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 8 - The BBC’s Response
In response to this story’s allegations surrounding BBC’s coverage of Israel and Palestine and Berg’s role and background, a spokesperson for the network told Drop Site News: “We reject your attack on an individual member of staff. Like every journalist at the BBC, they must adhere to the BBC’s editorial guidelines which ensure that we report impartially and without fear or favor.” The statement continued:
The allegations you’ve made fundamentally misdescribe this person’s role, and misunderstand the way the BBC works.
More broadly, we reject any suggestion of a ‘lenient stance’ towards either side in this conflict. The Israel/Gaza conflict is a challenging and polarising subject to cover, but when asked to choose the one provider they would turn to for impartial reporting on this story, three times as many pick the BBC as choose our closest competitor. The BBC remains the world’s most trusted international news source.
We have transparently set out our approach to reporting the conflict—for example in this blog from Deborah Turness—and if we make mistakes we correct them. Our coverage should be judged on its own merits and in its entirety.
The BBC’s defenders point to the fact that the organization is criticized from “both sides.” But even Turness dismissed this as a defense in a blog post titled “How the BBC is covering Israel-Gaza,” published on October 25, 2023. “We cannot afford to simply say that if both sides are criticizing us, we’re getting things right,” she wrote. “That isn’t good enough for the BBC or for our audiences. At the BBC we hold ourselves to a higher standard and rightly challenge ourselves to listen to our critics and consider what changes to make where we think that criticism is fair.”
More broadly, we reject any suggestion of a ‘lenient stance’ towards either side in this conflict. The Israel/Gaza conflict is a challenging and polarising subject to cover, but when asked to choose the one provider they would turn to for impartial reporting on this story, three times as many pick the BBC as choose our closest competitor. The BBC remains the world’s most trusted international news source.
We have transparently set out our approach to reporting the conflict—for example in this blog from Deborah Turness—and if we make mistakes we correct them. Our coverage should be judged on its own merits and in its entirety.
The BBC’s defenders point to the fact that the organization is criticized from “both sides.” But even Turness dismissed this as a defense in a blog post titled “How the BBC is covering Israel-Gaza,” published on October 25, 2023. “We cannot afford to simply say that if both sides are criticizing us, we’re getting things right,” she wrote. “That isn’t good enough for the BBC or for our audiences. At the BBC we hold ourselves to a higher standard and rightly challenge ourselves to listen to our critics and consider what changes to make where we think that criticism is fair.”
The BBC told Drop Site News that it corrects mistakes in its stories. Yet one BBC journalist has pointed out that the organization has failed to correct claims in published stories about specific atrocities alleged to have been committed on October 7 that have since been proven false.
Hamas fighters and other armed Palestinian militants undoubtedly committed grave war crimes in the attacks of October 7. But the BBC website published a number of unverified claims about the attacks, a significant number of which originated from the accounts of the religious emergency response team Zaka; many of these claims have since been proven to be false and discredited, most prominently by Israeli media outlets. Yet BBC news stories still include these disproven claims, including those of multiple babies being killed or the bodies of 20 children being tied together and burned. Other media organizations, including the New York Times, have printed articles correcting some of the false claims they made about October 7, though, like the BBC, a staggering number of false reports remain on the websites of many major news organizations.
Even if BBC license payers complained about such false claims remaining in published stories, the organization would be unlikely to act on them: Their standard complaints process only deals with items broadcast or published in the last 30 days.
After 14 months of witnessing the BBC’s failures up close, these disenchanted journalists are divided between believing it is important to stay and try and make changes and wanting to abandon what feels like an irreparable systemic feature. But all agree that the gap between BBC coverage and the gravity of the atrocities committed is indefensible.
As one concludes: “Most people with a conscience here have found that the coverage is frankly despicable and certainly not up to our editorial standards.”
After 14 months of witnessing the BBC’s failures up close, these disenchanted journalists are divided between believing it is important to stay and try and make changes and wanting to abandon what feels like an irreparable systemic feature. But all agree that the gap between BBC coverage and the gravity of the atrocities committed is indefensible.
As one concludes: “Most people with a conscience here have found that the coverage is frankly despicable and certainly not up to our editorial standards.”
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Full report:
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