A new report found the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) guilty of violating its own editorial guidelines over a thousand times in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
According to The Telegraph, the report analyzed four months of BBC output on television, radio, online, podcasts and on social media during the height of the conflict and found a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel.
British lawyer Trevor Asserson and a team of about 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists used artificial intelligence to analyze nine million words from the news outlet, starting the day of the October 7, 2023, terror attack.
The researchers allegedly identified 1,553 instances where the BBC violated its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest.
Hundreds attend a protest called by the National Jewish Assembly, The Campaign Against Antisemitsim and the UK Lawyers for Israel at the BBC Broadcasting House on October 16, 2023, in London, England. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
The report accuses the BBC of downplaying Hamas terrorism and painting Israel as the aggressor in dozens of instances.
Israel was associated with “war crimes” four times more frequently than Hamas (127 vs. 30); genocide 14 times more often (283 vs. 19), and breaching international law six times more often than Hamas (167 vs. 27).
BBC reporters who had shown hostility toward Israel on social media were also featured in the network’s war coverage, the report claimed.
Researchers reportedly found 11 instances on the BBC’s Arabic channel, where it featured reporters who had previously made public statements in support of terrorism and Hamas.
“The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth,” the report said, according to the Telegraph.
Aerial view of protesters take part in the March on the DNC in Chicago, Illinois. Pro-Hamas demonstrators have descended on the Windy City to protest the US Government’s handling of the conflict in the Middle East. (Fox News Digital)
A spokesperson for the BBC questioned the report’s methodology and said they would “carefully consider” the report’s findings after reviewing it, in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“We have serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyze impartiality, and its interpretation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. We don’t think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context. We are required to achieve due impartiality, rather than the ‘balance of sympathy’ proposed in the report, and we believe our knowledgeable and dedicated correspondents are achieving this, despite the highly complex, challenging and polarizing nature of the conflict,” the spokesperson said.
“However, we will consider the report carefully and respond directly to the authors once we have had time to study it in detail,” the spokesperson added.
The BBC also staunchly rejected the report’s claims that its reporters “celebrated acts of terror.”
Watchdog group Campaign Against Antisemitism claimed the report exposed the BBC’s ideological bias.
“Despite its persistent claims of impartiality and stubbornness in the face of complaints, the BBC’s ideological bias is now shamefully clear. This report vindicates with empirical data what we have said — and the Jewish community has known — for a long time,” the group said with a link to The Telegraph report.
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“Our polling shows that an overwhelming majority of British Jews — 86% — consider that anti-Israel bias in our media fuels antisemitism. The BBC should apologize for its biased and inflammatory reporting, but since the BBC has so stubbornly closed ranks and denied that there is a problem over the decades, the fundamental reform that is plainly necessary must come from outside. The answer to this report must begin with a transparent and unconstrained independent inquiry,” the post continued.
The BBC has been criticized for refusing to label Hamas a terrorist group in the October 7 aftermath. In a previous statement to Fox News Digital, the BBC said they use the terrorist label when it’s attributed to others, such as the UK Government.