Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump still have a major difference of Trump has been pushing for a Russian ceasefire. Vladimir Putin didn't give it to was a very different vibe earlier in the day. President Trump had rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, treating the Kremlin leader as an honoured the Russian president got his moment in the geo-political limelight, sharing the stage with the leader of the world's most powerful how will Trump react to what happened? He still hasn't managed to persuade Putin to end Russia's war in he'd threatened a tougher approach to Russia, with ultimatums, deadlines and warnings of more sanctions if Moscow ignored calls for a hasn't followed he? A sigh of relief from Ukraine - but fear for what's next By Vitaliy Shevchenko, Russia Editor BBC MonitoringWhat just happened in Anchorage may feel anti-climactic for many, but in Kyiv there will be sighs of relief that no "deal" has been announced that would cost Ukraine of Ukraine will also know that all of their key deals with Russia have ended up broken, so even if one had been announced here in Anchorage, they would have been will be alarmed, however, that at the joint appearance in front of the media Vladimir Putin yet again spoke of the "root causes" of the conflict and said only their removal would lead to lasting peace. Translated from Kremlin-speak, this means he is still determined to pursue the original objective of his "special military operation" - which is to dismantle Ukraine as an independent state. Three-and-a-half years of Western efforts have failed to make him change his mind, and that now includes the Alaska uncertainty that persists after the meeting is also worrying. What happens next? Will Russia's attacks continue unabated?The past few months have seen a succession of Western deadlines that came and went without consequences, and threats that were never carried out. Ukrainians see this as an invitation for Putin to continue his attacks. They may see the apparent lack of progress achieved Anchorage in the same light. WATCH: Smiles, handshakes and a shared limo: The greeting unpackedVISUALS: The war-ravaged Ukrainian territories in mapsVERIFY: Russian attacks on Ukraine double since Trump inaugurationGROUND REPORT: Left out of Alaska talks, Ukrainians fear an unjust peace
