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

Recent BBC World headlines:

    Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2)
    Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4)
    Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5)
    Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8)
    Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11)
    More than 20 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near Gaza aid sites, Hamas-run ministry says (June 16)
    Israeli forces kill 51 Palestinians waiting for flour at Gaza aid site, witnesses and rescuers say (June 17)
    Eleven killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, rescuers say (June 18)
    At least 12 Palestinians killed waiting for aid in Gaza, say medics (June 19)
    Israeli military kills 23 Palestinians near aid site in Gaza, witnesses and medics say (June 20)
    GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites (June 27)
    At least 81 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says (June 28)
    Israeli military investigates 'reports of harm to civilians' after hundreds killed near Gaza aid sites (June 30)
    Hundreds of families displaced by wave of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Palestinians say (June 30)
    Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies bombardment, rescuers say (July 3)
    Israel's strike on bustling Gaza café killed a Hamas operative - but dozens more people were killed (July 4)

Now, perhaps these anonymous staff make some distinction between headlines and whatever they mean by "PR," but there appears to be zero hesitation reporting everything the BBC can find on the crimes of Israel, real or imagined. Reading the open letter makes no such distinction, citing "reporting" many times. At least two of the above are directly attributed to "Hamas-run ministry," which is somehow a source for BCC's supposedly pro-Israel reporting.

How am I supposed to not see what I'm seeing with my lying eyes? I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.

Just because you can list a bunch of article headlines that seem to not show bias, it doesn't mean there isn't bias. That takes a much deeper analysis.

Interestingly you only picked the latest ones and even those still contain bias. The evidence needs to be analyzed holistically, from start to finish. BBC consistently used passive voice when it comes to Palestinian deaths like "20 Palestinians 'died' in Airstrike" which can appear "non-biased" but becomes clearer when compared to proper headlines like "20 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an ISRAELI Airstike"

"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...

I think the vibe is changing and BBC is letting these go on-air with care.

Do you remember when headlines with Israel's atrocities would be rewritten to not upset them? This was <1y back even.

Having anti Israeli headlines is not the same as having pro-Israeli proganda. If the writers/editors believe what they are writing, well I suppose I don't an issue with that.

At least it seems widely reported on https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/100-bbc-insiders-pen-lette...

So it it seems like a legitimate letter, what's less clear is which, if any, of their pro Israeli articles are written by people who believe what they are saying...

1. You don't have the counterfactual here, so who's to say how the world would have turned out without exhortations from top brass.

2. Recent is the keyword. The tide of public sentiment has shifted somewhat against Israel in this conflict as the civilian casualties mount & theater of combat expands, so maybe it's easier to be a Brave Truth-Teller in the past 2 months of a conflict whose most recent flare-up dates back going on 2 years now.

3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.

Good question. I don’t have the answers.

I am curious as to when and how journalists use language. Looking at the headlines you chose, I see that some are written in active voice and some are in passive voice. When do journalists choose to use active voice over passive voice?

>1. You don't have the counterfactual here, so who's to say how the world would have turned out without exhortations from top brass.

This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with. If they're biased to be anti-israel, then arguably the top brass telling them to tone it down a notch would make the coverage more neutral.

>3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.

This presumes there's some Objectively Neutral™ version of a headline for a story, but how do know what that should be? Is the "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens ..." wording supposed to be the neutral version? If that's the neutral version, I can't imagine what the anti-israeli version is supposed to be.

> I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.

Well, you're capable of some level. The allegations in no way suggest that articles critical of Israel aren't run.

> This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with

I don't think it presumes that, I'm just pointing out that the existence of articles reporting on Israeli war crimes doesn't preclude bias.

> How do you define what the neutral version of the headline should be?

I don't really believe that true neutrality exists, we're always exposed to biases. Which and to what degree are at question here. My hypothetical headline was specifically meant to highlight this - the same events can be reported on "accurately" in many ways, with many biases. The existence of those facts in a newspaper doesn't mean there's no bias. That's all.

Imagine China started doing to the Uyghurs exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and on the exact same scale. For that matter you can even say for the exact same justification - there have indeed been multiple mass death terrorist style incidents carried out by Uyghurs. Would you expect remotely similar framing?

The entire population of Gaza was only ~2 million and Israel has now killed/wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians directly, and it's likely some multiple of that have been killed indirectly (starvation, disease, deaths of despair, etc). If this was China, we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide, done all we could to economically sanction them out of existence, and perhaps even flirted with direct invasions which would entail risking not only WW3 but global nuclear warfare.

But because it's Israel, we're instead shipping them weapons to keep carrying out this "war" and the media continues framing it as just a regrettable conflict with unfortunate collateral damage.

It's ~1% click through most just get the news from the headline.

> we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide

Without knowing what "we" means, allow me to cite a few more recent BBC headlines, these related to "genocide":

    Gaza war: UN rights expert accuses Israel of acts of *genocide* (March 26)
    UN experts accuse Israel of sexual violence and *'genocidal acts'* in Gaza (March 13)
    Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of *acts of genocide* in Gaza over water access (December 19, 2024)
    Amnesty accuses Israel of *genocide* against Palestinians in Gaza (December 5, 2024)
    Saudi crown prince says Israel committing *'genocide'* in Gaza (November 11, 2024)
    Brazil's Lula compares Israel's Gaza campaign to the Holocaust (February 28, 2024)
    ICJ says Israel must prevent *genocide* in Gaza (January 26, 2024)

So the "genocide" narrative appears to be alive and well around the world, and the BBC is a fine place to read all about it. The ICJ is literally investigating a genocide case against Israel as we speak.

Again, this notion that there is some pro-Israel bias plaguing the BBC just doesn't compute for me. Were the claims of this anonymous open letter valid, I wouldn't be able to tap a couple keywords into X and dump a list of such BBC headlines. Apparently any leader, pressure group or institution on Earth that cares to make a headline need only accuse Israel of "genocide" and it will be on the BBC the same day. Whatever supposed editorial bias is in effect appears to be highly ineffective.

"Brave Truth Tellers"? There were protests on the 8th october after Israel was attacked and didn't even retaliate yet. Nothing happened to the people that shared their thoughts. I personally think they should improve their education on the topic, but that is my opinion.

This is a thorough victim complex if you really apply a neutral perspective.

"Counterfactual" my arse...

The narrative of "pro-/anti-" is part of the problem.

Zionist settlers are outright evil, while most Israelis don't care or are unaware of what's going on in Gaza. Unfortunately, the world has been being paying attention and has had enough of the hasbara of ethno-nationalist supremacy BS that is plain to see. A lesson that the Holocaust/Shoah didn't teach properly to much of anyone now that those who survived it and are mostly gone, while those here now lack the oral history continuity of it. It's an intentional Pyrrhic victory in the tradition of the American western frontier and the Trail of Tears. There's now a plan to create a "humanitarian zone" concentration camp in Rafah requiring security screening and involuntary captivity for 600k.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-07/ty-article/.p...

Effective propaganda, when truth is not on its side, does not simply ignore the truth. There's an ICC arrest warrant out for Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and so forth. Never saying genocide and ignoring all allegations would be a red flag to the point of absurdity. You'd never convince anybody that wasn't already completely convinced.

So the way that real propaganda works is by taking some issue people generally feel a way about, expressing some empathy towards that, and then working to shift that person's perspective. For instance here [1] is the first article you linked: "UN rights expert accuses Israel of acts of genocide". It not only spends much of the article softly trying to undermine these claims, but even leans on one of the most classical propaganda techniques - appeals to emotion. This is a quote from that article:

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Not surprisingly, Israeli diplomats are angry [at the claims]. Its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, described the report as "an obscene inversion of reality", and accused Ms Albanese of questioning Israel's right to exist. Many Israelis, too, are likely to be shocked. And the suggestion of genocide, towards a state which was founded as a direct result of Nazi Germany's genocide of Jews, will cause deep offence.

In the wake of 7 October attack, and the fact that so many Israeli families are still waiting for news of loved ones taken hostage, hearing such outspoken condemnation is hard. Noam Peri, whose father Chaim was taken hostage, also travelled to Geneva. Her focus, naturally, is that her father not be forgotten.

"My father was kidnapped from his own home," she said. "He's an 80-year-old person that was sitting in his home with my mother, and he was brutally taken from there, and has essentially disappeared since. He has no communication, with no-one in the world."

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[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68667556