Report: ‘Dishonest, Biased’ BBC Protects UK Ally Saudi Arabia

Journalists outside the front of the BBC's London headquarters. | Photo: EFE

Published 26 October 2015

A report in The Intercept debunks the BBC’s claims to be objective and neutral.

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald outed the BBC Monday as “dishonest and biased” after the broadcaster’s recent article, parroting claims by an anonymous Saudi official, covered up the extent of the monarchy’s dirty dealings with the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.

This media analysis comes as the U.K.-Saudi relationship comes under intense scrutiny in Britain.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn recently called on Prime Minister David Cameron to scrap a controversial bid to run Saudi prisons given its human rights record, to which the Saudi’s U.K. Ambassador to the U.K., Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, hit back in an article in The Telegraph Monday, writing, “There has been an alarming change in the way Saudi Arabia is discussed in Britain,” and going on to threaten, “It should be worrying to all those who do not want to see potentially serious repercussions that could damage the mutually beneficial strategic partnership that our countries have so long enjoyed.”

Against this backdrop, Greenwald explains that the BBC, which claims to act in the public interest, has covered up alliances between Saudi Arabia and al-Qaida in Syria.

“What this does highlight is just how ludicrous – how beyond parody – the 14-year-old ‘War on Terror’ has become.”

In October, the BBC wrote an article (read an archived copy of the pre-edited version here) citing an unnamed Saudi source as saying that his country was not supplying any arms to either the Islamic State group or the al-Qaida affiliate Nusra Front, claiming they would go only to the Army of Conquest, the Free Syrian Army and the Southern Front.

The problem with this reporting, Greenwald explains, is that there is “not even remote dispute,” even citing U.S. state outlet Voice of America, that the Army of Conquest includes the Nusra Front. Far from being a scoop from an anonymous source, the BBC’s reporting was “uncritical regurgitation” of propaganda the Saudis wanted to be released.

BBC user Ricardo Vaz complained to the BBC, but was far from satisfied with its response, which was to edit out the quote from the official to read “he said the weapons would go to the Free Syrian Army and other small rebel groups.”

Exerpt from the BBC Charter. Download the whole charter below.

Greenwald concludes that “the BBC literally changed the Saudi official’s own statement, whitewashed it, to eliminate his admission that they were arming ‘Army of Conquest.’”

Vaz told The Intercept, “Either the Saudi official expected the BBC journalist not to know (the connection between Nusra Front and the Army of Conquest), or he expects us to believe they can deliver weapons to factions fighting side by side with an al-Qaida affiliate and that those weapons will not make their way into Nusra’s hands.”

Vaz added: “This is very close to an official admission that the Saudis (along with Qataris and Turkish) are supplying weapons to an al-Qaida affiliate. This of course is not a secret to anyone who’s paying attention.”

Greenwald, in a blistering conclusion, writes that “it’s telling indeed to watch the BBC desperately protect Saudi officials, not only by granting them anonymity to spout official propaganda, but worse, by using blatant editing games to whitewash the Saudis’ own damaging admissions, ones the BBC unwittingly published. There are many adjectives one can apply to the BBC’s behavior here: ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ are most assuredly not among them.”

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