The graver Israel's atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows

The BBC’s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on 28 March in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off from the outside world. 

The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images. 

Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2,000 people were killed by Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake. 

The West sees the country’s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta’s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar’s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime’s image.

The BBC’s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage - or rather, lack of it - of another important story this week. 

Read more: The graver Israel's atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows