BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen was pressed on his initial reporting of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Saturday and said he didn’t regret his mistakes during an interview on the network on Saturday.
Several media outlets initially reported that Israel was responsibile for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. Bowen claimed during his initial reports that the Al-Ahli hospital was flattened.
“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,” Bowen said.
Bowen, during an appearance on BBC News channel’s “Behind The Stories,” said he didn’t regret his reporting and that he “didn’t race to judgment.”
“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 was measured throughout. I didn’t race to judgment,” he said.
The BBC was also one of several news organizations, including The New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN, which rushed to report claims made by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
The outlet offered a correction to the reporting on Oct. 19.
“We accept that even in this fast-moving situation it was wrong to speculate in this way about the possible causes and we apologize for this, although he did not at any point report that it was an Israeli strike,” referring to reporting from BBC senior reporter Jon Donnision.
“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.”
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