The publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has again been accused of wasting taxpayer money after handing an Islamic State bride a 10-part podcast series.
Shamima Begum, who travelled from the United Kingdom to Syria in 2015 to defect to the Islamic State and was later stripped of her British citizenship, has been given a 10-part podcast series on the BBC to tell her story.
Titled ‘I’m Not a Monster’, the podcast which heavily features Begum is hosted by journalist Josh Baker, who claims he wants to know “the truth about what really happened”.
However, with the British media seemingly being obsessed with giving the defector prominent and sympathetic if not positive coverage over the last few years — despite there being plenty of other ISIS defectors stripped of citizenship they could choose to highlight — some have accused the publicly owned broadcaster of “wasting” taxpayer money with the series.
According to a report by The Sun on the response to the podcast, many critics have expressed concern over the BBC’s decision to dedicate such an extensive podcast to Begum, who is currently battling to regain her British citizenship.
The publication lists one commentator as questioning why the former ISIS supporter was being given a platform “while the victims of grooming gangs are still trying to be heard and get justice,” for example.
However, the BBC has defended the podcast as reportedly being aimed at separating “fact from fiction”.
“This is not a platform for Shamima Begum to give her unchallenged story,” a spokesman for the broadcaster claimed.
“This is a robust, public interest investigation in which Josh Baker has forensically examined who she really is and what she really did.”
“We’d also encourage people to listen to the podcast and make up their own mind,” they added — although why Begum should be deserving of such disproportionate coverage either way was, as ever, not explained.
Even if the podcast intends to do more than just take Begum’s telling of the story at face value, with its first episode posted on Wednesday investigating the information surrounding her trip to Syria, the series’ release still comes at a time when the Brtish media seems strangely keen to give the jihadi bride sympatheti coverage.
For instance, back in 2021, one of Britain’s more supposedly “conservative” newspapers, The Telegraph, gave the woman a very positive write-up, even going into bizarre detail as to the Western clothes she was wearing.
Gushing that “Today Shamima Begum looks more suited to a shopping trip on Oxford Street than life in a camp for hardened jihadists”, the article took great efforts to humanise the former ISIS affiliate who currently remains stuck in a refugee camp in Syria.
However, despite the positive media cover of Begum, as well as her claims that she is “not the person” many fear she is, questions remain as to the extent of her involvement with Islamic State.
For instance, some reports have described the woman as being a strict “enforcer” of Islamic State laws during her time in the caliphate, with some saying she helped “stitching the vests” onto suicide bombers.
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