In recent months, BBC coverage of Gaza has itself become a major news story. The broadcaster attracted condemnation following the airing of a documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas agriculture minister, and the livestreaming of a Glastonbury performance in which rapper Bob Vylan led chants of “death to the IDF.” Across mainstream and social media, the BBC was accused of promoting extremism. In an emergency debate in Parliament, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called for sackings – surely an unacceptable interference in the independence of public broadcasting. The BBC issued public apologies, launched an internal review and pulled the original documentary – as well as, months later, another unrelated documentary on Israel’s systematic attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system (subsequently shown on Channel 4). This all fed the perception that the organisation’s coverage of the conflict is hopelessly biased in favour of the Palestinians.
There are understandable sensitivities around how the conflict is covered, so some caution is justified. Nonetheless, it worries me that swathes of British parliamentarians and journalists treat alleged editorial missteps as more worthy of condemnation than Israel’s mass killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people. In any case, the accusation of pro-Palestinian bias simply does not stand up. A significant report published in June by the Centre for Media Monitoring, with the assistance of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Caabu, received little mainstream media or political attention. But the year-long analysis of 40,000 BBC news items, covering the period October 2023–2024, reveals a systematic skew in the opposite direction. It provides damning evidence that in its language, framing, its coverage – and what it chooses not to cover – the BBC overwhelmingly favours pro-Israel viewpoints and repeatedly minimises Palestinian suffering.
The most immediate example is the treatment of casualties. Attacks on Palestinians were typically reported in the passive voice, with Israeli responsibility obscured or omitted altogether. Descriptions of Israeli deaths were markedly more emotive, with words like “atrocity,” “slaughter,” and “barbaric” used four times as often as for Palestinian victims. BBC correspondents used terms like “butchered” exclusively for Israelis. “Murdered” appeared 220 times in describing Israeli deaths and just once for Palestinians. 34 times as many Gazans as Israelis have been killed since the start of the war, yet BBC headlines mentioned Palestinian deaths only twice as frequently as Israeli ones.
The analysis also revealed a persistent under-representation of Palestinian voices. On TV and radio, Israelis were interviewed more than twice as often as Palestinians. The Israeli framing of action as “self-defence” was echoed eleven times more frequently than any equivalent from the Palestinian side. (For the avoidance of doubt, no, the murder of festival-goers cannot be excused as ‘anti-colonialism’ or ‘self-defence’ any more than the deliberate starvation of civilians can be.) While 38 interviewees were pressed to condemn Hamas’ 7th October attacks, there was no equivalent questioning of Israel’s actions.
A similar asymmetry can be seen in the BBC’s selective omission of relevant historical and legal context. Although the 7th October attacks were referenced in over 40% of online coverage, just 0.5% of articles mentioned Israel’s occupation and violence against Palestinians prior to that date. Terms like “war crimes” appeared in just 3% of articles. Interviewees referencing “genocide” were shut down in over 100 documented cases – despite the ICJ’s ruling that South Africa’s case against Israel is reasonable. There is, rightly, no such reluctance to use these terms when describing Russian actions in Ukraine, so it is not that the words themselves are taboo.
The problem extends far beyond the BBC, with journalists describing a systematic culture of pro-Israel censorship and editorial pressure across UK newsrooms – but as the national public service broadcaster, the BBC’s failings carry particular weight. Parliament isn’t much better, with references to 7th October tangentially tacked onto even the briefest interventions. And contrast the plight of Israeli hostages (which rightly remains a priority) with the deafening silence around the thousands of Palestinians – many of them children – that Israel has seized from Gaza and the West Bank and unlawfully imprisoned without trial or due process. Ministers tie themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging Israel’s violations of international law, avoiding clear, legally-defined terms like “war crimes”, “genocide” and “apartheid”, opting instead for vague allusions to “risks of violations” or “concerns”.
In a systematically distorted political and media landscape, the Liberal Democrats have a vital role to play in using language to drive action. This is no small task, especially as we receive limited airtime compared to the two larger parties (and Nigel Farage, of course). But that’s precisely why our voice matters. We must ensure Palestinian perspectives receive appropriate coverage and be willing to use clear language increasingly considered by NGOs, historians and lawyers to be appropriate and justified. We should do as Israel’s human rights NGOs and one of the country’s most respected papers, Ha’aretz, has now done: be willing to say that Israel is committing genocide, and demand that the government and our media take their responsibilities seriously.
* Jonathan Brown is a District Councillor for Chichester North and Vice Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.