Journalist Peter Oborne called out a BBC director over the broadcaster’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, following the publication of a report which found it to be “systematically biased against Palestinians.”
Oborne, the former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, addressed BBC director of news content Richard Burgess at the launch of the Centre for Media Monitoring’s (CfMM) report on the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
This week, the CfMM published a report analysing the BBC’s coverage of the conflict between October 7, 2023, and October 6, 2024. The body found that there had been a “pattern of bias, double standards and silencing of Palestinian voices” from the BBC, and that their coverage had been “systematically biased against Palestinians.”
The CfMM analysed 3,873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments, revealing that the BBC used emotive terms four times as much for Israeli victims. They alos found that despite there being 34 times more Palestinian deaths than Israeli deaths, the BBC did not reflect this in the number of victim profiles they published for Palestinians (279) and Israelis (201).
The report also highlighted how BBC presenters interrupted or dismissed genocide claims against Israel more than 100 times, but made no mention of genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders.
Confronting Burgess over the report’s findings this week, Oborne said the BBC’s coverage made them “complicit” in Israel’s crimes.
He said: “You never educated your audience about the genocidal remarks, and according to this report on 100 occasions, 100 occasions, you’ve closed down the references to genocide by your guests.
“This makes you complicit.”
Oborne accused the BBC of failing to properly educate its audience by only mentioning the Dahiya doctrine in passing once. The Dahiya doctrine is an Israeli military strategy involving the large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, with Oborne saying it was a crucial piece of context in understanding what has happened in Gaza over the last two years.
The journalist said this was a “grotesque omission” on the broadcaster’s part.
The report also highlighted that the BBC had only reported 6% of the journalist deaths in Gaza, compared to 60% of the Ukrainian journalist deaths in their war with Russia.
In a statement reacting to the CfMM’s report, a BBC spokesperson said: “We welcome scrutiny and reflect on all feedback. Throughout our impartial reporting on the conflict we have made clear the devastating human cost to civilians living in Gaza. We will continue to give careful thought to how we do this.
“We believe it is imperative that our journalists have access to Gaza, and we continue to call on the Israeli government to grant this.
“We agree that language is vitally important but we have some questions about what appears to be a reliance on AI to analyse it in this report, and we do not think due impartiality can be measured by counting words. We make our own, independent editorial decisions, and we reject any suggestion otherwise.
“However, we will consider the report carefully and study its findings in detail.”
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