Researchers found that the BBC has breached its own editorial guidelines 1,533 times in its early coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel was associated with war crimes and genocide far more often than Hamas was.
According to a new report detailed by The Telegraph, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyse the first four months of coverage by the BBC, more than 9 million words, beginning with the Hamas terror group’s attack on Israel on October 7 that started the war. They found a “a deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel, reports The Times of Israel.
The research team, consisting of about 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists, was led by British-Israeli lawyer and longtime BBC critic Trevor Asserson. The 9 million words analysed were across several languages and platforms.
According to the report, in BBC coverage, Israel was associated with war crimes, genocide, and international law violations far more often than the terrorist organisation Hamas was.
The report found that, though the BBC said in October that it would describe Hamas “where possible” as a “proscribed terrorist organisation,” Hamas’s designation as a listed terror group was only noted 3.2 per cent of the time.
The researchers asserted that the BBC’s Arabic service was among the most biased global media outlets in covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In response, a BBC spokesman said that the network has serious doubts regarding the methodology of the research, claiming that news coverage cannot be solely assessed by counting words with AI derived from context.
“We are required to achieve due impartiality, rather than the ‘balance of sympathy’ proposed in the report, and we believe our knowledgeable and dedicated correspondents are achieving this,” the spokesman added.
Nevertheless, apart from the data science component, researchers alleged that a number of freelance journalists employed by the BBC had a history of openly expressing support for Hamas without disclosing their bias to viewers.
The report cited Mayssaa Abdul Khalek, a Lebanon-based reporter who called for the “death of Israel” and tweeted: “Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned.”
It also cited Marie-Jose Al Azzi, another Lebanon-based contributor who described terrorists killed on October 7 as “the first of the martyrs of the operation.”
The report was hailed by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Jewish community groups and Israel-related media watchdogs, who have long known about the BBC bias but welcomed the evidence provided by the research.
Israel Foreign Ministry on X (formerly Twitter): „From @Telegraph :”The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war, a damning report has found…””The report’s analysis of BBC coverage found that Israel was associated with war crimes four times more than Hamas… pic.twitter.com/iL10mP0ySo / X”
From @Telegraph :”The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war, a damning report has found…””The report’s analysis of BBC coverage found that Israel was associated with war crimes four times more than Hamas… pic.twitter.com/iL10mP0ySo
Conservative MP Greg Smith called on government authorities to “use every tool they have in their arsenal to bring about greater compliance with the rules around neutrality and fair coverage in the BBC charter.”
The report is about a hundred pages long and will be released to the public on Monday.
Photo credit: HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
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