BBC Claims “Antisemitism” Too Long a Word, “Islamophobia” Just Right

Finding the right words can be tasking. Even when you’re the BBC and your grotesquely inflated salaries are paid by a mandatory fee just so you can spew out programming that no one in their right mind watches anymore, it’s still a trial to find the find the right way of telling the people what they should think.

The BBC recently reported the story of the Labour Lord who was suspended for claiming that Jews were responsible for his imprisonment after driving offences.

The Labour peer was jailed for sending a text message shortly before his car was involved in a fatal crash. He later said that Jewish owners of “newspapers and TV channels” had put pressure on the court.

Many queried the BBC’s reporting of the incident at the time. In fact, the odd headline, “Labour peer Lord Ahmed suspended after ‘Jewish claims’” is still currently live. Instead of using “anti-Semitism”, the Beeb opted for “Jewish claims”, making the story seem like there were claims by Jewish people leading to Lord Ahmed’s suspension.

But the BBC had a good excuse. A perfectly reasonable explanation.

BBC: Thanks for your email and please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We try and stick as closely as possible to the words used, so, in this case we  used ‘Jewish claims’ in the short space available for headlines to summarise his comments.

READER: Thanks for your reply, but with all due respect that is utter nonsense. ‘Jewish claims’ 13 characters. ‘Antisemitism’ 12 characters. Plus one look at the space available in the headline within the URL will tell you that there is/was PLENTY of space to report factually

Even more oddly, Islamophobia is also 12 characters yet the BBC has no trouble fitting it into every conceivable manner of headline including, “Islamophobia ‘explosion’ in UK”, “‘Islamophobia’ rises after 11 September”, “UK press ‘fuels Islamophobia”, “Islamophobia ‘just getting worse’”, “Terror jury Islamophobia warning” and finally “Islamophobia since Islam began”.

The word magicians at the BBC appear to have contrived ways to fit Islamophobia’s 12 character bulk into a headline, but can’t figure out how to get anti-Semitism in there.