Former BBC TV chief publishes highly critical report on corporation’s Gaza coverage
Danny Cohen and others call for independent inquiry into broadcaster's 'institutionally anti-Israel bias'
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
A report analysing numerous problems with the BBC’s reporting of the Gaza war has been endorsed by UK Jewish communal leaders, who say that “many British Jews conclude that the BBC has become, in practical terms, institutionally hostile to Israel, eroding trust in the institution”.
The report, which contains a call for an independent inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war — and the wider regional conflicts which have flourished in its wake — was compiled by former BBC1 controller Danny Cohen, together with researcher David Collier and Camera UK, a media monitoring group.
Its publication on the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel follows a similarly critical report three weeks ago, headed by the British-Israeli lawyer Trevor Asserson.
In their introduction, the writers say: “Honest mistakes can happen in any field, especially one where quick judgements are needed in response to incomplete information. This report concludes that the BBC is not merely careless in its reporting of the war in Gaza. The ‘mistakes’ are almost always in the anti-Israel direction. It would not be possible to compile a similar record of anti-Palestinian errors.
“Whenever the corporation is faced with the choice of whose account or narrative to believe, it seldom points in Israel’s direction. For Hamas in this war, proof is rarely necessary. For the IDF and Israel, proof is rarely enough”.
There follows a long list of “false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of this war”, many of which, the report says, have remained on the BBC’s website “long after they have been comprehensively debunked. The damage done by misleading broadcasts and social media output is unaffected by the occasional brief correction issued weeks or months later”.
Arguably the most shocking issue is that on October 7 itself, “while the rest of Britain’s media were detailing the brutality of Hamas’s attack on Israel, the BBC led its coverage with a headline about ‘Israeli revenge attacks’”.
In the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, the authors say, the BBC broadcast “interviews with Hamas apologists who used their platform to make comments which the BBC was forced to admit were ‘offensive’”.
It took outrage from the Jewish community and senior politicians for the BBC to “back down” on its policy of not calling Hamas “terrorists”.
Notoriously, the report says, the BBC reported that an “Israeli strike” killed “hundreds’” at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, “thereby repeating, legitimising and reinforcing entirely false claims that directly caused unrest in some European and Middle Eastern countries, including serious arson attacks upon synagogues in Germany and Tunisia”.
Moreover, the writers say, the BBC “failed to remove articles suggesting the same hospital blast may have been caused by the Israeli military, even after the BBC admitted it got its reporting wrong”.
The authors say that a senior BBC executive admitted inaccuracies had “real world consequences” for British Jews but were inevitable because of the “fog of war”. This, say communal leaders Phil Rosenberg, (president of the Board of Deputies), Claudia Mendoza (chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council) and Mark Gardner (chief executive of the Community Security Trust) , is not acceptable. In a letter to The Times published on Monday, they say: “We recognise the challenges of reporting accurately in war zones, but the evidence presented in this report goes far beyond what might reasonably be attributed to errors made in the fog of war”.
Among the litany of criticism in the report it is noted that “the BBC was forced to correct an article that described Iran’s bombardment of 300 rockets fired into Israel as “dozens” of “objects”. And that “at the height of the conflict, BBC Arabic was forced to correct articles on average every 48 hours, including copy that referred to Hamas as the “resistance”.
BBC Arabic comes in for particular complaint: according to the report, “it platformed one guest who had previously referred to the October 7 massacre as a “heroic military miracle” and another who described Hamas atrocities against innocent Israelis as “necessary”.
BBC Arabic was also, say the authors, “forced to purge articles from its website including one that asked whether the Kfar Aza kibbutz atrocities really happened.”
The BBC was forced to sack one employee who described Jews online as “Nazi apartheid parasites” and called the Holocaust a hoax, and failed to sanction high-profile sports presenter Gary Lineker who shared a BDS post calling for Israel to be banned from international sporting events.
Commenting on the new report, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said: “Few institutions are as vital for our national cultural identity or for the health of our democracy as the BBC. That’s why the content of this report, which records the repeated and longstanding failure to ensure impartial and accurate news coverage of the existential war that Israel is fighting on multiple fronts, is so profoundly troubling.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “The Israel-Gaza conflict is a polarising and difficult story to cover and we understand there are a range of views. The BBC has focused on reporting the conflict impartially, bringing audiences breaking news, insight and analysis, and reflecting all perspectives.
“While we do not recognise the overall characterisation of our journalism in this report, we will of course always look at anything raised with us with care and attention.”
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