BBC under fire for giving Isis bride a podcast platform
The BBC has come under fire for giving a ten-part podcast platform to British terror bride Shamima Begum, which sees her claim that she is different from how people perceive her.
Critics say the corporation should not be giving her the ‘oxygen’ of publicity amid concerns it will allow her to ‘spin’ a ‘sob story’ and use it for PR means.
The Shamima Begum Story features extensive interviews with the woman, who left the UK as a 15-year-old with two other schoolgirls to join the Islamic State (Isis) terror group. She is currently at a camp in Syria after the UK removed her citizenship on security grounds in 2019.
In the opening episode of the series she claims: ‘I’m not this person that I am being perceived as in the media, you know. I’m just so much more than Isis and I’m so much more than everything I’ve been through.’
The 23-year-old also said she packed items when she left for Syria that she could not get in the middle-eastern country.
She told the podcast: ‘You can find a lot of things in this country but you cannot find mint chocolate. It’s a tragedy. Tragedy.’
It is understood no money has been paid to her by the BBC for her participation in the series. But yesterday there was still concern over the amount of airtime being given to her.
Tory MP Giles Watling, who sits on the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee said: ‘I don’t think we should give these people airtime. We shouldn’t be doing it.
‘We shouldn’t be giving them
‘Disgraceful PR exercise’
space and giving them the oxygen [ of publicity]. She made a mistake. She paid the price for it. Now just go away.’
Campaign group the TaxPayers’ alliance said in a social media post that the BBC licence fee money ‘should not be supporting this disgraceful PR exercise to spin the sob story of an Isis bride’.
The BBC has said the series is ‘not a platform for Shamima Begum to give her unchallenged story’ but a ‘robust, public interest investigation’.