BBC vows systematic review of Israel coverage

After investigatory report found BBC violated its own guidelines 1,500 times in its reporting on the Israel-Gaza war during the first four months of the war, top BBC officials grilled by Parliament.

By World Israel News Staff

The leadership of the British Broadcasting Corporation vowed Wednesday the British media giant outlet would probe allegations of anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the war in Gaza, including a recent report asserting that the BBC violated its own guidelines over 1,500 times.

BBC chairman Samir Shah and Director-General Tim Davie were summoned to respond to questions in the House of Lords Wednesday regarding allegations against the news agency, after a report by The Telegraph found that during the first four months of the war between Israel and the Hamas terror organization, the BBC violated its own reporting guidelines at least 1,500 times.

Shah acknowledged the criticism of the BBC‘s coverage of the Gaza war, but appeared to downplay allegations of bias, saying the issue was “complicated” and surrounded by “strong emotions.”

“The Israel-Gaza story is a very complicated story and there are very strong emotions on both sides.”

Nevertheless, Shah called for a “deep, systematic” review of the BBC‘s coverage of the war.

Director-General Davie echoed Shah’s comments, and said the BBC would “seriously” examine allegations against its Arabic service.

“We will look at that piece of research, take it seriously, in good faith,” Davie said.

“Every accusation we’ve had on the Arabic service we have looked at. Now, the issue is not everyone agrees with the outcome. We’ve taken disciplinary action.”

“Broadly, I think we are doing a very good job and the research that we have into the overall public response is good. But that doesn’t mean we are perfect.”

“We take complaints seriously. We’ll go through them, and we won’t just be, frankly, in auto-defence. But we also stand up for our journalists. We’ll stand up for people doing a good job.”

On Saturday, The Telegraph published the results of research conducted by attorney Trevor Asserson and his team of some 40 British lawyers and data gurus, who used artificial intelligence to assess the BBC‘s reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict during a four-month period.

The team found that Israel was linked to the term “war crimes” four times more than Hamas, and to “genocide” 14 times more than Hamas.

Hamas was only described by the word “terrorist” or “terrorists” 409 times out of 12,459 references, a mere 3.2% of the time.

Asserson and his team also found that BBC Arabic was especially egregious in its reporting, with several reporters openly lauding Hamas or downplaying the organization’s terrorism.

In general, BBC Arabic was found to be the most anti-Israel channel in all global media.