The Control of Information – Guest post
How the rich and powerful shape the media and control your mind. By Dr. Judith Brown
Two guest posts from Jonathon Cook
“Jeremy Bowen’s interview with Gaza aid chief was shameful, and he knows it”. Jonathon Cook.
Today I went to a demonstration in Bath that was protesting for the rights of British citizens – a sort of “UK first” movement. The protesters felt that the government does not put the British people first, cutting services and funds for British people whilst raising their taxes and allowing price rises for essential products. At the same time, it is accommodating illegal migrants in hotels, and also sending money to fight wars and support people in other countries, such as Ukraine. I would add, the government is also spending millions of pounds every year to survey the UK people and censor their voices. Worse, the government is also sending money via government funded NGOs such as the Open Information Partnership and the British Council, and sometimes directly through British embassies to survey and censor people overseas, in a manner that has no benefit to the British people. All of this spending by the government does not have a democratic mandate. I am one hundred percent in line with the “Uk First” campaign.
Just round the corner was a protest against the genocide in Palestine. Some of the people in the “UK First” demonstration were making very negative comments about the Gaza protest. I could not hold my tongue. We are all on the same side. What is happening to the Palestinians – a visible genocide - is a warning of what might happen to people all over the world in the future, including the British population. When I went to a pro-Palestine demonstration a few months ago, I heard horrible comments about gender critical feminists, who are trying to protect women only spaces from encroachment by men. They are trying to protect our children from those who want to persuade them that boys can become girls and girls can become boys, although this is a ridiculous lie. The funding of the trans-activist campaigns are from the same sources that fund the genocidal attacks on Palestine, from the same people that fund the censorship of concerned voices, from the same people that fund war. It is those with immense and unbelievable wealth that are part of the Bank of International Settlement, that are part of the tax-avoiding-pretending-to-be-philanthropists crowd, that are part of the Bilderbergers, part of the World Economic Forum, and other such nefarious organisations. None of these organisations or people have a democratic mandate, but they not us decide policy, whilst governments and a few world agencies enforce their policies.
In fact, it was when as an aid worker living under Israeli occupation in South Lebanon when I first became aware that our world was censored, and that we were being told lies by the media and our government. I felt that I had been deceived. For example, when an Israeli bomb dropped on a UN shelter in Qana, South Lebanon, in 1996, I saw the new graves of the 106 Lebanese, nearly half of them children, who were murdered as they sheltered from war. 116 were also injured. I was told that if the story got out, then Boutros Boutros Ghali, then the Secretary General of the UN, would not get a second term in office; an unusual occurrence. UN peacekeepers gave evidence of an Israeli attack to the veteran journalist Robert Fisk who lived in Lebanon, and the story got out into the mainstream British press. Ghali did not get a second term. This really shocked me as until then I thought ‘the news’ was in fact ‘the news’. Following this awakening, I saw so many things in the Middle East that were ignored or excused by the British media.
When I eventually left the Middle East in 2001, I undertook a PhD to investigate this media and government deception that I had witnessed and discovered for myself. This took me onto a path of discovery, work that initially investigated media deception eventually changed into investigating media and social media manipulation. I then gained another master’s degree in Research into Journalism, and this led me to my current research into fact checking, some of which I undertook with an organisation called PANDA.
Jonathon Cook has remained one of my very favourite journalists since those early days of investigation of media censorship, media corruption, and frankly, media lies. Recently he has done some great pieces on the media and its reporting of events in Palestine. This one is about the BBC, which is one of the organisations that leads the global censorship drive, see my earlier investigations into the BBC [1] here.
But the star of today’s report is Jonathon’s story of media deceit. Read it. When you do, remember that this is how we are lied to, about everything. Gaza. Climate. Health. War. Censorship. Gender. Nutrition. Cows. Truth. Everything. The Truth is subtly adjusted to make the story seem what it is not. It is not just Bowen who twists the truth. Governments do it all the time.
Jeremy Bowen’s interview with Gaza aid chief was shameful, and he knows it.
Jonathon Cook.
May 20, 2025
There was no excuse for the BBC to follow Israel in treating the head of UNRWA as though he is aligned with terrorism. This kind of craven journalism just makes Israel’s job of genocide easier.
There was yet more shameful reporting by BBC News at Ten last night, with international editor Jeremy Bowen the chief culprit this time.
He prefaced an interview with Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA, with an utterly unwarranted disclaimer – as though he was talking to a terrorist, not a leading human rights advocate who has been desperately trying to keep the last aid life-lines open to the people of Gaza as they are being actively starved to death by Israel.
The only time I can remember Bowen prefacing an interview in such apologetic terms was when he interviewed Hamas’ deputy political chief, Khalil al-Hayya, last October.
That was shameful too. But at least on that occasion, Bowen had an excuse: under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act, saying or doing anything that might be viewed as favouring Hamas can land you with a 14-year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.
But why on earth would Bowen imply that Lazzarini’s remarks – on the intense suffering of Gaza’s population in the third month of a complete Israeli aid blockade – need to be treated with caution, in the same manner as those of a Hamas leader?
For one reason only. Because Israel, quite preposterously and for completely self-serving reasons, claims UNRWA is a front for Hamas. Since January, Israel has outlawed the organisation from operating in the Palestinian territories it continues to illegally occupy. As ever, the BBC is terrified of upsetting the Israelis.
Israel has long wanted UNRWA out of the picture because it is the last significant organisation to uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees enshrined in international law. It is, therefore, a major obstacle to Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinians from what is left of their homeland.
I missed this on Tuesday. On the News At Ten Jeremy Bowen gives a preamble before a clip of his interview with UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini is played
“Israel says he is a liar.. but I thought it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons”
Shameful from Bowen. pic.twitter.com/RpmZ8sYqJV
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 15, 2025
Before airing the interview with Lazzarini, Bowen cautioned: “Israel says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.
“First off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.”
Bowen would never consider prefacing an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu in a similar manner, even though the following would actually be truthful and far more deserved:
“The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, accusing him of crimes against humanity. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.
“First off, the British government deals with him, and sends weapons to his military to carry out the crimes he is accused of. As its leader, he obviously knows a lot about what Israel is up to, so therefore I think it is important to speak to someone like him.”
Can you imagine the BBC ever introducing Netanyahu in that way? Of course, you can’t – even though, in journalistic, ethical and legal terms, it would be fully warranted.
But in the case the Lazzarini, there are absolutely no grounds for such a prologue – except to promote an Israeli pro-genocide agenda. Bowen’s remarks suggest he needs to explain why, in the midst of an Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, the BBC would choose to speak to one of the most knowledgeable public figures about that starvation.
Bowen’s resort to an explanation instantly paints Lazzarini as problematic and controversial. It aligns with, and reinforces, Israel’s entirely bogus conflation of UNRWA and Hamas.
Even were Israel’s claims about UNRWA true of local staff in Gaza – and Israel has supplied precisely no evidence they are, as Lazzarini makes clear in a longer edit of the interview that aired on the BBC’s Six O’Clock News – that would in no way implicate Lazzarini. His remarks in the interview, on the catastrophic suffering of Gaza, are echoed by all aid agencies.
Bowen’s apologetic tone not only served to undercut the power of what Lazzarini was saying, but bolstered Israel’s ridiculous smears of UNRWA. That will have delighted Israel, and given it a little bit more leeway to carry on the starvation of Gaza, even as the first establishment voices tentatively start calling time on the genocide – 19 months too late.
Notice this from Bowen too. He asks Lazzarini: ‘When people look back on what’s been happening in the future, will they see, actually, a big international failure?”
Lazzarini responds: “I think in the coming years we will realise how wrong we have been, how on the wrong side of history we have been. We have, under our watch, let a massive atrocity unfold.”
Bowen jumps in: “Would you include the 7th of October in that?”
Lazzarini answers: “I would definitely include the 7th of October.”
But the set-up from Bowen is entirely unfair. He asks Lazzarini a question about “international failure” in relation to Gaza, and Lazzarini responds about the failure by the West to do anything to stop an atrocity – more properly a genocide – unfold over the past 19 months.
The events of 7 October 2023 are irrelevant to that discussion. There has been no “international failure” to support Israel. The West has armed it to the hilt and prioritised the suffering caused to Israelis by Hamas’ one-day attack over the incomparably greater suffering caused to Palestinians by 19 months of Israel’s slaughter and starvation.
Bowen’s interjected question about 7 October is a nonsense. It is levered in simply to cast further doubt on Lazzarini’s good faith in the hope of placating Israel, or at least providing the BBC with a defence when Israel goes on the offensive against Bowen for speaking to UNRWA.
The atrocities carried out on October 7 occurred in the context of decades of brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, of settlement expansion and apartheid rule, and of a 16-year siege of Gaza.
The international community was certainly on the “wrong side of history”, but not in the sense Bowen intends or Lazzarini infers from Bowen’s question. The West failed because it did precisely nothing to stop Israel’s brutalisation of the Palestinian people over those many decades – in fact, the West assisted Israel – and thereby guaranteed that Palestinians in Gaza would seek to break out of their concentration camp sooner or later.
Lazzarini’s remarks on the catastrophe in Gaza should be seen as self-evident. But Bowen and the BBC undermined his message by framing him and his organisation as suspect – and all because Israel, a criminal state starving the people of Gaza, has made an entirely unfounded allegation against the organisation trying to stop its crimes against humanity.
This is the same pattern of smears from Israel that has claimed all 36 hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “command and control centres” – again without a shred of evidence – to justify it bombing them all, leaving Gaza’s population without any meaningful health care system as malnutrition and starvation take hold.
Israel struck another hospital yesterday, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, as medics there were waiting to evacuate sick and injured children. The attack killed at least 28 people and injured many more, including a BBC freelance journalist who was conducting an interview there as the missiles hit.
Notably, BBC News at Ten blanked out its journalist’s face, adding: “For his safety, we are not revealing his name.” The BBC did not explain who the journalist needed protecting from, or why.
That is because the BBC rarely mentions that Israel has assassinated more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, as well as banning all foreign correspondents from entering the enclave, in its attempts to limit news coverage and smear what does come out as Hamas propaganda. Israel understands it is easier to commit genocide in the dark.
You might assume a major news organisation like the BBC would wish to be seen showing at least some solidarity with those being murdered for doing journalism – some of them while working to provide the BBC with news. You would be wrong.
We shouldn’t pretend that it was Bowen’s choice to attach such a disgraceful disclaimer to his interview. We all understand that he is under enormous pressure, both from within the BBC and outside.
BBC executives have appointed and protected Raffi Berg, a man who publicly counts a former senior figure in Israel’s spy agency Mossad as a friend, to oversee the corporation’s Middle East coverage.
And as the late Greg Philo reported in his 2011 book More Bad News from Israel, a BBC News editor told him at that time: “We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis”. Things are far, far worse 14 years on.
Excuses won’t wash any longer. We are 19 months into a genocide. Helping Israel to launder its crimes is to become complicit in them. No journalist should be allowing themselves to be pressured into this kind of moral and professional failure.