The BBC’s reporting on Israel and Hamas violated its own editorial guidelines
A new report compiled by a team of lawyers and data scientists has concluded that the BBC’s coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas shows “widespread anti-Israel bias” and has violated its own editorial guidelines on several occasions.
The report analyzed the BBC’s English and Arabic-language coverage of the first four months of the conflict, which began on October 7 when Hamas terrorists stormed the border into Israel, killing thousands of people and taking hundreds of others hostage.
The output was analyzed across all platforms including television, radio, podcast and the BBC’s websites.
Drawing from a random sample of 253 interviews conducted by the BBC’s Arabic service, the report also found that more than a quarter “were associated with Hamas or another terrorist group, or had posted extreme anti-Semitic views online.” However, these facts were not disclosed to the public beyond the interviews.
British lawyer Trevor Asserson, who led the AI-driven review, said: “The BBC’s responsibility as a broadcaster is to deliver news without bias. Our analysis shows that there has been a significant deviation from this norm in reporting on the Israeli-Hamas conflict, with the broadcaster showing clear partiality towards one side. This bias was even more evident in the Arabic BBC’s content. Such behavior not only breaches the BBC’s Royal Charter, but also calls into question its suitability for continued public funding.”
The report comes in the wake of growing unrest over the company’s reporting on the Middle East conflict, particularly its refusal to label Hamas a terrorist group. The broadcaster has also issued a number of apologies for on-air statements about the conflict, including one in which a news presenter suggested that Israeli forces “attacked” medical staff in Gaza in a report about the IDF assisting Al-Gaza patients and staff . Shifa Hospital.
A BBC spokesperson said this in a statement Variety: “We have serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyze impartiality, and its interpretation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. We do not think that reporting can be assessed solely by counting certain words, regardless of context.”
“We are expected to achieve the necessary impartiality, rather than the ‘balance of sympathy’ suggested in the report, and we believe our expert and dedicated correspondents are achieving this, despite the highly complex, challenging and polarizing nature of the conflict. However, we will carefully review the report and respond directly to the authors once we have had time to study it in detail.”
Read the full report here.
