BBC Faces Backlash Over Alleged Bias in Coverage of White Farmer Killings in South Africa

[JonnyF]

2 minutes ago, daveAustin said:

But, yes, they are no longer down the middle. Still churn out cracking docos and period drama. 

 

So do Netflix.

 

Maybe there should be a mandatory licence for that in the UK as well?

 

The licencing model has been obsolete for at least 2 decades. Time to defind the BBC and let them compete in the open market. If their content is that good it should be no problem for them.

 

[JonnyF]

24 minutes ago, stevenl said:

BBC has stayed center, where it has mostly been. But society has moved further right, under influence of extreme rightwing opinions.

 

I assume that is satire?

[proton]

How many south Africans have we got on here? this is the opinion of a native of the country

 

 

[Magictoad]

2 hours ago, JackGats said:

BBC = British Bullshyting Corporation. Hornet's nest of feminist, woke, third-worldist, misandric, climate-change alarmist agitprop.

 

This is a pity because it used to be good. In what seems so long ago I used to spend endless hours listening to Radio 4 on long waves (and to the World Service on short waves).

Alas Radio 4 has long gone and has become unbearable these days. It's appalling.

[Screaming]

No one takes the left wing globalist BBC seriously. The BBC is a mouthpiece of the Soros founded alt left movement dedicated to turning the UK into a homeless camp for all of Africa and the Middle East. 

[JakeC]

BBC biased? So what about this article from the very same paper that published this Hersov article? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/22/donald-trump-genocide-claims-south-africa-real-danger/

 

Seems to go along with what has been published by the BBC. But if the BBC publishes it, the extremists fly into a faux frenzy.

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, mikeymike100 said:

Maybe 25 years ago you would be correct, now they are not broadcasting news, but opinions.

They have broken the Royal Charter so many times, because they are not impartial, but biased. Not just on the ongoing conflict in Gaza, but Brexit, Climate Change, Syria, etc

No precise count exists, but thousands of complaints annually allege bias, with notable peaks (e.g., over 11,000 for the 2009 Gaza appeal decision, 2,000 for a 2023 Conservative bias claim, and 1,500+ alleged guideline breaches in 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas coverage)

Yes all those things are examples of attempts to undermine the BBC fir reporting stuff some don’t want to be presented to the public.

 

Attempts to discredit the BBC are not uncommon, here’s an example, there are others:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds#:~:text=It describes a “coordinated effort,deepen and expand existing divisions.

[Dionigi]

2 hours ago, mikeymike100 said:

Yes, however many folks are now not paying the fee, as they are not watching live TV, or using iplayer. Its perfectly legal.

Thing is in 2025 why is the BBC living in the 20th century?

The license is required for the following:

Why you need a TV Licence:

• Other streaming services:

  While you don't need a licence to watch on-demand content on services like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, you do if you watch live TV on them

• Watching Live TV:

  This includes watching or recording any TV channel, pay TV service, or streaming service (like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Sky Go) as they are broadcast.
• Using BBC iPlayer:

  Even if you only watch on-demand content on BBC iPlayer, you need a TV Licence.

   

  and I think it is illegal to use one of those tv boxes that gets copyright material for free. 

  so are these people not using a tv at all or is there some other thing to watch.

[proton]

9 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Yes all those things are examples of attempts to undermine the BBC fir reporting stuff some don’t want to be presented to the public.

 

Attempts to discredit the BBC are not uncommon, here’s an example, there are others:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds#:~:text=It describes a “coordinated effort,deepen and expand existing divisions.

 

The Guardian, really? 😊

[Hanaguma]

2 hours ago, WDSmart said:

I agree that any violence against White farmers in South Africa is despicable, but, like most of the problems in the world today, history plays a big role. In this case, how do you think this land was taken from the native. Black South Africans by White immigrants in the first place? 🥺

That is a good question. Considering that the first of the Boers arrived more than 350 years ago, how do you propose finding out exactly who took what land from whom? The farmers on the land today were not the ones who took it, nor are the angry blacks the ones who lost it. We are talking 10 plus generations in the past in many cases. I would love to hear how to fairly adjudicate this situation. 

[Bkk Brian]

23 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Yes all those things are examples of attempts to undermine the BBC fir reporting stuff some don’t want to be presented to the public.

 

Attempts to discredit the BBC are not uncommon, here’s an example, there are others:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds#:~:text=It describes a “coordinated effort,deepen and expand existing divisions.

Actually no, not attempts to discredit, many of those things referred to the post you responded to are factual as evidenced by the BBC themselves having to pull programmes and apologize when exposed, let alone break their own guidelines over 1000 times.

[Chomper Higgot]

13 minutes ago, proton said:

 

The Guardian, really? 😊

Feel free to offer your suggestion for alternative news sources.

[Bkk Brian]

16 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Feel free to offer your suggestion for alternative news sources.

Why. To further your off topic deflections?

[proton]

22 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Feel free to offer your suggestion for alternative news sources.

 

For you- Yahoo, Huff post and Moscow News 😆

[josephbloggs]

42 minutes ago, proton said:

 

For you- Yahoo, Huff post and Moscow News 😆

For you GB "News", Fox, and Sean Hannity.

[WDSmart]

2 hours ago, Hanaguma said:

5 hours ago, WDSmart said:

I agree that any violence against White farmers in South Africa is despicable, but, like most of the problems in the world today, history plays a big role. In this case, how do you think this land was taken from the native. Black South Africans by White immigrants in the first place? 🥺

That is a good question. Considering that the first of the Boers arrived more than 350 years ago, how do you propose finding out exactly who took what land from whom? The farmers on the land today were not the ones who took it, nor are the angry blacks the ones who lost it. We are talking 10 plus generations in the past in many cases. I would love to hear how to fairly adjudicate this situation. 

That's a good question, and could be asked of my home country, the USA, as pertains to the American Indians and the European immigrants, or, I imagine, almost every country. 

 

I don't have a good answer, but IMO there should be some acknowledgment of how the land changed hands, and if possible, some attempt at restitution, even if it is to descendants hundreds of years later. 

[mikeymike100]

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Yes all those things are examples of attempts to undermine the BBC fir reporting stuff some don’t want to be presented to the public.

 

Attempts to discredit the BBC are not uncommon, here’s an example, there are others:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds#:~:text=It describes a “coordinated effort,deepen and expand existing divisions.

No the BBC by being biased are breaking the rules of the Royal Charter.

You can easily find the charter , it explicitly mandates non-biased output as a legal and operational requirement.

 

 

[Anthony mellows]

The BBC is far from perfect but do you get any better in other countries?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

10 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

The genocide of white South African farmers myth exposed as the lie it is

 

“South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities. Of those, eight of the victims were farmers.”

 

So 8  South African farmers murdered in 2024 equating to 0.03% of all murders in that year.

 

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-makes-false-claims-white-genocide-south-africa-during-ramaphosa-meeting-2025-05-21/

 

 

 

Indeed, it seems to be yet another Trump ginned up right-wing political nonsense myth.... It even made fact checking agency NewGuard's new "False Claim of the Week" selection, as per below:

 

 

 

"Debunk: Crime statistics and findings from institutions that track genocide worldwide contradict the claim that there is a genocide against white farmers in South Africa.

• Although South African Police Service crime statistics show that murder is rampant in the country, they do not indicate that white farmers are being systematically targeted. According to the Police Service, there were 26,232 murders in South Africa last year; 44 of the murder victims were from the farming community.
   

• No international human-rights watchdog groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, have identified a “white genocide” in South Africa. No international courts have ruled that any group in South Africa is committing genocide against white South Africans. No political party in South Africa has claimed that genocide is occurring.
   

• “The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false,” Gareth Newham, the director of the governance, crime and justice program at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, told PBS News in May 2025. “As an independent institute tracking violence and violent crime in South Africa, if there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity, we would be amongst the first to raise [the] alarm and provide the evidence to the world.”
  
  https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/trump-cites-bad-source-to-claim-south?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3zw76&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Fact check: Trump’s false suggestion of a ‘genocide’ against White farmers in South Africa

May 21, 2025

 

"There is a lot of violent crime in South Africa. There is not a genocide against White farmers there.

 

Claims of genocide can sometimes be difficult to adjudicate. This claim is easy. The facts show that the genocide President Donald Trump suggests might be happening is not happening – and that crime against White farmers in South Africa represents a tiny fraction of the country’s overall crime. [emphasis added]

...

The claim of a genocide against White South African farmers has been pushed for years by White nationalist groups. Trump, who has expedited the processing of White South Africans as refugees even while keeping all other US refugee resettlement suspended, raised the notion of a genocide last week and repeated it during a contentious Wednesday meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in front of cameras at the White House.

 

(more)

 

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/fact-check-white-farmers-south-africa-trump

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

In his Oval Office remarks claiming white genocide in South Africa, Trump held up and displayed a discredited right-wing source, the American Thinker blog, as the basis for the claims he was repeating.

 

 

Here's what Media Bias Fact Check says about the American Thinker blog:

 

• Overall, we rate the American Thinker as Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of conspiracy theories/pseudoscience, use of poor sources, and several failed fact checks.

---

 

 

"According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, American Thinker has published Anti-LGBT articles and those by prominent white nationalist Jared Taylor. Further, American Thinker routinely publishes conspiracy theories, such as those by Pamela Geller. The latter is also on the SPLC’s hate watch list due to anti-Islam positions: Report: Obama said ‘I Am a Muslim,’ which has been debunked as a false claim. They have also promoted conspiracies about the Seth Rich Murder, and they have published numerous articles that are not supportive of the consensus of science, such as this one: The Hoax of ‘Climate Change.’

 

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-thinker/

 

 

Here's what the NewsGuard fact checking agency says of Trump's source:

 

Trump Boosts the Genocide Claim with a Shaky Source

"President Donald Trump himself gave a boost to the “white genocide” claim during an Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 21. At one point, Trump held up a printout of an article from AmericanThinker.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 22.5/100). As Trump displayed the publication, he referred to a photo accompanying the article and stated, “Look, here are burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried.”

• Actually, the image, which occupies half the American Thinker page, was not taken in South Africa. Rather, the photo taken from a Reuters video shows Red Cross aid workers at a burial site in the Democratic Republic of Congo in February 2025 in the aftermath of a mass rape and murder incident, The Independent (Trust Score: 85/100) first reported.

...

Context: American Thinker, a 22-year-old conservative website, has been found by NewsGuard to have repeatedly published false or egregiously misleading claims. This has been NewsGuard’s finding in seven reviews of the site since 2021, most recently in April 2025. [emphasis added}

 

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/i/164255386/trump-boosts-the-genocide-claim-with-a-shaky-source

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

In his Oval Office remarks claiming white genocide in South Africa, Trump held up and displayed a discredited right-wing source, the American Thinker blog, as the basis for the claims he was repeating.

 

 

Here's what Media Bias Fact Check says about the American Thinker blog:

 

• Overall, we rate the American Thinker as Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of conspiracy theories/pseudoscience, use of poor sources, and several failed fact checks.

---

 

 

"According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, American Thinker has published Anti-LGBT articles and those by prominent white nationalist Jared Taylor. Further, American Thinker routinely publishes conspiracy theories, such as those by Pamela Geller. The latter is also on the SPLC’s hate watch list due to anti-Islam positions: Report: Obama said ‘I Am a Muslim,’ which has been debunked as a false claim. They have also promoted conspiracies about the Seth Rich Murder, and they have published numerous articles that are not supportive of the consensus of science, such as this one: The Hoax of ‘Climate Change.’

 

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-thinker/

 

 

Here's what the NewsGuard fact checking agency says of Trump's source:

 

Trump Boosts the Genocide Claim with a Shaky Source

"President Donald Trump himself gave a boost to the “white genocide” claim during an Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 21. At one point, Trump held up a printout of an article from AmericanThinker.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 22.5/100). As Trump displayed the publication, he referred to a photo accompanying the article and stated, “Look, here are burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried.”

• Actually, the image, which occupies half the American Thinker page, was not taken in South Africa. Rather, the photo taken from a Reuters video shows Red Cross aid workers at a burial site in the Democratic Republic of Congo in February 2025 in the aftermath of a mass rape and murder incident, The Independent (Trust Score: 85/100) first reported.

...

Context: American Thinker, a 22-year-old conservative website, has been found by NewsGuard to have repeatedly published false or egregiously misleading claims. This has been NewsGuard’s finding in seven reviews of the site since 2021, most recently in April 2025. [emphasis added}

 

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/i/164255386/trump-boosts-the-genocide-claim-with-a-shaky-source

 

 

All a bit of a strawman though, the OP is not about claiming there is Genocide it is about the BBC bias in their reports about it.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Reuters news service has also chimed in calling the South Africa white genocide claims that Trump repeated as false.

 

A check of Trump's false claims about white genocide in South Africa

May 23, 2025

 

"JOHANNESBURG, May 22 (Reuters) - Following is a look at some of the claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump about the alleged persecution of South Africa's white minority. Trump made several false statements and misrepresented some facts during a contentious Oval Office meeting on Wednesday with President Cyril Ramaphosa. [emphasis added]

...

Among the claims contradicted by the evidence:

1. There is a genocide of white farmers in South Africa.

This conspiracy theory has been propagated by some fringe groups of white South Africans since the end of apartheid in 1994. It has been circulating in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade, with the vocal support of Trump's ally, South African-born Elon Musk.

...

The high court in Western Cape province ruled that claims of white genocide were "clearly imagined and not real" in a case earlier this year, forbidding a donation to a white supremacist group on those grounds.

 

(more)

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-makes-false-claims-white-genocide-south-africa-during-ramaphosa-meeting-2025-05-21/

 

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

All a bit of a strawman though, the OP is not about claiming there is Genocide it is about the BBC bias in their reports about it.

 

How do you have biased reporting about claims that are proven false in the first place?

 

The bottom line is ... the claims of white genocide in South Africa have been documented as being false by numerous credible sources inside and outside of South Africa, and those making the claims have been shown to be themselves biased and non-credible, as evidenced by the several fact checking posts above.

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

7 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

How do you have biased reporting about claims that are proven false in the first place?

 

"The BBC has come under fire from South African businessman Robert Hersov, who accused the broadcaster of downplaying violence against white farmers in South Africa and exhibiting what he called a “Leftist” bias in its reporting."

 

Read the OP

 

Oh and nice edit after I had already replied............

 

More strawman though, the OP is not about that.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

16 hours ago, Social Media said:

Hersov's comments come in response to a BBC article about a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. During their Oval Office meeting, Trump reportedly surprised Ramaphosa by dimming the lights and showing video clips he claimed proved the existence of a “genocide” against white farmers in South Africa. The BBC covered the incident under the headline “Ramaphosa keeps cool during Trump’s choreographed onslaught,” and dismissed the genocide claims as “discredited,” describing them as originating “among Right-wing groups” and circulated through “misleading information online.”

 

 

The excerpt above from the OP in this thread.... 

 

Based on the above summary from the rewritten Telegraph report, it sounds pretty much like the BBC's reporting accurately reflected what is NOT going on in South Africa, as documented in the multiple fact check reports cited above on the subject.  Sorry if Mr. Hersov doesn't like having to face the actual facts.

 

 

[Mike_Hunt]

When the left makes a significant effort to deny something, it's a sign that it is true.

[BLMFem]

So we have an opinion piece from "The Telegraph" that states "The BBC Faces Backlash Over Alleged Bias in Coverage of White Farmer Killings in South Africa".

In the opinion piece they quote one - 1 - person, a fringe SA activist.

 

 

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

The excerpt above from the OP in this thread.... 

 

Based on the above summary from the rewritten Telegraph report, it sounds pretty much like the BBC's reporting accurately reflected what is NOT going on in South Africa, as documented in the multiple fact check reports cited above on the subject.  Sorry if Mr. Hersov doesn't like having to face the actual facts.

 

 

I wont bother replying as you just make edits once I've already responded, very dishonest.

[josephbloggs]

10 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

"The BBC has come under fire from South African businessman Robert Hersov, who accused the broadcaster of downplaying violence against white farmers in South Africa and exhibiting what he called a “Leftist” bias in its reporting."

 

Read the OP

Ah yes, Robert Hersov who's father made his money from mining (ie. stealing South Africa's wealth) and benefitted massively from apartheid, who was awarded medals by the apartheid regime and received an honorary appointment to the South African Defence Force (apartheid military).

The same Robert Hersov who has directly benefitted from apartheid, who made his fortune based on it, he now claims BBC bias against white farmers.

You need to read up more before you quote people, perhaps see if they have an agenda - which he clearly does.