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 3 - Without Fear or Favor
Between November 2023 and July 2024, BBC management held five listening sessions on Israel-Gaza. In a group meeting with Davie in May 2024, staffers at the meeting acknowledged the pressure the BBC faced from pro-Israel lobbyists. They also emphasized that their sole objective was to uphold the BBC’s values of fairness and impartiality and to produce content “without fear or favor”—principles staffers told me had been cast aside in deference to Israeli narratives. They also noted examples of individual senior journalists who had sent dozens of complaints about coverage of Israel and Gaza, only to be consistently brushed off.
The staffers also identified the website, headed by Berg, as the BBC’s most egregious violator of editorial standards on impartiality on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Davie, BBC’s director-general, was already aware that many BBC journalists had specific concerns about Berg. “He did very little to hide his objective of watering down anything critical of Israel,” said a former BBC journalist.
Berg wasn’t the only senior figure discussed at the meeting in May. The role of another powerful individual raised Robbie Gibb—one of five people who serve on the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee along with Director-General Tim Davie, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness, the Chairman of the Arts Council Nicholas Serota, and BBC Chair Samir Shah. In September 2024, when discussing “the Israel-Gaza story,” Shah told British parliamentarians that the committee was “part of the process where complaints are discussed, talked about and addressed.” He added that the BBC’s next “thematic review” should focus on Israel and Palestine.
The staffers also identified the website, headed by Berg, as the BBC’s most egregious violator of editorial standards on impartiality on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Davie, BBC’s director-general, was already aware that many BBC journalists had specific concerns about Berg. “He did very little to hide his objective of watering down anything critical of Israel,” said a former BBC journalist.
Berg wasn’t the only senior figure discussed at the meeting in May. The role of another powerful individual raised Robbie Gibb—one of five people who serve on the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee along with Director-General Tim Davie, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness, the Chairman of the Arts Council Nicholas Serota, and BBC Chair Samir Shah. In September 2024, when discussing “the Israel-Gaza story,” Shah told British parliamentarians that the committee was “part of the process where complaints are discussed, talked about and addressed.” He added that the BBC’s next “thematic review” should focus on Israel and Palestine.
Gibb is charged with helping to define the BBC’s commitment to impartiality, and to respond to complaints about the BBC’s coverage on Israel and Palestine—but his ultra-partisan record speaks for itself. The brother of a former Conservative minister, he is a veteran of the revolving door between Britain’s worlds of media and politics. In his thirties, Gibb was the chief of staff for Conservative MP Francis Maude before becoming deputy political editor of Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship current affairs show, and, later, editor of BBC politics programs. Between 2017 and 2019, he served as director of communications for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, and was knighted by her upon her resignation. In 2020, Gibb also led a consortium to rescue the Jewish Chronicle from bankruptcy. In 2021, Gibb returned to the BBC, joining its board as a non-executive director. In 2022, former senior BBC journalist Emily Maitlis described Gibb as an “active agent of the Conservative party” who shaped the broadcaster’s coverage by acting “as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.” Similarly, Lewis Goodall, her colleague, said editors told him to “be careful: Robbie is watching you.”
Gibb’s deep involvement with the Jewish Chronicle continued after he took up his BBC role. In the November 2023 BBC Declaration of Personal Interests, he declared he was the 100% owner of the newspaper, before being replaced by a venture capitalist in August 2024. One former Jewish Chronicle journalist declared that, “since the change in ownership, the paper has read more like a propaganda sheet for Benjamin Netanyahu,” and that Gibb regularly appeared in the office “to check up on what stories were topping the news list and offering a view.” Since the acquisition, Jake Wallis Simons, its editor since 2021, has focused on zealously supporting Israel’s onslaught since October 2023. In one example, he tweeted a video of a 2,000-pound bomb exploding in Gaza City with the caption “Onwards to victory!,” before deleting with no apology.
In September 2024, four Jewish Chronicle columnists resigned in protest after the paper published a story that included fabricated quotes from Israeli officials, with one declaring that “too often the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.” Four Israelis, including an aide to Netanyahu, were subsequently arrested on charges of falsifying and distributing fabricated documents to the Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s largest newspaper Bild.
In September 2024, four Jewish Chronicle columnists resigned in protest after the paper published a story that included fabricated quotes from Israeli officials, with one declaring that “too often the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.” Four Israelis, including an aide to Netanyahu, were subsequently arrested on charges of falsifying and distributing fabricated documents to the Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s largest newspaper Bild.
In September, the Muslim Council of Britain wrote a letter expressing concern with Gibb’s position on the editorial standards committee, noting his involvement with the Jewish Chronicle, its political orientation, the fact that it had been repeatedly reported to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. At that May meeting, BBC journalists had emphasized that Gibbs’s agenda was widely understood in British media circles, referring to his links to the Jewish Chronicle and noting its right-wing partisan orientation and slavish pro-Israel stance.
But it was Berg’s key role in shaping online coverage of the Middle East that the staffers emphasized the most at the “listening session” meeting with the BBC director general, Tim Davie, in May. They noted Berg’s history and associations as indicative of bias, pointing to instances where journalists’ copy had been changed prior to publication. They made specific requests: that stories should, as a rule, emphasize that Israel had not granted the BBC access to Gaza, that the network should end the practice of presenting the official Israeli versions of events as fact, and that the BBC should do more to offer context about Israeli occupation and the fact that Gaza is overwhelmingly populated by descendants of refugees forcibly driven from their homes beginning in 1948. While Davie told staff that management would “look into” staff objections, to date no response ever came back.
A crucial part of the BBC news website is its curation department, which selects the stories that are displayed on each section’s “front page,” as well as the overall BBC news homepage. If a story appears on the front page, it often receives hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, BBC staffers said, adding that stories published on regional index pages tend to attract only a fraction of that number. BBC staffers allege that Berg plays a powerful role in deciding which Middle East stories appear on the BBC News front page. The BBC denies that he has a veto, and claims staffers are assigning “outsize importance" to Berg's influence. Given that only a handful of stories are published to the Middle East index each day, it is relatively easy for a single editor to have an effect while also influencing coverage outside of the index. “If it’s Israel/Palestine, it has to go through Raffi before curation even OK it,” one journalist said. “Anyone who writes on Gaza or Israel is asked: ‘Has it gone to edpol [editorial policy], lawyers, and has it gone to Raffi?’” another said.
In response to BBC management claims that Berg’s power is being exaggerated by staff, a former journalist at the BBC World Service says: “I was working for a World Service department, producing content for language services. ‘We have to run this past Raffi’ was the reflex answer to any producer pitching anything on Israel.” The journalist said that other editors were reluctant to sign off content, treating Berg’s verdict as “their safety step” in the editorial process. “There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff.”
This dynamic was corroborated by a third journalist, who said that even if a story which touched on Israel and Palestine appeared on another news index, it would still be flagged for Berg’s attention and approval. “How much power he has is wild,” said the journalist. “His reach goes beyond just the Middle East index, but to adjacent subject matters.”
This dynamic was corroborated by a third journalist, who said that even if a story which touched on Israel and Palestine appeared on another news index, it would still be flagged for Berg’s attention and approval. “How much power he has is wild,” said the journalist. “His reach goes beyond just the Middle East index, but to adjacent subject matters.”
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