The BBC has made a dramatic climbdown over comments broadcast in its 2019 Panorama programme ‘Is Labour antisemitic?’.
Publishing on its corrections page, the broadcaster admitted to removing crucial context during its interview with Izzy Lenga, who had experienced antisemitism after she became a student activist.
In the programme, they broadcast the interview as follows:
I’m Izzy Lenga, I joined the Labour Party in 2015… The antisemitic abuse I received was what I was subjected to every single day… Telling me Hitler was right, telling me Hitler did not go far enough…
In Labour Party meetings… we’ve seen people engage in Holocaust denial… and that’s terrifying for Jewish members… It absolutely breaks my heart to say but I do not think the Labour Party is a safe space for Jewish people any more.
They have since admitted that, if the programme were to be re-broadcast, they would include some additional comments (in bold below), which are pretty important, you might think!
I’m Izzy Lenga, I joined the Labour Party in 2015… When I was a student… being quite a high profile Jewish woman student, I was subjected to quite a lot of like nasty vitriol and abuse… The antisemitic abuse I received… was what I was subjected to every single day… Predictably a lot of it came from the far right… neo-Nazi abuse… telling me Hitler was right, telling me Hitler did not go far enough and even more… What absolutely baffled me, was at the same time, I was receiving… very similar and almost often the exact same tropes and anti-Semitic abuse… from the far left.
In Labour Party meetings… we’ve seen people engage in Holocaust denial… and that’s terrifying for Jewish members… It absolutely breaks my heart to say but I do not think the Labour Party is a safe space for Jewish people any more.
At the time, the Labour press office also said Panorama edited an email sent by Seumas Milne to completely misrepresent it.
Looks like it’s all coming out now!
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