Caution has turned to cowardice – the BBC is failing viewers with its Gaza coverage

The Guardian

a day ago

Tonight, audiences can finally watch Gaza: Doctors Under Attack on Channel 4 and Zeteo. This timely film was originally produced for the BBC by award-winning production company Basement Films. The BBC has been delaying it since February, arguing it couldn't go out before a review into an entirely different film, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, had culminated. That was a poor editorial decision with no precedent. But poorer still: after months of leaving the film in limbo, last week the BBC announced it wouldn't air it – leaving it for Channel 4 to pick up.
Why? The BBC said it might create 'the perception of partiality'. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was lifted from a dystopian novel. Perception, after all, has nothing to do with impartiality – at least in an ideal world. The BBC seems to have said the quiet part out loud. Impartiality, as far as it's concerned, is about PR, optics and managing the anger of certain groups, rather than following the evidence and championing robust journalism – no matter who's angered, no matter how it looks.
More than 100 BBC journalists have now anonymously signed a letter, calling the choice not to broadcast Gaza: Doctors Under Attack a 'political decision' that doesn't reflect the quality of journalism in the film. The BBC, they say, is 'an organisation crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government'. The letter says the decision not to air this film came straight from the top, and many BBC staff – junior and senior – are unhappy with it. They feel it doesn't reflect the organisation's values, and that there was no acceptable editorial justification for delaying and then canning it. Some have been brave enough to voice this internally, but their concerns haven't been heard.
It's no surprise to me that the BBC isn't listening to its own journalists over this film. It's also no surprise to me that more than 100 BBC journalists felt they needed anonymity to criticise the board's decision. Because this isn't the first anonymous letter. Twenty months ago, while I was working as a journalist in a BBC newsroom, covering Gaza day in and day out, I realised that my news organisation wasn't accurately telling this story. But I didn't feel I could openly criticise editorial policy without being taken off the story or coded as biased, and I wasn't alone.
In November 2023, I wrote the first letter out of the BBC, expressing concerns about the Gaza coverage. It was signed by just seven other BBC journalists, and reported on by Al Jazeera. By the time I wrote my last letter, published in the Independent a year later, more than 100 BBC journalists had signed anonymously, alongside hundreds of industry professionals and respected media lecturers. This was around the time I left the organisation, unable to continue in good conscience. Dissent was clearly growing. But people were still afraid to speak openly.
Last week in parliament, the BBC's director of news, Richard Burgess, claimed the organisation listens to its journalists. But my letters weren't heard, and nor were my efforts to raise the alarm internally. In the year from October 2023, I organised staff, attended multiple 'listening sessions' with executives, helped put together dossiers of poor coverage, wrote to executives and relevant teams, and did my best to cover Gaza while hamstrung by obstructive editorial policy and an unwillingness to cover the story.
I was a BBC-trained journalist horrified at the contradiction between the ideals of our public broadcaster – accuracy, transparency, public trust – and its actions. Editorial caution had become editorial cowardice. Decisions were being shaped by fear – of complaint campaigns and lobby groups, of being told off by higher-ups. This had left us with coverage that was overall inaccurate, failing to communicate the disproportionality, scale, gravity and illegality of Israel's actions in Gaza – actions now deemed a genocide by various experts and humanitarian organisations.
Inaccuracy is more than telling an overt lie. Inaccuracy comes in many forms: omitting key stories, omitting key context, speaking to one group far more than another. Good journalism is about following the evidence. And if the BBC's approach has been shaped by evidence, why did it speak to more than double the number of Israelis, compared with Palestinians, in the year after 7 October 2023? Why did it omit key legal context – such as the January 2024 international court of justice ruling – from its coverage? These choices skew reality. Both are findings from a recent damning Centre for Media Monitoring report on the BBC's Gaza coverage, with data-backed insights into how it has failed to tell the full story.
And it hasn't learned its lesson. Perhaps if the BBC had listened to these journalists over the past year and a half, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack would have aired in February when it was ready, instead of becoming another gaping omission in BBC coverage.
BBC impartiality is dead. The fiction that our public broadcaster can stay perfectly neutral, without being influenced, is fracturing around us. Every so-called 'controversial' story has exposed a new fault line, showing how unwilling the BBC is to wade through influence and disinformation to get to the truth – in certain cases. Gaza, climate breakdown, migration: these are stories where public opinion has been polarised, powerful lobby groups are at play, or where the government or major corporations have come down on one side. This is where the BBC is most needed but fails most catastrophically.
Those at the top of the BBC now have a choice. They can once again ignore the alarm raised by their own journalists, and continue to chip away at the trust of audiences and staff. Or they can finally – after 20 months – listen.
Karishma Patel is a former BBC journalist and newsreader turned media critic
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.