Despite sources outwardly rejecting any link to radical Islam, the BBC still felt it necessary, in isolation, to scrub any reference to the name “Ali” in the killer’s name. The organisation chose to report his name as “David Sonbaly” on social media, on broadcast TV, and in its online coverage.
After Breitbart London reported the news, which subsequently featured on the powerful news aggregation site the Drudge Report, the BBC began to quietly alter its coverage.
The chyron on its broadcast news segments was quickly changed to add in “Ali”, and the original article was edited to include the name as his middle name. The BBC also added the line: “He has also been referred to as Ali David Sonboly, or David S.”.
The BBC has now changed its article following my expose of their attempted cover up: https://t.co/GEj73KjxeB pic.twitter.com/58vI5DozA9Despite the alteration, the BBC has still not responded to a Breitbart London request for comment on the story.
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) July 23, 2016
We asked almost two hours before the ehange:
Dear Sir or Madam,The updated BBC article does not contain a correction or explanation for their editing.
Could the BBC please explain the decision to only refer to Munich killer Ali David Sonboly as “David Sonboly”?
This is a pattern across online, broadcast, and social media and therefore leads me to believe this decision was taken at a very high level.
Could you please let me know who took this decision and when, and why?
I will be publishing on this shortly.
Kind regards,
Raheem Kassam
Editor in Chief
Breitbart London
BBC news anchors are, as of 3pm EST on Saturday afternoon, still referring to the killer as “David Sonboly”.
Source: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/23/bbc-fixes-munich-killer-article-following-breitbart-expose-muslim-name-cover/