The outlet said it 'had not made sufficient effort to seek corroborating evidence to justify reporting Hamas' claim'
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The BBC apologized Friday for a Christmas Eve report containing an unverified Hamas claim that Israelis were committing "summary executions" – or executions based on guilt without a fair trial – on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
"In overnight output we ran a story about Hamas accusing the Israeli army of carrying out summary executions in the Gaza strip," the apology, posted to the outlet's corrections and clarifications page, read.
"This was a Hamas statement, but although the accusations were attributed and our story contained a response from the Israeli military saying they were unaware of the incident and that Hamas was a terrorist organization that did not value truth, we had not made sufficient effort to seek corroborating evidence to justify reporting the Hamas claim. We apologize for this mistake," it continued.
The BBC told Fox News Digital it had no further comment on the matter.
BBC MARRED BY RECENT STRING OF RETRACTIONS AND APOLOGIES RELATED TO ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR COVERAGE
People walk near the entrance to BBC Broadcasting House on October 22, 2012, in London, England. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
The Israel-Hamas war has created division abroad, including people in the U.S. and the U.K., even prompting the BBC to make a number of other retractions, apologies and policy changes.
Journalist Noah Abrahams, for example, quit the BBC last year over criticism against the outlet for formerly refusing to label Hamas as "terrorists."
The network, however, responded to the widespread criticism at the time with a policy change that involved labeling Hamas as a terrorist organization going forward.
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An Israeli soldier operates in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in this handout picture released on December 21, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo)
The change was initially announced by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who wrote in a press release at the time that BBC Director General Tim Davie agreed to the new policy.
"The BBC confirmed it was committed to continued dialogue. It also confirmed it is no longer BBC practice to call Hamas militants. Instead, the BBC describes the group as a proscribed terrorist organization by the UK government and others, or simply as Hamas," the press release read.
A BBC spokesperson confirmed the change to Fox News Digital at the time, saying, "The BBC regularly meets a range of groups and today met the Board of Deputies of British Jews. During the meeting we confirmed that we will continue to refer to Hamas as a proscribed terror organization by the UK Government and others."
"What the BBC does not do is use the word terrorist without attributing it, nor do we ban words. We also confirmed that for some days we had not been using ‘militant’ as a default description for Hamas, as we have been finding this a less accurate description for our audiences as the situation evolves."
Since Hamas terrorists launched attacks on Israeli residential areas on Oct. 7 of last year, Israeli and Palestinian sympathizers have engaged in back-and-forth protests in major cities and spawned concerns over antisemitism and Islamophobia that inspired a federal investigation into top universities.
Taylor Penley is an associate editor with Fox News.
