I didn’t expect my last day at the BBC to end with my accounts locked and my staff ID suspended, as though I had been fired rather than leaving on my own terms. But that’s exactly what happened after Israel targeted and assassinated renowned Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif in Gaza.
The decision to leave had been growing inside me for a while, but the last straw came when the BBC published a claim about the Al Jazeera journalist that wasn’t properly sourced and fell short of the BBC’s own editorial standards.
When I challenged it, I was told to take my concerns “somewhere else” and received a warning from a colleague that I could be “blacklisted from ever working with the BBC again” for expressing myself.
The BBC glow I once trusted began to fade; only then did I see an institution parroting narratives that made the world unsafe for me as a journalist.
This is my farewell to my colleagues, to ask you to see what we become in the act of reporting, and to confront the cost of being institutionalised and complicit. I’ve carried it, and I can’t stay silent any longer.
This is a personal history, yes. But it is also a first-hand account of how editorial decisions on the Palestinian genocide and Israel are made inside one of the world’s most influential newsrooms.
The reluctant journalist
Being a news journalist was never the plan. I was an aspiring filmmaker who got lucky when the BBC commissioned my first film in 2018. 51 kilos told the story of a boy struggling with depression and obesity while growing up in the Gulf.
That boy was me.
After the film’s success, I began a winding path through the byzantine structure of one of the world’s most storied news organisations, freelancing for the World Service and BBC News.
I broke stories on the UK’s Rwanda deportation scheme, exposed toxic oil pollution in the Red Sea threatening the world’s last refuge for corals, and exposed Microsoft’s deletion of Palestinian accounts, proving their online identities were 'killed' after using Skype to call their loved ones during the war. And many more stories that sparked debate, influenced policy, and forced accountability. We won prestigious awards.
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Earlier this year, I joined BBC Verify, the flagship team using open-source intelligence and digital forensics to combat disinformation, a crown jewel of the BBC’s future ambitions.
We produced investigations, many focused on Gaza, helping cut through disinformation with irrefutable hard evidence. I verified strikes on civilians queuing for aid, blurring footage while counting the dead and injured frame by frame. Images of dismembered children are burned into my brain.
But I felt energised to contribute to a fresh news craft in real time, helping re-establish trust during one of the corporation’s most scrutinised periods.
When the world’s top newsroom bent to power
I believed in what we were doing. Public service journalism, independent of government and commercial influence. Reporting without fear or favour. Rooted in public interest and accountability. I believed in it because I saw, first-hand, how our work could inspire change.
But since the start of the Palestinian genocide, I’ve witnessed the BBC drift from the standards it claims to uphold. Day after day, I saw the world’s most influential newsroom bend under political pressure. Truth was buried under the weight of caution, giving the Israeli government and its genocidal army the perfect alibi.
It was death by a thousand cuts. Diplomacy and lobbying crept into editorial decisions. What was meant as journalistic due diligence, checking if a source was credible and independent, became weaponised as ‘background checks’ to silence Palestinian voices.
Journalists in Gaza were scrutinised for family connections, appearing in a political event years ago or liking a post later linked to a ‘militant.’ These checks relied on crude ChatGPT and Google translation; they were run by journalists and signed off by editors with little knowledge of Gaza’s history or politics.
A culture of intimidation in the newsroom became a fertile ground for prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. It put a target on our Palestinian colleagues’ backs.
Then Israel killed Anas Al-Sharif and an entire Al Jazeera team in a targeted strike in Gaza City. That changed everything.
Anas’s death felt personal
Israel admitted to assassinating Anas, claiming he was a Hamas militant. There was no evidence of this, yet the BBC published a line that read: “The BBC understands Sharif worked for a Hamas media team.” That single word — ‘understands’ — carried weight. This wasn’t Israel’s claim repeated. It was the BBC presenting it as its own verified fact.
By the corporation’s own editorial standards, this meant either a BBC reporter received irrefutable, verifiable evidence or confirmation from two independent and credible sources. It later turned out there was no such evidence, no second source, only unverified hearsay from an anonymous source that made its way onto the BBC’s front pages.
I asked questions in a BBC WhatsApp group for editorial queries: “What were the sources, and why wasn’t it mentioned that Anas had publicly denounced Hamas?” Instead of answers, I was told to take my queries “somewhere else” Then a colleague warned me privately, “with love,” they said, that pressing the point could see me “blacklisted” from future BBC work. That was the moment I knew my time was over.
For me, Anas’s death was personal. The way he joked, the way he carried himself, even the way he combed his hair — it was familiar. Yet the BBC repeated Israel’s claim that he was a militant and doubled down by saying it understood he worked for a Hamas media team.
Journalism isn’t just about facts. It’s about trust. When we publish unverified claims as fact, when we let fear silence questions, we betray that trust. We tell the world that the lives of journalists like Anas are negotiable. And once we accept that, we’re no longer holding power to account. We’re helping it cover its tracks and justify the killing of our colleagues.
BBC Unverified
A branch of the National Union of Journalists quickly organised a vigil for Anas. That evening, I joined journalists marching through London, carrying placards with the names of our murdered colleagues. Grief written on every face.
As I stood there, listening to obituaries for Anas and other journalists killed in Gaza, my phone kept buzzing with messages from my manager at the BBC, one after another.
Earlier that morning, BBC Verify had repeated the unverified claim about Anas in a video published to Instagram and TikTok. Our team existed to prove things beyond doubt. So why, when it came to a murdered journalist, were we abandoning our own principles? BBC Verify’s reporting also omitted that Anas had criticised Hamas and its negotiators in his latest social media posts.
I raised multiple complaints with the team, warning that the line about Anas can be defamatory. No one replied. So I posted on social media, calling out the claim for what it was: unverified, unsourced, a breach of BBC Verify’s own guidelines.
What I witnessed wasn’t a minor dispute over editorial tone. It was potential editorial malpractice, the defamation of a murdered colleague, in a story of the highest public interest: the targeted killing of a journalist by a genocidal army. Staying silent would have made me complicit in justifying his death.
My manager messaged again, saying that after "reviewing resources," I would not be needed for my final shift that week. Then added that they wanted to speak to me about "editorial concerns" over my recent social media posts, with the head of HR present. It felt less like a procedural matter and more like a warning for speaking out.
Anas’s last cry
I told my manager I was at the vigil and asked to have this conversation on my last day. I had already decided to leave the BBC, with that week being my final one.
But the messages insisting I speak with them sooner didn’t stop. Soon after, my BBC accounts were locked, and my staff ID was suspended, ending seven years of walking through those doors. As though I had been fired rather than leaving on my own terms.
My now former manager said an escort would meet me to collect my things and take my work laptop, while still insisting on a meeting with them and HR. I refused the meeting, skipped my final day, and asked for a courier. My editorial complaint about the claim on Anas is still unanswered.
As the names of our Palestinian colleagues were read aloud in the vigil, checking my phone to see those messages felt grotesque. This was a face of the BBC I didn’t recognise.
We marched through London carrying a symbolic coffin with the faces of Anas al-Sharif, Hossam Shabat, Ismail al-Ghoul, and Mohammad Qureiqi.
By the end, the weight was unbearable. I was exhausted of seeing our Arabic names and my name, Mohamed, appear only on the lists of Gaza’s dead journalists, yet missing from newsrooms and senior editorial roles.
I realised I was carrying more than grief. It was the weight of a world that erases people like me while pretending not to, where the reality of 'the good Arab is a dead Arab' leaves no room for us to be seen as anything but victims or enemies.
For years, the BBC trained me to be measured, my questions controlled. That night in the streets of London, grief broke the restraint. I gripped the mic and cried: "From Asqalan to Jabalia sky, Anas’s voice will never die," his own last words, the cry of a refugee displaced from his home.
A leaked email ends the mirage
A month after my BBC account was suspended, Novara Media revealed an internal email sent to over 1,200 BBC staff. It amended the earlier line that the BBC “understands” Anas worked for a Hamas media team. The new wording read: “a source told the BBC”, Sharif worked for a Hamas media team, while “Al Jazeera denies it”, and the BBC’s own Gaza correspondent said “he had seen no evidence.”
It was a mess. The tortured construction exposed the truth: the BBC had relied on a single anonymous source, without evidence or corroboration, and presented it as fact. The amendment also showed that the earlier version, with the word understands, was not only sloppy and vague, but a breach of the BBC’s own standards.
The BBC’s standards require serious claims to be corroborated with multiple credible sources, or reviewed through legal and editorial checks if relying on a single anonymous source.
Yet here’s one unverified claim from an anonymous source, no evidence, no second source, was treated as fact and given the same weight as the BBC’s own Gaza correspondent’s reporting, according to the e-mail.
This broke transparency, accuracy, and the trust we were supposed to uphold. A crack in the facade that exposed how far the BBC had strayed from the values it claimed to uphold, and for me, it felt like watching a long-held mirage dissolve into harsh, undeniable truth.
How could the BBC report two contradictory things at once? Why wasn’t the Gaza correspondent being trusted? The message was unmistakable: Palestinian journalists, even inside Western newsrooms, are not trusted.
The BBC, in response to Novara, said it stands by its initial reporting. If so, why did it consider an old, unverified claim from before the war more relevant to a journalist’s assassination than the fact that Anas won a Pulitzer Prize with Reuters last year? A fact never published on any BBC output.
Why I never said goodbye
In the end, and I do not know why, that amendment was not made. And so, the claim remains in three separate places on the BBC’s website that Anas worked for Hamas.
Shutting down editorial questions, fostering intimidation, and ignoring good-faith complaints should not be how a public broadcaster acts. It’s not the BBC I knew when I joined. And it cannot be the BBC we choose to carry forward.
So, I never made it back to the newsroom on my final day. The institution I once dreamt of joining no longer lived by the values it claimed to uphold. I left without saying goodbye to colleagues I had promised to see.
Journalism isn’t just about what we report or how we report it. It’s about who we become in the act of reporting. We became complicit. That’s why I had to leave. I have returned to documentary-making, living with this truth.
To my former colleagues, I know the risks of speaking up. But silence is not neutrality. It is consent. And every time we stay quiet, we help write the story against ourselves.
Mohamed Shalaby is a journalist and filmmaker crafting bold, forensic, cinematic storytelling. Driven by human stories, creating multi-platform films that inspire change, recognised by the Academy Awards, BAFTA, and RTS.
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.