The BBC is not having a good week. The corporation, which has been batting away allegation after allegation of anti-Israel bias for years, appears to be risking its reputation and potentially its future on a position which could, many argue, amount to institutional antisemitism. Or is it institutional anti-Zionism? Or are they just biased against Israel but not opposed to its existence per se? The fact is, it does not matter which it is. None is acceptable.
Impartiality is not just important to the BBC; impartiality is the BBC. Its royal charter states that it exists to “provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world.”
In the last week alone, five major scandals have hit the headlines regarding the BBC’s treatment of Jews and Israel. Filmmaker Lucie Kon was paid a £400,000 settlement in a case where she alleged antisemitism, bullying, and unfair dismissal due to being Jewish at the BBC. Kon reports that when an attempt was made to set up a Jewish staff group at the BBC, one diversity and inclusion officer said that there was no need for one because “Jews run the media.”
Former BBC Panorama producer Phil Craig said the BBC had been taken over by a new radical generation “wagging the dog” and that the result was less rigor and less commitment to the guidelines. He said: “It needs an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – not to damage the BBC further, but to save it from this generation of cowardly managers who have so little instinct for its culture and values.”
Former head of TV Danny Cohen wrote in the Telegraph: “In the last three years I have been contacted by a number of Jewish people working for the BBC who have experienced both racist abuse and an everyday drumbeat of bias when it comes to reporting on the Gaza war. In these cases, they fear that speaking out will only end one way: the end of their BBC careers.”
Meanwhile, the BBC was forced to admit it made a mistake platforming influencer Bushra Shaikh, who called Jews who move to Israel “lying scumbags” and said that Israel was a greater threat to the West than Iran, while almost simultaneously platforming academic Andreas Malm, who praised October 7 as an “act of liberation.”
A catalogue of BBC failures
And that’s just the last week. If we widen the frame to months and years, we find an astonishing catalogue of failures.
Investigative journalist David Collier exposed the BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which British broadcast regulator Ofcom said misled audiences by featuring narration by a child who was connected to Hamas, but this was far from Collier’s only discovery. His reporting has identified case after case of BBC journalists failing basic due diligence when it comes to Israel.
The Telegraph has reported substantially on the failures of BBC Arabic, including the naming of 53 “journalists killed by Israel” who turned out to be linked to terrorist organizations.
The BBC’s third-stage complaints handler, the Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU), held that the BBC’s broadcast of Bob Vylan’s “Death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury broke editorial guidelines related to harm and offense, but not impartiality or incitement. The same complaints department recently defended the BBC reporting that the Bibas family “died in captivity.”
The leaked Prescott memo – which drew on and validated years of CAMERA analysis – detailed significant failures of impartiality on the Israel-Hamas War and led to the resignations of director-general Tim Davie and news head Deborah Turness.
Meanwhile, international editor Jeremy Bowen remains unrepentant on his significant misreporting on the Al-Ahli hospital blast, and US special correspondent Katty Kay broke impartiality rules when she referred to “genocide in Gaza” as an uncontested fact. When a video appeared purporting to show Bowen making similar remarks, the BBC defended his denial, and no investigation into his conduct appears to be forthcoming.
Documenting failures of impartiality on Israel
At CAMERA, we have been documenting BBC failures of impartiality on Israel for decades. Now the UK charity Campaign Against Antisemitism is calling for a suspension of the license fee pending an inquiry into institutional antisemitism at the national broadcaster, while several MPs have also called for an investigation before the royal charter can be renewed in 2027.
A key point to understand about the BBC is that it does not need to be proven to be institutionally antisemitic for it to have a profoundly serious problem. Institutional anti-Zionism would also be enough to bring down the corporation, as would anti-Israel bias. “I don’t hate Jews, I just hate Israel” is a euphemistic smoke screen that may work for the likes of the UK Green Party, but it does not work for the BBC. The BBC cannot be institutionally anything.
For any opinion to become so entrenched at the BBC that it is elevated above commitment to the charter would be an existential threat to the license fee. No single position, not even one vaunted as “moral” in the way anti-Israel criticism often is, can be allowed to bypass the rules that govern BBC output.
It does not matter if you believe anti-Zionism to be moral and unrelated to antisemitism; the BBC cannot be anti-Zionist or anti-Israel any more than it can be Labour, Conservative, or Green. There can be no politics at the BBC.
The corporation is capable of exceptional journalism and programming. It knows how to do its job properly. To quote Davie: “In a world of misinformation and disinformation, the BBC’s editorial values of accuracy, impartiality, and fairness are more crucial than ever. So too, in the context of the ugliness of much social media, is the fundamental decency embodied in sections like Harm and Offence or Children and Young People.”
The BBC is worth fighting for. The concept of a broadcaster with no allegiance to either government, shareholders, advertisers, or any specific audience demographic, whose only purpose is the truth, is a concept worth saving. The BBC is risking all that on anti-Israel hysteria, which often spills into outright antisemitism.
It is time for a deep cleaning of the BBC. It must be independently investigated not just for institutional antisemitism but also for institutional anti-Zionism and anti-Israel bias. The distinction between those three things has its place, but not here.
As the royal charter comes up for renewal next year, the British public must demand that the BBC return to its principles as a public service committed to impartiality. Our BBC is precious. We do not have to watch it destroy itself for a commitment to the hatred of Israel.
The writer is a UK media researcher for CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), the leading organization exposing and countering anti-Israel narratives in the media, online, and in schools. Learn more at CAMERA.org and on social media: @CAMERA4Truth
