BBC Ignored Internal Request to Correct Claim Anas Al-Sharif Worked With Hamas

The BBC ignored an internal request to correct reporting that smeared a high-profile Palestinian journalist killed by Israel as a Hamas operative, in what a whistleblower has described as a “grave editorial breach”. 

According to a leaked email seen by Novara Media, BBC Global News – run by BBC deputy director Jonathan Munro – sent an “essential amendment and correction” request regarding BBC News reporting which claimed that Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif “did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”.

Al-Sharif was killed on 10 August in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a tent marked “PRESS” outside the entrance of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Five other media workers were also assassinated in the strike: Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and photographers Ibrahim Thaher and Mohamed Nofal, freelance photojournalist Mohammed al-Khalidi and cameraman Momen Aliwa.

In a statement posted on X/Twitter, Israel said: “Al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops. Intelligence and documents from Gaza, including rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records, prove he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera.” Accompanying the post were unverified screenshots from spreadsheets. The IDF provided no justification for the killing of al-Sharif’s five colleagues in the same airstrike.

Al Jazeera has categorically denied that al-Sharif was in any way Hamas affiliated.

The leaked email, dated 18 August, was sent by BBC Global News to around 1,200 BBC journalists via a distribution address called “collective newsroom editorial”. It singled out a line in a BBC News article for correction: “The BBC understands Sharif did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current war”. 

The email said the sentence “should be amended” to: “A source has told the BBC that Sharif had worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict, but Al Jazeera has denied this and the BBC News Arabic correspondent also says that he has seen no evidence.”

The email is signed by the BBC Global News team, as well as BBC News’ senior controller of news content and the deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs.

At the time of reporting, the line in question remains uncorrected on the BBC News article, last updated 13 August. The same claim was also presented as fact on the BBC News liveblog on 11 August in reporting by Jon Donnison from Jerusalem, as well as cropping up in BBC Verify reporting on TikTok. 

A BBC employee told Novara Media: “This leaked email […] exposes from the inside the culture of intimidation, fear and political control that journalists are subjected to within the corporation. 

“The email admits a reported line that should never have made it onto the BBC’s front page was published without evidence, yet the error remains uncorrected and no one has been held accountable. 

“In any other newsroom, such a grave editorial breach on a matter of major public interest, the targeted killing of a fellow journalist, would have led to senior resignations.”

BBC News did not respond to a request for comment. 

Munro became global director of BBC News in September 2024. The role includes leading the BBC World Service, overseeing BBC Monitoring, and continuing as deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs 

In the months leading up to al-Sharif’s death, Israeli officials repeatedly claimed the reporter was a Hamas operative, including in a ‘kill list’ graphic with the names and pictures of six Al Jazeera journalists. 

Two weeks before al-Sharif was killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) called on the international community to protect him due to “repeated threats” from IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee. The CJP said accusations of al-Sharif being a Hamas operative “represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill al-Sharif”. 

In August, it was revealed that Israel has a secret military unit specifically tasked with linking Palestinian journalists to Hamas and Islamic Jihad as part of a drive to tamp down on global condemnation for the murder of journalists in Gaza. 

This isn’t the first time the BBC has been criticised for biased reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A blistering report from the Centre for Media Monitoring in June showed that Israeli deaths were given 33 times more coverage per fatality by the corporation, that both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards, and that content consistently shut down allegations of genocide. 

Last week, Novara Media revealed that BBC reps for the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) discouraged colleagues from attending a vigil in London – organised by the NUJ – for their murdered colleagues in Gaza.

Gaza is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Since October 2023, Israel has killed more media workers in Gaza than in both world wars, the US civil war, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan combined.