The (incomplete) truth about the BBC's Gaza headlines

Telegraph

2 days ago

Donald Trump's press secretary was confident she had the BBC bang to rights.
Responding to a question about the shooting of civilians at the new US-backed aid distribution centres in southern Gaza, Karoline Leavitt accused the BBC of misreporting the story.
Her evidence was a list of different headlines for the same story, which she then read out.
'Israeli tank kills 26.' 'Israeli tank kills 21.' 'Israeli gunfire kills 31.'
In case there was any doubt about her opinion of Britain's national broadcaster, Ms Leavitt presaged her remarks with: 'Unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don't take the word of Hamas as total truth.'
Behind closed doors in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, fists will have punched the air.
Israel's reputation managers have had a battering in the past few days, with allegations of three shootings of civilians by the IDF near the already controversial new aid stations.
It has threatened to discredit entirely the current phase of its military operation to flush out Hamas.
What is currently happening in the 25-by-6-mile pocket of land in the corner of the Levant is arguably the most acute military and humanitarian situation in the world.
But trusted information here is scarce.
Israel banned independent journalists from entering the Strip straight after the October 7 Hamas massacre.
The world now relies on highly polarised and often competing statements from both sides of the divide.
And when they cannot be trusted, there is a network of local on-the-ground reporters living under continuous bombings.
They are serially displaced people who are out of contact for hours a day.
What happened?
Some of those Gazan reporters on the ground have helped The Telegraph piece together what happened in the latest deadly incident when hungry Palestinians attempted to reach heavily guarded aid.
Mervat Zidan, a 20-year-old woman, told us how she ventured from the tent where she lives towards the site with her mother at 4am on Tuesday in the hope of getting food.
'When we reached the area of the Muawiya mosque… heavy shooting started,' she said.
It was not clear where from.
'We lay down in the street, trying to escape the bullets. As soon as my mother raised her head, she was shot in the middle of her head and fell to the ground. No one could try to help us. Everyone was trying to escape.'
Mervat, who lost her brother in January 2024, also said she saw snipers in a nearby tall building – the only one still standing in the neighbourhood.
She says there was also shelling by the IDF.
Later in the day, she found her mother, Reem Salmah Al-Akhras, in the mortuary of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which said it had received 27 bodies from an Israeli shooting.
That facility, ultimately, comes under the control of Hamas.
However, the International Committee of the Red Cross does not, and it said it sent over the 27 corpses to Nasser, Nineteen of them had been dead on arrival at their field hospital and eight subsequently died of their wounds.
There is no confirmation of how these people died or where and by whom they were shot.
Israel said its troops fired warning shots at Palestinians walking the wrong way, and when these didn't work, they fired 'near' the civilians.
Hamas has publicly warned citizens not to collect aid. The Telegraph has found no evidence that it killed civilians in this incident.
The picture, as ever, remains incomplete.
Another witness of the shootings corroborated what Mervat saw.
Our reporters also spoke to Saeed Al-Feri, a 35-year-old from Beit Lahia in the north of the Strip, who had spent four days trying to get to the aid centre in the south, braving bandits, walking for miles, and finally reaching it on Tuesday.
'Suddenly, shooting and artillery shells began,' he said.
'Whoever was injured had no one to rescue. Everyone was rushing to get aid and a shell was fired at us.
'A quadcopter [drone] came and ordered us over a loudspeaker to retreat.'
In recent days, the use of quadcopters and artillery, as well as the general allegations of shooting, have been corroborated by other reporters and witnesses.
They are believed to be weapons only Israel has access to.
A 29-year-old called Musaa from Khan Younis, who spoke to a different local colleague, described the use of quadcopters and artillery at Sunday's incident.
The full, unvarnished truth about what happened at the aid centres may never been known.
Verified footage from Tuesday is hard to find. As usual, there is no shortage of people saying that this is because the whole thing is fabricated.
Information war
Unverified photographs and videos from social media typically fill the vacuum when facts are scarce.
They run parallel with statements from officials often linked to Hamas and, of course, the IDF, Israel's military.
Independent organisations and charities inside Gaza have slowly been vanishing as the war in the Strip has become more violent.
Some have also been blocked by Israel, or excluded from aid distribution.
Online misinformation, especially early after an incident takes place, is persistent and aggressive, and the statements of on-the-ground players routinely contradict each other.
Take air strikes, for example.
The IDF says it targets terrorist command centres. The civilian casualty figures are often published quickly by the health ministry in Gaza, which is ultimately under Hamas control.
There is often no way for local reporters or aid workers to reach the bomb site.
However, the BBC's network is wide and the organisation cites 'trusted sources' in the Strip – without stating who they are – when it produces fast news reports. It also publishes clarifications.
The BBC has entirely rejected Ms Leavitt's criticism, claiming its story and headline from Sunday's shooting were 'updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources'.
'They were always clearly attributed … this is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story,' a spokesman said.
The outlet has certainly come in for some fair criticism since the start of the war – such as misreporting an alleged hospital bombing in the early days.
Last month, the Today programme reported a claim by Tom Fletcher, the UN's humanitarian chief, that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within 48 hours. The corporation later issued a correction when it emerged the figure was an estimate for the number of children at risk of 'severe malnutrition' by March next year.
The practice of updating headlines and the wording of stories as the day goes on is not unique to the BBC.
However, the reporting of Sunday's attack included one disappearing headline referring to Israeli tanks. This has not yet been confirmed.
The propaganda problem
Israel, as well as some Western analysts, have also argued that Hamas persistently inflates mortality figures, partly by failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The terrorist army has a well-oiled propaganda machine.
And there have been widespread allegations about their use of fake news to try to deter ordinary Gazans from accessing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid hubs.
The fingerprints of Hamas or their supporters can often be traced to examples of misattribution involving some, although not all, of the most heartbreaking and bloody videos.
Israel also tries to control the narrative in its own way.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu's government, ministers brand allegations of IDF wrongdoing as 'lies', even when they are later acknowledged to be true.
Foreign powers, including key allies, who question the conduct of the ongoing war are accused of siding with Hamas.
On Sunday, government aides circulated to foreign media a video appearing to show a Hamas gunman murdering a civilian who was carrying a bag of flour.
It appeared to be an attempt to suggest that the terror group was responsible for the disorder and bloodshed at the GHF distribution sites.
But the incident portrayed in the video turned out to have nothing to do with it.
It is unlikely that many in Gaza will have noticed Tuesday's noises about BBC reporting in the White House press room.
Having been deprived of aid for nearly two months, there are increasing reports of impending starvation.
The row between the White House and the BBC is unlikely to help solve the situation.
What happens next?
Civilians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, are being forced south towards the already flattened city of Rafah under the current seize-and-hold military escalation of the IDF campaign to finally defeat Hamas.
There, they are faced with trying to get food from centres whose wider security is provided by the IDF, a military force in one of the most hostile environments, trained to engage – and not to distribute aid.
At the same time, Hamas steps up its campaign of execution and torture of civilians – and associated propaganda videos – in an attempt to keep control of a disintegrating population.
According to one civilian who spoke to The Telegraph, people are getting so desperate that it is increasingly hard to distinguish between armed gangs robbing food trucks for money, and those just hoping to feed themselves that day.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, GHF announced it was temporarily closing its aid distribution centres in order to work on better security for the sites.