A new report accuses the BBC of breaking its own rules over 1,500 times by favouring Hamas over Israel in its coverage. The Telegraphhas the details.
The report revealed a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel, according to its authors who analysed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts and social media.
The research, led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, also found that Israel was associated with genocide more than 14 times more than Hamas in the corporation’s coverage of the conflict.
On Saturday, Danny Cohen, a former BBC executive, warned that there was now an “institutional crisis” at the national broadcaster and called for an independent inquiry into its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
Two leading Jewish groups, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the National Jewish Assembly, added their voices to calls for an independent review, while Lord Austin, a former Labour minister, accused the BBC of “high-handed arrogance” for continually dismissing questions over its impartiality.
The Asserson report analysed the BBC’s coverage during a four-month period beginning October 7th, 2023 – the day Hamas carried out a brutal massacre in southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 251 into Gaza as hostages.
A team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research, which used artificial intelligence to analyse nine million words of BBC output.
“The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth,” the report said.
It also found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.
It claimed that some journalists used by the BBC in its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict have previously shown sympathy for Hamas and even celebrated its acts of terror.
Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor, is accused of excusing Hamas’s terrorist activities and comparing Israel to Putin’s Russia, while Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, is also cited for allegedly “downplaying” the October 7th attacks on Israel.
The report singles out the BBC’s Arabic channel, saying that it is one of the most biased of all global media outlets in its treatment of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
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I despise the BBC for their coverage of climate and energy issue and ofcourse we have known for years that according to them Obama/Biden/Clinton/Harris is GOOD and Trump is BAD. That Palestine is GOOD but Israel is BAD, but the contents of this arcticle is enough to make any decent person vomit.
Yes nothing says ”genocide” like when Hamas execute six of your own people, whilst still keeping loads more, dead and alive, hostage but you ( IDF ) go and dole out millions of doses of Polio vaccine to kids in Gaza anyway. Says it all, really.
Fair obs, but consider why the assault was suspended [all of a sudden], and, why were the Pal children targeted after one [case], and, what comprises the ‘vaxxine’?
In the period from 2000 to 26 April 2024, the Israeli Government identifies 672 terrorist attacks blamed on the Palestinians, whereby:
105 of the attacks are attributed to Hamas. 58 to Islamic Jihad and 5 to Hezbollah. In other words, only 25% of the attacks are associated with a specific Palestinian group. The remaining 75% are blamed on nameless culprits. The total number killed by Palestinian violence during this 23-year-plus period is 1,455.
But:
the Israelis killed 7,065 Palestinians during the same period of time. In other words, the Israelis killed almost five times the number of Palestinians.
In the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdGVgY3t1cI (from 22m44s), he points out that in 2023, prior to 7th October, the Israeli foreign ministry reports 11 terrorist attacks, for which the Israelis put 5,000 Palestinians in prison, including children as young as 10 years old … arbitrary arrest and detention with no charges levelled … What it boils down to is pure intimidation.
Mogwai
7 months ago
If you don’t condemn it you condone it. You don’t get to demonstrate double standards and expect to inhabit the moral high ground. Terrorist supporters, much like rape apologists and Jew-haters ( a lot of overlap there ) are sick in the head and don’t deserve to live amongst decent people;
The BBC are clearly biased, but this issue not that simple. Such binary interpretation causes division, when there is more than one angle that demands investigation. Palestinian citizens are not allowed to bear arms, yet their claimed masters are slaughtering them indistinguishably from their [selected illegally armed leaders].
With respect, all news reporting has to be viewed with a degree of scepticism, including the earnest young blogger you cite.
Did Hamas kill the hostages they had held captive for 11 months? It is certainly possible. The British diplomat, Alastair Crooke, who is experienced in dealing with such situations, says the first thing hostage takers will tell you is that any sign of an attempt at a military release will result in the hostages being killed.
Did the IDF kill the hostages? Some weeks ago they attempted to free, if I remember correctly, 6 hostages, whereby 2 died in addition to 250 or so Palestinians. The IDF is not renowned for precision work.
You need to ask what is going on? Why did Hamas take hostages? Why has almost a year passed with only few hostages being successfully released? Why did Israel assassinate the chief Hamas negotiator a month ago? Why did Hamas build supposedly hundreds of kilometres of tunnels? Why are Palestinians moving from one bombed refugee camp to another inside Gaza instead of just leaving the place? Nothing makes real sense, unless a lot of information is being suppressed.
Your blogger summarily dismissed the action brought to the ICJ by a number of countries as complete nonsense, whereby the ICJ has ordered Israel to cease its military actions, which Israel steadfastly refuses to do.
Maybe Palestinians have a reason to be upset at their country being taken over by Israel? Who knows?!
Interesting that BBC’s editorial guidelines include impartiality and accuracy: is it necessary to specify that a report should be accurate?!
And what are BBC’s editorial values specified in its editorial guidelines? Among other things,
… we seek to establish the truth and use the highest reporting standards to provide coverage that is fair and accurate … We are impartial, seeking to reflect the views and experiences of our audiences – so that our output as a whole includes a breadth and diversity of opinion and no significant strand of thought is under-represented or omitted. We are independent of outside interests and arrangements that could compromise our editorial integrity …
So I am sure BBC provided critical arguments warning against the use of fast-tracked vaccines, supporting the many voices (including Nobel Prize winners) claiming there is no climate crisis, explaining how Russia was promised NATO would move “not one inch eastward” upon German unification, providing equal reporting from both Ukraine and Russia regarding the current conflict, providing equal and non-discriminatory reporting of the current US presidential election candidates, reporting on all facets of the unprecedented number of UK immigrants, and so on and so forth.
As far as Israel is concerned, a quick Google of “BBC Hamas” provides a list of articles, none of which in any way (in my opinion) portray the extreme suffering experienced by the Palestinians confined/imprisoned in Gaza or currently being ousted from their homes in the West Bank.
Israel mourns the six hostages who were killed … The world cried for them – it’s impossible not to: six beautiful young people, who went through hell in captivity before being brutally executed …
But our six hostages are only the tip of the story, a tiny fraction of the war’s victims. Their becoming a global story is understandable. Less understandable is the unbelievable contrast between the wide coverage of their lives and deaths and the total disregard for the similar fate of people their own age – as blameless and ingenuous and beautiful as them, and just as much innocent victims – on the Palestinian side.
While the world is shocked by the fate of Gaza, it has never paid similar respect to the Palestinian victims. The president of the United States does not call the relatives of fallen Palestinians, not even if they, like the Goldberg-Polins, had American citizenship. The United States has never called for the release of thousands of Palestinian abductees that Israel has detained without trial.
The Palestinian killed in Gaza who had a face, a name and a life story and whose killing shocked Israel has not yet been born.
The 17,000 children killed in the Strip since the war began also had hopes and dreams and families that were destroyed by their deaths. They hold no interest for a majority of Israelis; a minority even rejoices in their deaths. In the world beyond Israel they are seen as terrible victims, but even there they usually have neither names nor faces.
It’s especially the part of their editorial guidelines that states “…no significant strand of thought should be under-represented or omitted” that is where they most dramatically violate their own rules. Recall the type of audience invited to BBC Question Time when Nigel Farage stood trial on the runup to the election… Not one clap from an audience member in response to his answers, and the only questions being directed at him being those that accused him of racism, either directly or by association. Any “significant strands of thought” being omitted there? Like, for example, all Reform supporters, or anyone concerned with the state of play concerning our disastrous open-borders policy?
If that audience represented a broad array of viewpoints, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Many clever people say it is the other way round.
The BBC favours Israel.
“The BBC is once again blocking an appeal by 15 aid agencies known as the Disaster Emergencies Committee (DEC) – as it did several years ago – and once again it’s because the aid is intended for Gaza.
The pretext given by BBC execs is that they’re concerned the aid can’t be delivered to Gaza, though they don’t explain why: because Israel is blocking aid as part of its genocide against the people there.
Sources inside the DEC say the BBC is fearful of the backlash from an Israel lobby the BBC and others in the establishment keep telling us exists only in our imaginations.
Either the BBC is capitulating to the lobby, or there is no lobby and the corporation is simply run by the ghoulish dregs of humanity. Either way, the BBC is not fit for purpose.” Jonathan Cook, journalist
None of this alters my opinion of the BBC one iota. I am convinced the BBC is biased. Now its content has been combed through by some thick AI algorithm that takes things out of context, counts words, and churns out a verdict that we knew all along, I still think it is biased.
We didn’t need Artificial Stupidity to tell us that.
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I’m shocked.
But not even slightly surprised.
I despise the BBC for their coverage of climate and energy issue and ofcourse we have known for years that according to them Obama/Biden/Clinton/Harris is GOOD and Trump is BAD. That Palestine is GOOD but Israel is BAD, but the contents of this arcticle is enough to make any decent person vomit.
Yes nothing says ”genocide” like when Hamas execute six of your own people, whilst still keeping loads more, dead and alive, hostage but you ( IDF ) go and dole out millions of doses of Polio vaccine to kids in Gaza anyway. Says it all, really.
Fair obs, but consider why the assault was suspended [all of a sudden], and, why were the Pal children targeted after one [case], and, what comprises the ‘vaxxine’?
In the year to date, according to camera.org, the BBC reported just 15 of 3901 terror attacks in Israel.
Appalling bias, acting as Hamas apologist.
If you actually read through the data (https://www.gov.il/en/pages/wave-of-terror-october-2015), the large number of ‘attacks’ in no way corresponds to a large number of deaths.
Larry Johnson wrote a short article on the matter here: https://sonar21.com/the-stats-on-palestinian-terrorism-2000-to-april-2024/.
In the period from 2000 to 26 April 2024, the Israeli Government identifies 672 terrorist attacks blamed on the Palestinians, whereby:
105 of the attacks are attributed to Hamas. 58 to Islamic Jihad and 5 to Hezbollah. In other words, only 25% of the attacks are associated with a specific Palestinian group. The remaining 75% are blamed on nameless culprits. The total number killed by Palestinian violence during this 23-year-plus period is 1,455.
But:
the Israelis killed 7,065 Palestinians during the same period of time. In other words, the Israelis killed almost five times the number of Palestinians.
In the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdGVgY3t1cI (from 22m44s), he points out that in 2023, prior to 7th October, the Israeli foreign ministry reports 11 terrorist attacks, for which the Israelis put 5,000 Palestinians in prison, including children as young as 10 years old … arbitrary arrest and detention with no charges levelled … What it boils down to is pure intimidation.
If you don’t condemn it you condone it. You don’t get to demonstrate double standards and expect to inhabit the moral high ground. Terrorist supporters, much like rape apologists and Jew-haters ( a lot of overlap there ) are sick in the head and don’t deserve to live amongst decent people;
https://x.com/K0sher_C0ckney/status/1832805400929800331
The BBC are clearly biased, but this issue not that simple. Such binary interpretation causes division, when there is more than one angle that demands investigation. Palestinian citizens are not allowed to bear arms, yet their claimed masters are slaughtering them indistinguishably from their [selected illegally armed leaders].
With respect, all news reporting has to be viewed with a degree of scepticism, including the earnest young blogger you cite.
Did Hamas kill the hostages they had held captive for 11 months? It is certainly possible. The British diplomat, Alastair Crooke, who is experienced in dealing with such situations, says the first thing hostage takers will tell you is that any sign of an attempt at a military release will result in the hostages being killed.
Did the IDF kill the hostages? Some weeks ago they attempted to free, if I remember correctly, 6 hostages, whereby 2 died in addition to 250 or so Palestinians. The IDF is not renowned for precision work.
You need to ask what is going on? Why did Hamas take hostages? Why has almost a year passed with only few hostages being successfully released? Why did Israel assassinate the chief Hamas negotiator a month ago? Why did Hamas build supposedly hundreds of kilometres of tunnels? Why are Palestinians moving from one bombed refugee camp to another inside Gaza instead of just leaving the place? Nothing makes real sense, unless a lot of information is being suppressed.
Your blogger summarily dismissed the action brought to the ICJ by a number of countries as complete nonsense, whereby the ICJ has ordered Israel to cease its military actions, which Israel steadfastly refuses to do.
Maybe Palestinians have a reason to be upset at their country being taken over by Israel? Who knows?!
Interesting that BBC’s editorial guidelines include impartiality and accuracy: is it necessary to specify that a report should be accurate?!
And what are BBC’s editorial values specified in its editorial guidelines? Among other things,
… we seek to establish the truth and use the highest reporting standards to provide coverage that is fair and accurate … We are impartial, seeking to reflect the views and experiences of our audiences – so that our output as a whole includes a breadth and diversity of opinion and no significant strand of thought is under-represented or omitted. We are independent of outside interests and arrangements that could compromise our editorial integrity …
So I am sure BBC provided critical arguments warning against the use of fast-tracked vaccines, supporting the many voices (including Nobel Prize winners) claiming there is no climate crisis, explaining how Russia was promised NATO would move “not one inch eastward” upon German unification, providing equal reporting from both Ukraine and Russia regarding the current conflict, providing equal and non-discriminatory reporting of the current US presidential election candidates, reporting on all facets of the unprecedented number of UK immigrants, and so on and so forth.
As far as Israel is concerned, a quick Google of “BBC Hamas” provides a list of articles, none of which in any way (in my opinion) portray the extreme suffering experienced by the Palestinians confined/imprisoned in Gaza or currently being ousted from their homes in the West Bank.
In contrast, today’s https://antiwar.com/ references the Haaretz report (https://archive.is/piFWA#selection-551.10-555.59) When Six Israelis Are Mourned More Than 40,000 Palestinians:
Israel mourns the six hostages who were killed … The world cried for them – it’s impossible not to: six beautiful young people, who went through hell in captivity before being brutally executed …
But our six hostages are only the tip of the story, a tiny fraction of the war’s victims. Their becoming a global story is understandable. Less understandable is the unbelievable contrast between the wide coverage of their lives and deaths and the total disregard for the similar fate of people their own age – as blameless and ingenuous and beautiful as them, and just as much innocent victims – on the Palestinian side.
While the world is shocked by the fate of Gaza, it has never paid similar respect to the Palestinian victims. The president of the United States does not call the relatives of fallen Palestinians, not even if they, like the Goldberg-Polins, had American citizenship. The United States has never called for the release of thousands of Palestinian abductees that Israel has detained without trial.
The Palestinian killed in Gaza who had a face, a name and a life story and whose killing shocked Israel has not yet been born.
The 17,000 children killed in the Strip since the war began also had hopes and dreams and families that were destroyed by their deaths. They hold no interest for a majority of Israelis; a minority even rejoices in their deaths. In the world beyond Israel they are seen as terrible victims, but even there they usually have neither names nor faces.
It’s especially the part of their editorial guidelines that states “…no significant strand of thought should be under-represented or omitted” that is where they most dramatically violate their own rules. Recall the type of audience invited to BBC Question Time when Nigel Farage stood trial on the runup to the election… Not one clap from an audience member in response to his answers, and the only questions being directed at him being those that accused him of racism, either directly or by association. Any “significant strands of thought” being omitted there? Like, for example, all Reform supporters, or anyone concerned with the state of play concerning our disastrous open-borders policy?
If that audience represented a broad array of viewpoints, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Many clever people say it is the other way round.
The BBC favours Israel.
“The BBC is once again blocking an appeal by 15 aid agencies known as the Disaster Emergencies Committee (DEC) – as it did several years ago – and once again it’s because the aid is intended for Gaza.
The pretext given by BBC execs is that they’re concerned the aid can’t be delivered to Gaza, though they don’t explain why: because Israel is blocking aid as part of its genocide against the people there.
Sources inside the DEC say the BBC is fearful of the backlash from an Israel lobby the BBC and others in the establishment keep telling us exists only in our imaginations.
Either the BBC is capitulating to the lobby, or there is no lobby and the corporation is simply run by the ghoulish dregs of humanity. Either way, the BBC is not fit for purpose.”
Jonathan Cook, journalist
Asserson Report in full here https://campaignformediastandards.org.uk/asserson-report.pdf
None of this alters my opinion of the BBC one iota. I am convinced the BBC is biased. Now its content has been combed through by some thick AI algorithm that takes things out of context, counts words, and churns out a verdict that we knew all along, I still think it is biased.
We didn’t need Artificial Stupidity to tell us that.