Is the BBC biased?

The BBC's impartiality is once again under scrutiny after a report into its coverage of the war in Gaza revealed a "deeply worrying pattern of bias" against Israel.

Research, which used AI to analyse four months of the BBC's output across television, radio, online news, podcasts and social media, from 7 October 2023 when Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel, identified a total of 1,553 "breaches" of the BBC's editorial guidelines, which "included impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest".

It prompted calls from leading Jewish groups for an independent inquiry into the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and again raised the question of whether the national broadcaster is institutionally biased.

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Is the BBC biased over Israel-Hamas war?

The latest findings threaten to "reignite once more" a "long-running controversy" over BBC bias against Israel, said The Spectator.

One "insider" working on the project told the magazine "this has been months and months of work, using the most cutting-edge scientific techniques to prove what’s been happening at the BBC during this war". It has revealed a "systemic problem" at the broadcaster, they said, and there are "some serious people who are determined to not let the BBC off the hook on this one".

The BBC has said it would "carefully consider" the report even though a spokesman for the corporation added that it had "serious questions" about the methodology. 

While it is "no lightweight document" conceded Byline Times, it contains "little intelligence in the analysis itself" and its conclusions are "partly a result of a flawed methodology which relies on a very naïve conception of AI".

The background and motivation of the report's authors must also be taken into account. It was produced by Trevor Asserson, a British lawyer who now runs Israel's largest international law firm and has been described by The Daily Telegraph as a "long-standing campaigner against BBC bias".

Also crucially, the research team consisted of lawyers and data scientists but no media researchers or indeed journalists.

A comprehensive assessment of UK news reporting of Gaza published by the Centre for Media Monitoring in March 2024 "came to quite different conclusions" said Byline Times – that there have been repeated misrepresentation of Palestinian perspectives – but "received no attention at all in mainstream media at the time".

This is the real "balance of power when it comes to UK media coverage of Gaza" it added.

What does the public think?

Many on the right who rail against the perceived left-wing bias within the BBC have long called for greater regulation to reverse the tilt.

In January this year, the then-culture secretary Lucy Frazer set out reforms to "boost confidence in the BBC's impartiality and complaints system" including plans for Ofcom, the media regulator, to police the BBC's news website and YouTube channel as part of the mid-term review of the corporation's charter.

It is unclear as yet how the Labour government will proceed, but one useful idea it might like to keep is to "move the final stage of its complaints process on alleged bias – Gary Lineker’s tweets and the like – to Ofcom", wrote Anne McElvoy for the i news site. This would mean the BBC would no longer "be judge and jury in its own major controversies, which is hard going on everyone involved".

But attacking bias is "also about figuring out where coverage that the market or algorithms do not support should figure in the future, and how they can avoid extinction."

Is regulation the answer?

Ofcom currently regulates the BBC's TV, radio and on-demand output, but the government said oversight should be extended to digital services to allow the watchdog to hold the BBC to account "in a more robust way". 

After complaints about bias rose by 50% last year, Frazer "set out reforms including plans for Ofcom, the media regulator, to police the BBC's news website and YouTube channel" as part of the mid-term review of the corporation's charter, said The Times. The reforms "follow fierce criticism of the BBC's coverage of the war in Gaza", said The Daily Telegraph, "and its refusal to brand Hamas a terrorist organisation".

One useful idea is to "move the final stage of its complaints process on alleged bias – Gary Lineker’s tweets and the like – to Ofcom", writes Anne McElvoy for the i news site. This would mean the BBC would no longer "be judge and jury in its own major controversies, which is hard going on everyone involved".

But attacking bias is "also about figuring out where coverage that the market or algorithms do not support should figure in the future, and how they can avoid extinction".