The BBC's Prostitute 'Journalists’ Led by Radio 2’s Harvey Cook LAUGHED AT BABIES BEING BLOWN UP at the NUJ Conference

BBC Delegates Did All They Could to Undermine Solidarity With the Palestinian Victims of Israel’s Genocide

Sky News investigates slaughter of Palestinian family fleeing fighting | Israel-Hamas War

The BBC has historically been pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist. I can remember in 1967 during the 6 Day War, the BBC’s correspondent in Israel, Michael Elkins could hardly contain his enthusiasm for Israel’s victory.

Throughout the troubles in Northern Ireland, which began because the Catholic population demanded civil rights after years of gerrymandering, the BBC made it clear it was on the side of the British army and the Unionists.

During the current genocide in Gaza the BBC has bent over backwards to whitewash and exonerate Israel’s military. When the BBC showed Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone it immediately ran into a campaign by the Israel lobby over the fact that the father of its narrator, Abdullah 14, was the Deputy Minister for Agriculture in Gaza’s administration.

Harvey Cook lobbying i.e. threatening the NUJ Executive

Even if this were true, then so what? Even if his father had been a member of Hamas why should that have had any bearing his son fronting the program? The BBC thought differently and quickly bent the knee to the Zionists and their lackies in the British government like the despicable Lisa Nandy.

If this was not bad enough, the BBC then used the censorship of this film as an excuse not to broadcast another film, Gaza: Medics Under Fire. The fact that all of Gaza’s hospitals have been bombed and attacked and most of them destroyed hasn’t bothered the genocide supporters at the BBC at all.

Harvey Cook lobbying i.e. threatening the NUJ Executive

Anything that is seen as sympathetic to the Palestinians gets censored by the BBC management, led by its Tory Director General Tim Davie.

Harvey Cook and the rest of the BBC Delegation Found the Plight of This Child Highly Amusing

Contrast this with Sky TV’s coverage. It did an excellent expose of Israel’s  calculated murder of 6 year old Hind Rajab who was murdered by a tank along with the two Red Crescent paramedics sent to rescue her.

When Israel executed 15 Red Crescent medics and then lied about it, claiming that they had approached Israel’s military ‘suspiciously’ with their lights off, the BBC went out of its way to whitewash this appalling war crime. Even when the footage that was later discovered on one of the bodies proved that the ambulances had their lights on and that they had been murdered in cold blood. 

The BBC Delegation to the NUJ Conference

The idea of the BBC labelling what happened for what it was, clear and calculated murder is unimaginable. Instead its headline was 'Professional failures' led to killing of Gaza medics, IDF inquiry says. giving prominence to yet more Israeli lies. One wonders if Russia had executed 15 Red Cross workers whether they would have carried Russia’s explanation without comment?

‘Professional failures’ might be used about a doctor who made mistakes resulting in the death of a patient. It implies that the death was accidental, not the cold-blooded killing of Red Crescent workers.

When the Israeli version of events was shown to be a lie, did the BBC come out and say so? Not a bit of it. Its headline was ‘Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza’.

Presumably the Nazi massacres at Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane were also mistakes and the result of ‘professional failures’. How can an ambush in which firing could be heard for 5 minutes and when the ambulances were crushed and buried in a shallow grave, rather than being handed over to the Red Crescent, be termed a ‘mistake’? 

Omar and Omar - the BBC found their murder highly amusing

This is Goebbels style propaganda but it is consistent with the bias of the BBC over decades of reporting the war crimes of the Apartheid State.

Or take the title of its video ‘Israel admits wrongly killing 15 emergency workers in Gaza due to “professional failures” This was not an accidental death but deliberate, cold blooded murder. An ambush. Imagine the BBC saying ‘Israel murders 15 emergency workers in Gaza.’ It is not something that the BBC and its Zionist Gatekeeper Raffi Burg could even contemplate.

Israel admits wrongly killing 15 emergency workers in Gaza due to “professional failures” 

Owen Jones asked whether the BBC ‘journalists’ were on crack. The sad truth is that the ‘prostitute journalists’ responsible for the BBC’s coverage were not under the influence of drugs. They have no such excuse. The BBC sees its prime duty as being loyalty to British foreign office policy.

These premature babies were taken out of the incubators at Al Shifa hospital and left to die by the IDF - their bodies eaten by wild animals - highly amusing to Harvey Cook

It’s a good job that the BBC weren’t on the German side during the war otherwise they would have described Auschwitz as a ‘professional mistake’. 

It is no accident that when the National Union of Journalists held its conference in Blackpool from April 25-27 the BBC’s delegates, led by Harvey Cook and Stefan Cholewka, the Manchester delegate, did their best to block all resolutions supporting the Palestinians.

I was approached by a delegate to the conference, who asked to remain anonymous who wrote the following piece:

Kafka meets Orwell at the national union of journalists

The NUJ delegates at their conference in Blackpool laughed at the thought of babies being blown up in Gaza. When challenged if he thought it funny one said "the more the better."

These delegates included senior BBC presenters such as: Harvey Cook, who describes himself as a news reader at BBC radio two and radio  Kent.

These delegates who represented several sections, but were mostly based in London, had spent the entire conference voting down every resolution that in anyway supported Palestine.

Whenever they lost a vote they would bring it back with a point of order or vote clause by clause to neuter it. The NUJ is a small union of under 20,000 and is haemorrhaging members. It is well known in union circles that those in the BBC sections have threatened to leave in block if the union supports Palestine in any way. Obviously some BBC workers value their jobs more than opposing Genocide!

Manchester delegate, Stefan Cholewka, said:

" it was like something out of Kafka's, the trial."

When the NUJ executive ruled out of order yet another attempt to block discussion on Gaza, Harvey Cook approached them, whispered something to them, and magically, they changed their minds.

Many times, pro Palestinian delegates were not allowed to speak by time being called on debate. When one delegate from Manchester spoke to tell the conference what the pro Israel lobby had said, he was ruled out of order.

This delegate was then intimidated  by a member of the BBC world service, and later by an NUJ executive member called, Nick McGowan - Lowe. (this is one person not Manchester United's new midfield.)

Worse was to follow. The delegate was then called into a room by the then union assistant General Secretary, Seamus Dooley. No prior notice was given. No legal representation allowed. The unions legal officer took notes but the delegate was given no such luxury. Charges were then brought against the delegate by (the executive) rather than any named accusers.) The executive are therefore acting as judge and jury.

One of the charges is that the delegate may in the future write an article about the conference. Think for a moment.. : a journalist is charged with, at some time in the future, writing an article about journalists, at a conference for... journalists...

Opening the conference, union President, Natasha Hirst, had said:

" healthy debate is crucial to strengthening the unions work."

The BBC's Delegation to the NUJ Conference

An article in The Socialist, Heated debates on Gaza reporting in journalists’ union confirms the above account:

Tony Greenstein

Motion 102 from the London Magazine branch noted a November 2024 letter from over 230 members of the media, including 101 BBC journalists, that criticised the BBC, Sky and ITV reporting of the Gaza horrors.

Some BBC delegates, with backing from the right wing of the National Executive Council (NEC), successfully moved to bring the motion back to standing orders, claiming the motion broke NUJ rules. London Magazine members agreed to remove the contentious paragraph but BBC London branch still opposed the motion. They falsely claimed that the London Magazine motion was an attack on the integrity and work of BBC journalists.

Moving the motion, London Magazine branch chair and Socialist Party member Niall Mulholland emphasised that in fact the motion was an act of solidarity with BBC journalists trying to do their job and follow the NUJ’s Code of Conduct, in the context of senior management pressure and editorial decisions. Niall quoted from the open letter: “The BBC did not make clear when Israel is a perpetrator or relay the historical context of events before 7 October 2023.” An oppositional amendment was passed but a significant minority supported 102.

See also:

Fact or Fiction: Israel needs fake nurses to justify killing Gaza babies

Israeli killings of Palestinian children 'an extremely dark place in history', says UN

‘They killed her twice’: Hind Rajab’s mother mourns girl, 6, found killed days after being trapped under Israeli fire