BBC coverage of Israel's war on Gaza 'systematically biased against Palestinians'

Middle East Eye

5 hours ago

The BBC's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza is 'systematically biased against Palestinians', according to an analysis of over 35,000 pieces of content produced by the UK's public broadcaster.
The study, conducted by the Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM), which monitors how the national media reports on Islam and Muslims, found that the BBC gives Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage than Palestinian ones.
In an analysis of 3,873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments from 7 October 2023 to 6 October 2024, the CFMM found that the BBC used emotive terms four times as much for Israeli victims and applied 'massacre' 18 times more to Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones.
According to its authors, the report 'reveals a systematic omission of key historical and contemporary context that has acquired an institutional quality at the BBC', including the genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders – notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog - and a failure to scrutinise Israeli claims and denials.
While the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October were referenced in at least 40 percent of the BBC's online coverage, just 0.5 percent of articles mentioned Israel's decades-long occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
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According to the analysis, the BBC pressed a total of 38 interviewees to condemn the 7 October attacks, but at no point applied the equivalent questioning to Israeli actions. BBC presenters have referred to 'Hamas-controlled Gaza', despite Israeli forces now controlling more than half of the devastated enclave.
The study also found that the BBC had interviewed significantly more Israelis (2,350) than Palestinians (1,085) on TV and radio, while BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 v 217).
Unrest at the BBC
The report comes as the BBC continues to withhold the release of Gaza: Medics Under Fire, a documentary it commissioned that tells the story of Palestinian doctors working in Gaza.
Despite being signed off by the British broadcaster's lawyers, the film has not been aired because of a furore that erupted over How to Survive a Warzone, another BBC documentary on children in Gaza. The film did not mention that the father of one of the child narrators was a technocrat in Gaza's Hamas-run government.
'There's just an absurd culture of fear here, as well as a desire to follow the state line'
- BBC filmmaker
A BBC spokesperson told Middle East Eye a review into Gaza: Medics Under Fire was still ongoing. The film has cleared all internal 'editorial policy' teams, sources at the BBC said.
The same sources, who work across multiple BBC departments, said that director-general Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the BBC's CEO, are unwilling to release the film, despite Turness telling editorial meetings that she wants the corporation to be 'on the right side of history'.
During an AMA (ask me anything) session with BBC management last week, multiple employees asked about the fate of the film. According to two employees present, management 'ignored most of the Gaza questions'.
Employees opposed to the broadcaster's coverage of the Gaza war have multiple WhatsApp groups to vent their frustrations in, including one called 'Middle East coverage'.
BBC accused of 'political censorship' over failure to release Gaza medics documentary Read More »
A member of the group told MEE that the CFFM analysis had been widely discussed and that it was 'so incredible to see it all laid out like that'.
Multiple members of the group pointed out that the BBC has promised to conduct its own review into coverage of the Gaza war, 'and now they have been beaten to it'.
'This review is probably much better than anything the BBC would have done,' one BBC filmmaker told MEE.
'There's just an absurd culture of fear here, as well as a desire to follow the state line,' the source said. 'If Starmer was stronger I'm sure it'd make a difference.'
The BBC is also still dealing with a furore surrounding Gary Lineker, who presented its flagship football programme Match of the Day for 25 years and recently left the broadcaster early after reposting a piece of content about Zionism that contained a rat emoji, historically used in antisemitic propaganda.
Lineker apologised. In an interview with fellow BBC presenter Amol Rajan, which was conducted and broadcast prior to the episode that prompted his departure, the former footballer said that Israel's war on Gaza and the 'mass murder of thousands of children' was more important than what was happening internally at the broadcaster and was 'probably something we should have a little opinion on'.
Lineker said the BBC needed to be 'factual' and that the broadcaster was 'not impartial about Ukraine and Russia'. The CFMM report compared the BBC's Gaza coverage to 7,748 articles on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, concluding that the broadcaster is 'more willing to cover the full facts in Ukraine than Gaza'.
Report heralded by public figures
The CFFM report was heralded by public figures including Sayeeda Warsi, former Conservative Party co-chair; journalist Owen Jones, who has also reported on alleged bias at the BBC; Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot; Middle East Eye columnist Peter Oborne; and Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former director of communications who also endorsed the report, said: 'All too often, on domestic issues, the BBC's response to criticism from the right is to accept rather than challenge it and adapt coverage accordingly.
'We see the same pattern in some of its approach to international issues too, notably Israel and Palestine. The Israelis and the right-wing media do a very good job of persuading people that the BBC is biased in favour of Palestinians. This report suggests otherwise.'
'All too often the BBC shapes its agenda according to the views of those who shout loudest and fight the hardest to have their narrative dominant'
- Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street director of communications
Campbell said that it 'remains a scandal that a BBC commissioned film on the Israeli destruction of Gaza health facilities has yet to be aired.'
The former Labour adviser, who now presents The Rest is Politics podcast, told Middle East Eye that he was 'not at all worried about speaking out' on BBC bias on Gaza.
'The only thing that sometimes holds me back is that in criticising what seems to be an overall position I do not want to denigrate the considerable good journalism done by a number of people at the BBC,' Campbell said.
'But my central point stands - all too often the BBC shapes its agenda according to the views of those who shout loudest and fight the hardest to have their narrative dominant.'
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.'
The CCFM report used AI to process the transcripts, label speakers, and structure the content.