Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

I read the article but not sure which pro Israeli editorials the BBC has published.

My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.

Imagine all the other things they have not published because even with what they've written, it's still pro-Israeli bias.

"Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.

Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide."

https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...

The self-described mission of the Centre For Media Monitoring is "Promoting Fair And Responsible Reporting Of Muslims And Islam", so they might be slightly biased...

According to your own logic I should not even bother providing any evidence when you can simply assume any organization to be biased based on identity alone instead of addressing the evidence they provide, like the BBC operates under a Royal Charter agreed upon with the britsh government, "so they might be slightly biased..."

"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...

It's about the careful wording, about who gets to be on the spotlight, about who gets to call the other side a tyrant, an evil state, about saying things like "regime change" and no-one batting an eye. Slowly, but surely, you form an opinion as to who the bad actor is as you've seen or read about its bad behaviour (but not of the behavior of the other party)

Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and is allowed to say whatever they want, unquestioned.

In a meta sense, yes, but in practice it’s mostly just a large collection of journalists and editors, real humans, working in a chaotic information space where there’s a large variety of angles and sources being put out at all times depending on the context.

It’s equally easy to cherry pick this sort of thing to build a narrative of some ulterior agenda. Especially given the high pace that news demands in the social media age.

What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.

A sin of omission, not commission.

> We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions.

and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.

Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.

Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of persuasion, and how it affects the reader's perceptions.

All of this was taught in highschool literary criticism classes - just on old books and such, rather than modern material. But the same exact lessons could've been applied. Except people merely either half-assed those classes and use cliff notes, or just straight skipped them - leading to today's world where most adults are unable to critically examine the media they consume.

> What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.

Do you believe this with regard to what is happening in Israel/Palestine?

The chaos of information and what is truth is only bubbled up when 1) there's very few journalists in the area or 2) all the journalists are being killed or 3) there's no journalists and only special interests.

Consider that even if it was a "narrative" which at this point is controlled by social media, as it stands it seems to be: "these people are evil, they should be killed, sorry not sorry about the babies" or "these people are committing genocide, this bad."

> and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.

> Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.

Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.

I'd think this is more an example of a "genetic fallacy" rather than "ad hominem".

I.e., impugning the argument based on who presents it.

> are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse

and who's doing that discrediting? That's also a source.

Thank you for the correction! Won't mix up my fallacies next time.

Thats a very reductive view of the situation, have you been keeping track of the headlines or are you just a disinterested outsider?

It's mostly anout how Israel army controls the way journalists report the war or regime in west bank that walks, quacks, and swims like an apartheid but apparently they can't call it that.

Sadly no one will be able to document the carnage in gaza. They plan to create an internment camp in the south and move civilians into at after making sure they are not linked to Hamas. Then they are going to basically follow Trump's plan to clean Gaza by building new jewish settlements and kill anyone outside the internment camp. While doing that they will not allow independent journalists to go in gaza.

> Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.

Even when a source is unreliable, probable half-truths and lies are still valuable information when read critically and juxtaposed with many sources. Observing and noting when different factions agree and disagree on basic facts can be highly enlightening even when it's impossible to make a judgement on whether either side is right or wrong and to what degree. Identifying and recognizing the use and proliferation of canned phrases is also very helpful in constructing a mental map of the global journo-political landscape.

Also, highly credible organizations will be wrong sometimes and vice versa. One is never enough.

Sure, as a consumer, that is what you should do. But the issue at hand is that the BBC and its employees hold the BBC to a journalistic standard that it does not meet (according to those employees).

This is the kind of comment that at first glance seems measured and well-phrased. I’m sure it depicts a common situation in journalism too, after all they’re just humans like the rest of us.

The problem here is the enormity of what is actually going on in Gaza: a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot. It is not two sides in disagreement, each jostling for attention on roughly equal terms, each somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Two years in, we’re well beyond that and the only thing that matters is that one side is sadistically slaughtering the other and the world is pretending it’s not happening.

Isn’t military service in Israel compulsory?

Call me crazy, but neutral journalists should not be calling either side "evil". They should be reporting what each side does and let the reader draw their own moral conclusions.

As much as there are barriers to reporters here, it seems less than most other conflicts. Its not like journalists have unrestricted access to the Ukraine/Russia front line. Access to other conflicts like Sudan or Myanmar are also very restricted in practise.

Would you honestly accept a report by an Israeli think tank that came to the opposite conclusion? I feel like most people would be suspicious of such a report.

That doesn't appear to be correct. How have you reached that conclusion?

Israel has not granted access to journalists to report independently since October 2023.

There has been very limited escorted trips with external journalists but all tightly supervised by the IDF.

Journalists already in Gaza have been killed regularly and there are credible accusations that many are deliberately targeted by the IDF.

"...a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot."

So you are saying, you dont know of:

The genocide in Tigray

The Darfur genocide

The history of the DRC

The Rwandan genocide

The Genocide of Isaaqs ...

You must refuse to participate in the forces committing these acts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss

And if the state is compelling its subjects to participate, let's have an honest discussion about what that says about this state.

> Israel has not granted access to journalists to report independently since October 2023.

Has Russia granted access by independent journalists to russian occupied Ukraine in that time period? As far as i know the answer is no.

And even on the Ukraine side there has been significant restrictions

E.g. a quote from https://theintercept.com/2023/06/22/ukraine-war-journalists-...

“The Ukrainian government has made it virtually impossible for journalists to do real front line reportage.”

Maybe its hard to say which one is worse, but they seem to be at least in the same neighbourhood

If we define “worse” as higher journalist deaths, zero press freedom, no access, and active targeting, then Gaza is clearly worse for journalists right now.

Ukraine/Russia conflict is obviously extremely dangerous but it allows far more media access, transparency, and foreign presence.

> zero press freedom

According to the world press freedom index, Israel has the third highest press freedom of all middle eastern countries (Qatar and Cyprus are a bit higher, everyone else in the middle east is lower in most cases much lower).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Rank...

I'm not saying its a paradise for reporters. There are clearly issues. But saying "zero press freedom" is a massive overstatement.

It's not an overstatement. If external journalists aren't allowed into Gaza on their own terms then it is a fact.

How you can have a sentence that includes the word "paradise" in it when referring to what's happening in Gaza is beyond me.