The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Wednesday clarified its report on meeting of an Israeli politician with prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s son and ICT adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy just as a “claim” by the Israel’s rightwing Likud Party leader, reports the state-run BSS news agency.
“The BBC never reported that Sajeeb Wazed had met [Israeli] Mr Mendi Safadi,” the BSS news agency quoted the BBC to have said in a letter to Minister Press of Bangladesh High Commission in London Nadeem Qadir.
The BSS reported the BBC letter to have said, “What BBC Bangla broadcast on radio and published on their website on 27 May was an interview in which Mr Safadi ‘claimed’ that he had met Mr Wazed in the office of someone he claimed was a mutual friend.”
The BSS report, however, claimed that the BBC clarification regretted its decision to “publish and broadcast the story without Mr Wazed’s comments, as it ran contrary to the BBC’s editorial principles”.
“We do acknowledge that it was essential to get comments from Mr Wazed. This is how the BBC would normally treat such claims,” the BSS quoted the letter.
The state-run agency said it has obtained a copy of the letter this evening.
The BBC clarification came as Qadir in a letter sought an explanation calling the report on the meeting in Washington “false and baseless” as Joy “has not been to Washington over the past three to four years”.
“I can assure you that BBC Bangla has no intention to tarnish Mr Wazed’s (Joy’s) image,” read the BBC letter as quoted by the BSS report.
The BBC letter, however, said the BBC Bengali service team had tried to contact Joy several times and being failed to reach him it decided to publish Mr Safadi’s interview given the significance of the claim and high public interest in the story.
On 27 May, BBC ran the interview in which the Israeli politician claimed to have met Joy in Washington earlier.
In a Facebook posting on the very next day, Joy denied holding any meeting with Safadi and accused him of falsehood saying “he (Safadi) is willing to lie for the BNP also proves that he is involved in a conspiracy with the BNP”.
The BBC letter said once Joy denied the claim on his Facebook page it carried it “in full as a news story on our website as well as radio”.
“Similarly, when the Awami League issued a rejoinder on the same day, we also carried that in our news coverage. A full written response was sent to the Awami League on 30 May,” read the letter.
The BBC said it ran the report as Safadi was currently at the centre of news in Bangladesh for nearly a month mainly because of the arrest of a BNP leader who met Safadi at a conference in India, according to the BSS report.
“Therefore, when Mr Safadi claimed he had met the son of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Washington, it was seen as a legitimate story to investigate,” BBC pointed out in its letter.
Source: Prothom Alo
