Drop Site News is publishing a landmark investigation about the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s unrelenting assault on Gaza by British journalist Owen Jones. His report is based on interviews with 13 journalists and other BBC staffers who offer remarkable insights into how senior figures within the BBC’s news operation skewed stories in favor of Israel’s narratives and repeatedly dismissed objections registered by scores of staffers who, throughout the past 14 months, demanded that the network uphold its commitment to impartiality and fairness.
by Owen Jones
Part 2 - “This is about editorial standards”
In November 2023, BBC senior management attended a morning meeting with at least 100 staffers to discuss coverage of Gaza. It soon descended into a fiery debate. “We’ve got to all remember that this all started on 7 October,” Deborah Turness, the CEO of the news division, called out, in an attempt to assert control of the meeting, two attendees told me. Liliane Landour, the former head of the BBC World Service, disagreed, pointing to the decades of Israeli occupation before October 7: “No, I’m going to have to say that’s not the case, and I’m sure that’s not how you meant to phrase it.” People were “livid” about Turness’s remarks, one journalist said. When asked for comment, the BBC pointed to a blog post Turness authored in October 2023 detailing the organization’s approach to the conflict.
Internal tensions over the BBC’s coverage of Gaza had been rising for weeks. On October 24, Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent, sent an email to Tim Davie, BBC’s director general, laying out the concerns he and his fellow journalists had shared about the organization’s lack of impartiality in its Gaza coverage. While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” he wrote.
Internal tensions over the BBC’s coverage of Gaza had been rising for weeks. On October 24, Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent, sent an email to Tim Davie, BBC’s director general, laying out the concerns he and his fellow journalists had shared about the organization’s lack of impartiality in its Gaza coverage. While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” he wrote.
Ruhayem singled out the use of the word “massacre,” in particular, which the BBC had not used to describe mass slaughters perpetrated by Israeli forces. By contrast, on October 10, 2023, the organization published a story with the headline “Supernova festival: How massacre unfolded from verified video and social media.”
Ruhayem also noted the organization-wide failure to frame reporting and analysis around Israeli statements signifying war crimes and genocidal intent. He pointed out the lack of “historical context,” emphasizing that “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism” were “terms used by many experts and highly respected organizations to which the BBC usually defers.”
On October 31, 2023, for example, the BBC published a story with a headline that excised Israel’s role: “Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast.” When the BBC does mention Israel as a perpetrator, including when large numbers of civilians are killed by its missiles, the organization’s headlines use the caveat “reportedly.” The BBC repeats the Israeli authorities’ use of “evacuate” to describe the forcible transfer of civilians—effectively using a euphemism for a war crime. Instead of describing Israel’s total siege on Gaza for what it is, an all-encompassing blockade on aid was framed in an October 20, 2023 headline as “Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas.”
Ruhayem also noted the organization-wide failure to frame reporting and analysis around Israeli statements signifying war crimes and genocidal intent. He pointed out the lack of “historical context,” emphasizing that “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism” were “terms used by many experts and highly respected organizations to which the BBC usually defers.”
On October 31, 2023, for example, the BBC published a story with a headline that excised Israel’s role: “Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast.” When the BBC does mention Israel as a perpetrator, including when large numbers of civilians are killed by its missiles, the organization’s headlines use the caveat “reportedly.” The BBC repeats the Israeli authorities’ use of “evacuate” to describe the forcible transfer of civilians—effectively using a euphemism for a war crime. Instead of describing Israel’s total siege on Gaza for what it is, an all-encompassing blockade on aid was framed in an October 20, 2023 headline as “Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas.”
In November, around the same time as the meeting with Turness, eight BBC journalists sent a 2,300-word letter to Al Jazeera outlining how their employer had failed to accurately depict the Israel-Palestine story “through omission and lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims” and a “double standard in how civilians are seen.” In the preceding weeks, the BBC had either buried or failed to report on a number of official statements announcing Israel’s intent to perpetrate war crimes. Defense minister Yoav Gallant’s commitment to impose a “full siege” on Gaza and its “human animals” received just one mention in BBC online content, towards the end of an article headlined “Israel's military says it fully controls communities on Gaza border.” No context about the illegality of the statement was offered. A statement by Israeli General Ghassan Alian addressed to both Hamas and “the residents of Gaza”—which unambiguously denounced the Palestinians of Gaza as “human beasts” and promised a total blockade on life’s essentials and the unleashing of “damage” and “hell”—was not covered at all.
By comparison, weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, the BBC’s online coverage clearly identified war crimes committed by Russia, even without official rulings from international courts. “Gruesome evidence points to war crimes on road outside Kyiv,” read one headline 36 days into the invasion. After October 7, war crimes committed by Hamas were treated as objective fact requiring no legal verdict: “Israeli community frozen as Hamas atrocities continue emerge.” When strong evidence similarly shows Israel committing atrocities, the same editorial guidance does not apply.
In the weeks after October 7, a number of BBC journalists began venting their intense frustrations in forums like WhatsApp groups, where they collected the “bullshit reasons given for not commissioning stories.” They singled out Berg, one of whom says plays a key role in a wider BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.” After staffers were told by the BBC’s top brass to come forward with any concerns about coverage, in meetings with senior management, journalists have flagged numerous examples of problematic editing by Berg. Again, having been invited to do so by BBC management, journalists have sent large numbers of emails identifying problems with such news stories. Staff members report rarely receiving responses to such emails.
Instead, the BBC’s approach has been to pathologize the problem. In early November 2023, management convened several roundtables, described as “listening sessions,” where, as one attendee told me, it became clear that management sought to recast factual objections and bias concerns raised by staff as emotional struggles. “They said they were concerned about mental health [and] offered the telephone number of the BBC support group,” one journalist who attended said.
“They wanted to turn it into a ‘Muslim thing,’ that ‘we’re worried about your community.’ We said, ‘We appreciate your concern about our mental health, but this is about editorial standards. It’s about being a public service broadcaster and impartiality not being abided by. They realized they’d let the genie out of the bottle. We said: ‘What’s the next session? We want a progress report, collating the evidence.’” Another attendee said management told staff to “be as frank as possible” and that it sought “honest thoughts on coverage.” Despite management efforts to pigeonhole the objections to BBC's coverage, the internal dissent extended far beyond Muslim staff.
“They wanted to turn it into a ‘Muslim thing,’ that ‘we’re worried about your community.’ We said, ‘We appreciate your concern about our mental health, but this is about editorial standards. It’s about being a public service broadcaster and impartiality not being abided by. They realized they’d let the genie out of the bottle. We said: ‘What’s the next session? We want a progress report, collating the evidence.’” Another attendee said management told staff to “be as frank as possible” and that it sought “honest thoughts on coverage.” Despite management efforts to pigeonhole the objections to BBC's coverage, the internal dissent extended far beyond Muslim staff.
“It was quite bad, staff were not treated well,” says one BBC journalist. “They were speaking their mind, then being shut down. They were told to be honest, but managers didn’t want that and snapped.” Since the meeting with Turness in November, staffers have asked, on three occasions, for updates on whether there had been any progress on responding to and acting on claims about biased coverage. “Three times there has been nothing back,” one staffer said.
In March 2024, the Centre for Media Monitoring, a watchdog group established by the Muslim Council of Britain, released “Media Bias: Gaza 2023-24,” a 150-page document detailing numerous allegations against the BBC’s reporting on Israel and Gaza. That included stripping away context such as Israel’s occupation of Palestine and siege of Gaza, far greater use of emotive language to describe Israeli suffering or deaths than that used when the victims are Palestinians and a pattern that BBC's position "has often been to push the Israeli line whilst casting doubt on Pro-Palestinian voices."
The BBC journalists said they presented the document to Richard Burgess, the BBC‘s director of news content who oversees content across BBC platforms. His response: He did not “recognize the bias.”
In March 2024, the Centre for Media Monitoring, a watchdog group established by the Muslim Council of Britain, released “Media Bias: Gaza 2023-24,” a 150-page document detailing numerous allegations against the BBC’s reporting on Israel and Gaza. That included stripping away context such as Israel’s occupation of Palestine and siege of Gaza, far greater use of emotive language to describe Israeli suffering or deaths than that used when the victims are Palestinians and a pattern that BBC's position "has often been to push the Israeli line whilst casting doubt on Pro-Palestinian voices."
The BBC journalists said they presented the document to Richard Burgess, the BBC‘s director of news content who oversees content across BBC platforms. His response: He did not “recognize the bias.”
Full report:
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