As Israel’s war on Gaza has intensified and expanded across the Middle East, the role of western news outlets in shaping public perception of the conflict is causing concern.
It’s been clear for a while that any attempt to show Palestinians in a sympathetic light on the BBC will inevitably provoke pro-Israeli and right-wing groups to protest. The result of the furore around the film Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, which led the BBC to take the programme off iPlayer, is making the BBC ultra-cautious about covering the destruction of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
Now the BBC has delayed the release of Gaza: Medics Under Fire, a documentary it commissioned, which tells the story of Palestinian doctors working in Gaza.
BBC caution on Gaza reporting – a tale of two documentaries
According to a piece in Middle East Eye: “It became clear that director-general Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the BBC’s CEO, were unwilling to release the film, despite Turness telling editorial meetings that she wants the corporation to be ‘on the right side of history’.”
A statement by Basement Films claimed it had been given “no less than six different release dates” and the film went through a “long and repeated compliance process as well as scrupulous fact checking”, saying: “Our argument all along has been to tell the story of the doctors and medics as soon as possible, people whom we convinced to talk to us despite their own reservations that the BBC would ever tell their stories.”
Finally, on 20 June, the BBC decided not to broadcast the documentary, which includes witness accounts from frontline Palestinian health workers in Gaza and documents attacks on hospitals and clinics. Channel 4 showed the programme on 2 July. The film had been “factchecked and compiled by Channel 4 to ensure it meets Channel 4 editorial standards and the Ofcom broadcasting code”, and the necessary due diligence has been carried out to meet Ofcom’s editorial guidelines.
Louisa Compton, Channel 4’s head of department covering news, current affairs, specialist factual, and sport, said, “This is a meticulously reported and important film examining evidence which supports allegations of grave breaches of international law by Israeli forces that deserves to be widely seen and exemplifies Channel 4’s commitment to brave and fearless journalism.”
Where the BBC fears to tread
Ray Snoddy commented the BBC’s handling of this affair left it “looking weak, risk averse and unwilling to tackle some of the most difficult issues of the age”.
But Glastonbury provided another debacle for the BBC, which was seized on by the right-wing press. Bob Vylan, a punk rap duo, led the Glastonbury crowd in a chant, “Death, death to the IDF”. The following morning the Mail On Sunday front page was “NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY”.
The story splashed on the front pages of the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express. The focus was on anger for the duo’s chant (inaccurately reported) being broadcast by the BBC rather on the issue they were raising – the slaughter of Gazans and the destruction of their hospitals, homes and infrastructure.
The language bias in BBC Palestine-Israel reporting
It’s in this context that a new report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) – ‘BBC On Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards’ – deserves the widest publicity. The study found that the BBC gives Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage than Palestinian ones.
Reporting on this study, Middle East Eye summarised that: “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”, and a failure to scrutinise Israeli claims and denials.
“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 vs 217).”
Rizwana Hamid, director of the CfMM, said: “The BBC has a duty to reflect the full reality of this devastating war, including the lived experience of Palestinians. When language, framing, and editorial choices consistently favour one side, the public loses access to the truth. Our findings are based on evidence, not ideology – and we urge the BBC to reflect, engage, and reform.”
Labour ministers lurch to the right
Neither the BBC nor the rest of the media covered the report, apart from The Times, which managed a concise, single-column piece on page 20.
Indeed, what is really disturbing is that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, rather than raising the issues the report highlights, is more intent on getting headlines for demanding why no one at the BBC has lost their job over the airing of a documentary on Gaza and condemning the BBC over the Bob Vylan controversy. This, and the decision by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, reveal a disturbing lurch to the right by Labour ministers.
A version of this article was first published in Media North: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North). For more from Media North, and to subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website.
