There is something insidious about BBC reporting. The facts of the story of the shooting of three students in Vermont did not fit the narrative that the British state broadcaster wanted to tell.

But that did not stop them.

Instead, the publicly funded BBC simply pretended that they did – and wrote the story they wanted to tell anyway.

The Shooting of the Three Students

This is a story I covered in detail in December 2025, alongside Vermont-based investigative journalist Rachel Feldman, when members of Vermont’s congressional delegation tried to weaponise the tragedy by presenting it as a targeted hate crime – despite the evidence failing to support any such motive.  

The core details are as follows. On November 25, 2023, three students were shot on North Prospect Street in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is relatively small by American standards, but is the largest city in Vermont. The three college students were visiting family in town for the Thanksgiving break. 

The shooter, Jason Eaton, left his property, immediately encountered the three students and opened fire. As the students were of Palestinian heritage, and two were reportedly wearing keffiyehs at the time, there were immediate attempts to ascribe a motive to the attack. That narrative soon ran into serious problems as more details emerged – including Eaton’s own recent expressions of support for the Palestinian cause.

Eaton eventually went to trial in September 2026, attempting to rely on an insanity defense. The jury rejected it and found him guilty of the underlying three counts of attempted second-degree murder. 

Crucially, no hate-crime enhancement was added to the charges. Despite years of investigation, there was no evidence to establish an “anti-Palestinian” motive. 

None. 

The BBC Gets Creative

The verdict should have left the BBC with a simple reporting task. Yet what followed shows just how lost BBC journalism has become.

On 21 September, BBC News reported the conviction of Jason Eaton, but apparently decided that the facts established in court were not enough.

The report suddenly invents an entirely different narrative:

“The shooting occurred the month after the start of the Israel-Gaza war and amid a rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US.”

None of that has anything to do with any motive established for the shooting. The BBC is inserting its own narrative into the story. And when you look even closer – it gets even worse.

The hyperlink provided by the BBC to support its claim of “a rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US” is all about a rise in antisemitism – the article makes no mention of a “rise in Islamophobia” at all:

The link is provided as a red herring to imply a documented rise in anti-Muslim bigotry without providing any evidence of such.

And note too – the BBC journalist places Islamophobia first, pushing antisemitism into second place, before linking to an article that is all about “historic levels” of antisemitism.

Is nobody paying attention?

And They Had Not Finished Yet

In the very next paragraph, the BBC tells readers that the three victims were walking near Eaton’s home, “speaking a mix of Arabic and English and wearing traditional Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs.”

In isolation, these may be legitimate details to report – and in a properly reported account, their inclusion may well be justified. But that is not what the BBC has done. It has already introduced Islamophobia and the Israel-Gaza war into a story where no such motive was established. It then immediately tells readers that the victims were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs.

Their placement creates an unmistakable impression. The BBC has painted a picture that readers can hardly be expected to ignore.

This is disgraceful advocacy journalism – and it has entirely skewed the story. 

For anyone who has not yet grasped the depth of the misdirection, the BBC even tagged this story in its Gaza War section – as if this shooting and these victims are somehow part of the Gaza War story. So if someone browses the BBC’s “Gaza War” section, this Vermont shooting is one of the stories they will find.

This is shoddy and unacceptable. This is more like student activism than reporting.

The Pen Behind the Sword

The journalist Brandon Drenon is not new to me. I first wrote about his BBC reporting more than two years ago, raising concerns about the way he framed Israel-related stories. Since then, the media watchdog CAMERA has also challenged his reporting on several occasions. In April 2024, Drenon falsely told BBC readers that the International Court of Justice had found the accusation of genocide against Israel “plausible.” It had not. Following a complaint, the BBC amended the article.

But there is a broader pattern worth noting. Drenon has repeatedly produced sympathetic human-interest reporting centred on Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activism. Just a few examples: 

• October 2023: ’I wake up and check if my family in Gaza is still alive,’ says Palestinian American
• November 2023: Palestinian-Americans struggling with “survivors’ guilt” 
• May 2024: US campus protests: ‘Student arrests will be my final college memory’
• April 2025: Anxiety at US colleges as foreign students are detained and visas revoked
• October 2025: US campus activists relieved – and anxious – after Gaza ceasefire deal

I looked for the other side. I could find no comparable standalone feature from him centred on Jewish or Israeli-American experiences of October 7, the hostage crisis or the subsequent surge in antisemitism.

Nothing.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. When I last reported on Drenon I noted he came from a social justice background, and had married a Syrian-Palestinian from a family of anti-Israel activists.

And now we have his coverage of the shooting in Vermont.

Once again, the problem is not simply what Drenon reports, but the story he invents beyond the facts. His article introduces the Gaza war, Islamophobia, Arabic and keffiyehs in quick succession – leading readers to assume a motive that the evidence never established. 

We Should Not Have to Pay for This

The BBC’s motive seems considerably clearer than Jason Eaton’s. We know Eaton shot three young men on a dark street in a peaceful city. Nearly three years later, we still do not know why.

What we can see clearly is what the BBC has done with that uncertainty.

This was a local shooting in which nobody was killed. Would BBC News have reported the conviction of an American who shot and wounded three strangers in Vermont nearly three years earlier if the victims had not been Palestinian?

But having chosen to report it, the BBC then supplied the missing narrative itself: Gaza, Islamophobia, Arabic and keffiyehs – all pointing the reader towards an anti-Palestinian motive that was never established.

But the bottom line is this. I do not actually care if BBC News wants to employ activist journalists who produce one-sided, skewed and misleading coverage. 

There are plenty of dreadful media outlets in the world. One more will make little difference.

But here is the crunch: if the BBC has abandoned impartial journalism for student-level activism, then there is no justification for forcing the British public to pay for it.

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