Four of Britain’s top lawyers complain to Ofcom about BBC stance on Hamas

Four of Britain’s most senior lawyers have accused the BBC of abandoning impartiality by refusing to describe Hamas as “terrorists”.

In a letter to Ofcom, Lord Wolfson KC, Lord Pannick KC, Lord Grabiner KC and Jeremy Brier KC urged the regulator to investigate the corporation.

They said that the BBC had taken sides and described Hamas in “more sympathetic terms”.

The four co-signed the letter alongside Lord Polak, honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

They said: “On 7th October 2023, Hamas launched a large invasion of the State of Israel which resulted variously in the slaughter, rape and abduction of over a thousand Israeli citizens.

“There is nothing controversial about that. It is a fact.

“The BBC has fallen well below the standards expressed in its Editorial Values in reporting of that invasion and the consequences therefrom.”

They claimed that “it is beyond doubt that the BBC has not shown impartiality in terms of the nomenclature it uses to refer to Hamas as ‘militants’.”

The authors of the letter said that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and “that is not a matter of debate or discussion. It is a matter of legal fact.

“The question then arises: how can it be impartial (i.e. not taking sides) to describe an organisation in terms which departs from established legal meaning and substitutes a word which refers to an organisation which is violent or aggressive but not necessarily engaged in terrorism and not necessarily proscribed? In short, by a significantly ‘watered-down’ descriptor which is less legally precise.

“The answer is it cannot be impartial to do so. It necessarily involves the BBC ‘stepping into the arena’ and taking sides so as to describe Hamas in more sympathetic terms.

“Put another way: in trying to be impartial, the BBC has become partial.”

The letter pointed out that the BBC referred to the Manchester Arena bombing as a “terror attack”. The BBC Bitesize GCSE guide refers to both al-Qaeda and the IRA as “terrorist” groups.

“The use of the word ‘terrorism’ is neither confusing nor imprecise. It is a very accurate statement within the natural use of the English language as to what Hamas is engaged in,” the authors said.

“If the BBC is only declining to use the word ‘terrorist’ in the context of Israel then this is further evidence of partiality (by discriminating in this case only).”

The authors stated that the BBC should call Hamas “terrorists” just as they would refer to someone as a “murderer” if that person had been convicted by a court - both are legal, factual definitions, they said.

The BBC’s director of editorial policy and standards, David Jordan, earlier defended the policy, insisting that it was decades old and had “stood the test of time”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show that all audiences should be able to trust the BBC’s information, so it cannot risk appearing to favour one side or another in a conflict.

“The side of the conflict being described in that way - as terrorists - then immediately assumes that the BBC is biased against them and favours the other side in the conflict,” Jordan said.