What the hell is journalism? In Oct. 7 anniversary podcast, BBC Arabic reporters forgot - opinion

OCTOBER 28, 2026 15:00In a famous parable by American author David Foster Wallace, two young fish swimming along happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way.The older fish nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit. Eventually one of them looks over at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”Wallace’s point was simple: the most obvious, ubiquitous, and important realities are often the ones we most easily fail to notice.A similar blindness has seemingly taken root in established international media, often presenting itself as our most trusted source of information. But unlike Wallace’s young fish, who were merely naive, this kind of blindness is not so accidental.Some journalists at BBC’s Arabic service actively choose to overlook the facts, opting instead to place their own subjective narrative at the center of their reporting. As an arm of the BBC, the Arabic service shares the publicly funded network’s explicit mandate to help viewers “understand the world.”Palestinians take control of an Israeli tank after crossing the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023. (credit: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90)Yet, the episode of the BBC Arabic podcast Worth Paying Attention, marking the third anniversary of the October 7 massacres, woefully ignored the proverbial water of the so-called “al-Aqsa Flood,” that is, the countless atrocities that characterized the horrific day.The program’s premise was ostensibly straightforward enough; presenter Mahmoud al-Sheikh summoned correspondents in Jerusalem (Muhannad Tutunji), Ramallah (Eman Eriqat), and Doha (Adnan al-Boursh, formerly located in Gaza and specializing in “Gazan affairs”) to discuss “what happened on October 7 and in the aftermath” of that morning.But then al-Sheikh asked that they answer his question from a purely “human interest perspective,” focusing on their personal experiences as events unfolded.Al-Sheikh failed to explain the purpose of this unusual request to prioritize the personal over world-changing events. As Rachel Goldberg-Polin eloquently wrote in her recent book, When We See You Again, October 7 divided history forever into “Before” and “After.”Listeners tuning in would naturally expect the speakers to “provide impartial news and information” to help “understand the world around them,” a task that remains the BBC’s top current public purpose.Instead, a masterclass in the so-called “new journalism” genre emerged: reporting real-world events by using techniques derived from fiction, including scene-by-scene construction, adopting a subject’s perspective, and incorporating the reporter’s own voice into the narrative, all at the expense of an accurate overview of the big picture.Over the course of the conversation, the broadcast failed to provide the most basic facts of the October 7 massacre.The closest the speakers got to acknowledging the atrocities were Tutunji’s remarks that “Hamas operatives infiltrated Israel” and al-Boursh’s recollection of his confusion amid the first hours of the attack when it became apparent that “Gaza, or Hamas, had initiated the attack against Israel” with rockets.The glaring omissions were staggering. There was no mention of the 251 kidnapped hostages forced into Gaza’s subterranean tunnels. There was no mention of the systemic sexual violence and the families burned alive. There was not even a mention of the nearly 1,200 people killed on that day in southern Israel.In fact, even the Palestinian death toll from the ensuing fighting was strangely absent. West Bank correspondent Eman Eriqat cited what she said was her meticulous fact-checking throughout that day to ensure reliable reporting.However, the only individual fatality she mentioned from that entire day was one Palestinian man killed by Israeli fire in Jericho. For Eriqat and her colleagues, confirming any of the many hundreds of Israeli victims proved a much harder task.This self-referential pivot, which discusses “how I experienced the news” instead of addressing the news itself, is a troubling phenomenon in journalism, especially in publicly funded outlets like the BBC.Replacing facts with feelingsIn some ways, as al-Sheikh himself suggested, the podcast format offers a more relaxed, conversational atmosphere. It feels intimate and authentic.But that comforting aesthetic should not replace a journalist’s fundamental purpose to report on real-world events.When personal experiences and emotional resonance supplant facts, journalism ceases to fulfil its role and becomes a form of self-expression, a mirror reflecting only the narrator.This substitution of the emotional and personal can work well in specific contexts, such as a restaurant review or a first-person reflective essay on the ice-plunge craze.With respect to October 7, the “new journalism” genre can introduce dangerous obfuscation wherein reporters become the main characters at the expense of the victims.When journalists minimize the importance of facts, the risk grows that others will distort history down the road and spread false narratives. The interest of those new narratives usually doesn’t lie with the victims.To be fair, with a few exceptions, the BBC largely does not deny the October 7 atrocities. Notably, in 2025, media watchdog CAMERA compelled BBC Arabic to apologize after one of its presenters attempted to deny the burning of whole families.The corporation has reported most of the facts in other written pieces commemorating the day.Yet, a dedicated anniversary broadcast which omits the most basic historical facts of the day’s endless atrocities opens the door to eventual denial. BBC journalists simply chose to make the facts irrelevant to the conversation.Sometimes, the Worth Paying Attention team knows how to navigate instances of unprecedented mass terror. This fall’s episode commemorating 25 years since the 9/11 attacks primarily focused on Americans’ changing perspective on the attacks over the years.The interviewee explicitly anchored the conversation in the inescapable context of the murder of thousands of people. While the feelings of one of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s relatives were also discussed, personal experiences did not replace facts.Why, then, does the journalistic standard suddenly shift when the victims are Israelis and Jews?Imagine a new parable for our times: three journalists sit in a studio to record a podcast, and one presenter nods his head and says, “Morning, friends, how’s the journalism?”The journalists keep talking for a while, sharing their feelings and their lived experiences, until a question inevitably arises: “What the hell is journalism?”When journalism replaces facts with feelings, it overlooks its most fundamental purpose. If we only talk about how it feels to swim, no wonder people might forget the actual al-Aqsa Flood.The writer is an Arabic media researcher for CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), the leading organization exposing and countering anti-Israel narratives in the media, online, and in schools. 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