At CUFI, we have long been calling out the anti-Israel bias of the BBC. We see the BBC as an instigator of misinformation against Israel and due to its prominent position in British society, and indeed throughout the world, the way in which the BBC reports affect how people view the Israel-Hamas war, and further than that, influences their attitudes towards Israel and the Jewish people as a whole.
The Telegraph reports:
The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war, a damning report has found.
The report revealed a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel, according to its authors who analysed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts and social media.
A team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research, which used artificial intelligence to analyse nine million words of BBC output.
Researchers identified a total of 1,553 breaches of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, which included impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest.
“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.
It also found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.
It claimed that some journalists used by the BBC in its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict have previously shown sympathy for Hamas and even celebrated its acts of terror.
Why is this so troubling?
We know from the Bible that in the end times, the entire world will turn against Israel. We are seeing that now with lies and misinformation spreading around the world. A lot of this information is being spread by social media and influential figures of religion and popular culture. But the mainstream media is also a big purveyor of the anti-Israel narrative. It could be argued that the BBC is the largest of these instigators.
The BBC is the most-watched news channel in the United Kingdom. More than this, it is the most-watched news channel globally. And to compound this, it’s voted as the most trustworthy news source in the world.
The influence of the BBC cannot be understated. It also happens to be something on CUFI UK’s home turf that we simply cannot ignore. British Christians who love Israel are forced by UK law to fund the BBC to legally watch television. It’s not only our national broadcaster, but we are also paying the salaries of the reporters who are spreading misinformation.
More importantly than all of this, however, is that we want the world to see the truth about Israel, to see Israel the way that God sees Israel, as a blessing to the nations. The BBC is working to spread lies about Israel, whether knowingly or not, that is the result. And unfortunately, the leadership of the BBC is failing to take action to tackle this problem.
Key people are being deceived by biased media reporting
There is an example of a senior member of the British military being misled by biased reports in the BBC and other British media outlets. This gave him a negative view of Israel and the IDF’s action in Gaza. Thankfully, he was able to assess Israel’s actions on the ground and realise he had been misled.
General Sir John Chalmers McColl was a leader in the British armed forces during his 38 year career. He was deployed in combat in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, and served as deputy supreme allied commander of NATO between 2007 and 2011. To say he knows what he’s talking about is an understatement.
General McColl wrote an article in The Times after he was part of a delegation of military experts from six NATO countries who visited Israel to see the IDF in action and assess the situation first hand.
He explained, “Basing my views about the Israel-Hamas war on UK media coverage, I arrived in Israel critical and sceptical of their military operations.”
During his visit he met with IDF generals and commanders, was given extensive insight into the IDF’s operations, including their humanitarian aid operations, and even travelled inside Gaza into Rafah, the heart of the warzone.
“Accompanying troops in Rafah we found that the rules of engagement were being adhered to rigorously and that a significant number of engagements were being aborted because the clearance of civilians could not be verified,” he said.
One important note he made was just how complex a situation the IDF is dealing with in Gaza.
“What we, military observers with decades of combined experience in leading Nato armies, were told and saw was the most complex and demanding operational environment any of us had come across, including in Afghanistan and Iraq,” General McColl wrote.
CUFI has been saying this for a long time. Israel is dealing in the most densely populated warzone and is fighting against a terror group that has embedded itself underneath a civilian population and using civilians as human shields more effectively than any other terror group in history. Israel is fighting against all odds, and yet it has achieved one of the lowest civilian death ratios in history.
Regarding media reporting, General McColl said, “there is balance missing in the reporting of events in Gaza.” And that journalists, “must make a greater effort to report more accurately.”
The General finished by saying, “I came away from the trip satisfied that the IDF’s operations and rules of engagement were rigorous compared to the British Army and our western allies.”
“War is terrible, but sometimes necessary. And Israeli soldiers are fighting in conditions of extraordinary complexity and risk. It’s time for the world to have its eyes opened to that,” he concluded.
If a General was deceived, what hope do we civilians have?
An important takeaway from all of this is that a British Military General who experienced battlefields in numerous wars and served in one of the highest positions in NATO was able to be persuaded by the media that Israel was in the wrong. Therefore, what hope is there that regular people watching the news are not going to be deceived?
It took a trip to Israel for this General to see the truth for himself, to be convinced that the BBC and other media outlets were reporting falsehoods. It was enough for him change his views on Israel, to speak out and challenge the false narrative as well as calling for the media to report accurately and fairly.
This is why it is so important we hold the BBC and other media outlets to account. Right now, they are working against Israel and turning public opinion against Israel. We want Britain to bless Israel, it cannot do that if people are tricked into hating Israel by biased reporting.
