BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen received a harsh grilling while on his own network Saturday over his coverage of an explosion at a Gaza hospital on October 17th.
The explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital quickly became a lightning rod of controversy as many Western media outlets immediately ran with Hamas-linked statements on the event claiming that Israel bombed the hospital, killing hundreds. In the days following, as U.S., Israeli, and other countries’ intelligence agencies concluded the explosion at the hospital was likely an Islamic Jihad rocket misfire, many outlets corrected their coverage and added editor’s notes apologizing to readers.
Additionally, damage to the hospital later appeared to be mostly contained to the parking lot, where a great many were killed — although the exact number remains unclear.
While appearing on BBC News channel’s Behind The Stories on Saturday, Bowen admitted to errors in his coverage but said he “doesn’t regret one thing” about his report.
“The missile hit the hospital not long after dark. You can hear the impact. The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital. It was already damaged from a smaller attack at the weekend. The building was flattened,” reported Bowen live on air during BBC One’s News at Ten within hours of the initial reports.
After playing sound from the report, a BBC journalist said to Bowen, “I’ve got to ask you about the hospital. On the 17th of October.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah,” Bowen replied.
“The BBC was criticized heavily for its reporting of that event. Tell us what happened that night. And, you know, bluntly, where were you getting your information? And do you regret anything that you said that night?” Bowen was then asked.
“So it broke in, I suppose, mid-evening. And to answer your question, no, I don’t regret one thing in my reporting, because I think I think I was measured throughout. I didn’t race to judgment,” he replied, defending himself.
“But you said that building had been flattened,” the interviewer pushed back.
“Oh, yeah. Well, I got that wrong because I was looking at the pictures and what I could see was a square that appeared to be flaming on all sides. And there was a, you know, sort of a void in the middle. And it was I think it was a picture taken from a drone. And so, you know, we have to piece together what we see. And I thought, well, it looks like whole buildings gone. And that was my conclusion from looking at the pictures. And I was wrong on that. But I don’t feel too bad about that,” Bowen replied.
The BBC also offered a correction of its reporting on the hospital explosion on October 19th for speculating Israel was behind the blast. The network later added an apology to its correction on the 24th:
We have reviewed our coverage of the immediate aftermath of an
explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday night. During this our correspondent was giving instant analysis on the ground from Jerusalem in what was a confusing and difficult story. The programme repeatedly made it clear that it had yet to verify who was behind the blast, including in the questioning by the presenter. The correspondent said that the Israelis had been contacted and were investigating, adding “It’s hard to see what else this could be really given the size of the explosion other than an Israeli air strike or several air strikes”. He then explained that in his experience as a reporter in Gaza that he had never seen explosions of this scale caused by rockets being fired out of the territory. He again stressed that the pictures had yet to be verified.We accept that even in this fast-moving situation it was wrong to speculate in this way about the possible causes and we apologise for this, although he did not at any point report that it was an Israeli strike. This doesn’t represent the entirety of the BBC’s output and anyone watching, listening to or reading our coverage can see we have set out both sides’ competing claims about the explosion, clearly showing who is saying them, and what we do or don’t know.
Watch the full clip above via the BBC.