Of all the disgusting genocide-apologist headlines pumped out by the establishment media on Gaza, a recent BBC article might now top them all. In a utterly disgraceful move, the news broadcaster entitled a piece about a disabled man the IDF had horrifically murdered in words so blatantly bristling with pro-Israel bias, it beggared belief.
Outrage on social media forced the BBC to change it. However, research shows that far from being a mistake, it’s likely the BBC had a reason to run its propaganda-laced headline.
BBC pro-Israel headline the latest in establishment media bias
It’s ten months now that Israel has been carrying out its brutal genocide in Gaza. People on social media have born witness to ten indescribably atrocious months of Israeli war crimes. At the same time, the corporate and Western press has pushed ten months of whitewashing media to obfuscate and absolve Israel of precisely these unconscionable acts.
There have been too many of these propaganda pieces to note here. That’s because Western outlets have published near wall-to-wall coverage dripping in this bias – and by extension, complicity in Israel’s bloody crusade of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
People on social media have consistently called this out. Meanwhile, journalists and civilians in Gaza, alongside independent sites (including the Canary) have been left to tell the truth about Israel’s unrelenting fascistic massacres.
When Israeli soldiers killed six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family, the appalling Western establishment media spin was plain for all to see:
Oh my goodness. This is terrible & irresponsible reporting from BBC News World. Innocent & defenceless 6 year old girl Hind Rajab was not ‘found dead’ in Gaza. She was brutally killed by the Israeli military. https://t.co/X0x3sCpBnv
— Professor Ahmed Hankir (@ahmedhankir) February 11, 2024
28,000+ ppl have been killed in Gaza. And yet the media still insists on jumping through hoops to write headlines like this one from @CNN, which would suggest Hind died from being trapped in a car. Not that she & her family were killed by Israeli tanks & left to rot for 12 days. pic.twitter.com/cM4otAVIFd
— Yumna (@yumna_patel) February 10, 2024
CNN anchor Kasie Hunt referred to 6-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, who was executed by Israeli tanks in Gaza, as “a woman killed in Gaza.” pic.twitter.com/quqi3OaOyz
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) May 2, 2024
Then, in June, the Canary’s Rachel Swindon reported on a BBC headline that flagrantly ignored Israel slaughtering nearly three hundred Palestinians. It relegated them to the subtext, while celebrating how the IDF had “freed” four Israeli hostages
More recently, folks on X underscored the shocking double standards Western media displayed when Russia attacked a hospital in Ukraine. Particularly, they compared its emotive coverage condemning Russia, with the passive language it applied to Israel bombing Gaza health facilities:
Sometimes the media says “there are no words” to describe or justify horrific attacks on hospitals.
Other times, the media has countless words to describe and justify horrific attacks on hospitals. #gaza #israel #ukraine #russia pic.twitter.com/HM4rXOhnfD
— AHMED | أحمد (@ASE) July 9, 2024
Now, the BBC has added a new sickeningly sanitising headline to the whitewashing hall of infamy and complicity.
BBC whitewashes IDF murder of disabled Palestinian
The article detailed how IDF soldiers had brutally set a combat dog on a autistic disabled man with Down Syndrome. It described how the IDF dog mauled 24-year-old Muhammed Bhar in his family home. His family later found his decomposing body where the IDF had left him to die. But in its editorial wisdom – or deliberate lack thereof – the BBC headline meekly read:
The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome
So once again, people on X had to speak out about another horrendous headline:
This is one of the sickest headlines I’ve seen. As if he died of natural causes.
No one would ever know looking at this that he was *killed* by Israeli soldiers who unleashed a dog to attack this Palestinian man and left him there to die. https://t.co/QOEHVVC5K0
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) July 16, 2024
UK ambassador to Palestine Husam Zomlot expressed how despicable the BBC’s framing was:
I don’t think there could be a worst murder in human history, still @BBCWorld headlines this as “death of a Gaza man” to abdicate Israel of responsibility. Abhorrent! https://t.co/XQtq4CmFaH
— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) July 16, 2024
Some noted the shocking double standards at work again with the BBC baring its racist arse:
This is one of the most egregiously misleading headlines of the last few months.
The article describes a disabled man being mauled by an IDF dog, before being left to bleed to death.
Why are you sanitizing war crimes? You don’t use this tone for other countries or people.
— KILL, THE ICON! (@KILLTHEICON) July 16, 2024
Others couldn’t quite believe the language the BBC had used that implied something altogether different from the true order of events:
The cruel and gruesome murder of a disabled man attacked by IDF dogs described as a “lonely death” as if it’s just some sad human interest story. This framing is a complete disgrace https://t.co/u0kbgaCOLh
— Jason Okundaye (@jasebyjason) July 16, 2024
Lonely is not the adjective any humane individual would attach to being mauled to death by an IDF attack dog, then left to die slowly from his wounds.
Covering up such a crime shows just how complicit western reporting is in the suffering of Palestine.
This is #genocide. https://t.co/fgbMIYi3p3
— Dr Georgie Budd (@BuddGeorgie) July 16, 2024
Because quite apart from a “lonely” death, the IDF viciously murdered Bhar with a military dog. But passive voice – the feat of shameless linguistic gymnastics that avoids placing blame – reigned supreme again:
this is one of the most viscerally horrifying accounts of palestinian brutality – a disabled man attacked by a combat dog and left to die in a pool of his own blood – and the bbc uses the most passive voice imaginable. for shame https://t.co/7qkbUMKNAT
— lucy ford 🍊 (@lucyj_ford) July 16, 2024
After enormous backlash, the BBC removed the social media post, and amended the headline:
The BBC changed the headline because of your outrage.
Never stop fighting the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people as they are butchered with Western complicity.
Doing so is literally a matter of life and death. https://t.co/gFXOxBjsa9 pic.twitter.com/9bMaYitTea
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 16, 2024
Beyond the biased headlines…
Of course, the BBC knew exactly what it was doing. Editors would have been aware that in a digital, social media-fueled churnalism landscape, people don’t actually read the news. That is, many will in fact only read the headline, and do not engage with the article content itself. As the previously Independent reported, a 2016 study illuminated this reality, showing how across X (then Twitter):
59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked: In other words, most people appear to retweet news without ever reading it.
Given this, BBC’s latest offence shows how the establishment press can weaponise this media illiteracy to shape a pro-Israel narrative.
US-based linguist and journalist Abdulkader Assad previously told the Middle East Eye how headlines in particular propagate this pro-Israel bias:
The way the western media is “framing” headlines and opening paragraphs of their news coverage of the Israeli occupation’s war on Gaza is intentionally meant to sway opinions and help consolidate a perception of Gaza with its entire population as ‘militants’, and thus the bombardment and killing then becomes justified
Ultimately, the mismatch between the headline and the story itself was almost inconceivably depraved. Almost. Only, this has been the Western establishment press writ large.
Evidencing this, in March, the New Arab conducted an analysis on UK mainstream media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This did specifically focus on the rightwing press, but is still instructive. In particular, it looked at articles by the Times, the Telegraph, the Sun, and the Daily Mail. Notably, it identified that:
in their headlines, all four sources exhibit bias against Palestinians in the following three ways: uniquely deploying a vast amount of emotive language when describing Israeli suffering, amplifying Israeli justifications for violence, and qualifying Palestinian deaths.
Echoing these findings, researchers at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), an arm of the Muslim Council of Britain, produced a report on UK media coverage of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. This research looked more comprehensively at the UK press, assessing 28 outlets, including the BBC.
Again, it stated how:
One noticeable feature of this coverage has been the use of imagery which has shown Israeli aggression or Palestinian suffering and headlines which have favoured an Israeli position or narrative. The dehumanisation of Palestinians in this respect starts with the minimisation of their suffering, effectively rendering them invisible despite the huge numbers of those killed whilst focusing solely on the deaths of Israelis.
With the recent article, it’s clear that he BBC is firmly among this Zionist propaganda ecosystem. This liberally employs techniques like bias by omission, and passive language describing Israel in order to deprioritise Palestinians voices and experiences.
Overall, the incident showed the BBC indisputably as the servile media handmaiden to a violent colonial state. This latest headline is testament to the fact the BBC – like Western establishment media en masse – promotes a hierarchy of human life. And a disabled Palestinian man’s life wasn’t worth enough to condemn the Israeli war criminals it has spent months unrepentantly whitewashing.
Feature image via the Canary/BBC
