BBC News website live page promotes conspiracy theorist Carlson
As is standard practice when a big story breaks, the BBC News website provided live page coverage of events following the Israeli and American strikes on Iran on the morning of February 28th. The initial live page was replaced by another which opened on the morning of March 2nd following Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel and is credited as follows:
Members of the BBC’s audience visiting that live page on the morning of March 3rd in order to catch up on overnight events found the following uncredited entry, illustrated with a photograph taken on January 9th:
The inclusion of that entry suggests that some unidentified BBC journalist seems to have sat through at least an hour and twelve minutes of an episode of Carlson’s show (including the bouts of bizarre cackling) that appeared the previous evening.
Apparently, additional statements made by Carlson in that podcast – including those concerning “neocon bloodlust and demonic spirits” and his promotion of a conspiracy theory according to which Qatar and Saudi Arabia had “arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries” – did not deter that BBC journalist from presenting Carlson’s comments concerning Israel’s prime minister as though they were legitimate and relevant analysis.
Evidently too, Carlson’s shift from mainstream US conservative media figure to a polarising internet personality who promotes conspiracy theories, falsehoods and – to put it generously – tolerates antisemitic narratives did not turn on any red lights for the editors of this live page.
While it may seem strange to find the BBC quoting and promoting a far-right figure such as Carlson, it is once again obvious that when such views serve the purpose of advancing the corporation’s own chosen framing of a story, any reservations are cast aside.
It is therefore interesting to see who else considered remarks made by Carlson in that podcast to be worthy of further promotion.
They include the Qatar-linked media outlet ‘Middle East Eye’, the Turkish outlets ‘Türkiye Today’, TRT Today and Anadolu Agency, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian Revolutionary Council and another Muslim Brotherhood outlet.
The BBC’s funding public may well be asking itself what sort of company their national broadcaster keeps and to which standards of journalism it aspires.
Hadar Sela was born in the north of England and has lived in Israel for over three decades. She has a special interest in the influence of the media on the British public’s perceptions of the Middle East and the Islamist networks operating in the UK and has written pre-emptive reports on several anti-Israel campaigns, including the flotillas and the Global March to Jerusalem in March 2012. Hadar’s work has been published in the Jerusalem Post, The Algemeiner, The Commentator, MERIA Journal and at Harry’s Place, among others.
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