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Damning new analysis of BBC bias shows consistent pro-Israel propaganda during Gaza genocide

The Centre For Media Monitoring (CfMM) has released a rigorous new report about BBC bias during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And it’s headline statistic is stark, revealing the public broadcaster’s decision to place significantly more value on Israeli lives than on Palestinian lives. Because although Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 34 times more Palestinians, Israelis who died got 33 times more coverage. The BBC also interviewed more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians.

The BBC‘s bias towards Israel has perhaps been clearer than ever before since October 2023. But the CfMM has put together what even a former Conservative Party chair has called:

a comprehensive, evidence-based indictment that cannot be ignored

Overwhelming evidence of BBC bias in favour of Israel

Despite the global scholarly consensus that the apartheid state has been committing genocide since October 2023, meanwhile, the BBC opted to make Israelis’ suffering sound worse than Palestinians’. As the CfMM pointed out:

Emotive language like “slaughter” & “massacre” was used 4x more often for Israelis.

But while actively using such words when prioritising Israeli lives, the BBC consistently sought to shut down any mention of the word genocide to talk about the mass murder in Gaza.

The BBC also regularly tried to push guests to condemn the resistance of Hamas, while never asking any to condemn Israel’s genocidal war crimes. This is despite Israel not having the right to “self-defence against a threat that emanates from a territory it occupies” and international law protecting the right of Palestinian people to resist Israeli occupation.

At the same time, the public broadcaster seemed to do its best to ignore the decades-long historical context of illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the apartheid system Israel has set up, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing via illegal settlements. It managed to mention the word ‘occupation’ a small handful of times, but the other issues were “all missing from the story”.

The apparent assumption of Israeli innocence and Palestinian guilt, meanwhile, was visible in the unequal coverage of hostages in Israel and hostages in Gaza.

And the CfMM also made a telling comparison between the war between Russia and Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Faithfully toeing the British state’s policy line of demonising Russia and defending Israel, the BBC spoke about Russia a lot more harshly than Israel, and treated Ukrainians a lot more sympathetically than Palestinians.

The CfMM has called for “an independent public review of the BBC’s Gaza reporting”.

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.