BBC coverage of Israel's war on Gaza shows 'pattern of bias'
The 188-page report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), published on Monday, analysed the BBC's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza between October 7, 2023 and October 6, 2024, looking at 3873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments.
Despite there being 34 times more Palestinian deaths, the CfMM found this was not reflected in the number of victim profiles the BBC ran for Palestinians (279) and Israelis (201).
READ MORE: Windows smashed and graffiti sprayed on BBC building in Gaza protest
During the timeframe analysed by the CfMM, 42,010 Palestinians and 1246 Israelis were killed. The death toll in Gaza has now reached more than 55,000 Palestinians, many of whom were women and children.
The report found that the BBC interviewed twice as many Israelis as Palestinians when reporting on Gaza. During the analysis period, the BBC interviewed 2350 Israelis compared to 1085 Palestinians.
The CfMM said that while the BBC asked 38 guests to condemn Hamas, it asked zero to condemn Israel's mass killing of civilians.
And despite Israel being credibly accused of committing genocide in Gaza, the CfMM said BBC presenters interrupted or dismissed genocide claims more than 100 times, yet made no mention of genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders.
Further, the term "war crimes" in relation to Israeli violence against Palestinians was mentioned in only 121 BBC articles analysed by the CfMM – just 3% of the total.
When it comes to the words used by the BBC when discussing Gaza, the CfMM said that the BBC "deploys a hierarchy of language for Israelis and Palestinians", as it found that emotive language such as "slaughter" and "massacre" was used four times more often when reporting on Israeli deaths than Palestinian.
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The report also highlights how the words "butchered", "butcher" and "butchering" were used exclusively for Israeli victims by BBC correspondents and presenters, while "murder[ed]" was referenced 220 for actions against Israelis and just once for Palestinians.
Further, when reporting on the hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the BBC "consistently" referred to Israeli captives as "hostages" and Palestinians detained by Israel, even those held without charge, were labelled as "prisoners". The CfMM said this implied "criminality and reinforc[ed] Israeli government narratives".
The BBC was also found to attach the "Hamas-run" qualifier (for example, "Hamas-run health ministry") to Palestinian casualty figures in 1155 articles – almost as many times as the Palestinian death toll was mentioned across BBC articles. The CmFF said this "undermin[ed] Gazan casualties and Palestinian suffering, more generally".
When compared with the BBC's coverage of the war in Ukraine, the report states that the broadcaster mentioned Russian war crimes 2.6 times more than Israeli ones and used sympathetic language for Ukrainian victims two times more than for Palestinians.
The CfMM, which is a project by the Muslim Council of Britain, called for an independent public review of the BBC's reporting on Gaza.
Sharing the report on social media, the CfMM said: "This report is evidence-based, rigorous and damning. The BBC must reform."
Commenting on the report, Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, said: "In spite of the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli leadership, the media persisted in projecting an inaccurate equivalence, distorting realities on the ground."
READ MORE: BBC issues statement after staff 'held at gunpoint and strip searched' by IDF
Meanwhile, Karishma Patel, a former BBC journalist who left the corporation last October because of its Gaza coverage, said: "I could see every editorial failure in this report playing out as it happened, and now the data is utterly clear in supporting what I witnessed."
And Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said: "Most mainstream media have failed in their most basic duty: they have largely manufactured consent, enabling a genocide in real time."
A BBC spokesperson said: 'We welcome scrutiny and reflect on all feedback. Throughout our impartial reporting on the conflict we have made clear the devastating human cost to civilians living in Gaza. We will continue to give careful thought to how we do this.
'We believe it is imperative that our journalists have access to Gaza, and we continue to call on the Israeli government to grant this.
'We agree that language is vitally important but we have some questions about what appears to be a reliance on AI to analyse it in this report, and we do not think due impartiality can be measured by counting words. We make our own, independent editorial decisions, and we reject any suggestion otherwise.
'However, we will consider the report carefully and study its findings in detail.'
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