The BBC's Gaza Bias Betrays its Journalistic Duty - Article by Malaka El-Gammal in the New Arab
By omitting Israel’s history of crimes & discrediting Palestinian voices, the BBC’s Gaza coverage has repeatedly failed journalistic integrity.
Rising discontent and outrage over the BBC’s coverage on Gaza has been impossible to ignore, not least because this subject has been consistently making headlines. From open letters from BBC staff, to investigative journalistic pieces, and many more articles and statements published across international outlets, this ongoing issue is clearly not going away.
It has been over 20 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the question of media bias has been at the forefront of public conscience, particularly among those sympathetic with the plight of Palestinians.
Given the severity of the situation on the ground, paired with accusations of BBC suppression of this fact, the Council of Arab British Understanding (Caabu) found it vital to conduct a deep dive into the BBC’s coverage of Gaza alongside its responsibility in upholding its guidelines on accuracy and impartiality.
Over the last few months, CAABU has been monitoring the BBC’s output, and whether they meet their own editorial guidelines on accuracy and impartiality. This analysis relied on the data published by the Centre for Media Monitoring on BBC bias when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
Failing media duties
It is clear that the BBC has failed in its own duties with its coverage, rarely providing a complete portrayal of the context, therefore falling short of its commitment towards achieving due accuracy within its output concerning Gaza.
As a public broadcaster, the BBC is an essential institution to which 68% of people in the UK turn for the news, and whose news website receives 1.2 billion visits globally. The BBC has clear editorial guidelines on how it must deliver its output, yet it has done a disservice to them .
One of the main issues found with BBC coverage was that of the provision of key historical context, or rather lack thereof. It would be a challenge to come across a piece on Gaza that does not invoke the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas as the trigger for the current Israeli aggression, or that does not refer to the “Hamas-run health ministry”.
The siege on Gaza since 2007 and the fact that the Israeli military under COGAT controlled all movement in and out of Gaza is rarely mentioned.
There is also a repeated absence in the mention of the fact that it is not the first war on Gaza, that Israeli aggression and bombardments also took place in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021.
The BBC’s guidelines emphasise impartiality, accuracy, and balance, yet a reader who solely relied on this platform for news would be forgiven if they believed that 7 October 2023 came about in a vacuum, rather than as a result of years of oppression that ultimately reached a boiling point. While this does not justify violence against civilians, it is the BBC’s journalistic duty to contextualise the conflict.
A question of legality
It is not just the historical context that the BBC has failed to consistently apply within its coverage, but also the legal context. Unlike the 7 October attacks and the fact that ministries and institutions in Gaza are governed by Hamas, key international law judgements are not routinely invoked as context within coverage.
When Donald Trump won the US presidency, and it was Benjamin Netanyahu who was the first leader invited to the White House, the ICC arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity was not mentioned by the BBC.
This reluctance to provide legal context seems to be an ongoing trend for the BBC. In its reports on starvation in Gaza, neither the ICC arrest warrants nor the ICJ provisional measures have been regularly used as context. This is a major oversight, when considering that the use of starvation as a weapon of war was directly cited by the ICC for their charges against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Gallant. Not forgetting, that the ICJ explicitly ordered Israel to permit the entry of aid into Gaza as part of their legal duty to prevent the ensuing genocide in Gaza.
Following these events, some of the BBC’s own staff were dismayed and wrote an anonymous letter which claimed that it did not sufficiently cover the ICJ proceedings, which could constitute “public disservice or, at worst, aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.
Israel’s mouthpiece
Another recurring theme in how the BBC covers Gaza is the way in which unverified claims made by Israel seem to be taken at face value. Claims of genocide or war crimes made by guests are almost always faced with the rebuttal of “Israel denies”, despite the growing consensus among legal experts, genocide scholars, human rights experts and wider civil society that a genocide is taking place.
It is not the role of the BBC to act as Israel’s defence lawyer nor to parrot Israeli talking points, but instead to conduct due diligence and rigorous analysis to claims made by all parties.
Recently, when reporting on the targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al Sharif on the Breakfast show, a BBC presenter stated that “Anas has been accused by Israel of leading a Hamas cell, something he denied”. This was again stated in a BBC article which reported the killing of Anas alongside three of his colleagues. The reliability of Israel as a source was not subsequently interrogated and nor was there sufficient due diligence applied as to whether there was any credibility or evidence to these claims.
The world has watched the systematic targeting of journalists in Gaza, with over 230 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, many with their families. And while the BBC is arguably satisfied with Israeli claims, the word of those reporting on the ground from Gaza is questioned. This was clear to see when a reporter asked a guest on BBC News, “obviously international organisations like the BBC cannot go in... so Al Jazeera is using local people there. Are they able to operate truly independently?”
As journalist Nesrine Malik explained in her Guardian piece, ‘the word of Palestinian journalists is never quite enough – not until foreign media (who are not allowed into Gaza) can give the final gold-standard judgement. They are cast out of the body of journalist, their truth buried along with them.”
The BBC has played a role in this perception, and by repeatedly failing its duties with its coverage on Gaza, its commitment to remaining impartial, accurate, and to focus on the facts, has been compromised.
