BBC gets a Gaza story right

As we have remarked here before on several occasions, the BBC has shown in the past that it is capable of accurate and impartial reporting on Israel as long as the subject matter is not related to ‘the conflict’.

Thus we have seen balanced reporting on subjects such as tourism, nature, technology, locust swarms and ‘matkot‘. 

On August 10th a short article published on the Middle East page of the BBC News website showed that the capability for accurate and impartial reporting on security-related issues also exists.

The report concerns an incident which took place on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on that night in which a man tried to cross the border fence and – having refused to heed the warnings of soldiers – was subsequently shot, later dying of his wounds.  

The BBC article accurately reports that:

“The man, who has not been identified, was earlier seen digging into the ground on the Gazan side of the fence [ed. – in an area in which IEDs have been laid in the past], a military spokesperson told the BBC.

He then clambered over the fence, allegedly carrying a suspicious object.”

Aug 10 incident Gaza border

Whilst there is room for improvement in the accuracy of the headline – the addition of the word ‘infiltrator’ would have better clarified the story to audiences – and of course the use of the word ‘terrorists’ would have been more exact than the term ‘militants’, it is nevertheless encouraging to see that the absence of a permanent BBC reporter in the Gaza Strip actually seems to be beneficial to the standard of the BBC’s coverage. 

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