BBC faces questions over board member's links to Jewish Chronicle
The BBC is facing questions about links between a member of its governing board and the Jewish Chronicle after the newspaper was forced to retract a series of articles alleged to have contained fabricated quotes from Israeli officials.
Robbie Gibb, who also sits on an influential BBC editorial standards committee that appears set to carry out a review of the UK broadcaster’s coverage of the Gaza war, led a consortium which rescued the newspaper from insolvency in 2020 and was the only director of the company that owns it until last month.
Meanwhile, a Jewish Chronicle event on Wednesday evening that was scheduled to feature a senior BBC executive alongside panellists including Melanie Phillips and Michael Gove appears to have been postponed at short notice amid the furore surrounding the newspaper and warnings that his participation was "ill advised".
Gibb’s role at the BBC is under scrutiny after the Jewish Chronicle published and then retracted stories by a freelancer reporter, Elon Perry, which included explosive revelations from a document supposedly discovered in Gaza, which allegedly detailed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s plans to escape the Palestinian enclave with Israeli hostages taken during the 7 October attack.
After the Israeli army stated that it had no knowledge of such a document and several Israeli outlets began to question Perry's identity and professional background, a number of high-profile columnists, including the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, announced that they would no longer write for the paper.
In a letter sent to Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons and posted on social media, Freedland said the episode had brought “great disgrace” on the paper, and suggested that a lack of transparency about its ownership had created issues of accountability.
The paper, which was founded in 1841, had “departed from the traditions that built its reputation as the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper,” Freedland wrote.
“Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic,” he added.
In response to the allegations, the Jewish Chronicle said in a statement that it had ended its association with Perry and withdrawn his articles from its website.
It said: "The Jewish Chronicle maintains the highest journalistic standards in a highly contested information landscape and we deeply regret the chain of events that led to this point. We apologise to our loyal readers and have reviewed our internal processes so that this will not be repeated."
But as the scandal unfolded, Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of the Guardian who has previously investigated the Jewish Chronicle’s ownership, called into question Gibb's position on the BBC’s editorial standards committee.
“I can’t see how he can possibly sit on that committee and portray himself as a beacon of impartiality, sitting in judgement on BBC journalists,” Rusbridger told LBC radio.
That view was also echoed by Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu).
Doyle told MEE: “To have one of the most senior people at the BBC be a participant in the takeover of the Jewish Chronicle calls into question his impartiality.”
Doyle said the Jewish Chronicle had pushed a “very activist right-wing agenda” under Simons and his predecessor, Stephen Pollard, which marked a sharp break from its history as a paper that was far more reflective of the different positions taken by Britain’s Jewish community on Israel and Palestine.
When asked if he thought it was acceptable for Gibb to be sitting on the BBC’s editorial standards committee, Doyle said: “Absolutely not.”
On Wednesday, the Muslim Council of Britain said it had written to the BBC to express its own "deep concern" about Gibb's role and called on the corporation to consider whether it was appropriate for him to remain on the editorial standards committee.
"We believe that Sir Robbie Gibb cannot objectively judge the impartiality of the BBC on a highly sensitive subject such as the Israel-Gaza conflict while his role in a newspaper that has demonstrated clear bias against Palestinians remains opaque at best, and fully supportive at worst," Zara Mohammed, the MCB's secretary-general, wrote in a letter to Samir Shah, the BBC chair.
MEE approached Gibb for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication. A BBC spokesperson told MEE that Gibb had resigned as a director of the Jewish Chronicle in August.
Paper saved from liquidation
Gibb was reported by the Jewish Chronicle to be the leader of a consortium that bought the newspaper in April 2020 to save it from liquidation.
>From then until August this year he was, according to public records, the only director of Jewish Chronicle Media Limited, which owned the paper.
In July, the Jewish Chronicle said Gibb would depart as director and divest his shares as part of a conversion to a charitable structure in which ownership of the newspaper would be vested in a trust.
Gibb appears to have then resigned in August following the appointment of two more directors: Ian Austin, a former Labour MP and member of the House of Lords also known as Lord Austin of Dudley; and Jonathan Kandel, a former partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
But Gibb remains the only director of another company with apparent links to the Jewish Chronicle, the JC Media and Culture Preservation Initiative CIC.
Registration documents filed by the company describe it as an “independent advisory organisation” offering “consultation to The Jewish Chronicle newspaper regarding impartiality and independence”.
MEE asked Gibb whether the Jewish Chronicle had consulted him over its handling of the withdrawal of the Elon Perry stories but has not received a response.
As part of his BBC board role, Gibb sits on the five-member editorial guidelines and standards committee, alongside Shah, the BBC chair; BBC director-general Tim Davie; Nicholas Serota, a senior independent director; and Deborah Turness, CEO for BBC news and current affairs.
Minutes from the committee’s most recent meeting in May, at which Gibb was present, noted that a “summary of Middle East complaints” had been discussed, with “a number of editorial errors” resulting in complaints.
The minutes also record that the committee “discussed the reporting of the International Court of Justice finding on the Middle East conflict and why media organisations had misinterpreted the judgement”.
Addressing the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee last week, Shah said the committee had discussed coverage of the war in Gaza many times.
And he told peers that the BBC’s reporting of the Middle East conflict would likely be the subject of a thematic review, a process through which BBC coverage of key areas of public debate is scrutinised to ensure impartiality.
“I definitely think the Middle East conflict is one area we should consider very seriously to be subject to a deep systematic analysis of how we cover it,” he said.
'Active Tory party agent'
Gibb’s original appointment to the BBC board in 2021 by former prime minister Boris Johnson’s government was controversial because of his previous work as director of communications for Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May.
The Labour Party in 2022 urged the BBC to demand Gibb’s resignation after he was reported to have intervened to oppose the appointment of a journalist to the corporation’s flagship Newsnight programme.
Emily Maitlis, a prominent former Newsnight presenter, described him as an “active Tory party agent”, comments dismissed by then-BBC chairman Richard Sharp as “completely wrong”.
But Gibb was reappointed to the BBC board in March in a process overseen by the commissioner for public appointments – a role currently held by William Shawcross, who was reported by the Jewish Chronicle to have been part of the Gibb-led consortium that bought the newspaper in 2020.
MEE asked Shawcross, Gibb and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport whether Shawcross’s office was consulted regarding Gibb’s reappointment and whether Shawcross’s reported involvement in the consortium was declared, but none responded.
A BBC spokesperson told MEE: “Robbie Gibb went through a process, led by government and it was fully disclosed.”
Panel event postponed
Meanwhile, a Jewish Chronicle event on “Jews and the Media” on Wednesday evening, in which BBC director of news content Richard Burgess was set to join a panel “discussing Israel bias in British journalism”, has been postponed.
Burgess had been due to appear at the event alongside journalist Phillips, former Conservative minister Gove, journalist David Aaronovitch, and Sky News managing editor Jonathan Levy.
On Tuesday, Aaronovitch told MEE that he still intended to attend the event despite being among the columnists to have quit the Jewish Chronicle.
“I thought I might get disinvited but that hasn’t happened so far,” he said. “I am going by the event not the organiser… I can’t tell you how important it is that the community hears different voices right now.”
A source close to Gove confirmed to MEE on Tuesday that the former MP would still be attending the event. But by Wednesday morning the event was listed online as “postponed”.
MEE had earlier asked the BBC whether Burgess still planned to attend but did not get a response.
MEE understands his involvement in the event had been a subject of discussion in a WhatsApp group made up of BBC employees who are trying to highlight what they see as the broadcaster’s “problematic” pro-Israel coverage of the war in Gaza.
“It’s insane that Burgess is thinking about appearing there,” one member of the group said. “Doubly so now,” they added, referring to the scandal engulfing the JC.
Doyle told MEE’s that Burgess’s involvement in the event had been “ill advised”.
“This conflict is one of the most contentious issues the BBC deals with,” said Doyle. “They should exert extreme caution when it comes to it."