Dear All,

or well over a year, we have been witnessing what is, effectively, the ‘first live-streamed genocide’ in human history­ ­– i.e. Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. We have watched entire families wiped out, children killed, maimed and orphaned, babies left to die in hospitals, journalists, doctors and academics targeted and killed, buildings razed to the ground. And along with all of this we have had to endure relentless gaslighting by Western mainstream media outlets.

The way that broadcasters like the BBC, CNN et al have reported the events of October 7 and the subsequent Israeli aggression has been jaw-droppingly surreal. Their narrative has been biased in favour of Israel. It has downplayed the context and dehumanised the Palestinians. Most normal people with some belief in international law and an iota of compassion, have been horrified by this continuous gaslighting and by the complete abandonment of basic journalistic principles by most of the mainstream media. BBC News has been one of the worst offenders in this regard.Now a report details just how skewed and propagandist their coverage has been.

The report, prepared and published by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring, is titled BBC on Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards and is a forensic examination of the BBC’s coverage of the events following October 7. It consists of eleven sections (the last of which is: Questions for the BBC) and two appendices and it provides data-led insights that reveal the shortcomings and failures of this coverage. It confirms through citing extensive data analysis and examples what most people had already sensed.

The report found systematic “bias, double standards and the silencing of Palestinian voices” and said that “a clear dynamic has emerged: the marginalisation of Palestinian suffering and the amplification of Israeli narratives.” It found that Israeli fatalities received 33 times more coverage per death than Palestinian fatalities. In the one-year period studied in the report 42,000 Palestinians and 1,246 Israelis were killed – a ratio of 34:1. The report referred to this as an “extreme imbalance in reporting fatalities.”

The report also found that BBC coverage “delegitimised casualty numbers” of Palestinians. This was mostly done by throwing doubts on their credibility with its use of “Hamas-run’ when citing Gaza Health Ministry figures.

The choice of language that BBC News used for both sides is telling. The report found that words like ‘massive’ were only used to describe attacks against Israel. Highly emotive language was used for Israeli victims.Words like slaughter,barbaric, deadly and brutal were used for attacks on Israelis four times more than for attacks by them. On BBC TV and radio output, specifically, 70 percent of emotive terms were used for Israelis. Thus, Israelis would be butchered or murdered while Palestinians would simply die. The report points out that “the BBC’s systematic use of passive language particularly obscures Israeli responsibility for the overwhelming scale of violence. With Israel conducting an estimated 10,728 aerial strikes since October 7, 2023, the BBC published over 150 articles about Israeli attacks without naming the perpetrator in headlines, using passive language like “Air strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people” rather than “Israeli strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people.” The term massacre appeared in BBC headlines five times during the analysis period;it was exclusively applied to attacks on Israelis, despite numerous mass casualty events affecting Palestinians.

The report also confirmed what many people have commented on over the course of the last year: the disproportionate projection of Israeli views and Israeli interviewees and the promotion of Israel’s narrative by BBC News presenters and reporters.

The CMM report reveals that while 2,350 Israelis were interviewed during the period they studied, less than half that number – only 1,085 Palestinians - were interviewed. They were treated differently too – the presenters often interrupting them rudely to put across Israel’s point of view/narrative, although the presenters failed to challenge Israeli interviewees. as Mark Urban on Newsnight, for example, did not challenge the Israeli politician Danny Danon when he called Palestinians “barabaric animals.” (And who can forget the rudeness of the presenter Lucy Hocking in the infamous “Karim, you’ve had your say” interview where she repeatedly interrupted Karim Ali, founder of Gaza Sunbirds a professional para-cycling team in Gaza and treated everything he said with a level of contempt and disbelief).

The report “identified 100 instances where BBC presenters actively – and often belligerently – shut down, challenged or dismissed guests who raised the possibility of genocide taking place. This, despite mounting evidence from human rights organisations, legal experts and the UN.”

The Centre for Media Monitoring report was launched in London on the 17th of June. The launch was attended by BBC’s Director of News Richard Burgess. A panel and an audience put questions to him on the occasion. They included journalistSangeetaMyaska (who lost her job due to her criticism of the manner in which Gaza-Israel was covered), journalist Peter Oborne,and MP Andy McDonald. However, till a day later there had been no official response/statement from the BBC and no coverage of the report by other mainstream media outlets. Even the BBC’s competitors and its traditional detractors have chosen to black out this important analysis of the failures of the public broadcaster in the coverage of this conflict.

This is a very important report. It is data-led so it gives you numbers and incidence. And it points out clearly, with examples, how the BBC actually failed to follow its own stringent and clear guidelines. It identifies a lot of issues around how BBC News chose to frame this coverage and to take a partisan view by over-representing the Israeli view and choosing to omit key historical and legal context.

The BBC’s crimes of omission, sadly, include its failure to cover the targeting and killing of journalists by the IDF. Of the 167 journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, the BBChas reported the deaths of only 11 – or 6 percent. (The killing of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 similarly received little coverage on the BBC.It was not referenced in the coverage of the targeting of journalists in Gaza).

This report is recommended reading– not just for journalism schools and working journalists – but for everybody: https://cfmm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CfMM-report-2023-24-ePDF-1.pdf.

For me, personally, it has been a painful experience witnessing the decline of BBC News coverage. I worked for the BBC news division in London for over 16 years.I was so proud of being a part of it when I joined but so disillusioned with it when I left. Perhaps the so-called War on Terror was a turning point for the broadcaster…. More on that later.In the meantime, do read this CMM report.

Best wishes

Umber Khairi