A new report accuses the BBC of displaying heavy bias against Israel in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The report was put together by a team of 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists.
It comes after a four-month analysis of the BBC’s output across television, radio and other platforms. In it, the group claims that during the peak of the fighting, the BBC breached its own impartiality guidelines more than 1,500 times. The report describes this as a “deeply worrying pattern of bias.”
The report utilized artificial intelligence to analyze about 9 million words of BBC content. One key finding was that the BBC mentioned “war crimes” four times more in relation to Israel than Hamas. The publication mentioned it 127 times, compared to just 30 mentions for Hamas.
The term “breaching international law” was also used six times more often with Israel. When it came to the word “genocide,” it was associated with Israel 283 times versus only 19 for the Palestinian group.
Another concern raised by the report was the BBC’s Arabic broadcasts, which reportedly featured journalists who had previously made statements in support of Hamas. This is an issue that the BBC has acknowledged, launching its own internal investigation into six reporters.
The media company said, responding to the report, that it will carefully consider the findings, but have “serious questions” about the methodology used, particularly the reliance in artificial intelligence to assess impartiality.
Former BBC executive Danny Cohen has also called for an independent inquiry into the broadcaster’s coverage. Protesters have gathered outside the BBC’s London headquarters, upset over the broadcaster’s characterization of Hamas as a “resistance movement.”
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