Massive Attack urge the BBC and other media outlets to redirect their resources on “what is happening, daily, to the people of Gaza” following Bob Vylan Glastonbury controversy

Massive Attack are urging the media to redirect their attention towards the “what is happening, daily, to the people of Gaza” rather than Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury controversy.

Sharing a statement to Instagram yesterday, the band said that they had been contacted by “various media outlets” to “ask our view of something a musician said”, referring to Bob Vylan’s set in Glastonbury, where the duo led chants of “death, death to the IDF.”

Over the past few days, the UK punk rappers had their US visas revoked, were reportedly dropped by their agency United Talent Agency and a criminal investigation into the set was launched by the Avon and Somerset Police.

Massive Attack, known supporters of the Palestinian cause, shared a statement saying: “Today, a hot day when 22 Palestinians (including journalists) sat in a seafront café were murdered by one Israeli bomb, various national media outlets have contacted us (again) to ask our view of something a musician said.”

The band also put forth the current situation in Gaza, writing “For 636 days now, unprecedented & insufferable horror has been recorded by the brutalised communities of Gaza and shown to us on our phone and television screens. It will not stop. No one, it seems, will stop it.

 

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“The natural human consequence of the absence of objective journalism and any moral leadership from government is a sense of acute frustration, deep sadness and rage (much of it quiet and private) amongst a majority of the British public,” they continued, “including the expressive branches of society, artists and performers. They tend not to have had media training, or regularly updated LinkedIn accounts, or social inhibitions.

“As we all watch on aghast, every day, shouting or typing into an echo chamber of complicity, the media and political classes focus again on… artists.”

Concluding their statement, Massive Attack urged “the BBC and other media outlets to redirect their considerable news resource to reporting the truth of what is happening, daily, to the people of Gaza. And critically, to explaining the corresponding inaction of western governments (such as the UK) to their viewers.”

Following the controversy of their Glastonbury set, Bob Vylan also expressed that they, “like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story, and whatever sanction we receive will be a distraction.”

Since Hamas’ attacks on Israel in October 2023, the UN has found Israel’s military actions on Gaza to be related to genocide. At least 56,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.