On March 23rd the BBC News website’s US & Canada and Middle East pages carried an article titled “Israel holds 19-year-old over threats against Jewish centres“.
The article itself gives an accurate account of the arrest of a US-Israeli dual national on suspicion of making hoax bomb threats to institutions in the US and elsewhere. However, the report also promotes two items of completely unrelated visual material.
Embedded in the report is a video captioned ‘”It’s other people’s loved ones – you don’t do this”: People gather at Philadelphia graveyard’ which first appeared on the BBC News website on February 27th in a written report titled “‘Hundreds’ of US Jewish graves attacked in Philadelphia” as well as in a separate filmed report.
Obviously that video has no connection to the arrest which is the subject matter of this report and the reason for its inclusion is therefore unclear.
A second video embedded in the article is captioned “The BBC spoke to a Muslim-American couple targeted by an abusive caller”. It first appeared on the BBC News website on November 29th 2016 in an article promoting a report produced by the controversial SPLC titled “‘Trump effect’ led to hate crime surge, report finds” as well as in a separate filmed report.
There is nothing to suggest that this video has any connection to the story being reported either and so the editorial decision to promote it in this article is similarly incomprehensible.
