UK parliamentary group criticizes BBC coverage of January uprisings anniversary

CAIRO – 20 February 2021: Head of the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Egypt Jonathan Lord criticized BBC's coverage of the 10th anniversary of January uprisings. He accused it of ‘imbalance’ especially on its report on the memory of former President Hosni's Mubarak ousting in February.

“The report failed to reflect the strength of the Egyptian’s rejection to the policies of Mubarak's successor and Muslim brotherhood affiliated president Mohamed Morsi, as it did not also show the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is ultimately an anti-democratic group.” The statement said, Friday

The BBC reports were completely unbalanced and extremely disappointing, Lord said.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Egypt aims at strengthening relations between British and Egyptian lawmakers and promote British-Egyptian relations between both chambers of the UK Parliament.

On January, 2020, he Supreme Council for Media Regulation complained that the Council could observe, through its specialized committees, a repetition of serious professional mistakes by the BBC, with regard to covering the Egyptian issues, saying that theses systematic mistakes indicate clearly hostility of the Egyptian state.

In a letter to the BBC CEO, which included the annual report of the state’s council, the Media Regulation Supreme Council reported increasing professional mistakes by the BBC, saying that they indicate that those in charge of covering the Egyptian affairs ignore the professional rules and media standards that the BBC abides by.

The repeated mistakes distort the editorial policy in the programs that relate to Egypt, whether with regard to the rules for choosing topics of the programs, or the criteria for hosting guests, or the style of questions that are clearly politicized, or the approach that programs with a single opinion go through, while ignoring balance of argument, the council said in the report.

This results in having programs that make accusations without evidence by unqualified personalities, the report added.

Concerning news reports, the report said that those preparing them in the BBC do not verify the authenticity of information, while some of these information rely on rumors circulating on social media. The news reports do not even provide any data that clarifies the validity and integrity of what is being broadcast, the council added.

Egypt has designated the Muslim Brotherhood group as terrorist since late in 2013, after former President Mohamed Morsi, who also served as head of the "terrorist" group, was ousted. Morsi died in June 2019 after he collapsed in court during his trial.