The BBC flunks Journalism 101 when it comes to Israel

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Bad journalism has bad consequences.

Traduce Israel, and you bring Jew-hating angry mobs onto the street. That is a step away from acts of racial hatred. Journalists know this, yet they willingly act as cheerleaders for such hatred, whipping it up with distorted, manipulative and sometimes dishonest journalism.

They should know better.

THE BBC BREACHED EDITORIAL GUIDELINES OVER 1,500 TIMES IN ISRAEL-HAMAS CONFLICT, REPORT CLAIMS

The BBC is the largest and most ‘trusted’ brand in journalism. We know this, because the BBC tells us. It earns this sobriquet by dint of its past glories, and the fact that it is legally obliged to produce ‘impartial’ news. In return for this promise, it is paid more than $5 billion per year by the British public.

The Asserson Report, which I published earlier this month, takes a deep dive into four months of BBC news coverage of the Israel–Hamas war. We look at some 9 million words of output using a traditional litigation style analysis. In parallel, a team of data scientists (operating as the Research for Impartial media – RIMe) conducted a series of experiments using cutting-edge AI techniques. Working independently, yet collaboratively, these two disciplines found strikingly similar results, exposing the myth of BBC impartiality.

‘CORROSIVELY WOKE’ BBC CONTINUES TO BE PLAGUED BY RETRACTIONS, APOLOGIES RELATED TO ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

We analyzed BBC English language TV output. While some programs were neutral, the remainder were between 90% and 100% pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli.

The BBC broke almost every rule in its own rule-book - the ‘Editorial Guidelines.’ They use BBC as a platform for Hamas sympathizers, and Hamas members; they report death figures they know to be wrong without adequately conveying their unreliability to audiences; they air reports from Gaza without mentioning that Hamas controls journalistic output; their own 
journalists express personal opinions. Each of these is a separate breach of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality.

While we found that BBC English was disappointingly bad, we found that BBC Arabic was significantly worse. In a ‘sympathy analysis’ conducted by the RIMe data scientists across global media, BBC Arabic was snuggled up with such outlets as Al Jazeera; Palestine Chronicle and Iraqi News. It must surely degrade trust in the BBC to discover that it is being used to peddle extremist views.

The BBC News machine displays a strong anti-Israel view from almost every angle we analyzed. Any pretense at impartiality seems to have been abandoned. Indeed, its lead Middle East journalist, Jeremy Bowen, recently boasted that he considers impartiality means him telling the audience what he considers to be ‘the truth.' This is the precise opposite of what the Editorial Guidelines dictate.

So, how has the BBC drifted so far from its roots? There are two answers. Firstly – the BBC has been captured by an institutional bias on many issues. Journalists who insist on expressing their own opinions should be shifted to somewhere less harmful – Gardener’s Question Time, comes to mind - or they should be removed altogether. This seems rarely, if ever, to happen.

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Secondly, and more fundamentally, BBC management needs to get a grip on their most sacred product - news. They need to set targets; monitor output, adjust when targets are not hit; and take steps against recalcitrant journalists and editors. At present, the BBC senior management sets no KPI’s; sets no goals; conducts no systematic monitoring of output and is essentially running blind. They hope their journalists will achieve impartiality, but take no effective steps to ensure they do. They have let go of the rudder, and are allowing the BBC to be blown where the winds take it. That means that a bunch of very self-opinionated journalists, many of whom display deeply malevolent views about Israel, control the output.

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The Asserson Report blows the myth of impartiality out of the water. The BBC doesn’t achieve impartiality and is not remotely close to achieving it. BBC management must either take back control of the ship, or the British people should demand a refund.

Trevor Asserson was global head of litigation at one of the UK’s top 20 law firms. In 2005, he set up Asserson, a UK law firm working out of Tel Aviv. It is today the largest international law firm in Israel. The Asserson Report – The Israel-Hamas War and the BBC is available at www.Asserson.co.uk