Employees accuse BBC of pro-Israel bias – media

A letter signed by over 100 staff says the broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza is not “fair and accurate journalism,” the Independent reports

Dozens of BBC employees have accused the British state broadcaster of exhibiting pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the Gaza conflict, The Independent reported on Saturday. The newspaper, citing a letter allegedly sent to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, said the appeal was also publicly signed by other media representatives, including broadcaster Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who previously served as senior minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs.

The Independent claimed that accusations of partiality were levelled at the BBC by 101 staff members, who chose not to reveal their identities. The letter allegedly highlights a lack of “fair and accurate evidence-based journalism in coverage of Gaza.” BBC employees urged the organization to report “without fear or favour” and to “recommit to the highest editorial standards – with emphasis on fairness, accuracy, and due impartiality.”

The letter allegedly stressed the need to make it clearer in BBC reporting that Israel is preventing foreign journalists from accessing Gaza, and to provide more historical context behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Independent quoted an anonymous BBC employee, who signed the letter, as saying that “levels of staff confidence” are unprecedentedly low, with some of colleagues having “left the BBC in recent months because they just don’t believe our reporting on Israel and Palestine is honest.”

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Another supposedly told the newspaper that they “see that we are losing the trust of audiences across the world.” The unnamed signatory cited headlines that often leave out Israel, in an apparent attempt to deflect blame.

A BBC spokesperson has rejected the allegations of bias, stressing that the broadcaster “holds itself to very high standards, and we strive to live up to our responsibility to deliver the most trusted and impartial news.”

Meanwhile, in September, The Telegraph published a report pointing to a “deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth.”

According to an analysis prepared by a group of lawyers and data scientists, the broadcaster exhibited anti-Israel bias in its output on television, radio, podcasts, websites, and social media over a period of at least four months in the wake of the deadly Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023.

The BBC has dismissed the findings, calling into question the reliability of AI tools employed by the researchers.