BBC admits vetting failure after hosting guest who praised October 7

The BBC has acknowledged that it failed to properly screen a guest who appeared on one of its television programs despite a history of inflammatory statements about Jews and Israel, including comments celebrating the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. According to The Telegraph , Bushra Shaikh, a former contestant on the reality television program The Apprentice, appeared last month on BBC One's “Sunday Morning Live" to argue in favor of women's right to wear burkas in public.

However, the broadcaster subsequently came under scrutiny over Shaikh's previous social media posts, which included statements targeting Jews and expressing support for the October 7 attacks. Among her remarks, Shaikh referred to Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Europe as “lying scumbags" and “the biggest charlatans on this planet." Within hours of the Hamas massacre in southern Israel, she posted, “Palestinians have done more in 5 minutes than Zelensky has done with 75bn.

Humiliation is an understatement." Shaikh also blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the October 2025 terrorist attack at a Manchester synagogue, in which two people were murdered and three others seriously wounded. “He has Jewish blood on his hands," she wrote on X. In January, responding to initial reports of casualties among Iranian protesters killed by the regime, Shaikh invoked the Holocaust, writing, “The real number is 6 million."

The Telegraph reported that the BBC recently acknowledged to a member of parliament that Shaikh's social media history had not been reviewed in accordance with “the standards we expect." The broadcaster said changes would be introduced following the incident. Shaikh, for her part, denied that her statements were antisemitic. The controversy added to longstanding criticism of the BBC's reporting on Israel and Hamas, including allegations of anti-Israel bias and failures in editorial oversight.

In November 2023, the broadcaster apologized after incorrectly reporting that Israeli forces were targeting medical personnel during military operations around Gaza's Shifa Hospital. The BBC also faced criticism for its initial reporting on an explosion at a Gaza hospital, which it attributed to Israel before the IDF presented evidence indicating that a failed Islamic Jihad rocket had caused the blast. The broadcaster subsequently acknowledged that “it was false to speculate" about responsibility for the incident.

In 2025, the BBC faced another controversy involving its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone," after it emerged that the film's narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official. The broadcaster later admitted that the production had contained “serious flaws" in its handling. Separately, The Telegraph reported last week that the BBC had agreed to pay £400,000 in compensation to an award-winning Jewish documentary filmmaker who alleged that she had suffered antisemitic harassment by colleagues and had been forced out of the organization following the October 7 massacre.