The UK state broadcaster streams disinformation into our living rooms – deceptions that not only leave us clueless about important international events but drive us ever closer to global conflagration
BBC little more than a propaganda machine for Starmer " I'm proud to be a Zionist". Today he said that in response to the illegal attack by them , Iran had launched ' indiscriminate ' missiles. FFS. He's I'm incompetent we know, a liar we know, but this is pathetic.
I gave up on this garbage outlet during the Balkan wars when they were in a bus filming Serbian refugees escaping from KLA killers, and changing the subtitles so the non-Serb-speaking audience would think the people in the bus were Albanians escaping from Serbs.
It’s astonishing how quickly we fall into the same patterns again. We’ve seen this film before — in Iraq, in Libya, in Venezuela. But somehow, each time, the scriptwriters think they can repackage it for a new audience.
The BBC's current fantasy reporting about “tens of thousands killed” in Iran is not journalism. It’s narrative preparation. It’s propaganda-by-proxy, delivered under the comforting disguise of public service media.
Let’s be blunt: Trump has already stated that if Iran uses force against protesters, he will intervene militarily. He doesn’t even pretend to want diplomacy. That alone should make every serious journalist tread carefully when citing unverified mass casualty claims from exile-linked groups.
But the BBC — as during the build-up to Iraq — rushes forward to do the groundwork for war. It plants the moral pretext. “Iran is butchering its people.” “We must do something.” “Look how bad it is — even worse than Gaza.” And when Trump launches the strike, they’ll report it with a sigh and a shrug, as if all of this were inevitable. It’s a self-fulfilling justification cycle.
We’ve already seen this in Venezuela: pre-invasion narrative scaffolding, labeling a government a “narco-state” despite lack of credible evidence. Now the same machinery turns toward Tehran.
What the BBC is doing is not impartial reporting. It is manufacturing moral permission.
And the worst part? Trump isn’t even hiding the playbook. He says it openly. The BBC just fills in the emotional story beats — so that when the bombs fall, viewers feel like they’ve already accepted it. That is not public broadcasting. That is complicity.
The pattern repeats. Institutional media manufactures consent through omission and distortion, but what strikes me is how this same machinery operates across issues - climate, economics, foreign policy. They don't need to invent reality when selective emphasis achieves the same result. What makes Iran particularly susceptible to this manufacturing process compared to other potential targets?
BBC is MI6; surprised more haven't worked this out yet. It is the propaganda arm of the state and it always has been. Those who see it 'too left' or 'too right' always miss the point. BBC always bangs the drums for war or for whatever the government and the international power behind it wants to do.
Reporting WTC7 as having fallen 23 minutes before it did on 9/11 gives the game away if you are still in the dark about this. 'It was confusing' they said. You're a news organisation and you reported a building had collapsed when it was still standing behind Jane Standley at the time.
Brilliant piece of writing. You reveal in your argument just how sneaky and evil the BBC is. Evil is not a word I use lightly, but how else can you frame a media strategy that joins the conspiracy to engage in mass murder? How can they not empathise with the Iranian population of men, women and children living in heightened fear of brutaility, brutality that will maim and murder their loved ones. I, for one, have had enough of this hypocrisy.
Hi Jonathan! What a pleasure to smack two flies at the same time, ok just ONE huge irritant.
I have followed you writing for many, many years and I have always found it invaluable. Thanks!!
And here is the buzzing fly getting a bit of massage re his latest anti-Iran propaganda. I paid USD12 just to get that pleasure
-----------------
Jesus X, Mehdi! Why not immediately ask every guest "Do you condemn the Ayatollah, yes or no!" Oh, but you didn't need that with this particular and particularly biased guest. I can't even muster hearing your voice as I am reading this.
Are you willing to educate yourself? Then go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiuTgH1YoE "Oh, no! Not that regime REGIME! apologist Professor Marandi!" What about Sharmine Narwani? Oh, Mendi! If you could be a 10th the journalist as her, you maybe didn't have to make an embarrassment of yourself as you always do. All the time.
Not enough? Go to Alastair Crooke here on Substack. 35-30 with MI6. He was the first to report THE TRUTH about these violent riots. And why not poke some fun at Elon Musk who lost hie entire Starlink venture when Iran crashed the entire system and turned it into a surveillance machine find all the 40,000 users of Starlink, provided by Mosad?? Shame on you!
Has anyone at the BBC bothered to count the Iranian civilians who’ve died or suffered due to US sanctions? Or do they even know how to do basic arithmetic?
The common denominator being Israel/Gaza; the English (I hesitate to say British as it would include the Scottish Irish and Welsh) governing body, whether Tory or Labour, have been blinded by their past allegience to US (therefore Israeli) interests. To paraphrase Dylan: it's too late to change horses midstream.
SCOTS WERE amongst the most fervent in commitment to the Empire (they shouldn't be let off too lightly).
Not just 'brawn', either, but the finest brains (applied to the design and maintenance of the imperial project).
And arguably, since the Union of the Kingdoms, it has been the Scots who made things work (the English, more often, looking like they couldn't run a whelk stall).
Like the Labour Government and it's predecessors the BBC has been suborned by foreign interests and when it comes to international affairs, especially when Israel's interests are involved, 100 percent unreliable. It doesn't deserve to exist.
Thank you Jonathan Cook for your enlightening and heartfelt articles. You always leave me feeling hopeful even in the middle of this never-ending chaos. You prove to me that humanity still exists. Thank you for your time.
It may interest people to know that the New Zealand state broadcaster RNZ has moved away from using the BBC as a principal source of news and commentary on its website, and now relies more on CNN and ABC. The reason is that the current colonialist administration is aligning itself more with the Trump presidency for which CNN and the ABC are proving to be a more sympathetic channel (to the surprise of those who had thought of CNN as more "left" or leaning towards the Democratic Party).
RNZ is joining in the clamour for war against Iran and to that end published an amazing piece of fake news originating from the ABC, claiming to quote an Iranian doctor (who was an invented persona), and suggesting that the casualties in the failed Iranian insurrection numbered in the tens of thousands.
State media organizations in the west now seem to regard fake news in the same way that their commercial counterparts regard paid advertising. They have to run these fake news items in order to carry on doing what they do in the way of real news. In the case of RNZ that mainly consists of stories along the lines of "Mum (27) laments loss of local cafe" with in depth coverage over why the cafe closed, how other businesses and residents have been impacted and so on.
Somehow RNZ journalists have become accustomed to the idea that the important issues can be handled by fake news, and the trivia become the stuff of "real" journalism. This process was initiated in 2023 when RNZ journalist Mick Hall was sacked and RNZ conducted a purge of all its on-line archival content to remove any that was judged pro-Russian, pro-Palestinian, pro-Venezuelan or pro-Peruvian (not sure how that one crept in, but there you go). Any RNZ journalists not already corrupted had the fear of death put into them by the 2023 purge, and so none are willing to speak out publicly about the steadily increasing volume of fake news on RNZ.
Below is the text of comment I sent to RNZ in response to its publication. So far I have had no reply from RNZ.
"I have friends and family in medical practice yet curiously none of them admit to having been "devastated" by the "smell of blood" as was Dr Arash. "The blood smell, it was very, very devastating," Arash told 7.30. "I cannot forget; that blood smell was everywhere, all around the emergency room."
I have.. taken a patient into an emergency department of a hospital in Iran, and can confirm that even in ordinary times they can be very busy places. The doctors who work in these conditions seem to accept it as normal and just get on with the job, although one did interrupt his work for a few seconds to say to me "If the western world did not restrict our access to modern medical equipment and supplies, we would be able to do more for these patients".
Was your Dr Arash new to the Iranian health system? If not, how long had he been working within the system?
Why did Dr Arash choose to leave Iran? When he left Iran, was he accompanied by family members? How and when did he arrive in Australia? Such questions might not have been top of mind for your reporter, but they would never-the-less be of interest to your readers"
BBC little more than a propaganda machine for Starmer " I'm proud to be a Zionist". Today he said that in response to the illegal attack by them , Iran had launched ' indiscriminate ' missiles. FFS. He's I'm incompetent we know, a liar we know, but this is pathetic.
I gave up on this garbage outlet during the Balkan wars when they were in a bus filming Serbian refugees escaping from KLA killers, and changing the subtitles so the non-Serb-speaking audience would think the people in the bus were Albanians escaping from Serbs.
It’s astonishing how quickly we fall into the same patterns again. We’ve seen this film before — in Iraq, in Libya, in Venezuela. But somehow, each time, the scriptwriters think they can repackage it for a new audience.
The BBC's current fantasy reporting about “tens of thousands killed” in Iran is not journalism. It’s narrative preparation. It’s propaganda-by-proxy, delivered under the comforting disguise of public service media.
Let’s be blunt: Trump has already stated that if Iran uses force against protesters, he will intervene militarily. He doesn’t even pretend to want diplomacy. That alone should make every serious journalist tread carefully when citing unverified mass casualty claims from exile-linked groups.
But the BBC — as during the build-up to Iraq — rushes forward to do the groundwork for war. It plants the moral pretext. “Iran is butchering its people.” “We must do something.” “Look how bad it is — even worse than Gaza.” And when Trump launches the strike, they’ll report it with a sigh and a shrug, as if all of this were inevitable. It’s a self-fulfilling justification cycle.
We’ve already seen this in Venezuela: pre-invasion narrative scaffolding, labeling a government a “narco-state” despite lack of credible evidence. Now the same machinery turns toward Tehran.
What the BBC is doing is not impartial reporting. It is manufacturing moral permission.
And the worst part? Trump isn’t even hiding the playbook. He says it openly. The BBC just fills in the emotional story beats — so that when the bombs fall, viewers feel like they’ve already accepted it. That is not public broadcasting. That is complicity.
Only certain types of people are paying for this lie-factory.
Law abiding ones.
The pattern repeats. Institutional media manufactures consent through omission and distortion, but what strikes me is how this same machinery operates across issues - climate, economics, foreign policy. They don't need to invent reality when selective emphasis achieves the same result. What makes Iran particularly susceptible to this manufacturing process compared to other potential targets?
BBC is MI6; surprised more haven't worked this out yet. It is the propaganda arm of the state and it always has been. Those who see it 'too left' or 'too right' always miss the point. BBC always bangs the drums for war or for whatever the government and the international power behind it wants to do.
Reporting WTC7 as having fallen 23 minutes before it did on 9/11 gives the game away if you are still in the dark about this. 'It was confusing' they said. You're a news organisation and you reported a building had collapsed when it was still standing behind Jane Standley at the time.
Peace.
Simply Brilliant!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP3NNFCv834
Brilliant piece of writing. You reveal in your argument just how sneaky and evil the BBC is. Evil is not a word I use lightly, but how else can you frame a media strategy that joins the conspiracy to engage in mass murder? How can they not empathise with the Iranian population of men, women and children living in heightened fear of brutaility, brutality that will maim and murder their loved ones. I, for one, have had enough of this hypocrisy.
Hi Jonathan! What a pleasure to smack two flies at the same time, ok just ONE huge irritant.
I have followed you writing for many, many years and I have always found it invaluable. Thanks!!
And here is the buzzing fly getting a bit of massage re his latest anti-Iran propaganda. I paid USD12 just to get that pleasure
-----------------
Jesus X, Mehdi! Why not immediately ask every guest "Do you condemn the Ayatollah, yes or no!" Oh, but you didn't need that with this particular and particularly biased guest. I can't even muster hearing your voice as I am reading this.
Are you willing to educate yourself? Then go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiuTgH1YoE "Oh, no! Not that regime REGIME! apologist Professor Marandi!" What about Sharmine Narwani? Oh, Mendi! If you could be a 10th the journalist as her, you maybe didn't have to make an embarrassment of yourself as you always do. All the time.
Not enough? Go to Alastair Crooke here on Substack. 35-30 with MI6. He was the first to report THE TRUTH about these violent riots. And why not poke some fun at Elon Musk who lost hie entire Starlink venture when Iran crashed the entire system and turned it into a surveillance machine find all the 40,000 users of Starlink, provided by Mosad?? Shame on you!
Has anyone at the BBC bothered to count the Iranian civilians who’ve died or suffered due to US sanctions? Or do they even know how to do basic arithmetic?
The common denominator being Israel/Gaza; the English (I hesitate to say British as it would include the Scottish Irish and Welsh) governing body, whether Tory or Labour, have been blinded by their past allegience to US (therefore Israeli) interests. To paraphrase Dylan: it's too late to change horses midstream.
SCOTS WERE amongst the most fervent in commitment to the Empire (they shouldn't be let off too lightly).
Not just 'brawn', either, but the finest brains (applied to the design and maintenance of the imperial project).
And arguably, since the Union of the Kingdoms, it has been the Scots who made things work (the English, more often, looking like they couldn't run a whelk stall).
As Michael Collins said of the English: “However did they run an Empire”. But that was way back then - ancient history.
Israel has nuclear weapons
Like the Labour Government and it's predecessors the BBC has been suborned by foreign interests and when it comes to international affairs, especially when Israel's interests are involved, 100 percent unreliable. It doesn't deserve to exist.
It's Raffi Berg's shithole through and through.
Thank you Jonathan Cook for your enlightening and heartfelt articles. You always leave me feeling hopeful even in the middle of this never-ending chaos. You prove to me that humanity still exists. Thank you for your time.
It may interest people to know that the New Zealand state broadcaster RNZ has moved away from using the BBC as a principal source of news and commentary on its website, and now relies more on CNN and ABC. The reason is that the current colonialist administration is aligning itself more with the Trump presidency for which CNN and the ABC are proving to be a more sympathetic channel (to the surprise of those who had thought of CNN as more "left" or leaning towards the Democratic Party).
RNZ is joining in the clamour for war against Iran and to that end published an amazing piece of fake news originating from the ABC, claiming to quote an Iranian doctor (who was an invented persona), and suggesting that the casualties in the failed Iranian insurrection numbered in the tens of thousands.
State media organizations in the west now seem to regard fake news in the same way that their commercial counterparts regard paid advertising. They have to run these fake news items in order to carry on doing what they do in the way of real news. In the case of RNZ that mainly consists of stories along the lines of "Mum (27) laments loss of local cafe" with in depth coverage over why the cafe closed, how other businesses and residents have been impacted and so on.
Somehow RNZ journalists have become accustomed to the idea that the important issues can be handled by fake news, and the trivia become the stuff of "real" journalism. This process was initiated in 2023 when RNZ journalist Mick Hall was sacked and RNZ conducted a purge of all its on-line archival content to remove any that was judged pro-Russian, pro-Palestinian, pro-Venezuelan or pro-Peruvian (not sure how that one crept in, but there you go). Any RNZ journalists not already corrupted had the fear of death put into them by the 2023 purge, and so none are willing to speak out publicly about the steadily increasing volume of fake news on RNZ.
The fake news item currently in question was https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/585264/iranian-doctor-who-fled-to-australia-after-operating-on-massacre-victims-estimates-death-toll-in-tens-of-thousands
Below is the text of comment I sent to RNZ in response to its publication. So far I have had no reply from RNZ.
"I have friends and family in medical practice yet curiously none of them admit to having been "devastated" by the "smell of blood" as was Dr Arash. "The blood smell, it was very, very devastating," Arash told 7.30. "I cannot forget; that blood smell was everywhere, all around the emergency room."
I have.. taken a patient into an emergency department of a hospital in Iran, and can confirm that even in ordinary times they can be very busy places. The doctors who work in these conditions seem to accept it as normal and just get on with the job, although one did interrupt his work for a few seconds to say to me "If the western world did not restrict our access to modern medical equipment and supplies, we would be able to do more for these patients".
Was your Dr Arash new to the Iranian health system? If not, how long had he been working within the system?
Why did Dr Arash choose to leave Iran? When he left Iran, was he accompanied by family members? How and when did he arrive in Australia? Such questions might not have been top of mind for your reporter, but they would never-the-less be of interest to your readers"