Campaign highlights BBC’s ‘deliberately misleading’ coverage of Israel and Gaza

A pro-Israel group in Britain has said the BBC is “deliberately misleading” in its coverage of Israel and Gaza.

The Israel Britain Alliance (IBA) said it was trying to highlight the BBC’s “misreporting” when it came to rocket-fire from the Strip and Israel’s response, complaining that the national broadcaster often leads on the response.

“Every broadcaster can make mistakes but there is now evidence from the pattern and frequency of these misleading reports from the BBC that they are not blunders, but are instead deliberate editorial decisions,” said IBA director Michael McCann.

“This not only means that the BBC is misleading its vast audience, it is breaching its Royal Charter.”

He said IBA was working with monitoring group ‘BBC Watch’ and had focused on coverage of eight rocket attacks over the past two years, seven of which led on Israel’s response. McCann added that there had been 19 attacks in the same period that were not covered by the BBC.

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McCann said he was urging supporters “to ask their MPs to highlight the evidence we’ve uncovered to the BBC board,” adding: “They are responsible for ensuring that the Corporation fulfils its mission and public purposes as set out in the BBC Charter, it’s time that they did their job.”

A spokesman for the BBC said: “BBC News is committed to accurate and impartial coverage and rejects the unfounded accusation of ‘fake news’ made by the Israel Britain Alliance.”