BBC’s bias lain bare will be sickening to British Jews

Wide-ranging report shows extent of corporation’s failure to provide balanced journalism

Over the past 11 months, the BBC has consistently denied that there are significant problems with its reporting of the Israel-Hamas war. Well-evidenced complaints have been ignored, excuses made and corrections only issued after weeks of delays.
The focus of the BBC’s senior leadership appears to have been on reputation management rather than a transparent relationship with licence-fee payers about the failings in its coverage.
Now, almost a year since the terrorist massacres of Oct 7, a detailed data analysis of the BBC’s reporting has revealed a systemic failure by the corporation to report on the conflict with due impartiality and accuracy. 
The Asserson Report on the BBC’s coverage of the war is wide-ranging and comprehensive. It takes in nine million words published by the BBC on its websites and hundreds of hours of flagship broadcasts including the News at Ten and Newsnight. Its conclusions are shocking but not surprising.
Take first the BBC’s portrayal of Hamas. Detailed analysis has revealed that the BBC is more likely to describe Hamas in relation to its “health ministry” than as a proscribed terrorist organisation. Given the butchery of Oct 7, many British Jews will find this revelation simply sickening. Certainly it suggests a failure by the BBC to provide audiences with the full and proper context for events that balanced reporting demands.
The report also reveals that the BBC has shown consistent bias against Israel. Again the detail is highly revealing, with Israel being accused of war crimes in the BBC’s reporting six times more often than Hamas, despite the killings on Oct 7 being documented in video footage that the terrorists filmed themselves. Other than as a result of deep-rooted bias, how is it possible that the BBC’s emphasis on “war crimes” is so consistently directed towards Israel?
At the heart of a number of the corporation’s problems is BBC Arabic. The report establishes that more than 90 per cent of the bureau’s video and web output on the war exhibits pro-Palestinian bias, even during that terrible weekend last October when the Hamas attack was taking place.
We should not be surprised by this given that in a sample study of BBC Arabic output, 27 per cent of Arabic-speaking interviewees were either connected to racist terrorist groups or had posted anti-Semitic rhetoric on social media. BBC Arabic’s failure to provide balance in its news coverage is a scandal in its own right. It has become a propaganda weapon.
The corporation is doing nothing short of gaslighting Britain’s Jewish community by its continued insistence that BBC Arabic is maintaining consistent standards of impartiality and accuracy. In doing so, it provides a litmus test of BBC bosses’ overall commitment to a transparent relationship with the public who pay for it. The BBC’s senior management can be in no doubt that there are serious problems with the editorial standards of BBC Arabic, but they do not have the courage to admit it.
So what should happen now? To solve a problem you have to acknowledge that you have one. The Asserson Report is further evidence that change is needed, but the BBC’s leaders have consistently failed to see the scale of the problem they face. It is time for an independent inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of the war to address what is now an institutional crisis at our national broadcaster.
Danny Cohen was the director of BBC Television from 2013 until 2015