Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | January 3, 2025
A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group.
Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.
Our Man in London
Berg came to public attention in December after Drop Site News published an investigation based on interviews with 13 BBC staffers who present him as a domineering figure, systematically blocking coverage critical of Israel and manipulating stories to suit pro-Israel narratives.
The 9000-word report, written by popular journalist Owen Jones, is extensive and well-researched. However, one aspect of the story it almost completely avoids is Berg’s connections to the U.S. national security state, which MintPress News can now reveal.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Berg was an employee of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) three years before joining the BBC. The FBIS is understood the world over to be a CIA front group known for gathering intelligence for the agency.
As the first two lines of its Wikipedia entry read:
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly available news and information from media sources outside the United States.
In 2005, the FBIS was subsumed into the CIA’s new Open Source Enterprise.
Berg does not dispute that he was, in fact, a CIA man. In fact, according to a 2020 interview with The Jewish Telegraph, he was “absolutely thrilled” to be secretly working for the agency. Berg said, “One day, I was taken to one side and told, ‘you may or may not know that we are part of CIA, but don’t go telling people.’” He was unsurprised by this news, as the application process was extremely long and rigorous. “They went through my character and background with a fine tooth comb, asking if I had ever visited communist countries and, if I had, did I form any relationships while I was there,” he said.
Mossad Collaborator
The CIA, however, is not the only clandestine spy organization with which Berg has a long history of collaborating. He also has a rich professional relationship with Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency.
In 2020, for instance, Berg published “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” a book that tells the story of the Israeli operation to clandestinely smuggle Ethiopian Jews into Israel. That the 320-page account lionizes Israel and its spies is perhaps unsurprising, considering how much input Mossad had in its creation. Berg said that he wrote the book “in collaboration” with Mossad commander Dani Limor, whom he relied on extensively, as he, in his own words, knew “next to nothing” about the story and its background before writing it. Limor opened numerous doors and was able to secure “over 100 hours of interviews” with Israeli military and intelligence officials, including with the head of Mossad.
Limor and Berg became extremely close friends. In 2020, he posted a picture of himself with his arm around the ex-Mossad commander. The first page of “Red Sea Spies” is simply a glowing recommendation from Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, a group Berg describes as “the world’s greatest intelligence service.”
Berg has aggressively promoted his book and has, on multiple occasions, expressed his delight that Benjamin Netanyahu has shown interest in it. In August 2020, for example, he shared a picture of Netanyahu at his desk in front of a copy of his book. “First time I’ve been on a prime minister’s bookshelf” I know I’ve got one of Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s on mine – but wow!” he exclaimed, tagging Mossad, the Israeli Likud Party, and the Israeli Embassies in the United Kingdom and United States.
The following year, he messaged Netanyahu’s son, Yair, stating, “Your dad has my book, ‘Red Sea Spies: The True Story of the Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,’ and sent me a lovely letter about it.” That letter can be seen on the wall of Berg’s office in his many public posts and videos, framed and placed beside pictures of him meeting a Mossad commander and meeting Mark Regev, the former spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
That a BBC Middle East editor would not only frame these images and documents and put them pride of place in his office but also choose to display them while talking publicly and in an official role is telling. The BBC sells itself as an impartial distributor of news on the Middle East and beyond. And yet, Berg, who, by most accounts, calls the shots when it comes to the network’s Israel-Palestine coverage, clearly believes that this is acceptable and unremarkable behavior.
If the opposite were true – that even a low-level BBC employee was openly sharing pictures of themselves embracing Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar or displaying a glowing letter from Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei – it is clear that there would be serious repercussions. The BBC suspended six of its reporters for simply liking pro-Palestine tweets. And yet, in Berg’s case, his overt pro-Israel advocacy has been treated as entirely unproblematic.
Relentlessly Pro-Israel
Of course, it is entirely possible that a pro-Israel stance would help one climb the ladder at the BBC, an organization long known to display a strong bias in favor of the country and its interests.
Born and raised in England, Berg always took a keen interest in Israel, moving there to study Jewish and Israel Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He worked at the FBIS between 1997 and 1998 and joined the BBC in 2001, starting as a world news writer and producer.
One of his first BBC articles profiled the Israeli military and its recruits, presenting the IDF as brave protectors of their homeland and as a “source of national pride” and framed women serving as a win for sexual equality.
In 2009, at the height of Operation Cast Lead – the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed more than 1,000 people – Berg attended a pro-Israel demonstration in central London. Moreover, he even chastised the Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, for noting that only 5,000 people showed up to the event. In Berg’s opinion, there were three times as many in attendance. The BBC would later change its guidelines to prevent its newsroom employees from attending controversial demonstrations.
During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military was found to have indiscriminately targeted and killed civilians, used Palestinians as human shields, and used banned chemical weapons, such as white phosphorous, on civilian areas.
Three years later, in November 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, a high-profile, bloody assault on Gaza that made worldwide headlines. As Israel bombarded the densely-populated civilian area, Berg went on his own internal offensive, telling his BBC colleagues to word their stories in a way that does not blame or “put undue emphasis” on Israel. Instead, leaked emails show, he encouraged journalists to present the attack as an operation “aimed at ending rocket fire from Gaza,” thereby framing Hamas as the aggressor.
Another Berg email instructed his coworkers to “Please remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border” – a highly contestable opinion not shared by the United Nations, which declared that Israel was the occupying power besieging the strip.
Extraordinary Revelations
Shortly after Operation Pillar of Defense, Berg was promoted, becoming head of the BBC’s Middle East desk. This position gives him enormous influence in shaping the platform’s presentation of Israel’s current war on Gaza. In this role, he has helped turn the network into “systematic Israeli propaganda,” according to one journalist quoted by Jones in his Drop Site investigation. “This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” said another.
The BBC staff Jones talked to painted a picture of a pro-Israel zealot systematically suppressing any content or information that would paint Tel Aviv in a negative light. A micromanager, numerous journalists reportedly attempted to notify management of their issues with Berg, but their complaints fell on deaf ears. “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one staffer stated. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [management] just ignore it.”
“How much power he has is wild,” another journalist told Jones, who explained that essentially every story or segment featuring Israel would have to be signed off by Berg first, even leaving other editors in “extreme fear” of commissioning anything without his approval.
Berg is alleged to have made extensive pre-publication edits to others’ stories, changing the framing of news events to shield Israel from blame. One example of this is the whitewashing of the Israeli attack on the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. In May 2022, Israeli snipers shot the Al Jazeera anchor in the head and proceeded to lie about their culpability. Israeli forces subsequently attacked the public funeral, beating mourners and firing tear gas. The BBC’s text, allegedly penned by Berg himself, read:
Violence broke out at the funeral in East Jerusalem of reporter Shireen Abu Aqla, killed during an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.
Her coffin was jostled as Israeli police and Palestinians clashed as it left a hospital in East Jerusalem.
Thus, Abu Akleh’s murder by Israeli forces was downgraded to a mere death during an operation (with no perpetrator mentioned), while a police attack on a funeral procession was presented as a “clash” between rival factions, presumably of roughly equal responsibility.
A more recent example of this, Jones claims, comes from a July story about IDF soldiers setting an attack dog on Muhammed Bhar, a severely disabled Gazan man, and letting him bleed to death. Under Berg’s supervision, the original headline ran: “The Lonely Death of Gaza Man with Down’s Syndrome.” Only after a gigantic worldwide outcry did the BBC change its framing to note anything about how Bhar met his end. “There has to be a moral line drawn in the sand. And if this story isn’t it, then what?” one BBC journalist said, commenting on the affair.
Since the investigation was published, Berg has remained silent, although he has hired defamation lawyer Mark Lewis, the former director of U.K. Lawyers for Israel.
The BBC, meanwhile, has offered unequivocal support for him and his work, rejected any suggestion of a lenient stance towards Israel, and alleges that the Drop Site article “fundamentally misdescribe[s] Berg’s power, influence, and how the network works.
A Worldwide Network
Whatever the veracity of the Drop Site allegations, the undisputed fact that a former U.S. State Department and CIA operative is calling the shots at the BBC for its Middle East coverage is undoubtedly of public interest.
It also bears a striking resemblance to the accusations of journalist Tareq Haddad. In 2019, Haddad resigned in frustration from Newsweek, claiming that the outlet systematically stymied him from covering important Middle East news stories that did not align with Western objectives. Perhaps most strikingly, though, he claimed that Newsweek employed a senior editor whose only job was seemingly to vet and suppress “controversial” stories, in the same vein as Berg. This editor also had a similar background with state power. As Haddad concluded:
The U.S. government, in an ugly alliance with those the [sic] profit the most from war, has its tentacles in every part of the media — imposters, with ties to the U.S. State Department, sit in newsrooms all over the world. Editors, with no apparent connections to the member’s club, have done nothing to resist. Together, they filter out what can or cannot be reported. Inconvenient stories are completely blocked.”
When contacted by MintPress News for comment, Haddad said he found the BBC, State Department and CIA links to be “staggering,” adding:
When I resigned from Newsweek, I did so because all reporting on foreign affairs went through a particular editor, who, in my case, turned out to be connected to the European Council on Foreign Relations. That prevented me from writing truthfully when it came to a number of sensitive issues.”
CIA-Affiliated Media
The implications of former U.S. national security state operatives dictating global media output are profound. This is not least because the State Department and CIA are among the world’s most notoriously dishonest and perfidious institutions, regularly injecting lies and false information into public discourse to further Washington’s ambitions. As Mike Pompeo, former Director of the CIA and then-Secretary of State, said in 2019:
When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on] it!”
Furthermore, both organizations have a long history of organizing invasions of and coups against foreign countries, drugs and weapons smuggling and operating a worldwide network of “black sites,” where thousands are tortured.
The CIA, in particular, has an extensive record of penetrating media outlets. As far back as the 1970s, the Church Committee unearthed the existence of Operation Mockingbird, a secret project to infiltrate newsrooms across America with secret agents masquerading as journalists. Investigative reporter Carl Bernstein’s work found that the agency had cultivated a network of over 400 individuals it considered assets, including the owner of The New York Times.
John Stockwell, former head of a CIA task force, explained on camera how his organization infiltrated media departments across the planet, establishing fake outlets and news agencies that worked to control global public opinion and spread false information demonizing Washington’s enemies. “I had propagandists all over the world,” he admitted, adding:
We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country… We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”
This process continues to this day, as the CIA continues to promote dubious stories about so-called “Havana Syndrome” and Russia putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Cable networks routinely employ a wide range of former State Department or CIA officials as personalities and trusted experts. Former CIA director John Brennan is employed by NBC News and MSNBC, while his predecessor, Michael Hayden, can be seen on CNN. Top anchors such as Anderson Cooper and Tucker Carlson have their own connections to the agency.
Meanwhile, in 2015, Dawn Scalici, a 33-year CIA veteran, left her job as national intelligence manager for the Western hemisphere at the Director of National Intelligence to become the global business director of the international news conglomerate Reuters. That this was a political hire was barely hidden; in Scalici’s official announcement, the company declared her primary responsibility would be “advancing Thomson Reuters’ ability to meet the disparate needs of the U.S. government.”
Social media, too, is full of former U.S. national security state agents. A previous MintPress News investigation uncovered a network of dozens of ex-CIA officials working at Google. Most of these individuals work in highly politically sensitive roles such as security and, trust and safety, effectively giving them control over the algorithms that decide what content gets seen and what is suppressed worldwide. Some were even directly recruited from the CIA, leaving the agency to join the Silicon Valley giant.
Competing with Google for the crown of employing most former CIA agents is Facebook. The company’s senior product policy manager for misinformation, Aaron Berman, the man most responsible for deciding what the world sees (and does not see) in its news feeds, was directly parachuted in from Langley, Virginia. Berman was one of the agency’s highest-ranking officers, writing the president’s daily brief for both Obama and Trump until July 2019, when he made the switch from big government to big tech.
And since it became a target of Washington’s ire, TikTok has been on a hiring spree, recruiting large numbers of U.S. State Department officials to run its internal affairs. The company’s head of data public policy for Europe, for example, is Jade Nester, who was previously the State Department’s director of internet public policy. These connections were explored in a MintPress investigation entitled, “TikTok: Chinese “Trojan Horse” Is Run by State Department Officials.”
Cheering on a Genocide
In recent years, Washington has shown considerable interest in influencing the British press. The National Endowment for Democracy—another unofficial branch of the CIA—has spent millions of dollars funding a wide range of media outlets in the U.K. The NED’s sister organization, USAID, is the third-largest funder of BBC Media Action, the company’s charitable arm, donating over $2 million annually.
The BBC itself has faced repeated accusations of pro-Israel bias, not only from the public but also internally. Their headquarters are a common start or end point for numerous pro-Palestine marches, including an upcoming national rally in London on January 18. In November, over 100 BBC staff signed an open letter to the corporation’s director-general, Tim Davie and Chief Executive Officer Deborah Turness. The letter admonishes the company for consistently providing “favorable coverage to Israel,” failing to uphold even “basic journalistic tenet[s]” when covering its war on Gaza, and aiding in “systematically dehumanizing Palestinians.”
Haddad agreed that much of the network’s coverage had been subpar, telling MintPress :
The BBC, of course, like many institutions, has fallen way short of their coverage in documenting what Israel has done in a densely populated strip of land we know as Gaza over the last 14 months and prior.”
Partially as a result, public confidence in the broadcaster has fallen to an all-time low. By July 2023, just 38% of Britons said they trusted the BBC to tell the truth – down from 81% 20 years previously. Since October 7, its biases have been put under even more scrutiny.
Israel’s actions, Haddad said, are “growing harder to ignore.” Officially, the death toll from the Israeli attack on Gaza stands at almost 50,000, although credible estimates put the likely figure at many times that. International organizations, such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, have described the onslaught as “genocidal.”
Israel could not sustain its attack without vital military, logistical, economic, and political support from Western powers. It is, therefore, vital for Washington, London and the E.U. that public opinion does not turn too far in favor of Palestine to the point where widespread public rebellion forces a change in policy. The BBC, with its deeply misleading and one-sided coverage of the events, therefore, plays an important role in the perpetuation of crimes against humanity. That this is being driven from the top down by overtly pro-Israel editors, including one with a history in both the State Department and CIA, is perhaps unsurprising but no less shocking, nonetheless.
To be clear, this article does not claim that Berg or anyone at the BBC is a plant. Nor is it accusing him of any specific wrongdoing beyond working at a distinctly biased network. What it is stating is that it is telling that the person in charge of its Middle East reporting has framed pictures and letters of Mossad commanders and high Israeli officials on the wall, as if they are rock stars and he is a teenage fan. That someone such as this rose the ranks is a clear indication of the kind of culture that exists at the BBC – one that has systematically demonized Palestinians and manufactured consent for genocide.
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.”
Executive producer challenges BBC on camera
Executive Producer Ben De Pear, speaking during the acceptance speech, dedicated the award to journalists in Gaza who continue to work under extreme danger. He then directly addressed the BBC on camera, questioning whether the broadcaster would also cut their acceptance speech from the delayed broadcast of the ceremony.
De Pear’s challenge to the BBC adds renewed pressure on the network over its long-standing Zionist bias and controversial editorial decisions regarding coverage of Palestine.
The incident follows a report by a Freedom of Information NGO on April 16, 2026, revealing that BBC executives have met nine times with Zionist groups since the start of the genocide, compared to just once with pro-Palestinian organizations.
Furthermore, over 100 BBC staff signed an open letter on July 2, 2025, addressed to Director-General Tim Davie, accusing the broadcaster of acting as “a mouthpiece” for “Israel” and failing its own editorial standards.
The documentary team’s defiance at the BAFTA awards underscores a growing crisis of credibility for the BBC, as even its own journalists and the filmmakers it commissioned accuse the network of actively suppressing evidence of war crimes and genocide.
UK mainstream media has been constantly criticized for its coverage of “Israel’s” genocide on Gaza, sparking controversy for its journalistic biases that promote double standards through misinformation.
“The coverage of Gaza has several noticeable features. There have been instances of misleading and factually incorrect information being published throughout the last 10 months,” media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) Faisal Hanif told Anadolu in September.
“Israel” killed two four-day-old newborn twins at their parents’ apartment in central Gaza in an airstrike as their father went to collect their birth certificates.
Western mainstream news outlets, including the BBC and Sky News, did not mention “Israeli strikes” in their headlines on their social media posts, prompting online users to ask “Killed by who?”
Hanif highlighted that many Western news outlets continue to refer to a fabricated story presented at the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, claiming the Palestinian resistance “beheaded babies.”
The media analyst emphasized that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the debunked narrative in his address to the US Congress in July 2024, which the BBC reported verbatim without providing context for readers that investigative journalists determined the story to be a fabrication.
Monitoring group finds UK media guilty of ‘systematic’ dehumanization of Palestinians
The Cradle | April 23, 2026
A British media monitoring group accused major UK media outlets on 23 April of “systematic” anti-Palestine bias in their coverage of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years.
NewsCord announced it had analyzed thousands of articles published by BBC, The Guardian, and Sky News in their coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since 2023.
The group quantified various bias metrics, including “attribution, passive voice, source qualification, humanization, legal framing, and the reporting of documented genocidal statements by Israeli officials.”
NewsCord found systematic patterns of anti-Palestine bias in the reporting of all three news outlets. For example, the BBC names Israel as the perpetrator in just 50 percent of reports of casualties and uses passive voice, which obscures responsibility, in 80 percent of sentences reporting casualties from Israeli attacks.
The Guardian names the perpetrator in just 54 percent of cases.
All three routinely label the Gaza Health Ministry as “Hamas-affiliated” in an effort to undermine the credibility of its casualty and death counts, even though the UN and Israeli military view the ministry’s reporting as credible.
In contrast, the outlets only noted the credibility of the UN in one percent of instances when the international body’s reports are cited.
Across UK media, the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza is rarely mentioned, NewsCord found. This is despite the International Court of Justice issuing provisional measures ordering Israel to halt its military operations to prevent its troops from perpetrating genocide, and despite the findings of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that Israel has committed genocide.
Rights groups Amnesty International and Israeli-based B’Tselem have also concluded Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.
Additionally, none of the three UK news outlets have reported on documented genocidal statements by Israeli officials that are cited as evidence of intent in ICJ proceedings, NewsCord added.
Shortly after the genocide began, Netanyahu referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “Amalek,” recalling a story from the Jewish Torah in which God commands the ancient Israelites to eradicate an entire people, including every last woman and child.
The monitoring group also found that Palestinian voices were given far less prominence, as measured by word count, compared with Israeli perspectives, and that detainees were more often humanized only when Israeli.
In December, Drop Site News revealed that BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias.
“This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.
Pro-Israel bias is not just an issue in the UK media, but in the western media broadly.
A media-analysis report released by Media Bias Meter last November titled “Framing Gaza” presented data showing that major western outlets mention “Israel” far more often than “Palestine” in both headlines and article bodies.
The outlets in question included the New York Times (NYT), BBC, Le Monde, the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, and AFP.
According to the dataset, NYT uses “Israel” in headlines 1,868 times and “Palestine” only 10 times, a ratio of 187 to 1.
The disproportionate pattern appears across the other outlets, with BBC showing 1,100 uses of “Israel” in headlines and 91 uses of “Palestine,” Le Monde showing 1,087 versus 65, and De Telegraaf showing 952 versus 65.
How I fell foul of the BBC thought police
By Charlie Spedding | TCW Defending Freedom | April 5, 2026
THE BBC recently featured a United Nations report which claimed the Earth’s ‘Energy Balance’ was dangerously disrupted by excess heat caused by rising carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. This is false for many reasons, but rather than explain why, I want to discuss the BBC.
This story was on the evening news and also on the website. I read many of the comments posted online. The majority were worried and adamant that we must ‘do something before it is too late’. I wanted to reassure people that there is nothing happening to the climate that could be described as a crisis and carbon dioxide is not the control knob of planetary weather patterns. I decided it was best to direct them towards some of the world’s leading physicists rather than attempt to explain it myself. This is what I tried to post on the BBC website:
‘May I respectfully suggest that everyone worried about a man-made climate crisis do some research. I recommend the work of Prof Richard Lindzen, Prof William Happer, Prof Willie Soon, Nobel Laureate John Clauser and the CO2 Coalition. Most people don’t realise how much we are all manipulated by vested interests including the mainstream media. Be smarter than most and learn from world experts.’
The website moderators informed me that my post had been deleted because it broke their house rules: ‘We reserve the right to fail comments which . . . are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others, are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable; contain swear words or other language likely to offend.’
I appealed against their decision, not because I expected them to change their minds, but because it gave me the opportunity to ask which part of my post they considered to be ‘sexist, racist, homophobic or abusive’. This was their response: ‘In this instance, we believe the moderator made the correct decision so we will be unable to uphold your appeal. Due to the volume of correspondence we receive, we are unable to discuss this matter further.’
They were confident the ‘rules’ had been broken but would not tell me which part of my message transgressed which part of their rules. I didn’t express an opinion about the climate but suggested that the opinion of world-renowned specialist scientists was worth reading. Did the BBC object to this, or was it my reference to manipulation by the mainstream media? I included that comment in reference to the BBC’s Environmental Correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, who was found to have lied about the climate in a 2022 BBC Panorama programme called Wild Weather. He said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true.
The BBC’s Charter states that ‘The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.’
The Public Purposes of the BBC are ‘To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them.’
When it comes to coverage of the climate the BBC is not impartial, high-quality or informative. In this case, it has blocked an opportunity for people to discover high-quality scientific research from around the world. I am firmly of the opinion that I am not the one breaking rules; it is the BBC which is ignoring its own rules and charter.
The murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed
By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 4, 2026
In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.
The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.
It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.
None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.
On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”
At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.
International reaction: Silence
If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy. In 2017, in his home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.
Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.
Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.
The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”
The BBC did similarly dishonest and deceptive journalism in 2014 in Damascus after terrorists in eastern Ghouta had shelled an elementary school, killing one child and injuring over 60. The BBC later reported: “the government is also accused of launching [mortar strikes] into neighborhoods under its control.” The BBC could have easily learned about the trajectory of mortars and from where the strike in question could only have come: the terrorist “moderates” east of Damascus.
The New York Times also got the memo, likewise omitting Israel from the headline and implying Iran is lying. But when it comes to blaming Iran for its retaliation, the NYT has no problem stating whose missile strike it was. And there is no “Israel says.”
CNN ran the headline “A girls’ elementary school was hit in Iran. Here’s what we know.” Its video report not only doesn’t mention the US or Israel, but insinuates Iranian blame: In an Israel-like tactic (recall Israel’s claiming Gaza’s Shifa hospital was a “Hamas base”, and staging weapons as “proof”), CNN claims the children’s school could be connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) base. But The Cradle noted that the school had operated independently as a civilian institution for over a decade, with separate entrances, playgrounds, and classrooms.
CNN’s report did, at least, debunk online claims that the school was hit by a failed missile launch by Iran, noting the photo shared online as “proof” of the claim was actually taken 800 miles from Minab. But, hello? If it wasn’t a failed Iranian missile there is clearly one remaining explanation: the schoolgirls were killed by US-Israeli bombing.
Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.” Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.
Even if you set aside the actual culprit of the school bombing, legacy media reports are devoid of any concern for the slaughtered children: no details, no empathy, no mention that they were murdered in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The tone would be radically different were the children Israeli, Ukrainian or American. We would see names, ages, stories about them. They would be humanized – if only they were not Iranian (or Palestinian, or Lebanese, or Syrian).
Since the February 28 Minab school massacre, US-Israeli strikes have attacked still more civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring more Iranian civilians.
One man recounted to RT how after the bombing of central Tehran’s Enghelab Square he’d seen a decapitated person in front of his café. Walking around showing the destruction, RT’s Tehran bureau chief Hami Hamedi pointed out residential buildings, cars, shops, damaged and destroyed in recent bombings where a police station was among those targeted.
This was the same tactic which Israel used on December 27, 2008, when it unleashed over 100 bombs nearly simultaneously on Gaza, targeting police stations, police academies, universities and more, destroying and damaging shops and residential buildings around them.
I was in Gaza at the time and saw the immediate aftermath of the initial bombings, the chaos and destruction in every direction. Shifa hospital, Gaza’s main hospital, was an endless circuit of cars and ambulances bringing the dead and injured.
That was 17 years ago, and Israel has repeated this brutal tactic over and over again in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran. We’ve seen this US-Israeli strategy of terrorizing the people by widely attacking civilian infrastructure repeatedly in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, to list only some of the targeted regions – as well as being replicated by the Kiev regime in the Donbass. The intent is always destabilization and instigation of fear in hopes of causing the people to turn against their government. It never works, but it invariably kills countless innocent civilians and flattens infrastructure.
To add further insult, days after the girls’ school massacre, Melania Trump presided over a UN Security Council meeting on children in conflict. You can’t make this insanity up. The wife of a US president who is co-waging a war on children in Iran feigns concern over children in conflict.
The US and its bought media have so little regard for Iranian lives that they don’t even bother to try to explain, much less apologize for, the murders of the 168 schoolgirls. Outrageously, it is as if they simply never existed to Western media.
But it is true that every war crime, every murdered child, fuels support not only to their government but to resistance in general. And Iran is resisting and retaliating in ways that will make the US wish it hadn’t co-started this war on the people of Iran.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Iran riots 2026: How the Erfan Soltani “execution” story went viral – and fell apart
By Yousef Ramazani | Press TV | February 3, 2026
The release on bail of Erfan Soltani, an Iranian national detained during recent riots in the country, on Sunday did more than conclude a domestic legal episode.
It also dismantled a carefully constructed and extremely flawed international narrative that, for weeks, had weaponized misinformation to portray his “execution” as an imminent certainty.
In mid-January 2026, a wave of alarming headlines rippled across global media, claiming without evidence that Iran was preparing to execute a young man named Erfan Soltani.
Major outlets – including the BBC, Euronews, The Guardian, and Sky News – reported his supposed “sentence” as fact, citing scandalous Western-based “human rights groups,” and triggering diplomatic warnings and an avalanche of political reactions.
“Iran set to execute protester days after arrest as Tehran speeds up death sentences,” declared Euronews. ABC News ran with: “Relative speaks out on plight of arrested Iranian protester Erfan Soltani, who had faced execution.” The Hill asked: “Who is Erfan Soltani, Iranian protester Trump mentioned facing execution?”
As the initial fog of propaganda began to lift, the narrative quietly shifted. The Guardian, which had earlier warned of Soltani’s “imminent execution,” later revised its framing: “Execution of condemned Iranian protester postponed, family told.” The BBC followed suit with: “Who is Erfan Soltani, Iranian protester who reportedly had execution postponed?”
The storyline consistently casts Iran’s judiciary as carrying out summary executions – a familiar script deployed in previous cycles of engineered unrest.
Yet on February 1, Soltani was released on bail. His case remains open, but without any death sentence outcome, Iranian judicial authorities had already signaled weeks earlier.
For charges against him, the provision of execution does not exist; they had made it clear.
The stark gap between the initial global coverage and the eventual reality revealed more than a routine correction. It exposed a complex ecosystem in which unverified activist claims, geopolitical pressure, and coordinated digital disinformation converged to shape a predetermined narrative against the Islamic Republic.
This investigation traces how the story was constructed, amplified, and sustained amid foreign-backed riots across Iran. It focuses in particular on the systematic manipulation of Wikipedia by a network of accounts linked to the exiled Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) cult, designated as a terrorist organization.
It also shows how contemporary information warfare is waged not only through headlines and breaking news, but through the quiet, strategic curation of what is presented as the world’s most trusted knowledge repository.
How a legal case became a global human rights flashpoint
The international narrative surrounding Soltani ignited with striking speed and uniformity in the second week of January 2026, while riots and terrorism were at their peak across Iran.
The initial spark did not originate in mainstream newsrooms, but rather from organizations operating outside Iran. Among the first to circulate claims were the Norway-based, Kurdish-focused Hengaw Organization for Human Rights and the Iran Human Rights (IHR) group.
Both organizations reported that Soltani had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death within an extraordinarily compressed timeframe – allegedly in a matter of days. These assertions were disseminated through their own platforms and amplified across social media.
Hengaw and IHR have a documented record of promoting anti-Iranian narratives and of repeatedly circulating unverified or later-debunked claims in high-profile cases, including those of Armita Geravand and Mahsa Amini.
Their statements contained severe allegations: that Soltani had been denied access to legal counsel, informed of a death sentence almost immediately after his arrest, and was facing imminent execution.
These claims were framed within a broader warning that Iran was embarking on a new wave of summary executions aimed at suppressing the “protest movement.”
The framing was particularly effective from their standpoint. It cast Soltani not as an individual defendant in an ongoing legal process, but as an early signal of an escalated phase of state repression.
Presented under the moral authority of human rights reporting, the narrative offered international media outlets a ready-made, emotionally charged storyline – one that aligned seamlessly with prevailing coverage of unrest and political tension in Iran.
Western media machine and the rush to judgment
Major Western media outlets swiftly amplified these unsubstantiated claims, often with little independent verification of the underlying judicial details.
Headlines quickly shifted from cautious phrasing to declarative assertions presented as fact. The Independent, for example, ran a story titled, “Iran set to execute first protester after ‘no trial and no due process’,” unequivocally treating the allegations as established reality.
The Guardian’s live coverage included an entry stating, “Execution of condemned Iranian protester postponed, family told,” reinforcing the impression that an execution date had already been set and merely delayed.
Broadcast and digital video platforms adopted even more sensational framing. On YouTube, outlets such as NewsX Live ran segments headlined: “Iran Protests Day 17: Iran Set to Execute Protester Erfan Soltani (26) After Fast-Tracked Trial.”
Across media outlets, the narrative structure was remarkably uniform: an innocent protester, a sham judicial process, and an impending state-sanctioned killing.
This coverage was frequently interwoven with statements from Western politicians, most notably reports that US President Donald Trump had warned his administration would take “strong action” should such executions proceed.
The result was a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Media reports appeared to justify political pressure, while political statements in turn validated and amplified the media’s gravest framing.
On social media, the story rapidly achieved viral status under hashtags such as #ErfanSoltani, where it was often stripped of nuance and circulated as categorical proof of Iranian “barbarity.”
At this stage, the narrative’s momentum became self-sustaining. The sheer volume of coverage by respected international outlets lent it an air of inevitability, crowding out a critical component: the perspective of Iran’s judiciary and state institutions.
Iranian counterpoint: Legal clarifications and a different frame
At the same time, from the earliest moments of the international media surge around this particular case, Iranian officials issued firm and detailed denials, grounded in logic.
The Judiciary Media Center described the reports as a coordinated rumor campaign driven by what it termed “media supporters of street terrorists.” Beyond dismissing the allegations, authorities sought to ground their response in legal specifics.
Officials stated that Soltani was arrested on January 10, 2026, during the deadly foreign-backed riots on Bahar Street in Karaj, and charged with “gathering and colluding against the country’s internal security” and “propaganda activities against the state.”
Crucially, they emphasized that these charges – under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code – carry penalties of imprisonment, not execution.
Authorities further stated unequivocally that no death sentence had been issued and that no final verdict had been reached in Soltani’s case, dismissing the media trial.
Some international wire services, including Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as outlets such as Euronews and CBS News, did report these denials, resulting in a fragmented media landscape of competing claims.
However, these reports often appeared as secondary updates or were framed with distancing language – “Iran claims” or “Iran denies” – subtly casting doubt on the official statements while preserving the primacy of the original allegations.
As a result, the Iranian position struggled to gain equal footing. It was presented less as a substantive legal clarification and more as a predictable rebuttal from an accused state.
This imbalance allowed the execution narrative to remain the dominant global understanding of the case for weeks, despite the absence of any confirmed death sentence.
Digital battleground: Wikipedia’s vulnerability to coordinated influence
While the media storm raged with a familiar viciousness, a more subtle and insidious battle unfolded on Wikipedia – a platform whose content shapes the work of most Western journalists, researchers, and public perception.
Wikipedia’s open-editing model, a cornerstone of its success, also makes it uniquely vulnerable to coordinated influence campaigns orchestrated by well-resourced political actors.
The case of Soltani did not arise in isolation on the platform; rather, it was planted into a digital landscape already carefully cultivated by partisan forces.
For years, Wikipedia administrators have waged a silent war against a network of user accounts dedicated to advancing the agenda of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) terror cult.
This cult, which fought alongside Saddam Hussein during the Holy Defense War in the 1980s and is designated a terrorist group by Iran, has long sought international legitimacy and crafted a narrative of popular resistance against the Iranian government.
Its digital strategy includes systematic infiltration of Wikipedia to whitewash its own controversial history and amplify content critical of the Islamic Republic.
From whitewashing to newsjacking: Soltani case as a target
The emergence in early January 2026 of a new Wikipedia user, PatriceON, exemplifies how this disinformation apparatus exploits breaking news to shape and distort narratives.
Created in July 2025, the account initially gained credibility through minor, low-profile edits before dramatically ramping up activity at the exact moment the Soltani story broke internationally.
PatriceON focused intensively on creating and editing biographies of individuals portrayed as “victims” of unrest, applying a formulaic narrative that emphasized their innocence and state brutality. The account’s sources consistently included exile media outlets and the same human rights groups driving the Soltani narrative.
When the Soltani story erupted, accounts like PatriceON were ready to embed it into Wikipedia’s permanent record with a dual purpose: to frame Soltani’s case through the now-debunked execution narrative, thereby enshrining it as historical fact, and to connect this content within a broader web of articles depicting systemic state violence.
This activity produces a self-referential information loop. For example, an article on “Human rights in Iran” cites the Soltani case, which in turn relies on sources from the very same partisan entities. This cycle creates an illusion of independent verification, effectively “source-washing” activist claims into encyclopedic knowledge.
Unmasking the network: A persistent playbook of deception
The tactics employed by PatriceON were far from novel, following a well-established playbook honed by a network of earlier accounts linked to MKO advocacy.
Wikipedia’s volunteer administrators have repeatedly documented this exact modus operandi across accounts such as Stefka Bulgaria, ParadaJulio, and TheDreamBoat – created between late 2016 and 2017 and eventually exposed and blocked in 2023.
Each account began with a “gnoming” phase, making hundreds of benign edits to non-controversial topics to build edit counts, avoid suspicion, and gain editorial privileges.
Once legitimacy was established, they abruptly pivoted to intense editing of articles on Iranian politics – whitewashing the MKO and promoting opposition biographies.
The sophistication and coordination of this network were revealed through behavioral forensics, including distinctive technical quirks like consistent template misuse that acted as a digital fingerprint. In one telling incident, a user accidentally pasted part of an external email containing instructions, exposing off-platform direction.
The MKO link was further confirmed when the Stefka Bulgaria account petitioned to remove Wikimedia Commons photos of paid non-Iranian (African) protesters at an MKO rally in Paris, an effort documented by journalists as crowd manipulation.
Wikipedia officials concluded these accounts were part of a “complex and multi-person operation” designed to subvert editorial guidelines and promote a singular viewpoint.
The campaign exhibited persistence; blocking one account was quickly followed by the emergence of another, indicating an organized, long-term strategy rather than sporadic activism.
How Wikipedia and media fuel each other
The interplay between covert Wikipedia editing and mainstream media is symbiotic, often indirect but mutually reinforcing.
Journalists working under tight deadlines frequently rely on Wikipedia for quick background. Articles citing reports from organizations like Hengaw or IHR, framed around an alleged impending execution—reinforce the story’s perceived legitimacy.
Conversely, after major outlets like the BBC or The Guardian publish stories, Wikipedia editors, including those linked to influence networks, swiftly cite these articles as “reliable sources,” leveraging mainstream media’s authority to legitimize the narrative within the encyclopedia.
This creates a closed informational loop: activist claims → media amplification → Wikipedia codification → further media citation.
Though initial sourcing traces back to a handful of partisan actors, the journey through respected media intermediaries obscures this provenance.
In the Soltani case, this feedback loop operated with remarkable speed, cementing the execution narrative as accepted fact well before judicial clarifications could surface.
Unraveling: Bail and the narrative’s collapse
The factual cornerstone of the entire international narrative collapsed on February 1, 2026, when Soltani was released from Karaj Central Penitentiary on bail of two billion tomans.
His lawyer, Musa Khani, publicly confirmed the release, and Iranian media reported the news straightforwardly. This outcome was irreconcilable with the widely circulated story of a man on death row facing imminent execution.
Some Western outlets, such as Sky News, acknowledged the release but continued to frame it with headlines like “Iranian protester Erfan Soltani released after death sentence threat,” perpetuating the discredited execution claim as a foundational part of the story.
The contrast was stark: a judiciary accused of summary executions had, in reality, processed a bail application and released the defendant pending trial, standard procedure in legal systems worldwide.
Soltani’s own mother revealed she first learned of the alleged death sentence not from Iranian authorities, but from the BBC, underscoring how the family became collateral in the international media battle.
Aftermath and lingering damage
Despite the resolution, the damage to accurate public understanding was profound. The initial false narrative had already reached global saturation, and diplomatic capital had been expended.
The hashtag #ErfanSoltani remained indelibly linked to “state execution” within the digital ecosystem of social media. On Wikipedia, correcting the record became a difficult and contested process.
Editors seeking to update Soltani’s entry to reflect the bail release faced resistance from those invested in maintaining the earlier narrative. The MKO-linked networks, despite periodic disruptions, showed resilience, the blocking of PatriceON in January 2026 being merely one episode in an ongoing campaign.
Their strategy is long-term and systemic. It does not hinge on winning a single edit battle over Soltani’s case but on persistently shaping hundreds of articles to construct an overarching meta-narrative of Iranian illegitimacy and oppression, into which individual cases like Soltani’s are seamlessly woven as examples.
The protest article as a propaganda platform
The systemic nature of this influence campaign is perhaps most starkly revealed in the ongoing manipulation of Wikipedia’s main article covering the 2025-2026 Iranian protests-turned-riots.
Far from serving as a neutral encyclopedic record, this entry functions as a curated propaganda platform, actively shaped by a coalition of interest groups – including MKO advocates, monarchist partisans, and pro-Israeli editors.
Its foundation is critically compromised by heavy reliance on sources such as the Saudi-funded, Israeli-linked outlet Iran International – a propaganda channel widely documented as a disinformation platform. Yet, its own Wikipedia article is systematically whitewashed by the very same network of editors who promote its narratives.
The result is a narrative rife with blatant falsehoods presented as fact: the article claims an unverified figure of “5 million protesters,” despite independent analysis indicating that, at the peak of the unrest on January 8 and 9, fewer than 20,000 people were on the streets.
It elevates the Israeli-aligned Reza Pahlavi as a principal leader of the “protests” and inflates casualty counts by an order of magnitude, attributing all deaths solely to state forces.
This curated version deliberately omits documented counter-evidence, including forensic proof of terrorist infiltration and shootings, video footage of armed violence against police, extensive damage to infrastructure, and the scale of pro-government counter-demonstrations.
Instead of portraying the complex on-the-ground reality, the article foregrounds imagery from diaspora monarchist rallies in Western capitals, effectively substituting actual events with an externally manufactured political narrative.
This distortion epitomizes the ultimate goal of the coordinated campaign: to entrench a partisan version of history within the world’s most trusted knowledge repository.
Craig Murray, Reporting from Venezuela
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | January 26, 2026
Last year, British journalist and former diplomat Craig Murray provided valuable reports from Lebanon, documenting — among other things — death and destruction brought by Israel’s military. Now, Murray is on the ground in Venezuela, doing what he did in Lebanon last year — providing access to information that tends to be filtered out or distorted in much reporting.
Indeed, in his first report from Venezuela that he posted at his website on Monday, Murray provided, based on his crisscrossing of the nation’s capital, an account that the situation there is very different from what is commonly reported. “I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark,” stated Murray to begin his report. Expanding on this observation, Murray wrote later in his report:
Pretty well everything that I have read by Western journalists which can be immediately checked – checkpoints, armed political gangs, climate of fear, shortages of food and goods – turns out to be an absolute lie. I did not know this before I came. Possibly neither did you. We both do now.
As in Lebanon last year, Murray is set to provide a view into matters much of the media is not interested in sharing with people around the world. Murray explained in his report:
When I was in Lebanon a year ago, the mainstream media were entirely absent as Israel devastated Dahiya, the Bekaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon, because it was a narrative they did not want to report.
Disgracefully, the only time the BBC entered Southern Lebanon was from the Israeli side, embedded with the IDF.
The BBC, Guardian or New York Times simply will not send a correspondent to Caracas because the reality is so starkly different from the official narrative.
To be more informed about what is happening in Venezuela, it would be a good practice to check periodically Murray’s website where he is planning to post more written and video reports in the coming weeks.
Truth as first casualty: Deconstructing disinformation campaign on Iran riots death toll
By Yousef Ramazani | Press TV | January 19, 2026
Amid the foreign-instigated riots and terrorism that struck Iran in recent weeks, a parallel narrative war also unfolded, centered on the deliberate propagation of wildly inflated and unverifiable casualty figures.
These figures were designed to manufacture global outrage and legitimize calls for American military intervention and yet another aggression against the Islamic Republic.
The discourse surrounding riot-related casualties in the past few weeks has been fundamentally shaped by a coordinated disinformation campaign originating from US-funded organizations operating entirely outside Iran. Central to this campaign was the circulation of sensational death tolls that bore little resemblance to verifiable facts on the ground.
The figure of 12,000 deaths was initially promoted by the New York–based Center for Human Rights in Iran, an organization financially linked to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US Congress–funded entity with a well-documented history of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.
This claim was presented without transparent methodology, primary data, or independent verification, raising eyebrows both inside and outside the country.
Despite this lack of evidence, the narrative was uncritically amplified by major Western media outlets and online influencers, creating a pervasive – but demonstrably false – impression of mass violence. Iranian officials consistently rejected these claims, presenting forensic evidence of manipulated datasets and instead reporting a death toll in the hundreds, the majority of whom were security personnel and civilians killed by armed rioters with foreign backing.
The subsequent escalation of these figures to even more implausible numbers – such as claims of 52,000 dead – underscores the persistence of a hybrid warfare strategy aimed at demonizing Iran while obscuring or outright excusing the violence committed by its adversaries.
Genesis of a false narrative: Center for Human Rights in Iran and its backers
The primary source of the sensational 12,000-fatality claim was neither an Iranian authority nor a verifiable international body, but the Center for Human Rights in Iran, an organization headquartered in New York. Despite its name, the group operates entirely outside Iran and has no physical presence or investigative capacity within the country.
An examination of its leadership and funding reveals a clear political orientation inconsistent with impartial human rights monitoring. The chair of its board is Minky Worden, an American activist with a documented history of spearheading anti-China advocacy campaigns, including efforts to politicize the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Financially, the organization relies heavily on grants from the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. The NED is a privately managed but publicly funded institution that receives annual allocations from the US Congress through the State Department budget.
Historians, observers, and former intelligence officials have long characterized the NED as a transparent successor to activities once conducted covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency, particularly the funding of political opposition groups and media outlets under the banner of “democracy promotion.”
The NED’s record includes extensive involvement in “regime-change” efforts across Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Asia – regions that have consistently featured in American foreign policy campaigns.
Amplification network: From NED grantees to global headlines
The unfounded casualty figure did not remain confined to a single organization. It was rapidly injected into the global media bloodstream through a tightly networked ecosystem of interconnected groups.
Other NED-funded entities, including the Human Rights Activists News Agency and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, echoed and cross-cited the same unsubstantiated statistics.
Operating largely from the US, these organizations function within a closed loop of mutual citation, manufacturing the illusion of multiple independent confirmations.
This echo chamber was then leveraged by major Western media outlets, including BBC Persian, Voice of America, The Washington Post, and ABC News, which incorporated the figures into their reporting.
Typically, these outlets attributed the numbers vaguely to “human rights groups” or “activists,” effectively laundering the information and granting it a veneer of credibility without conducting any independent verification. This failure is particularly striking given the well-documented funding sources and political objectives of the originating organizations.
Crucially, much of this coverage omitted the context that these groups are financially and ideologically aligned with the very governments actively seeking to pressure, isolate, and destabilize the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iranian rebuttal and exposure of fabricated evidence
Iranian government officials and domestic media mounted a comprehensive, forensic rebuttal to the widespread disinformation campaign. The judiciary’s spokesperson and the head of the Supreme National Security Council categorically denounced the claim of 12,000 deaths as “psychological warfare” and a “complete fabrication.”
They publicly challenged the originators of the figure to provide a single verifiable name, death certificate, or precise locational detail to substantiate their alleged casualty lists, a challenge that was never answered.
Cyber units affiliated with Iranian media conducted technical analyses tracing the viral dissemination of the figures to known bot networks operating from locations in the United States, Israeli-occupied territories, and Albania.
Further investigations revealed that purported “martyr lists” were riddled with fraud: hundreds of duplicate entries, names of individuals who had died decades earlier during the Holy Defense war, and even names copied directly from public cemetery records in other countries.
The case of Saghar Etemadi became emblematic of the deception. Widely declared a “martyr” by external outlets, she was later confirmed by the Iranian judiciary and by her own family to be alive and receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during a riot.
Iranian reports emphasized that the actual death toll, resulting from terrorist acts carried out by foreign-backed armed rioters, numbered in the hundreds. A significant proportion of the victims were police officers, Basij forces, and civilians deliberately targeted by violent saboteurs.
Escalation to absurdity and the weaponization of atrocity propaganda
The disinformation ecosystem demonstrated its capacity for rapid and unchecked escalation.
From the initial claim of 12,000 deaths, narratives soon proliferated across social media platforms and activist circles alleging 52,000 fatalities and more than 300,000 wounded.
These figures, divorced from any conceivable reality, serve a deliberate psychological and political function. They are designed to induce global emotional shock, overwhelm critical scrutiny, and portray the Iranian state as uniquely and exceptionally undemocratic
This narrative fulfills a dual geopolitical purpose, according to experts. First, it seeks to manufacture consent for foreign intervention, intensified sanctions, or diplomatic isolation by invoking a humanitarian pretext. Second, it functions as a tool of distraction and moral laundering.
By creating a false equivalence, or even attempting to eclipse, the documented casualties inflicted by the Israeli regime in Gaza, the campaign aims to redirect global outrage and obscure the horrendous crimes of Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s allies.
Influencers and online networks aligned with the Israeli regime aggressively promoted the fabricated Iranian casualty figures in an effort to undermine the global Palestine solidarity movement and digitally overwrite the extensive evidence of Israeli war crimes.
Underlying architecture: NED as a US “regime-change” instrument
The role of the National Endowment for Democracy is central to understanding the structural foundations of this disinformation campaign. Leaked documents and historical analyses reveal the NED as a key instrument of US foreign policy, operating as a conduit for government funds to support political movements aligned with American strategic interests abroad.
The organization was established following congressional scrutiny of CIA covert operations. One of its founders, Allen Weinstein, openly acknowledged that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The NED’s activities extend far beyond Iran. It has been a principal funder and organizer of so-called “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and has been formally designated an “undesirable organization” by Russia for interference in domestic affairs. Its involvement in Hong Kong and Xinjiang has prompted sanctions from China.
In the Iranian context, the NED has for decades funded an array of exile media outlets, advocacy groups, and cultural figures, with the explicit aim of cultivating an alternative political leadership.
A leaked 2024 proposal revealed NED plans to funnel State Department resources into an “Iran Freedom Coalition” composed of US neoconservatives and selected exile figures, exposing the direct link between humanitarian narrative construction and overt regime-change ambitions.
A perennial pattern of narrative warfare
The manipulation of casualty figures during the 2025–2026 unrest is not an isolated episode, but part of a recurring tactic in the long-running hybrid war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The pattern is consistent and predictable: a US-funded NGO, operating safely from New York or Washington, releases an unverifiable and sensational claim. A network of affiliated organizations and social media assets amplifies it, after which mainstream Western media repackages it as credible reporting.
The objective is never truth, but the construction of a carefully engineered perceptual reality serving strategic interests. This reality is designed to demonize independent states, legitimize coercive policies, and erase or minimize the crimes of allied regimes.
The Iranian experience, from the myth of 12,000 deaths to the even more fantastical claim of 52,000, stands as a stark case study in the weaponization of information in the 21st century.
In this domain, the battlefield is not only the street, but global consciousness itself, and the most powerful weapons are often not missiles, but meticulously crafted falsehoods.
The Empire of Lies: How the BBC Strangles Free Speech Under the Mask of Objectivity and Why Trump is Right to Sue
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – December 21, 2025
Against the backdrop of hysteria over “repressions in Russia,” Great Britain itself has long since transformed into a police state, where dissent is stigmatized and truth is replaced by propaganda. Putin’s response has exposed the double standards of Western media.
The Smokescreen of the “Free Press”
On December 19, 2025, Vladimir Putin gave comprehensive and calm answers in a live broadcast to provocative questions from BBC journalist Stephen Rosenberg. Instead of honestly analyzing his arguments about foreign agents, security, and sovereignty, Western media, and the BBC itself first and foremost, prepared another portion of distortions under headlines like “Putin Denies the Obvious.” This moment is the perfect prism through which to discern the essence of the phenomenon. While the missionaries from Northgold Street teach the whole world about “democracy” and “free journalism,” the British Isles themselves are rapidly sinking into the quagmire of ideological conformity and censorship. The BBC Corporation, once a symbol of respectability, has become the epitome of systemic bias and an industry for manufacturing narratives. It is no coincidence that Donald Trump, whom this media machine has vilified for years, has filed a lawsuit against it—this is a logical act of self-defense against organized lies.
Hypocrisy as Editorial Policy. “Repressions” There and Censorship Here
Putin’s answer on the issue of “foreign agents” was crystal clear: the law is a copy of the American FARA, requiring only transparency of foreign funding, not criminal prosecution for opinion. This thesis reveals a monstrous contrast with the realities of Great Britain itself, where freedom of speech has become a fiction, covered by bureaucratic and ideological terror.
Thought Police in Action: From Tweets to Kitchen Conversations. In Russia, it’s registration for NGOs; in Britain, it’s a criminal charge for an ordinary citizen. The Online Safety Bill is nothing other than an architecture of preemptive censorship. UK police regularly detain people for “offensive” or “alarming” posts on social media. There are known cases of a man being interrogated for a sarcastic tweet about transgender people, and a pensioner for a “racist” comment about migration on Facebook. These are not isolated excesses; this is the system. Where is the freedom of speech that the BBC so fiercely defends in its reports about Russia?
De Facto “Foreign Agents”: Stigmatization Instead of Discussion. The BBC has appropriated for itself the right to define the boundaries of permissible discourse. Any criticism that goes beyond these boundaries, be it doubts about the radical environmental agenda, questions about transhumanism, or analysis of the problems of mass migration, is instantly branded by the corporation as “marginal,” “extremist,” or “propagandistic.” Independent analysts, scientists, and journalists who disagree with the general line are systematically pushed out of the airwaves and public sphere under the convenient pretext of “fighting disinformation.” That is, the BBC itself creates “disinformation,” defines it, and fights it, eliminating competitors. This is a classic monopoly on truth.
Trump’s Lawsuit is an Anatomy of the BBC’s Lies. From the “Steele Dossier” to the Myths of “Russiagate”
Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC is not the gesture of an offended politician, but a legal exposure of the festering wound of systemic malfeasance. Trump accuses the corporation of “deliberate and malicious defamation,” and history provides him with ample evidence.
The “Steele Dossier” — A Fake as a Journalistic Standard. In 2016-2017, the BBC, like many Western media outlets, zealously circulated sensational allegations from an unverified dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s political allies. Citing “high-ranking sources,” the BBC built a narrative for months about “Trump’s ties to Moscow,” presenting unconfirmed gossip as facts. Subsequent FBI and US Department of Justice investigations proved the dossier was fabricated, its key “evidence” unsubstantiated. No apologies or serious editorial conclusions ever came from the BBC. The corporation simply moved on to the next topic, leaving a poisoned residue of lies in the minds of millions of viewers.
Salisbury — Verdict Instead of Investigation. The story of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal became a textbook example of how the BBC replaces journalistic investigation with state propaganda. From the first minutes, the corporation abandoned the basic principle—presumption of innocence. The airwaves carried not questions of “who and why?” but assertions: “Russia committed an act of war on British soil.” Alternative versions, inconsistencies in the official story (for example, the complete absence of traces of the “Novichok” poison in the places the Skripals allegedly were), expert opinions questioning the British version—all of this was either hushed up or ridiculed in specially designated “disinformation” segments. The BBC brazenly turned an unverified accusation into an indisputable dogma, denying viewers the right to information.
The Myth of Trump’s “Russian Links,” Which Lasted for Years. Throughout Trump’s presidency, the BBC peremptorily supported the obsessive narrative of his “secret collusion” with the Kremlin. This “link” was the central theme of thousands of reports, analytical programs, and articles. The final report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller (2019) found no evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. For an objective media outlet, this would have been a reason for a deep review of its own editorial policy. For the BBC—merely a reason to change rhetoric: if not “collusion,” then “interference” that Trump “didn’t condemn enough.” The goal was not to inform but to shape the desired, pre-set perception of Trump as illegitimate and hostile.
Censorship in the Name of Security: British Total Control vs. Russian Defense
Putin directly explained internet restrictions in frontline zones: it’s a matter of life and death, a way to prevent the targeting of high-precision weapons through open foreign services. This is a military necessity in conditions of real conflict.
Double Standard as a Principle. And what does peaceful, democratic Great Britain do? Under the same pretext of “national security,” one of the world’s most total surveillance mechanisms over its own citizens has been created here. The Investigatory Powers Act (or “Snoopers’ Charter”) allows intelligence agencies to mass-collect the browsing history, calls, and message metadata of every resident without any court warrant. In partnership with the government, major IT companies and social networks engage in preemptive content censorship, removing viewpoints inconvenient to the authorities under vague labels like “hate propaganda” or “disinformation.” The difference is fundamental: Russia is protecting its physical borders from real military threats in the context of the Special Military Operation. The British state, with the tacit approval and participation of the BBC, actively and undemocratically protects the ideological boundaries of the ruling establishment from dissent, passing it off as “concern for security” and “protection of democracy.”
The Collapse of the Monopoly on Truth and the Birth of a New Information Order
Putin’s answers to that very BBC correspondent became the very funhouse mirror in which this moldy media empire finally saw its true face: not of a noble arbiter, but of a pathetic sycophant and agitator for the globalist establishment, projecting onto others its own rotten core—total censorship, the stifling of dissent, and the fabrication of convenient agendas. Trump’s lawsuit is not the beginning, but a logical final act. It is a shameful verdict for an organization that, with hypocritical, sanctimonious zeal, searched for “tyranny” in far-off lands, blinded by its own arrogance, until it itself turned into the main strangler of free thought at home, on those very blessed islands ruled by arrogant mandarins from Whitehall, detached from reality, and their lackeys at the BBC.
Readers and viewers around the world have long been sick of this hypocritical sham. They are fleeing these dreary, pompous preachers of the “only correct” truth to vibrant alternatives, live streams, and independent voices, bypassing these filtered sewer channels of the old, thoroughly rotten guard.
The world no longer believes in the sacred cow of the “public broadcaster” BBC, whose editorial policy has long been groveling low and basely before the powers that be. All the world’s vileness is committed not by the powers that be, but by the most cowardly dregs, in this case, “the dregs of journalism.” They cannot win in an open fight, and therefore always act with rat-like methods, basely and brazenly distorting obvious facts. Cowards from journalism always rely on baseness and prefer to strike from behind, like rats. This word is the best characterization of the BBC’s current state.
The era when a bunch of pompous dandies from the Thames could arrogantly tell the world what to think has irrevocably sunk into oblivion. And in this lies the best slap in the face to their ossified arrogance and a real breath of freedom for the word in the 21st century.
Victor Mikhin, Writer, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries
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Georgia to sue BBC over ‘absurd’ chemical weapons claims
RT | December 3, 2025
Georgia has announced that it is suing the BBC “for spreading dirty, false accusations,” after the British state broadcaster alleged that the government in Tbilisi used chemical weapons against protesters last year.
The South Caucasus nation was rocked by violent pro-EU demonstrations in late 2024, which broke out after the government temporarily froze integration talks with the bloc, accusing it of weaponizing Tbilisi’s accession bid for political leverage.
In an article on Monday, the BBC claimed that the Georgian authorities used WWI-era chemical weapons during the protests – an allegation which the ruling Georgian Dream party said was based on “absurd and false information.”
According to the BBC investigation, authorities used an outdated riot-control agent mixed into the water fired from water cannons to disperse protesters.
Tbilisi said the broadcaster provided no evidence to substantiate its claims.
Despite approaching the BBC for an explanation and giving exhaustive answers to its questions, the Georgian government “received a cornucopia of lies” and “serious accusations” in response, it said.
“We have decided to start a legal dispute against the false media in international courts. We will use all possible legal means to hold the so-called media that spread lies accountable for spreading dirty, false accusations.”
Georgian Dream claimed that the BBC “has no moral or professional inhibitions about carrying out dirty orders and spreading lies,” and referred to recent scandals which have damaged the broadcaster’s credibility.
Earlier this month, several top-level staff resigned after it emerged that the BBC had aired a documentary in 2024 that spliced together two parts of Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech at the US Capitol in a way that it admitted falsely gave the “impression of a direct call for violent action.”
Trump has accused the broadcaster of meddling in US elections with the controversial 2024 documentary, and threatened to sue for “anywhere between $1 to $5 billion.”
The BBC is losing more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) a year in mass cancellations and fee evasion, according to a recent UK parliamentary report.
BBC Editors Blocked Story on Latest Fluoride Science Over ‘Scaremongering’ Concerns, Former Reporter Says
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 19, 2025
A former BBC health correspondent said editors repeatedly prevented him from reporting on emerging scientific debates over the safety of water fluoridation, dismissing the story as “scaremongering.”
Michele Paduano spent three decades reporting for the BBC from the West Midlands, the first region in the U.K. to fluoridate its water supply, in 1964.
At a Fluoride Action Network (FAN) press conference on Tuesday, Paduano said he became interested in water fluoridation after reviewing the landmark 2024 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The court found that the U.S. fluoridation level of 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L) posed an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health. The West Midlands fluoridates its water at 1 mg/L, about 30% higher than the recommended U.S. level.
Paduano said professor Vyvyan Howard, a pathologist specializing in toxicology and a long-time collaborator, alerted him to several major cohort studies in top academic journals linking water fluoridation to lower IQ in children.
Paduano said mainstream media rebuttals were “so strong and absolute” that he knew publishing a story on the findings would be difficult.
He said he pursued the story only after reading the September 2024 court decision, which cited new evidence pointing to potential neurodevelopmental risks at lower fluoride concentrations.
“At that point, it felt like my public duty to tell people in the West Midlands that there was potentially a problem,” he said.
BBC editors rejected story as ‘scaremongering’
Paduano said he pitched the fluoride story through the BBC’s planning process and arranged an interview with West Midlands anti-fluoridation campaigner Joy Warren. Senior online and television editors abruptly cancelled the interview.
“They told me the story was scaremongering,” he said. Internal BBC scientists and public-health staff insisted there was no credible new evidence. Paduano said he challenged the decision and urged editors to read the U.S. court judgment, but they instead accused him of bias.
“As a BBC journalist, impartiality is fundamental. But impartiality also means reporting new evidence when it emerges,” he said.
Paduano continued investigating the issue and spoke with professor John Fawell, a leading U.K. pro-fluoridation expert and adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO).
As a result of their conversation, Paduano said Fawell acknowledged that recent research should prompt the U.K. to consider lowering fluoridation levels to match U.S. and Canadian guidance. Fawell, who co-authored a book on fluoridation’s oral health benefits, urged U.K. officials to reexamine the country’s dosage and consider aligning it with the U.S.
“If somebody who is a leading pro-fluoride proponent adjusts their position, that is a story,” Paduano said. But he said BBC editors still refused to let him cover it.
Paduano said he then emailed CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs Deborah Turness and BBC Director-General Tim Davie, but the response was “radio silence.” He then took his concerns to Nicholas Serota, a BBC board member responsible for editorial standards.
In the meantime, Paduano said he learned of planned BBC coverage in the North East about proposed fluoridation expansion, and he told Serota that failing to mention the U.S. court decision would constitute “significant censorship.”
Paduano said the article on the North East fluoridation expansion that eventually appeared briefly mentioned the U.S. judgment. He continued arguing that the West Midlands — which has fluoridated its water for decades — should also have reported on the new developments.
The editorial board refused to cover the story. “Concern was that we would be scaremongering, we would frighten people and that the science wasn’t there,” Paduano said.
Paduano said frustrations over fluoride reporting, along with broader concerns about the broadcaster’s impartiality and its close relationship with government, ultimately pushed him to leave the BBC.
Soon after, the BBC published an article about a recommendation by Worcestershire public health officials to expand fluoridation countywide. In what Paduano described as “the ultimate bias,” the article didn’t refer to the U.S. judgment or related research.
After leaving the BBC, Paduano contacted The Independent, which published his story on Fawell’s changing position on water fluoridation.
Paduano said he again approached the BBC, arguing that national coverage proved the issue’s newsworthiness, but editors held their ground and directed him to the complaints process — which he says has resulted in little progress.
‘We should avoid worrying our audiences unduly,’ BBC says
The BBC has not responded publicly to Paduano’s allegations, and it did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
The organization did reply to complaint letters from Howard and FAN’s science adviser Paul Connett, Ph.D., author of “The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There.” The letters urged the BBC to show “objectivity and professionalism on the latest research into the risks of water fluoridation” and to investigate Paduano’s claims.
In its initial response, the BBC complaints team said it had “provided a fair and appropriate view” of the water fluoridation issue.
In a follow-up response to Connett and Howard, the BBC defended its decision not to mention recent science linking fluoride exposure to neurodevelopmental issues in children.
The BBC said its reporting reflects “the majority view — from the World Health Organisation, US Centre for Disease Control, the American Dental Society [sic] and others,” and argued that it maintains a “higher bar for publishing stories around health risk.”
The BBC cited its editorial guidelines:
“The reporting of risk can have an impact on the public’s perception of that risk, particularly with health or crime stories. We should avoid worrying our audiences unduly and contextualise our reports to be clear about the likelihood of the risk occurring. This is particularly true in reporting health stories that may cause individuals to alter their behaviour in ways that could be harmful.”
Kevin Silverton, who signed the letter, said the complaints team could not continue corresponding and that further concerns should be taken to the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit.
BBC reporting on fluoride ‘can’t be trusted’
Connett told The Defender he was “shocked” when the BBC justified its position by citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Dental Association (ADA) and the WHO as representing the majority expert view. He said:
“As you well know, the CDC oral health division’s mission was to promote fluoridation, and the ADA has avidly promoted it for years — so much so that any study that found any harm was immediately dismissed as being bad science, and the WHO has not looked at fluoride’s neurotoxicity for many years, if ever. It is incredible to me that this very large government-funded body should rely on such one-sided, essentially partisan.”
Connett said the public and local officials rely on the BBC for accurate information, but on fluoride, “it can’t be trusted.” He said:
“When a major media entity gets involved, you would hope that they would do their homework and review the science when it is available for them. In this case the issue should have been easy because it did not entail slogging through all the studies themselves. They had a major review by a government entity, the National Toxicology Program, and they also had the judgment of a judge in a seven-year lawsuit.
“In short, the BBC is abusing the public’s trust on this important health issue, and that is shocking. Scientists like myself have an obligation to speak out. In our case, we were lucky to have a journalist to give us an inside view of the censorship that went on. We are often not that lucky.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Breaking: Fluoride in Water Poses ‘Unreasonable Risk’ to Children, Federal Judge Rules
- CDC Stands by Water Fluoridation After Report Linking Fluoride to Lower IQs in Kids Finally Published
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
BBC Ignored Internal Request to Correct Claim Anas Al-Sharif Worked With Hamas
The BBC report remains uncorrected – evidence of a culture of intimidation, fear and political control
By Harriett Williamson | Novara Media | September 10, 2025
The BBC ignored an internal request to correct reporting that smeared a high-profile Palestinian journalist killed by Israel as a Hamas operative, in what a whistleblower has described as a “grave editorial breach”.
According to a leaked email seen by Novara Media, Global Journalism – part of the BBC Global News team, which is run by BBC deputy director Jonathan Munro – sent an “essential amendment and correction” request regarding BBC News reporting which claimed that Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif “did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”.
Al-Sharif was killed on 10 August in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a tent marked “PRESS” outside the entrance of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Five other media workers were also assassinated in the strike: Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and photographers Ibrahim Thaher and Mohamed Nofal, freelance photojournalist Mohammed al-Khalidi and cameraman Momen Aliwa.
In a statement posted on X/Twitter, Israel said: “Al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops. Intelligence and documents from Gaza, including rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records, prove he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera.” Accompanying the post were unverified screenshots from spreadsheets. The IDF provided no justification for the killing of al-Sharif’s five colleagues in the same airstrike.
Al Jazeera has categorically denied that al-Sharif was in any way Hamas affiliated.
The leaked email, dated 18 August, was sent by Global Journalism to hundreds of BBC journalists via two distribution addresses. It singled out a line in a BBC News article for correction: “The BBC understands Sharif did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”.
Screenshots seen by Novara Media show the email was sent to a significant number of senior journalists, including World Service Languages controller Fiona Crack, senior news editors Kate Forbes and Abigail Mobbs, director of audience growth Jamie Wakefield, and head of digital content for World Service, Claire Williams.
The email said the sentence “should be amended” to: “A source has told the BBC that Sharif had worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict, but Al Jazeera has denied this and the BBC News Arabic correspondent also says that he has seen no evidence.”
The email is signed by Global Journalism, part of BBC Global News which is led by Munro, who currently serves as BBC News’ senior controller of news content and the deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs.
One BBC employee told Novara Media that the email went out to at least 1,200 journalists. The BBC disputed this and says the number is closer to 400. However, a screenshot seen by Novara Media confirms that just one of the two distribution email addresses goes to over 1,200 accounts.
At the time of reporting, the line in question remains uncorrected on the BBC News article, last updated 13 August. The same claim was also presented as fact on the BBC News liveblog on 11 August in reporting by Jon Donnison from Jerusalem, as well as cropping up in BBC Verify reporting on TikTok.
A BBC employee told Novara Media: “This leaked email […] exposes from the inside the culture of intimidation, fear and political control that journalists are subjected to within the corporation.
“The email admits a reported line that should never have made it onto the BBC’s front page was published without evidence, yet the error remains uncorrected and no one has been held accountable.
“In any other newsroom, such a grave editorial breach on a matter of major public interest, the targeted killing of a fellow journalist, would have led to senior resignations.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “We stand by our reporting in the BBC News article you reference from 13 August and liveblog from 11 August, and can assure audiences that we scrupulously fact check and verify all information we obtain. This internal email was sent to a specific team about a different article and contained a suggested amendment that was incorrect. We are updating our copy to remove the amendment where it has been applied.”
Munro became global director of BBC News in September 2024. The role includes leading the BBC World Service, overseeing BBC Monitoring, and continuing as deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs
In the months leading up to al-Sharif’s death, Israeli officials repeatedly claimed the reporter was a Hamas operative, including in a ‘kill list’ graphic with the names and pictures of six Al Jazeera journalists.
Two weeks before al-Sharif was killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) called on the international community to protect him due to “repeated threats” from IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee. The CJP said accusations of al-Sharif being a Hamas operative “represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill al-Sharif”.
In August, it was revealed that Israel has a secret military unit specifically tasked with linking Palestinian journalists to Hamas and Islamic Jihad as part of a drive to tamp down on global condemnation for the murder of journalists in Gaza.
This isn’t the first time the BBC has been criticised for biased reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A blistering report from the Centre for Media Monitoring in June showed that Israeli deaths were given 33 times more coverage per fatality by the corporation, that both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards, and that content consistently shut down allegations of genocide.
Last week, Novara Media revealed that BBC reps for the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) discouraged colleagues from attending a vigil in London – organised by the NUJ – for their murdered colleagues in Gaza.
Gaza is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Since October 2023, Israel has killed more media workers in Gaza than in both world wars, the US civil war, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan combined.
Harriet Williamson is a commissioning editor and reporter for Novara Media.
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Villains of Judea
Abe Foxman
Foxman left a legacy of surveillance scandals, political vendettas, and selective outrage.
José Niño Unfiltered | May 24, 2026
When Abraham Foxman died on May 10, 2026, tributes poured in from presidents, prime ministers, and Jewish leaders worldwide, yet his legacy remains defined as much by controversy as by accomplishment.
Foxman described himself as “a passionate supporter of the State of Israel” and spent his career building the ADL into a roughly $60 million per year organization that defined mainstream American Jewish advocacy on antisemitism, civil rights, and the Jewish state. … continue
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