BBC’s Jeremy Bowen admits he ‘got it wrong’ in Gaza hospital report but has ‘no regrets’

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telegraph.co.uk

International editor says he doesn't 'feel particularly bad about' his inaccuracies

BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen admits he ‘got it wrong’ in his coverage saying the Gaza Al-Alhi hospital was "flattened" (it was never even bombed), but still said he “doesn’t regret one thing” about his reporting and doesn't feel particularly bad.

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His inaccuracies: blaming Israel for the al-Shifa missile attack, and referring to the hospital as, "flattened."

I've seen people repeating these inaccuracies constantly on Lemmy.

He didn't blame the attach on Israel. He did say it had been flattened.

His claim of it being flattened caused the BBC to report that it was likely Israel who did it because they were the only ones who had ordinance powerful enough to level a hospital:

In the first story about the hospital on the BBC on Oct 17, correspondent Jon Donnison suggested Israel was behind the blast. Speaking shortly after 8pm on BBC News, he said: “It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.”

I admit, I was surprised at how many people are indifferent to the truth (at best) regarding this conflict. I know some people in real life who see a lot of antisemitism in modern American society and I used to think they were paranoid but now I'm not sure what else could be motivating this sort of motivated reasoning.

The problem is, that Israel made it relatively easy to fall for these stories by doing similar things for real in the past.

So you've got a credible source (BBC) reporting something that's not really unheard of (i.e. kind of plausible) and that's happening to align with what you've already suspected. Bam, rumor is born.

BTW, you had the same mechanism shortly after the attacks with the "Hamas beheaded babies" stories.

You don't know what could possibly cause people to have an anti-Israel bias other than antisemitism? Maybe a history book?

Beheaded babies and the IDF saying “we have lied before but not this time.” really muddies the water.