The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, recently gave a press briefing about Palestinians killed close to an aid distribution centre in Gaza on June 1. A key question, she suggested, was whether the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were really to blame, as had been reported.
“Unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas as total truth,” she said. “We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.”
Given the explosive war of words that has broken out between US president Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, Leavitt’s accusation may now appear to be small potatoes. But it matters: this is the latest twist of Trump’s undermining of a free press that has been evolving since he first repeated the words back in 2016 that would shake the public’s belief in journalism: “Fake news!”
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On inauguration day in January, my international journalism class and I were examining the seating chart for the White House press briefing room. We discussed the prime position of the Associated Press’s (AP) seat (front and centre) and the seats further back, where in the seventh row the BBC shared a position with Newsweek. We wondered if Trump might shuffle the pack, but decided that decisions were safely in the hands of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Since then, the whole game has changed. Even an organisation as large and venerable as AP can be turfed out of the White House press pool on its ear. Meanwhile selected, right-wing newcomers like Brian Glenn of Real America’s Voice can throw a curve ball putting such an extraordinary question to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House press conference that it temporarily disturbs the course of a war.
The White House later decided to take away access given to other wire services such as Reuters and Bloomberg rather than allow AP to return to its previous access.
Media appearances and briefings for Trump are now purely performative. Friendly media companies get special invitations to Trump’s often explosive meetings with world leaders (such as that with Zelensky above), and “legacy media” have to keep raising their hands for access.
Leavitt, Trump’s young spokesperson, came out swinging at her briefing, brandishing a handy A4 printout of BBC online news stories on the shootings in Gaza on Sunday.
As she waved her piece of paper – as curiously old-fashioned as Trump’s tariff whiteboard – she appeared assured of her facts. While referring to the page, compiled by a student activist on X, she announced that the BBC had edited “multiple headlines” about the death count, and changed claims about the deaths from being the result of tank fire to gunfire.
Without a hint of irony, she observed: “So we’re going to look into reports before we confirm them from this podium. I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same to reduce the misinformation that’s going around the globe.”
Back in London, the BBC released a timely statement arguing that it updated its breaking stories throughout the events on Sunday, saying this was “normal practice” and that all its figures were “clearly attributed”.
Meanwhile, the corporation’s analysis editor, Ros Atkins, put out a brief but carefully worded video, via BBC Verify, that concluded Leavitt’s accusations were “repeatedly false”. It affirmed that BBC reporters had quoted figures “with clear attribution” from the “the Hamas-run health ministry”. It also used sources such as the independent Red Cross and quoted the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in stories that day.
Atkins refuted Leavitt’s claims that the BBC had taken down any of its articles and confirmed that they remained online. He said that BBC Verify had examined a separate online video posted on social media (not a BBC video) and deemed it unrelated to the aid centre deaths. He said that once again the student activist had “misrepresented what BBC Verify had done. The White House then repeated this misrepresentation”.
Interestingly, following the BBC Verify examination of the other video, the Israeli army has admitted responsibility for “a previously unacknowledged strike on the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza”, which reportedly killed at least one Palestinian and injured 30 others”.
Two days after her initial briefing, Leavitt doubled down with similar accusations against the “fake news BBC”. However, it is Atkins’ final comment on his video that knocks out arguments that the White House is an arbiter of truth that is most chilling: “But in this case either the White House didn’t look into its claims about the BBC before bringing them to the podium or had no concern that they weren’t true.”
Part of Trump’s playbook involves sowing uncertainty among the public about the truth. He and his associates repeatedly hurl accusations, and then sit back and see what sticks. Going after one of the world’s most trusted media organisations neatly serves this purpose, even though the BBC is a UK-based corporation and there are no straightforward domestic political gains in so doing.
This attack does however do a job of tarnishing the BBC’s reputation with some members of the public which can only please the Israeli government, whose own reputation within the international community could not be lower, according to the Pew Research Center. At the UN security council, this week, the US was the only country out of 15 to veto the draft resolution calling for an “unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza.
While British and international media correspondents are still calling for permission to enter Gaza to report on the situation, it is clearly not in the Israeli government’s interests to allow this. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has now confirmed he has authorised the supplying of weapons to another, purportedly anti-Hamas militia in Gaza, further muddying the waters of exactly who fired on whom.
Welcome to the latest twist in the Trump government’s media strategy that is designed to promote uncertainty while distracting from troubling events: “Oh look, a squirrel!”
