BBC accused of over 1,500 editorial breaches in Israel-Hamas war coverage, report unveils systemic bias

A BBC spokesman stressed that “coverage can’t be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context.”

The BBC has been accused of breaching its editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, according to a report published by The Telegraph on September 7. The report, based on research led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, claims the broadcaster exhibited a "deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel."

The investigation, which analysed four months of BBC output across television, radio, online news, podcasts, and social media, involved a team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists. The team employed artificial intelligence (AI) to scrutinise over nine million words of BBC content. Their findings highlight that Israel was associated with genocide 14 times more often than Hamas, despite the group's status as a terror organisation.

The total number of editorial breaches, spanning issues of impartiality, accuracy, editorial values, and public interest, reached 1,553. According to the report, Hamas terrorism was repeatedly downplayed, while Israel was depicted as a "militaristic and aggressive nation."

One of the most significant areas of concern was BBC Arabic, which, according to the research, demonstrated a particularly biased stance. The report uncovered 11 instances where reporters from BBC Arabic publicly supported acts of terrorism, especially those carried out by Hamas, without this bias being disclosed to viewers.

In response to the findings, the BBC stated it would "carefully consider" the report, but questioned the methodology, particularly the use of AI to analyse coverage, Telegraph wrote. A BBC spokesman stressed that “coverage can’t be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context.”

The report has sparked calls for an independent review of the BBC’s coverage of Israel, with Laurence Julius, vice-chairman of the National Jewish Assembly, criticising the broadcaster for promoting an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic narrative.

Asserson, who has monitored BBC coverage of Israel for two decades, warned that the BBC's conduct raises serious concerns about its role as a publicly funded broadcaster. “Such conduct not only breaches the BBC’s Royal Charter but also calls into question its suitability for continued public funding,” he said.

The BBC has faced scrutiny since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, after which it announced it would label Hamas as a terrorist organisation where possible. However, the research revealed that out of 12,459 mentions of Hamas, only 409 (3.2 percent) referred to the group as terrorists.

The report has been submitted to the BBC's leadership, including its director-general and board members, as pressure mounts on the broadcaster to address concerns about impartiality in its reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict.