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Youth Demand continue protests against BBC bias, now in Leeds studio

On Monday 8 September, youth-led pro-Palestinian campaign group Youth Demand announced its occupation of the BBC’s Manchester headquarters. Then, the group also announced that it was protesting outside of the BBC studio in Leeds.

As with Manchester’s protest, they’re calling out the BBC for its consistent downplaying of the genocide that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.

Youth Demand: ‘refusal to call a genocide a genocide’

22-year-old Haz spoke on video about the motivations behind the protest:

I took action with Youth Demand today targeting the BBC because of their refusal to call a genocide a genocide, and the increased value that they put on Israeli lives over Palestinian lives, their refusal to highlight the brutal reality of the atrocities that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people.

The BBC pushes this Western colonialist mindset onto its viewers, and this is extremely harmful for not just the Palestinian people but indigenous people and oppressed people across the world.

For some statistics on this BBC bias, the Centre for Media Monitoring published an analysis of over 3500+ items of content from the national broadcaster. The key findings included:

  • Palestinian deaths treated as less newsworthy: Despite Gaza suffering 34x more casualties than Israel, BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage per fatality and ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles (279 Palestinians vs 201 Israelis).

  • Systematic language bias favouring Israelis: BBC used emotive terms 4 times more for Israeli victims, applied ‘massacre’ 18x more to Israeli casualties, and used ‘murder’ 220 times for Israelis vs once for Palestinians.

  • Suppression of genocide allegations: BBC presenters shut down genocide claims in over 100 documented instances whilst making zero mention of Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements, including Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek reference.

  • Muffling Palestinian voices: The BBC interviewed significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis (1,085 v 2,350) on TV and radio, while BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 v 217).

On 1 September, the BBC put out an article headlined “Israel committing genocide in Gaza, world’s leading experts say”. It stated that the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) had passed a resolution that Israel’s conduct meets the UN’s legal definition of genocide.

However, the BBC story stopped short of agreeing with the IAGS findings. It took the opportunity to mention that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has not yet ruled on whether Israel is committing genocide, and included a description of Palestine’s health ministry as “Hamas-run”, as well as Israel’s rejection of the ICJ case as “blood libel”. 

Arrests

Youth Demand also posted another video about the Leeds protest on their social media. It shows footage of police officers arresting one of the demonstrators after the occupation. This is interspersed with earlier shots of the campaigners’ chants within the lobby of the BBC building:

What do we want? Justice When do we want it? Now!

One – We are the people. Two – We won’t be silent. Three – Stop the Bombing now, now, now, now!

We are youth demand!

The demonstrators also held up a Palestinian flag and a sign reading ‘BBC’, in which the letters stand for “Bloodshed Backed by Corporations”.

As of the time of this article’s writing, BBC Leeds had made no mention of the Youth Demand protest on its social media.

Featured image supplied

By Alex/Rose Cocker

This post was originally published on Canary.